>> bessie grew up in the jewish orphan home in new orleans. it closed in 1946 and i too was an orphan and became award for an agency that cared for her. when i graduated from the same high school that she went to, 50 years later, my high school guidance counselor introduced us. i got to know her through my years in college, law school and legal career for the state of maryland. so i think she saw in me a little bit of herself, that little girl of new orleans. >> this is book tv on c-span2. television for serious readers. here is prime time line-up. starting shortly look back at 2016 election. at 7:30 photos of abandoned public spaces around the country by matthew christopher and on book tv after words, georgetown philosophy professor weighs in

on flaws in democratic systems. at 10:00 detail look at the 1901 world fair in buffalo, new york. we wrap up sunday prime time line-up at 10:45 with thomas freedman on how technology and globalization are accelerating our lives. first up is unprecedented on the 2016 election. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, everybody. thank you all for coming out this afternoon, what a great crowd for 4:00 p.m. on thursday. it's wonderful we are very excited about this event, before we get started, i just have a few houseceiling things. as you all know we do assigning after ward. we are not going to be able to do that today.

the books are semisigned. it's a beautiful book. we have plenty of copies up front. please help yourself. great christmas and holiday gift. i might add and otherwise the event will run as it usual does, our panel will be up here to lead the discussion for a while. we only have mic today. it's over here. we really do hope that you can make it to a mic if you have a question. we have our own video up on youtube and have c-span here and we are also doing this on facebook live stream. please try to make it to the mic if you have a question. a couple of housekeeping things, our winter member sale begins tomorrow. it goes for three days. if you're a remember pretty much everything is 25% off. please come out with that. we are always happy to have you.

it's an easy thing to do and to do at the cash register every time you're in the store. lastly, i think we all know that there's been a lot of news around this block 5,000 dlak -- block of connecticut avenue. by the lay, i'm lissa muscatine, i forgot one of the details. i'm one of the coowners with my husband, there he is. we want to express our truly heart felt thanks on behalf of all out of our staff. outpouring of concern has been truly overwhelming, positive and a sign of us truly testament of the strength of the community. it's why we are here. we are proud to be part of this community, we hope that we contribute in some small way to the defense community and other business on the block but it really is about the people of

this neighborhood who support our businesses who believe in solidarity on the face of this kind of assault on values and community and so we just can't thank you all enough for not only conveying your support but also being here and showing your support in the way that you do. so thank you very, very much. [applause] >> we are so happy to have this incredible panel from the world of politics and journalism who we know are going to give us all of the exact answers. [laughter] >> truly been one of the most bizarre elections in hurry history, i don't know how many of you if any were here, we did air the presidential debate here at politics and prose, all three of them. we were kind of surprised how packed the store was.

and it just showed the interest and intense engagement over the past year and a half around this election. with the panel of experts from cnn who are going to discuss the election and aftermath. i think you recognize all of them. new york times best seller, inside the cut throat of morning tv. next we have -- i was going to go in a different order. there you are. it's fine. we have amanda carpenter. we are delighted that she's here with us. she's also a political

commentator on cnn. i'm sure she's a familiar face too. 8:00 to 10 crew. her resume covering politics would take us the entire hour so i'm going to have to make it shorter than that. she reported on the white house, congress presidential campaign. she's been a questioner and most recently paid attention to presidential field in 2016 campaign. she had one-on-one interviews with virtually every candidate or a lot of them. [laughter] >> i said republican. >> that's true. >> propro among prose. my former colleague from the clinton administration, a good

friend patty, i think many of you know patty worked for a long time as top adviser for hillary clinton, most recently she's also maybe stay on the many cnn political round table that we all watched, offered analysis of the 2016, patty and i also have the wonderful distinction of being parents, one was a boy and one was a girl. i'm not going to say it. [laughter] >> as you also know, when we do events here, there's always a book involved and that's certainly the case here to. it's hot off the press. unprecedented. the election that changed everything. it includes cnn anchor and chief washington correspondent. you all know is from the neighborhood and pieces by a variety of cnn contributors.

i'm not sure where they went off to. anyway, we have jody who helped put -- there she is. jody is responsible for the book actually literally coming together. she was the other -- we also have john morgan the publisher. john. thank you also for being here. they deserve a lot of credit for the final project as well. and we are just thrilled to have this event and thank you all for coming and thank you most of us for being here. >> my first time here. i'm really thrilled to be talking today. i want to first mention the book and why it's so incredible. i have no idea what this meant when i heard cnn was making a book about the election. this was a year and a half ago as candidates enter in the race. cnn assigned jody, the main writer of the book to -- to go off to not have to worry about the day-to-day campaign but document what happened.

when we think about the title unprecedented, we all went to election night thinking, most of us, went in thinking, hillary clinton was to be the first female president, unprecedented story. the title in some ways even stand more strongly today one month later unprecedented, living history and this book, here is what amazed me, i don't know how you all did it, judy, it reads that trump was going to win. this book saw it coming and explains why it happened. i was really nervous to read my own essay because i wrote it before election day. interesting to see if the words hold up but it really does in the final, final days right after the election, they were able to get this done in record time. i highly recommend, check it out. also contributed inside the book. i wanted to start with our boss, words from jeff, head of cnn. this was really interesting.

-- intriguing on page 49. i don't think donald trump ever thought he was going to be the republican nominee for president. he's known trump for many years. i think he got into this race to varnish his brand, he was happy to get publicity but i think that's what it was all about until he realized that he could actually win. looking back 18 months, does that sound true to you as the reporter the whole time? >> absolutely. [laughter] >> no question. i agree. just watching him, he was just kind of doing his thing, making it up as he went along and obviously using his master marketing skills and celebrity status to do it. i mean, the first interview i had with him was at his winery and i remember sitting over this

beautiful scene of the vineyards and the hilltop and he come in the helicopter and walking up ten steps and they drove him in the suv. i'm thinking, no one is going to relate to this. i was thinking it's marketing. you know, it turns out people did relate a lot. >> obviously the night of the election trump's team was trying to lower expectations and trying to blame people like mitt romney for their loss. they didn't even see it coming that night. you talk about unprecedented. they didn't imagine themselves in that scenario because in the hours before he was president elect. they were saying, oh, these guys are the reason i lost. >> does that explain some of what happens since election night, there are times where it doesn't seem like we are seeing a normal transition, preparedness, do you think

because that wasn't an expectation on election day of winning? >> sure. they had transition team but they saw what was put together and threw it out of the window and now we see live auditions at trump tower with a parade coming through. >> our form of marketing, by the way. >> you're absolutely right, they weren't prepared for it but i also think we are seeing apprenticeship-style of transition because if it ain't broke, why fix it. it worked for him throughout the primary, throughout the general, why change things? why pivot now? he's been very successful. >> right, right. >> also who he is and also the way he operates. >> yeah. >> to just kind of fly by the seat of his pants clearly from anybody who has worked with him from the way he ran his campaign, you know, my sense is that even if there was expectation that he was going to

win, this transition process wouldn't look much different. >> one thing i love about the book it identifies pivot points in the 18 months. what was it for you, dana, the kind of not necessarily a huge made for tv moment but a time where you started to realize something was different this year, different from all past campaigns? >> you know, trump would always talk about his crowds. the two things that were most important for donald trump and still are his poll numbers and the size of his crowds. i mean, that's it. it felt too small for him. >> absolutely. >> that quickly changed. >> until he won the primary,

started winning, a lot of people thought that people were coming out to see a concert or show. just like you would buy a ticket to see a celebrity showing up at, you know, dar or something. in some cases, many cases that was true. when those people came to see the celebrity. they started to listen and they liked what they heard. because throughout the campaign, so much of what we talked about understandably and appropriately so were the things that were so controversial but the mainstay of his stump speech the entire time trade deals are bad, you guys are getting forgotten, build a wall. he didn't say that at the beginning. he liked the media at the beginning. that's a whole other story. and those are the core ideas and

ideals that people really tbraf at a -- gravitated towards because they were different. >> amanda, you were kind of famously, cnn had antitrump conservative voices, actually went out and hired protump conservative voices in order to have more balance on the air waves. when you came on board after having worked with crews, you looked back on the primary season and you learned what? >> the breaking point was sometime between new hampshire and florida where it appeared donald trump was for real and that debate where chris chris christie took out marco rubio. going to florida, i wanted to see it down come down to cruz-rubio race. when i didn't see people gravitating towards making that happen, it seemed like this is really going to fall apart and donald trump could take, the cruz camp saying, well, we have to get it down to trump and cruz, we almost sort of need

trump to beat everybody else and we will beat him and wait a second, and so to me the real story of the republican primary was a lack of unity within the republican party. you don't end up with 17 candidates in the stage. and that allowed donald trump to come in and so, before he got the nomination, i thought parties are over, you know, republican party couldn't stop this, couldn't do anything, but now he's showing himself to be very strong leader. i have reservations with the leadership style, but the party seems to be falling in line and saluting him in a way that i never really expected. we will see where it goes. as for the democratic party, i don't know what rebuilding going on over there. i think the party institutionally have a big party. >> before we talk about my sad party -- [laughter] >> i want to talk about the primary process and the thing that i found most astonishing

about the republican primary was that every candidate sort of left donald trump alone. i'm sure was because they thought he was a joke but between him getting all of this media attention and nobody laying a hand on him, i think that was the two parallel tracks that caused him to rise like he did and basically, you know, just win almost consistently throughout the entire primary season. and i -- and by the time they did, by the time ted cruz went after him and marco rubio went after him and jeb bush wept after him it was too little too late. >> you probably went in 2015 thinking jeb bush was going to be the story -- >> i didn't probably, i did. i even followed him to to poland, i think that was it because right before he announced, he did this international tour to varnish

his world-stage credentials because he was thinking like a traditional candidate, which by the way was the first thing he did wrong, first of many, many things including the fact that his name was bush which there was nothing he could do about that. no, there's no question. i remember being at jeb bush's announcement on june 15th, 2015 and i remember, you know, it was -- he did very well but it took a lot of effort for him to connect and to really emotish and to try to connect with the crowd and as soon as it was over all of the buzz in the back at the press table is donald trump is really going to do this tomorrow. i mean, the second it was over, i didn't realize it because i was doing live shots, it was jeb bush's inability to really get through to people, but it was

also -- there's no question in my mind that donald trump announced that he was going to run for president the day after jeb bush intentionally to steal his thunder and it worked. >> contrast in terms of the connection. >> yeah. >> do we chalk the same thing on the democratic side with the inability to connect. >> i'm a little biased because i happen to love hillary clinton very much, but having worked for her on many of her -- on her last presidential campaign, senate campaign, i know that she's a flat -- flawed candidate. i know she's not good on the stump and she really did personify, embodiment of institution, not just washington institutions, but the embodiment of all of those institutions that people were just so angry at whether it's washington, whether it's congress, whether

it's government, whether it's banks, whether it's the media, she just sort of embodied all of that for them so was she the wrong messenger for the time, probably. but having said that, she did so many things right. she was prepared, she had policy, she won the debate, she raises the money, she did everything -- she was a girl. she did everything she was supposed to do but she was a girl. [applause] >> she was a girl which is why she did everything she was supposed to do. >> well, that, she lost because she was a girl. >> how much do you chalk up her gender to her loss? >> i think it's really, really hard. i know we can't know that. there's so much more i want to know why people did what they did, but how much do you and your gut think it was. >> i think it's really hard to run for office when you're a woman.

i just do. and the little things that really piss me off, i'm sorry, were she's screaming too much. i don't like the tone of her voice, she -- she was the enabler, she was the won who treated the women badly. that's just ridiculous, have we ever heard that about a man ever? i mean, trump, he has a very maladic voice. [laughter] >> how much were you feeling going into election night at the cnn bureau, how much were you feeling that there was a chance she would lose? >> zero. zero. >> i mean, if i'm being honest, zero. i was in the green room with corey lewandowski waiting to go

on for our time at 11:00, we were forced to watch it in the room with lewandowski. as we started, he was a little, well, i was very tipper and as the time sort of wore off, i was sort of -- he was very -- zero. >> amanda, where was your head at? >> well, i was watching cnn and i expected hillary to win, i didn't know by how much. i thought donald trump would be competitive. i thought in the end hillary would win. donald trump had to win the four states and he wins florida, north carolina, it's like once he won those two states, wholly molly, we have a game. so i had cnn on. i was watching the new york times ticker, i would go walk away and breath and is this really happening, tonight was like a roller coaster, as everyone predicted, delete, delete because i thought it

would be a wild ride and end safe and harbor, no surprises. >> now, both of you were mostly in the green room or waiting to go on for a panel discussion, dana, you were sitting on the set the whole night sitting across from wolf and jake and watching it all happen and seeing your phone i assume blown up. what happens on election night when there's a shock around the world? >> i thought -- [laughter] >> you know what it is, it's like, you know, it's like landing a plane. you have to focus on what's in front of you. truthfully there's no emotion to it. you're just doing your job and trying to get the information real-time. it is the ultimate adrenaline rush, ultimate and it's like you guys, as soon as we started to

see florida look off, oh, okay. you know, but one thing i will say about all of our expectations because obviously we had a lot of time to think about this and i see abigael, my partner in crime, producer in the back and we have been talking about this a lot too is that we, all of us, these are political professionals and as a political reporter, we are concerned to -- to these modern times talk about and study the data, the voter modeling, specially sort of post -- i guess starting with george w. bush when they had voter file and micro targeting trying to find voters the way politics and prose find book readers and so on and so forth. fast-forward to now, 2016 the clinton campaign had a down to what was we thought it was a science, the way that they

identified voters and frankly the republicans did too. the trump campaign didn't have it but they relied on the republican national committee and we did stories on that. so my point is that all of the data including the republicans showed hillary clinton winning, okay. now, if we didn't have any of that, if we were back in the times of alexander hamilton over there, if we just had our shoe leather reporting, there are two stories that we did looking back, we would have said, oh, donald trump is going to win, one was a piece on millennials in north carolina where we talked to so many young people who were saying, nope, i was a bernie sanders voter, i'm never going to vote for her, no way, no way, no way. then in pennsylvania it was like two or three days after the access hollywood tape came out and we went to do a piece on suburban women and we went to

several trump events, ivanka trump was actually there and these were the kind of women that you would expect would say forget it, i'm not going with this guy, he's a dog, no way. to a person, we could not find one woman who said that, whatever, of course, we know this about donald trump but he's going to do x, y and z with the economy. by the way, we can't stand hillary clinton, sorry. looking back, if we would have focused on those kinds of stories that we did with real people, we would have said, oh, okay, but we were relying on the fancy data which have been right for the most part. i just want to -- my favorite focus group are cab drivers and we traveled a lot throughout this campaign to go to all debates and the primaries and i always ask my cab driver, who are you voting for? and nine times out of ten they were trying to decide between

bernie sanders and donald trump and that was a clear warning sign that we just sort of kind of, you know, spatted away. people were hungry for disruption, not the same old-same old. >> who would have won sanders-trump? >> i think sanders. >> i could have voted for trump against a socialist. i think a lot of republicans would have felt that way. i don't know if america is ready for a jewish democratic socialist. >> is america ready for donald trump? [laughter] >> what do i know? [laughter] >> i think bernie sanders. >> a couple of questions, a lot of questions in the audience, let me ask about -- the night on cnn after one of the debates, donald trump invoked you, suggest that you created the birther movement.

[laughter] >> conspiracy theories are in the news. tell us about that experience about this plague of fake news and conspiracy theories. >> it was the first debate. first debate. hofstra. lester was administrator. i was sitting in the trailer watching the debate. it came at the tail-end of the debate. i was there because i'm a girl making notes on what i'm going to say about the debate about how hillary nailed the debate and suddenly, you know, and i'm sitting there with other comment at a at a -- commentators and i suddenly hear my name. is it somebody in the room? no, it's donald trump. first he called me patty doyle. my name is patty solís doyle.

i did an interview with wolf blitzer that the campaign indeed started the birther movement. i did do an interview with wolf basically saying that during our campaign a volunteer coordinator, a nonpaid person forwarded an e-mail about barack obama being a muslim and that i fired him -- her, sorry, for doing that. that's not called peddling in conspiracies, that's called shutting it down. but that interview took off on the website, took off on, you know, the right-wing websites and donald trump used it as a point in the debates. what's great about working for cnn at the time is i was able to

respond in realtime to that with the help of my friend dana bass who also asked donald trump about it immediately after the debate. so that was good but my phone exploded, exploded, people, you know, calling me not nice things, b words and c words telling me to go back to méxico and when donald trump wins he's going to deport me. i mean, it was ugly, and -- but there are a lot of, i would say, the majority of trump supporters who actually believed it because he said it. ..

the there are people who believe that 2 million people voted illegally in california -- 3 million people. they believe it. [laughter] let's take questions from the audience. there is a microphone over here. so we can record for c-span and facebook. on the title "unprecedented," was there a story that didn't get enough credit and now we look back in retrospect and you were describing two of those interviews with voters. is there anything that stands out to you about what should have maybe been noticed more before november 8 to tell us that there would be unprecedented results? >> i think because the attention

on donald trump, there wasn't enough attention on hillary clinton and her not getting out of the battleground states. it wasn't until she lost it was like she onlwent there once? had there not been so much focus on donald trump, there would have been scrutiny on hillary clinton. she went like once before the general election. >> this was the trump show for 18 months, which in some cases we didn't see the walls that you were describing of the other candidates. >> i am a big cnn watcher and i'm a liberal, not a democrat, but i can go to msnbc and see that. but i was really disappointed and troubled by what i was watching on cnn. precisely because i felt so much air time was given to trump . antics and not hillary and her

speeches. to me there was an inordinate amount of time given to donald trump. because i heard his chief counsel maybe this was the information, but he has told the young donald trump negative news is good news as long as the war in the news. so i was curious whether cnn post election whether it was an internal assessment on how you handle the reporting of the election and the only other thing is i heard a lot about the rights. aren't they extreme or radical right i don't think they would accept the millennial's into

those that are i hate to say educated but i don't think the general populace quite understands it and it minimizes the extremism. >> let's take your point about the campaign first. i would say that my program and resources should be named what just happened, what did we do right and wrong. every week we are having those conversations. >> what time are you on? >> sunday at 11. [laughter] >> i think internally, the soul-searching needs to happen and i do think it is. we heard cnn and others say there were so many rallies so often without any focus at all. the argument of that, and i'm one of those people that couldn't turn his head away from

the tv when trump was speaking, he was an incredibly provocative, and as someone that was on all these rallies, he was making news at these rallies. >> he was, and that is the struggle. i take your point about it being all trump, and not necessarily focusing on what schiller e. clinton was saying -- hillary clinton was saying. but donald trump pretty much every day said something so wild, we felt the responsibility to talk about it and fact check it, which is called him so mad at us. you are so negative and don't treat me right. he had a 50% shot of being president of the united states. we felt a responsibility to really dig into what he was saying. hillary clinton wasn't doing that or saying things that required -- some things required fact checks, so we did. that explains the prosperity but

it doesn't necessarily excuse it but it certainly explains it, because just like everybody here was grappling with what to do with kind of unicorn, we were all so. >> what i learned, someone that spent years at cnn, i love sitting in control rooms and watching from the back of the control room at cnn. my take away from that is these are minute by minute decisions deciding what to do about the trump rally not based on months of conversation or the plot to help or hurt trump, but what that meant. and that is the reality of the cable news world. >> from my experience with senator cruise, they were saying the same things that were interesting to cover.

>> one of my frustrations looking back -- >> i said it at that time on the air. >> wifi becoming out trying to learn from his antics? >> because they were up in the fox news primary trying to get them on their side. they were not paying attention to cnn. meanwhile, they were caught up in a different kind of race to dominate at an early stage and then they went and ran away. >> on the question about the right, where do you come down on the terminology, the language, the term which can be sometimes maybe confusing or not clear? >> i don't know of a better thing to call it. some of them are racism -- >> extreme, racist. >> yes. to me, when i saw this coming

on, knowing very well what kind of things they publish, i wouldn't place my bets with that out of luck because you never knew what they were up against. so, you know, what do you call it? the first thing was this isn't a conservative outlet. they do not have the party. >> what are they if they are not conservative? >> alternative reality. there's no accountability, no fact checking, no editorial control. it's the wild west of internet politics with no accountability. i'm open to a better word that -- >> [inaudible] >> it is anti-immigrant, anti-semitic, antifeminist. it is just anti. [laughter] >> okay, thank you.

>> anti-media. >> this is what restored credibility in the media generally is there has been a campaign conservative outlets that couldn't believe the liberal media. it's like the church of the conservative media. we are the only ones that will tell you the truth. >> they have the books of different opinions. let's go to another question. >> thank you to the panel. i love your socks by the way. [laughter] >> i watch cnn constantly and what it used to bug me is the need to try to have this false equipment. trump did this but clinton also did this. you have folks on your panel. what was the woman's name, kelly

ann conway. for the life of me, i felt like thrusting my shoe at the tv. whatever hillary clinton may have done or not didn't prepare us for what donald trump did. >> i think what you are talking about is you call it false, but i'm you are describing how it is partisan or a trump supporter, that's what that was. i think historically, there has been come and there have been issues with the objective reporters sometimes giving the falsdoing thefalse equivalency e we are trained today he did this, she said this. okay thank you, goodnight. but we didn't do that at all and

i think that probably feeds into your question about donald trump getting so much more airtime to spend so much wartime on him trying to explain and fact check and so forth. so just remember who is talking when you throw the shoe. [laughter] >> i know it doesn't appear that way when you are watching us that she is a lovely young woman. we just disagree on the issues and which way the country should go, but they are lovely people. and i think the viewers

sometimes don't distinguish reporting and commentating. we are supposed to defend our candidates and our party. that's what we do and it's hard to distinguish it when you have a panel of the thing one of thet is cool about the experience of 2016 and all of the contributors do we have on both sides of the aisle is that you do disagree in a heated way on the air. but in the green room and on camera i feel like you are making friends across the aisle that i think it's cool because i render being at one of the conventions and walking downstairs and seeing a table after they were working out with

david axelrod and he was like okay, that's happening. [laughter] >> one thing that was interesting about the cycle is that he allowed the commentators to let it play out on camera anf there were no discussions. we were free to let them go where it's needed to go and where it came to issues of race. you say what you feel in that moment and they allow us to be passionate and that was very emblematic of the feelings and cycles. let it happen.

i remember going for what seemed like three hours. >> let's go to the question over here. >> what is on the democratic party they now hold a record number of governorships in the entire history. in the house race, they got 3 million more votes than democrats did and the senate for all of the reasons in the candidate that ran in particularly in those states like pennsylvania or north carolina or wisconsin where they should have picked up the seats. >> everyone is looking at me. >> when president obama was in office, we lost a lot of seats in the house.

we lost a lot of state legislatures because we kept our eye off the ball. president obama remained wildly popular. he got things done, but we lost the seats where it mattered and where it mattered was in the state legislaturstate legislatuf the redistricting was going on. we went into this election thinking we were going to win for the third term which was unprecedented but we felt that was going to happen. and we typically were going to win back the house, but we thought that we would pick up more than the seats that we picked up, but needed and

obviously. we are still poring over the exit polls. but we left an important group of people on the table. the white working class voters on the table and that was i think our biggest mistake and that is exceptionally frustrating for me is that calorie clinton, this was part of her coalition when she ran for the senate and president in 2008. one of the problems and there were many the world beneath kobe will be chewing on it for months, they tried to replicate the coalition but the problem was her coalition was different

which came out very strong and it consists of the white working class voters and she didn't go after him. i think it hurts the democratic party because they think that they can sell the parties policy that he did. he was able to convince people to go along with obamacare but that didn't turn out well for people. my premiums will go up to $1,100 onto each month starting in january. so he can sell those things that hillary didn't have that natural ike ability and nobody can sell the policy like he did but he tried to and failed. >> let's go to more questions in

line here. this is about the media. even though she's using twitter all the time i do connect to his ideas that there is the ordinary americans in peril because of certain asymmetric things that are going on but there's lots of others like north korea and ir iran. but do you think they can be targeted by the terrorists because the internet that could provide a legal justification as well as the whole fake news

thing. it now comes into play. what do you think is going to happen having been a blogger myself, i think it's very curious. i'm a libertarian, somewhat conservative libertarian but gay man. what do you think of this? >> i think we are seeing the media lawyers and advocacy groups rallying right now and preparing for a difficult climate that may or may not come to pass. but he said on the campaign trail has to do with threats against the media and the amendment. so, i think that i am slightly reassured to know the freedom

groups are very much taking it seriously. >> i don't think that he has any interest in shutting down the media. he was then to be a candidate if it hadn't been for twitter. >> he has shown interest going after the individual reporters picketed he wants to expand liable laws. i would expect to see the court case on that but in the generated social media that is the biggest allied proponents. >> more questions from the audience? >> i wanted to go back to the working class and obviously i

don't expect guys to speak for all media outlets, but i'm a little confused how that is being defined. is the measure when people speak of the category is education levels for the type of jobs they hold such as blue-collar and white-collar and urban income which is what i primarily think of or is it a combination of all of those things where is somewhat different for the group that we have nailed down and then as a follow-up to you think it is realistic the democratic party can actually blame the class given that they voted primarily republican in every election as far back as i know and we don't need to win the whole group just a percentage.

the specific is all of those categories listed it it's wheree white working class voters didn't like her to begin with. over and over and over again if made her case and she won enough of them. for whatever reason, i don't know why we left column on the table. but it was a huge warning sign.

he won michigan and the states that she lost in the general it was a huge warning sign that we didn't. >> since you ran the presidential campaign in the definition of demographics it is especially since we saw the trend in the campaign the white working class voters effectively who didn't have a college degree and also who i guess for the most part it didn't necessarily matter but those with a certain income level. they were pretty mucbut they wem the beginning of this race, the beginning of the republican

primary that donald trump attacked attracted. i remember exit poll after exit polls during the primary those were the people that he was attracting and it was a sort of more traditional that were voting for knocks ted cruz bookmark of -- dot marco rubio and other people who were the more traditional. there will be other republicans that were socially conservative that vote republican. but for the most part, historically to your faith to think about back in 1992, baba, that was bill clinton.

he knew how to speak to them. he also won the other states because that was back at the ise that the southern states were because the father and grandfather were voting democratic, too. i think certainly, we saw the end of the shift in the demographics for each party. >> we have five minutes left. >> there's a large number of observers to think among the 20 or so presidential candidates, donald trump was the least qualified and prepared in various dimensions. if so, that puts in doubt the democratic process in the united states and anything can be done about it.

>> i am not one of his defenders but he does have classifications. he's a highly successful person. managing bureaucracies, managing budgets like a freshman sender like barack obama -- >> we are back on cnn now. >> you take a person who was president i don't think it's fair to say that he doesn't have some qualifications. >> of course he isn't qualified in the traditional sense because he's the first person elected

president without military or government experience. by those definitions it's not that he's unqualified per se but of course he is qualified as the country beliefs because they wanted somebody like him, to use your point earlier, they wanted somebody that would come to the town and pull it to smithereens because they were done with the people that have the qualifications. >> as a result of the presidential election, the precedent has been set for the future. so in your opinion what type of precedent has been set not only at the national level that the statbut thestate and local levee campaign's? >> i have been working in

politics for like 30 years and on every metric that we look at, he did everything wrong. he didn't have a policy. he didn't raise money, he said these horrible, offensive, degrading things to women and african-americans, and he won. and now, everyone is looking at subsequent elections like is it's no now okay to see these terrible things. did he make it even a little bit okay to say these things?

is it now okay not to raise money and just run a social media campaign and then? i think those of us that were campaigning we are taking a hard look at it and seeing what it means for the future because i don't think people know quite yet. >> that is a perfect pitch for the buck. thank you all for being here. [applause] to the publisher, it's a remarkable book, check it out. thank you very much. here's a look at some of the staff picks from politics and prose in washington, d.c..