it's sending the message if you don't eat, you are not going to survive. so it puts your brain in a state of emergency where you'll do anything in order to get the procedures needed to survive. >> west virginia governor jim justice gives his state of the state address. >> you elected me as your governor, person who had never been a politician, in the wake of me running as a democrat, at a time when donald trump won our state by 17,000 million percent. >> all c-span programs are available at c-span.org. either on our home page or by searching the video library. next a look at the future of america's political parties, hosted by the commonwealth club of california.

>> i want to -- before i introduce tonight's speakers, i want to also announce that tonight is the first time that conversations is being taped by c-span. so you may have noticed some cameras, and they promised me i would look at least ten years younger, which is one of the reasons i agreed to let them come, but any way -- and they tell me that that will be up loaded to their website in about two weeks, three weeks most and you can search under the archives for this date or one of the names of our speakers or the mill valley and you'll find it. so if after this program you feel so inspired, please watch it again and also tell your friends and family all about it. let me introduce tonight's speakers. dave brady i've known for a

number of years partially because my husband attended stanford business school where he is a professor, and i don't know that dave remembers, but i actually interviewed him a number of times during my own dissertation research. oh, you remember. all right. well, i must have done okay because he's still talking to me. okay. dave brady is not only a very well-respected professor at stanford, he sits on the faculties of the business school and the political science department, runs public policy and is at the hoover institution. so, he's very highly regarded. obviously connected to the stanford community, but also appreciated nationally for his insightful commentary on political processes. we are very delighted that he's with us tonight and you will i'm sure all end this evening

agreeing with me that he's one of the most insightful political commentators that we have with us today. melissa cane is the political journalist in san francisco. she has a very wide following. she does a lot of work with the common work club and the editor of the common work club magazine said there's no one better at doing a job of moderating, providing political commentary and asking questions as melissa. she comes with really pretty terrific bona fides. and i think that this conversation should be just wonderful, and i don't know if it will all make us feel safer, more secure, happier, but it will certainly inform us of what's happening. and of course, please save your questions until afterwards and we'll have time for them.

thank you so much. [ applause ]. >> there we go. okay. so, the name of tonight's program is the future of american political parties, and we have a packed house tonight and i can't imagine it's because you all think things are going really well. right? i think there's a lot of uncertainty out there, a lot of fear out there. so i think my first question, of course, is how bad is it? how bad can it get? at what point do we start hoarding canned goods? >> is this on? no. it's on. well, i want to start by quoting t.s. elliott who said that the only form of knowledge that we

can aspire to is humility. and humility is endless, so when ever i make predictions i start with that. it's a cover. so, we have not had a president like this or we have not had ten or however many 11, 12, however many days it is we haven't had a president like this, always behave like this. so the question is from someone who tried to be analytic and step back and say, what's going to happen? so, in the early days there are certain things the president can do, the refugee crisis, et cetera, he can put some orders out, not that they've been put out very efficiently, but he can put orders out, but in the end on the big issues, taxes, affordable care act, military policy, those sorts of things, he either has to go through congress, he basically has to go through congress. so, the question people often ask is, well, what is the

congress? independent branch of government? and the founders -- they put the constitution together, they trying to put this in an objective way, the founders knew that you might have political operatives that probably weren't grand, so they built -- >> good job. >> that was pretty good? so they built a system that had checks and balances, and that's what the checks and balances are for. but i think -- so the question is -- but i don't think it's the congress that will stop them. the democrats are obviously not going to decide. it's going to be the republicans in congress. so, i'm going to give you the most likely scenario, in my view, or other scenarios that could happen? sure. but the one i think most likely is the republicans in the house have been sitting on an agenda for six years n their view

frustrated by president obama, et cetera, so they want to pas that agenda. they did not think that the republicans would hold the senate and they didn't certainly did not think that donald trump would be elected president. so, they look at this -- so i think what they're doing is they're sitting there and saying, okay, we've got a path. we want to pass the tax cut. we want to pass what we can pass that we can agree on and they're not in complete agreement on the affordable care act. they understand that they own it now. they could screw it up and make the obama rollout look like silk, so they understand that and so they're waiting. so, they're going to -- my view is they're going to wait. they're going to wait and get as much as they can through and at some point, unless the president changes his behavior, they're going to say that's enough. you can't go anymore. two republicans are already going to vote as nominee for secretary of education that was announced tonight. so, they're starting.

and so it's there. you can hear it occasionally from them. so what i think you have to watch for is how congressional republicans are ranked. i don't expect them in the first ten or 20 days, if you were thinking that, they're not going to impeach him quickly. it's not going to happen, but they're going to start to object. okay. the only other thing i can say about some of the appointments is on defense, i know jim mat tis his office was three doors down from me, very solid, very, very clear thinker, no ways -- doesn't want to drop the bomb. told the president he shouldn't torture, agreed he wouldn't have signed the iran deal but you would keep to it. so i think on the treasury and most of the appointments i think they're reasonable people. and i think -- i won't go there. i'm done. >> no, no, do. say whatever dicey thing you're not saying. well, but you have people like mattis and other people in his cabinet that are well regarded.

who -- he goes behind their back and issues the executive order on the refugee ban, stay whatever you want to call it. how long do the honorable people in his cabinet stay on if he continues to do these things? >> i don't have an answer to that but i'm sure some of them are thinking what did i sign up for? so, normally -- so what i think of on foreign policy on which i'm no expert, but i think what happens is that you have to have a strategy. then there's tactics. and what bothers me about this president on this is there's tactics, i think, but i don't know what the strategy is. so there's symbolism and there's reality, right? think of it like this, there's campaigning and there's governing. trump tumped out to be a much better campaigner than you thought and now you have to govern. that's a different thing. and on the foreign policy, it's

symbolic. he said he would build the wall. now he is telling his supporters i've got to build the wall. what's the purpose of building the wall? does he really believe you can cut a better deal with the mexicans on trade? already businesses -- lots of businesses are already objecting and they're in washington talking to congressmen and congresswomen and saying don't do this. the same thing in regard to banning the muslim refugees. he just puts -- he puts the united states more at risk in my view in iran, in the iraqis who with were us, as far as i can tell, it's symbolic, there's no strategy there. it may be there, but i haven't seen it and i don't think many people do. so i think those people in the -- so tillerson, you may not like the fact that he was at kpon or something like that, but he's not -- he's a very accomplished man. he sees the way the world is.

and i'm sure he would not have been advising to do those things. so we have to wait and see what they do -- and i don't know what the right time frame is. they can't do it now. they haven't been in office. tillerson is like one day. he can't quit now. so i think it's going to take a matter of time. we'll see. and i think there's always the belief that the president will -- the president will stop tweeting and -- >> does anyone believe that? >> well, there's hope. >> i think hope, yeah. >> there's space and charity too. >> so, what about -- so if you're looking at you say right now we need to be focussing on republicans in congress. now, if you're democrats, it seems they're a little on hair heels too, not only in the sense that they didn't think he would win, but since november 9th or so, they've known there's a supreme court nominee coming who is going to be someone their

constituents are not going to like and yet they still seem to be trying to figure out how to navigate this situation. >> well, i think that's a reasonable thing for them to do. so, the court was 4-4 with kennedy as the deciding vote and on a bunch of votes he was -- he was on the left and the democrats didn't find on abortion and a series of other things he's with them. so if you think about -- so when obama was the president, replacing scalia, if you replace scalia with the liberal, that's the greatest shift in the supreme court probably since 1934 because now you make it a 6-3 majority. so, with trump, he just puts it back -- so you replace scalia and replace him with a conservative, it's the same as it was. so if you're a democrat, do you want to make the republicans

pull out the nuclear clause and say, okay, we're going with a majority instead of the filibuster, or do you hold your fire on this guy because the nominee may not agree with some of his opinions, he's thoughtful, he's really smart, so on. so i think they're probably right to be thinking about when you throw the bounds. >> but there's pressure for them to filibuster kind of everything else. sort of spend the entire next several years filibustering on sort of everything that comes in front of them. >> yeah. i think that just plays into trump's hands and makes his supporters feel that he's right that the system is broken and that they can't even get -- they won't even agree to my nominees and the democrats, remember, passed the rule that said it only had to be 51 and you couldn't filibuster cabinet

appointments. and at the time, people said that will come back, that will come back and it has. so, they've decided not to attend some of the meetings because you have to have a kor rum plus one. then you couldn't actually call the meeting. well, what do you think that looks like to a trump supporter? they show a picture and there's none of the democrats in the room. it seems to me that that plays into their hands and allows him to justify his behavior and continue to act symbolically instead of substantively. >> what do you think it would take to separate trump supporters from trump? some of them at least. there seems to be this core, i don't know, 30, 35% or so who just, you know, no matter what, you change your view of the world to fit that. so, what would it take, in your

estimation, to do that? >> that's a great question. so we ran -- my frind doug rivers is a professor he started ugof, the economist pollster and we ran over the course of the campaign a contact survey we interviewed the same 5,000 americans every month so we could trace who moved where and when. so right on -- so in may, we were sitting around all these smart guys looking at the candidates, there were about 20 of them, 35 and trump's name came up and everybody said, don't put him in. he's not a serious candidate. it's just for show biz. that turned out to be a good thing for analysis because he wasn't in our list of may people. it turns out from other work we had done in europe we know that people who thought their

family's income was down or their family financial situation was not as good as it was a year or two ago, those people all across europe were much more anti-immigration. so we had on the first vote people who -- people who thought their economy was down. the first choice of those people was no choice. they didn't have a preference. number two is scott walker and he was only at 12%. trump comes on, gives the anti-immigration speech which you listen to, you thought, oh my god, he's out. you can't say that in american politics. suddenly he's at 22% because 40% of republicans said that's what happened to their financials, didn't matter whether it had, the question is they perceived it that way. so the result is they're for trump because he's speaking their language. and we had another question, 58% of republicans thought that immigration is a very important issue. suddenly had 41% of them. so you have to remember, 19-person field, he's got 23%.

that puts him twice as high as anybody else. then the republicans did a couple other things. they front loaded the primaries so that there are more votes up front. two, they switched to a more winner take all format, all giving trump an advantage because he's the early leader. then the others were fighting over who is going to be the establishment candidate, right? rubio, bush, kristy, kasich, the others are fighting over who will be the tea party candidates, feeeny and so on and so forth. we'll never know if the republican establishment had get on a candidate and put in to beat trump. we're never going to know, but that's a rather special circumstances? which he was able to capture the nomination. and so those voters -- so those are the voters that supported him all the way, made less than $50,000 a year, high school or less, any way you tried to cut it, they were the people who were most supportive. so the question is then how

results -- the question is we're trying to find this out now whether it's -- can he continue to hole them with, you know, stuff that isn't real or are they results oriented, that is can it just be symbolism? he can hold them with symbolism? or do they have to be action oriented. i happen to believe that they are results oriented. they are going to be people who want jobs. they want these things to happen. if they don't happen, our latest poll we just finished it, we ask a question of trump supporters who were democrats and trump supporters who were independents because they're the ones that tipped it to them and asked them if in the next election would you consider voting democrat, about 70% said yes. so i don't think they're tied to the republican party, they're tied to trump a bit, but i think we're going to find over time

that their results oriented. and then -- and the democratic party will have to do what it's going to do, but they're going to have to rethink how they think about and talk to those people because those are -- green bay, wisconsin, voted big for obama and then switched. my hometown, obama in 2008 and 2016, illinois, twice voted worst city in illinois. it's not really but it was voted. so the question is, i think they're going to be results oriented, but that's a great question and i can't tell you i have the answer. >> in the course of answering that you sort of hit on something i want to explore a little more. is it part of what the democrats problem was, people are saying i perceive i'm worse off and it seemed like on some level the democrats answer was no statistically speaking your income has gone up 4.3%. there seemed to be an analytical, statistical answer

to a gut-driven, you know, sort of cry. >> yeah. i think those -- i think that's a good point. those statistics don't appeal to -- they don't appeal -- if you're from cankey, illinois, and your children don't have jobs, in cankey, illinois, the white males over the last 20 years, they're 3.8 -- they live 3.8 years less than they did before. there are drug epidemics all over there. just like you said earlier, the democratic party hasn't spoken to them. the assumption has been pretty much that they're there. so take identity politics. they don't care much about identity politics in green bay. i think they don't care where you go to the bathroom. i think what they care about is do the democrats or does anybody actually care about them and the

jobs they've lost and what their situation is? and so, is it possible to put that together with the regular democratic stuff? sure. but they got to think about it exactly as you say they haven't talked to them. >> now, you have written and spoken about globalization as a big part of why things are happening here and other parts of the world. and it did seem like -- and i forgot who exactly was it who said this but i was watching probably c-span -- >> hopefully it was me. >> i think it was c-span and someone was saying, you know, people are losing jobs and the democrat's answer is, we'll retrain you. and this is our answer to the massive loss of these potentially good-paying jobs in places. and what should the answer have been in your estimation? and i would like to sort of turn to talk more about globalization in the election here and

elsewhere. >> you don't ask very easy questions. could you talk about the electoral college? here is the reason why i don't think it's easy, what globalization does -- so if you looked at the first period where there was big globalization, it was 1850 to 1900 or so and 1850 the two major job categories where people either worked on a farm or worked as servants in homes. then there's this huge transformation and people were better off economically for that but they moved to the cities and they had factory jobs. and that created a lot of problems. immigration was an issue, it was called the gilded age, there was wealth inequality. you can expect that any time there's globalization. that's not going to go away, there's going to be inequality.

so that switch, these people are in cities, off on the farms and what happened was by 1950 those people had good jobs, my father was able to support a family of six children, you know, we didn't live in marin, but we had a home. we had a house. and there were -- the politics at the time there were labor parties and there were anti-labor parties and in the democrats and republicans. parties to the left pro labor and parties to the right, italy and so on that were not. but overtime what happened beginning in the 1970s people started the auto mate. around 50% of the work force in 1950 -- by the way it's nice to say to an audience, it was so good in the 1940s that harry truman could get re-elected in 1948 by campaigning on 14b, the taft heartily act. now you try that with stanford

students. they don't know who bill clinton was. so it's true. they don't. so they were like 2. so, they weren't even born then, '17. so at any rate, those jobs -- it's the jobs left and some of them moved to china and et cetera, it was really automation that caused that. so that's across the world, you know, as you mentioned the front national in france, the people's party in denmark, the new party in germany, the five-star movement in italy, all over europe you're getting this anti-immigration, this question, this rise of what happens to these people, as those jobs go, the political parties are kind of stuck because they don't have 40% labor. so then you try -- so the parties have to try and do stuff. so they do stuff like trying to put blue collar workers with stanford professors. well, professors are pretty --

around 90% democrats. that works okay if you just go to vote, but if you go to a bar, put the professors and the blue collar workers there, it doesn't work out too well. they don't have shard nay and tiny tap. so that's a problem that no one solved that problem. so what i worry about is not jobs. i don't worry about jobs too much because as a farmers, you know, people go back and read history you see oh my god, the mccormick reaper. what will happen? none of these people have jobs. they all got jobs. i think we'll create jobs. but what i worry about are wages. it's not clear to me the wages that these jobs generate will be enough to sustain the political system. >> that's part of it. >> is that the crowd from berkley. >> they heard the comment about

stanford. but that's a great point. when you talk about things like unemployment, it's another issue democrats said oh, unemployment is low. but the wages for a lot of these jobs are incredibly low. so even let's assume everyone that the unemployment rate is accurate, being employed at $7.50 an hour isn't the same thing. >> that's correct. i think you have to have economic growth. if you don't have economic growth, you don't -- the markets gets stripped so you can hire people lower. and i don't even know if growth alone would cover it, without growth, i know you can't do it. it seems to me. then you have to say, well, what are -- so what are the president's policies? i don't think banging away at carrier or telling the ford motor company you can't do that or you -- no, you may get a couple of them to say that, but i don't think apple's 400,000

workers in china are going to suddenly move to the u.s. so, i think you have to try and look at the trump economic policies and -- as he's expressed them thus far and say are these policies that are really likely to generate growth. i don't know. the tax cut, corporate tax cut, things like that, they may generate growth. but they have to get that through congress. when you get at that, that's the political problem. what are these workers going to do? will they be able to solve the problem? and does the economic policy work. that all comes together and he's got to get that through congress. >> do you think he will? >> well, i think that congress would like to shape what he tries to get through, more so take the export -- the tax where 20% tax where imports coming to the united states, going to tax at 20%. well, your husband pointed out, some of those things go back and

forth two to three times the same product. well, that just means the american taxpayers, we're paying for that. it's not -- the mexicans aren't paying for it. they will in terms of jobs and stuff like that, but not in the real way. so i don't think that's -- i don't think that's a real solution to the problem. so will the congress be able to get a tax cut? i think they will get a tax cut. i wouldn't look forward to getting a lot back yourselves because -- >> i don't know. suppose you made $1 million. >> we're in marin. this is a total possibility. >> so if you made $1 million in california by the time you pay about 43% when you add the 39, 6 federal plus the obama tax for medicare and then you pay state taxes. so what they're going to do is

they're going to cut that rate or the proposal i've seen cut the taxes from 43 to 33, but they're not going to let you deduct state and local taxes, which pretty much makes it a push. so the real emphasis will be on corporate tax cuts in the hope that that will bring some of the money that they have in foreign places back home and the second part will be that they'll reduce the capital gains tax from 15 to 20. but those will be the main deductions. >> those are supposed to generate jobs? >> the capital gains and the money coming -- the money that apple and other companies have in ireland, yes, that could generate jobs. could. probably will. how many? i don't know. >> some accounting jobs. >> you have to get an economist to do this. >> we are talking about political parties here. we know that california, the growing political party is

declined state. that seems to be sort of an actual national trend about a third of people don't wish to belong to either party. what does that say about our party system? do we need additional ones? people are consistently -- especially younger people declining to join either. >> well r, i'm glad you asked this. i have data on this. about time. we collected -- about time she asked me something i actually know. so on that -- so we collected all the gallup poll data back to 1937 on party, the democrats had the big lead, but in the mid '80s with reagan, there was a big rise in the number of independents. decline in the number of democrats and so since that time we've really been about 30, 35. the democrats generally have

about to 3 to 5 point lead and more people say they're independent. i think that's significant because i think what happened with the political parties was -- again, nice to be able to talk to people. you remember the days when there were liberal republican senators like senator brooke from massachusetts, clark, there were rockefeller, scranton and there were conservative democrats, but the parties sorted and now there's some moderates in the democratic party and few moderates in the republican party, but the bottom line is the parties are more like european political parties and the democrats are on the left, republicans are on the right. and i think by and large that the average american is not as liberal on economics as the democrats and they're nowhere near as conservative on social issues as the republicans and i think that accounts for a hunk

of the rise in independents. so i think that's my personal view is i think that's a good time. that may be because i consider myself one. >> well, why don't you start a party for those folks? if there's enough people in the middle who are these socially liberal, economically conservative folks, why haven't we seen something coalesce for them or see them take over one of the other parties? >> trouble is there's not that many of us. there's only about 15%. then there's some on the periphery, but the hard core like that is about 15%. and i think the answer to why they don't take over a party is because -- well, think of it, it's a lot of work. you have to go out and recruit candidates in 435 districts and start to run like that. that's hard. so what you get is third party candidates jumping in and ross perot and others, but think of

it -- the real reason is because it's easier to take over a political party. the united states is the only democracy in the world where we have democracy within the party and democracy between parties. we're the only one that people run against each other in that way, in each of the congressional districts. democrat runs against a democrats. republicans run against republicans. so the result of it, think of donald trump. donald trump is not a republican. he's not free trade. he's not any of the things that the republican party was for. he wasn't even pro choice until like two months ago or two years ago or when ever. but the point is, and he took over the republican party. he won. he took it over. again, so what happens in these eras of globalization. there's a lot of flip-flopping. what was true in the 1870 and

the now, just think. in 2004 i remember reading this piece by karl rove saying after the victory, you know, it's great, we created mckinly era. the republicans won three state elections, control the house senate. president bush saying i've got -- i've earned some capital. i'm going to spend it. there it was. privatizati privatization, social security, 2006, they all got beat. 2008, obama. why the democrats will control america for the next generation. apparently generations are shorter than they used to be. and the second thing was -- so then obama -- so then president obama overreaches. 2010 the republicans are back. so all that flip-flopping is the result of this sort of economic undercutting and you don't have a solution. so under those times, again the populus was rising as a

political. we'll take their platform and take them and captured the democratic party. just too easy to do it. >> is that where you see democrats going? right now there's an internal debate, do we follow the bernie sanders or do we try to stay on this other path of the more establishment democrats. >> so this is strange, i actually think the democrats have an easier time of it than the republicans. not in the short run because in the short run as you say. so the question is they lost an election. but why did they lose? well, they lost because of the distribution of votes. they actually won the election by about 3 million votes. some of you need to move to green bay and so on. so just think if 77,000 votes in pennsylvania, wisconsin and michigan had changed, ms. clinton would be president and then the headlines would be

america rejects racism and misogamy and et cetera. the population didn't change. the votes were exactly the same. you get these different headlines. so the democrats have the problem, they lost an election. and their problem is, gee, we lost the election by 77,000 votes. well, so then there is going to be the left elizabeth sanders, bernie sanders and the governor of montana and other people in the democratic party saying, no, we have to be more centrist. but that's kind of a normal fight after an election. so, that's not going to be particularly easy, but think of what happens when donald trump is gone from the republicans. what are they as a party? they don't know. they're now sitting there. whole bunch of people that believe in the things that you can count, lower taxes, more freedom, blah blah blah. and they're thinking, donald trump. they're waiting because they want to pass the agenda, but

he's not a republican in any ordinary sense. does he redefine the republican party or traditional parts of the republican party comport? i think that's a much tougher question than the question of the democrats trying to figure out how to win next time. >> just one last question before we turn it over for audience questions. so get to thinking because we'll come around with a microphone soon. do the democrats need to rethink their views on immigration? that seems to be the thing that galvanized so many people in certain places that had voted for obama once and now they switched. was this issue. should they at least have that conversation? >> yeah. well, in principal now but in reality probably yes. the data on that have shown for a long time that the democrats were closer -- that the independents. so i think of it as there's

democrats, republicans. so where are the independents? there were fractions of the democrats were in general on the side of more immigration. republicans there were some of them. bush pud president w. bush put a decent plan. people wish they had taken it now, i think. so it's a question about independents and i think it's the way you talk about immigration and i think that not talking about it, either didn't talk about it or disparaged trump, it didn't work. so, i think they have to think about it and probably talk about it in a different way. but i don't see -- i think they can win -- they can have a position close to where their position is now and they can still win the next election. that's going to be easier than republicans thinking about what the republican party needs now.

>> excellent. >> that wasn't much of an answer, by the way. >> i think democrats would love to hear about how they have an easier go. >> let me just jump in with audience question at this point f that's okay. let me take a prerogative and ask the first question, which is a few years ago a book came out that called "why nations fail" that i thought was particularly prescient. and they argue in that book when institutions in a country no longer work, the country no longer works. and our institutions, i.e. congress, the media, parties are broken. so i wonder if you think that our institutions are going to save us or fail us? >> you're talking about robinson's book? >> yeah. >> she got a ph.d.. >> but i can't pronounce his

name so i didn't say it. >> that is not -- that's not a book that was a big seller. so, their argument is if you try to look -- so if you're looking for markets and why the economies don't work better, their argument is that well institutions make a difference in that institutions are rated in a particular way and some people have an advantage and some people don't. if you don't get the institutions right, you don't get the economy right. so, they went on some broken institutions. are american institutions broken? no, i don't think so they're broken. i think they're in a situation where like the institutions across europe, australia, everywhere where capitalism, this time it's much hotter than it was before. first of all now it's 80% of the

world. before it was just europe and the u.s. essentially. 8 o 0% of the world and you have the problem of is anything you do sustainable? so you see china has 7, 8% growth, i don't know how many of you have been in beijing when it wasn't windy, but it's not great. so the question is can we do this -- can we do this in a sustainable fashion? and i think that our institutions may be damaged, but if you actually look at how -- so look at the big crisis, 2007/2008/2009, that was a horrendous recession. and then if you look at how we've done relative to europe, australia, japan, the united states is in pretty good shape. we have 2.3% -- not great. so those growth rates -- i was just saying, relative to everybody else with the possible exception of germany, we've created more jobs, incomes are

up some, so i think we've done better. i think our ainstitutions -- i don't think we should turn to a parliamentary government or anything, but they're damaged. >> my question is about the l elect tral college going away? which of those scenarios do you see as being the best one and which one do you see as being the most probable? i never think of which one is the best one because i don't think it's possible. so, what do i think -- is it going away? no. there were in the '50s several bipartisan attempts to reform it. and they were lodge goset, dc

and republican and basically they were going to do it like congressional districts, like nebraska and maine do it. but it got beat in the congress because the big states didn't like it and the little states didn't like it. big states didn't like it because they like the fact that candidates pay more attention. if you win california by one vote, you get all those. wyoming, nothing. so this way they get three. so they beat it. but now there is some chance for change because states like california and new york and illinois, hillary clinton, democrats don't come here unless they go to -- the democrats come here. they come to silicon valley and hollywood for money. they don't campaign here. you may have noticed they didn't have much trouble winning the state. so they don't campaign here. and that means that california no longer gets the juice that it used to and the candidates

coming. so there is more of a chance for a movement, but i think it has to come from the states and the problem when the states think about it, probably best way to do is it break it down by congressional district and democrats are not going to like that. i'll give you an example why. in 2012, president obama won by 5 million votes. little over -- some over 5 million and romney carried 226 congressional districts. we would have gone to that system, romney would have been elected. so the alternative is not quite. but i do believe that states has they come along will start to do things like maine and nebraska and there will be some changes, but it's going to take a while. >> in all of this you talked about -- back at the beginning of this talk you talked about would they respond to results --

>> i'm sorry. >> would the electorate respond to results, for instance, in the next election. and i think we watched -- i think we just watched a situation where that didn't happen, where people had more health care, the economy was up -- the list is long and fox news told them that wasn't the case. obama -- everybody said obama had a good message but didn't get it across, but the people to whom he needed to get across were listening to fox news, so they were never going to hear it there. and my question is, it doesn't seem to me that any of that is going to change. i think that those people it's not going to matter whether trump provides results for these people and that they have better paying jobs because they're going to be told they do and they're going to be told that everything is fine and continue listening to fox news and they're not going to know that it's not, or that's how it feels to me.

and it's happening already in this first ten days. >> well, big difference would be he's president and they're responsible now. that's one. two, the areas it turns out where mrs. clinton didn't do as well were not the areas where there had been growth. so, in the -- we oversampled six midwestern states that flipped. it turns out that the areas where population went down and jobs went down, those were the areas -- so population and jobs were down, trump's vote was up 2.9% over obamas. and in areas where there was growth. so the question was, the areas that voted against him were areas where the jobs weren't. okay, that's two. and i guess the third point i would make -- i don't think those people -- so fox news, yeah. you know how many -- the max, bill riley, 3.2 million.

that's it. that's what watches him. that's cnn -- they're ahead of everybody else, but 3 million. you know how much people watch "dancing with the stars"? 24 million. so, i do think there's a problem with those news sources because now people can just listen to what they want. there's no i can say it again, there's no walter cronkite to interpret events. i do think there's a little bit of a problem -- we're looking at that now. i think the biggest problem i'll ask for a comment, the biggest problem is facebook where people are -- most of the people under 40, that's where they get their news. >> and youtube, actually. my husband and i volunteered at a middle school and we were teaching a journalism class. it was really cute.

so we would say, today we're going to research and they all wanted to write about video game. okay, fine. today we're going to research video games and they would go to youtube and video games or whales and go to youtube and type in whales. fox news is positively cnn compared to some of the nutty stuff on youtube. there's a whole flat earth movement out there. you guys, google it. >> or youtube it. >> it's kind of interesting. yeah, there was a lot of siloing in this election, but to your point, if in reality there were places losing jobs and there were losing life expectancy was going down. that wasn't something that fox news telling them. i just want to say that rick

perry was on both. >> what are the prospects for healthy two-party democracy in an era of really powerful gerrymandering? >> well the gerrymandering i think gerrymandering is overestimated and here is why -- so, if you actually look at it, there are between 65 and 75 seats that are majority/minority districts. so, that means that there are 40 some american congresses, some latino congressmen and congresswomen and they are from these districts that are set so they will have the majority will have a minority representative. so, if you -- once you sort those in, then republicans have a great game.

you can have another one. just put some more democrats in that district. so if you look at a distribution of the democrats and republican votes in house seats, the democrats have a fat end of the tail, so that's 50%. the democrats have a lot of districts where the winner gets 75/80% of the vote and the republican tail looks nowhere near that fat on the end. so, the question is if you want to draw the districts differently, you could get that, but part of the gerrymandering is these districts. once they're there, our best estimate of this is that of the districts that are left, the republicans got about a 53, 54% tendency to win those. now, you can get like 2006 and 2008 a flip, but the way things are set up now i think the democrats are going to have a

hard time taking the house. it will take some event like the disaffection with bush in 2006 for the democrats to get the house again unless they change the way those districts are drawn. >> so, i'm somewhat heartened by your observation of general mattis and rex tillerson is a guy with a respective and world view, but what do you make of the fact that the secretary mat tis was standing right behind president trump when he announced his immigration order on friday and does that give you any pause? >> what could he do? >> say no. >> okay. then what happens? the thing is, if you're jim mattis, you may disagree with

that, but there are many things that mrs. clinton when she was secretary of state and obama didn't agree on, so i think he would be thinking something like that -- the immigration issue relative to what damage he could do is pretty minuscule. so if you are -- so if that had been you and you're thinking what could he do, i mean, it seems to me that you might well have stayed there and say, okay, i don't agree with this but that's what i have to do to achieve this bigger end out there. i don't know. he didn't call me. he didn't ask me anything. but that would be my view of -- you take those jobs in washington. you sign on. and you're in unless you're willing to resign. >> i take the point that secretary of homeland security has not been confirmed but he's the secretary of defense and this is an immigration issue. so it seems, i don't know, it

seems striking -- >> i assure you that he probably was not in favor of it. he was a guy who said i wouldn't have signed the iran deal, but i wouldn't get out of it now. don't torture anybody. so i frankly i'm glad he didn't resign. so, you know, there's principle and there's getting stuff done and that's the trade off. but it's true that in a washington job you take that job and you argue like hell inside for this is what i think we should do. and when you lose, you go along with the president because that's the game. and if you don't do that, which has happened a few times, you're not back in the game ever again. >> hi. it does seem like our democratic party, mine -- well, i'm an independent, too. >> yeah. >> any way, that we have a tendency to sort of put our heads in the sand when it comes

to jobs. we seem to think that everybody is better off, especially those of us who live in marin, when they really are not. maybe employment is up, but maybe the people who worked at the factory are now working at walmart and are not so happy and this is what we experienced. i've been in manufacturing for -- running a company for 20 years, and we didn't really lose the jobs because of automation. we lost jobs because of tax havens, zero income tax in malaysia if you move your factory there. zero income tax to ireland. >> is there a question? >> how do we combat that in the political party system? >> well, first of all, globalization is really hard to combat. first of all, it's global. so, donald trump can do what he wants but the chinese can do what they want and the europeans

are going to do what they want. that's one thing. the second thing is inequality is just going to increase. very simple. robert downey, doesn't he wear that -- my grand kids watch everything. iron guy or iron head. so robert downey, he's an actor. >> robert downey jr., "ironman." i will translate. >> i appreciate it. thank god for that. >> he made on the last "ironman" movie he made $80 million. 320 million people around the world, you got a quarter. suppose you're the best carpenter or the best plumber in miran. how much can you make? so there are just inherent differences. the question is, how do you redistribute it? can it be done in that way? so it's a very tough issue.

i don't think anybody -- i don't think anybody is really -- third, inequality is called marriage socialism. in the old days when -- so my daughter, well educated, she's making -- she's an investment banker, so she is making pretty good money 300,000, in the old days that's it. he's a lawyer. now they're making $600,000. so that also increases. what are we going to do? you're going to say to people, hey, don't do that. give up your job. you say to my daughter, i'm not. and the final thing is, you can help inequality if you say no more googles. no more facebooks. that will bring about equality in california. >> that will bring about a revolution. people with pitch forks.

they'll unlike it. but i do want to point out, look, the democrats do talk about jobs. problem is if you went to hillary clinton's website, it was a 28-point plan for job creation that no one understood. you had to go to the right tab under the right menu to find the right thing. and simplistic as the message was, at least it was something you knew what he was going to do. you knew where he stood and hillary clinton made it clear, she cared, but the practical steps she was interested in taking were just sort of more than the attention span of a lot of people. >> on this subject of immigrations and institutions. i'm an immigration lawyer, and i can tell dwlu the two executive orders that were issued last week they read like statutes.

they're plainly unconstitutional, both violation of separation of powers and individual rights. they're major overhauls of immigration. what's been called the refugee ban is a lot more than a refugee ban and affects iranian americans. it also affects a host of other visa. i can tell you from my own practice and my -- stream of about 25 e-mails i'm getting from clients every hour, it has totally up ended immigration law and there have been four federal court orders issued in the last couple of days and all the reports from my colleagues is that the executive branch is in violation of these executive orders. >> that's great. >> it's a total meltdown of rule of law. >> do you have a question? >> why is that a meltdown of the rule of law? the president puts together a pretty not very well drafted, four judges ordered.

it's going to go through the courts and my view is, i'm happy to have it solved in the courts than by an order. so that's what the constitution is about. it's a check. >> i agree with that, but that he's in violation of the court orders, this is to me this is troubling. the department of state issued -- >> look, the judges, of course, can order the trump administration to appear and there's plenty of mechanisms, any party who refuses to appear refuses to abide by a court order, then is subject to a series of other court actions lieding to penalties. so presumably the administration would be subject to those same set of circumstances. >> i'm pretty sure the republican caucus is not happy with that order, not happy with what happened and inside they're saying lot of them are saying this is crazy. we should back it off and calm

it down. >> this gentleman over here. >> from the perspective of looking at the future of the parties, what is your take on the growth of republican control of state houses? >> good question. it's grown. but you knew that. well, so what happened was president obama, who was such a great campaigner both in 2008, 2012, the 2010 election decimated the republican party. they lost all those house seats. they lost 675 legislative seats and then in 2014 they lost another 400 legislative seats. so, what that kind of decimation

and states tend to choose governors that kind of -- they kind of flip. we have democratic president, you can get more republican house. i think the democrats should not be unhappy. 2018 -- so i think the democrats in 2018 are going to pick up five to seven governorships. and those are governors that are going to be their potential candidates for the presidency in 2020. it's going to reestablish some of that. the next thing i think -- so that's one thing that's going to happen that's good. and i think the other thing that's good for the democratic party is the clintons however good they've been, whatever you think of them they're gone. they've been since '88 with his moment. he is '88, that's a long time. so they're out now. the democratic party will pick up some governorships. they're going to pick up and rebuild that way and we'll see

what happens. but, the main thing was the decimation of the 2010 election and then followed by 2014. >> well, but even party operatives will tell you that they did not do a good job of building their bench. it was one of these, our guys in the white house. we don't have to worry about the rest of the stuff. there was some degree neglect in the party to build these grass roots organizations that need to be there to sort of create the bench. around so i think that one of the lessons of this election, one of the things on the list of things they need to do going forward is to focus better on that, really use the republican play book to some degree for their own purposes. >> quick question. as far as dealing with the current administration. this is obviously very biased question. all the papers that have come out like indivisible and the marches and so forth, in your view, what's the best strategy -- speaking of

strategies, for trying to preserve some of the values that were in the obama administration, if that's your value system w you want to take that first. >> move to green bay. >> good answer. glad i handed that to you. >> as a wise man once said. it's hard because we're in the bay area and our people are so -- our congress people, it's not like we can go out and root for a more liberal member of congress or liberal member of the senate, there is some limitation to what are the grass roots things we can do. the best thing you do is donate to organizations that you feel are under threat, places like planned parenthood, aclu who reflect your values, but in the bay area, there's not a lot of door knocking. we're going to be able to do to get any further left. they're going to saw us off and send us into the ocean.

marching, of course -- it seems that trump does respond and he is interest ed -- big events happening. i think it really hurt his feelings, frankly, to see the massive turnout for the women's march and marches elsewhere. i know, but if that's what you want to do, get on out there. because i think it does matter the size and the numbers of people who show up. so those would be the two things i would advise. >> i agree with all that. i would say, you know, watch the republican party. watch what they start to do and if there are people that are doing the thing you want, write them, encourage them. write john mccain. tell them with what you agree with them on and they should do something about it. because those people, they're under some pressure. then one last thing you want to

say, all of this about trump sway over the republican party, you know, he's starting -- let's be realists. he's starting with the lowest -- ever since we did the gallup polls, he starts with the lowest approval rating, the lowest. and he was -- but he was up 45, 41 in our ugov poll. and over the weekend when all this flap went on, he fell to 38 on the refugee thing. he fell to 38% approval, 51% disapproval and among republicans who voted for him and democrats who voted for him and i think we kept independents out, but 48% thought he handled it very badly, acted to rationally. so it seems to me that that's what you have to look for and try to encourage that. and then just, you have to contribute to the causes that you believe in and remember, you

say politics ain't bean bag. it's hard. it takes time to do it, but great thing is we have an election every two years and the filibuster. >> at least for now. this is a two-part question. if hillary's motto had been rebuild america, would that have strengthened the hand of democrats? and the second part is, if the democrats got behind true infrastructure redevelopment, would that compensate in part for the loss of jobs and things like coal mining, energy industries, globalization and modernization where you're more efficient with fewer people? so, is that a pathway for the democrats?

>> the stronger together in retrospect may not appeal to everyone. not everyone wants to be together. sometimes they just want to buy a house. so, yeah. should the democrats focus more on infrastructure, well, now the democrats are in an inveebl position because they -- i interviewed nancy pelosi about this just the other day, look, we want to get behind an infrastructure bill, there's this great idea we're going to go out there and create all these authorities and pick people to work and do an fdr recipe for bringing america back. look, if the republicans -- the only thing they want to do is build toll roads, right, and put municipalities in the federal government further in debt and benefit large financial institutions that would finance these things, then the democrats will be in a position of saying no to an infrastructure project or infrastructure bill that for a lot of working people they say, no, we want the jobs and the democrats are going, well,

no, it's a municipal bond and the interest rate is too high. that's a difficult place to be. so, even if they're for an infrastructure bill, not just anymore can do. that can get them backed into a rn coer if republicans are really pushing for something more of a public/private partnership emphasis on private than the democrats are willing to go for. >> i think that's right. >> smart man. >> then i would like to ask each of you -- do you want to make a closing comment or thought at the end of this? >> i don't particularly. >> i think that people in this room could use some good news. do you have a good, a hopeful, sunny -- you're the professor. i'm just lame stream media over here. i think they could use some happy news. have we gone through worse in history? >> come on.

we've had presidents who kept lists of enemies, watergate. this country's been through quite a few things. so i'm relatively -- why do i have to do this? i'm relatively optimistic about how our institutions will handle this situation. so, i think the probability is quite high that there's going to be a break in the republican party. there will be a sorting and that they'll stop a good deal of what might have happened. that's it. i mean, my job is to be an analyst. i'm not like a preacher. go in peace, children. >> well, on that note, melissa

cane, david brady, thank you so much. [ applause ]. today on capitol hill, the house is working on veteran's issues. later this week, legislation to overturn certain financial regulations put into place during the obama administration. the senate will vote this evening on president trump's picks to head the treasury and veteran's departments. scheduled for 7:00 p.m. eastern time. later this week in the senate, confirmation votes for the head of the small business administration. the house, live on c-span and the senate live on cspan2. tonight, on the communicators, the new chair of the house sub committee on communications and technology, tennessee congresswoman marcia black burn on her priorities for

the sub committee and how she expects communications and tech issues will change this year with the republican administration and a republican-led fcc. representative blackburn is interviewed by john hen dal, congress reporter for communications daily. >> making certain that we address what i view as having been an opportunity gap, communities that do not have broad band, then they're not able to go in and expand educational opportunity for their students. they're not able to utilize tell medicine. they're not able to recruit new factories that can bring jobs to those underserved areas. >> watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. west virginia governor jim justice delivered his first state of the state address to a