this f.b.i. has been so revered in our country. sure, it has issues at various times, as every agency does. but this has been a nonpolitical agency. no longer. and when -- in the confirmation hearing my colleagues, adam schiff and others, asked about the purge, he heard nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. he didn't know anything about it. two days later, it comes out he was masterminding it. and implementing it. as he was lying to us in the committee. so the biggest threat to our country right now is donald trump's frontal assault on the rule of law. and one of the generals in that assault is kash patel. we must defeat his appointment as the f.b.i. director.

sen. durbin: thank you. questions? too cold for questions. all right. we're out of here. [laughter] thank you, all. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] announcer: you've been watching live coverage. we return now to our scheduled program. we join it in progress. unties jo win by 20 or 30 points go to trump? >> i would like to make a comment more broadly on a theme of this panel. i am not sure it's quite that clear. earlier today, we had a question from one of the students who was here, who asked something similar, because when donald trump wins the kind of overwhelming victory he did in the electoral college, where he

sweeps all seven swing states, when the republicans now control both houses of congress, it's easy to think this was an unmitigated disaster for democrats in november and it's maybe even easy to buy into trump's claim democrats in november and it's maybe even easy to buy into trump's claim that he and his maga allies have won a major mandate but i think that is a misreading of what happened in november. from for the first time in three tries for the presidency managed to win a plurality of the popular vote. he did not win a majority. to me, it's hard to clean you have a mandate would most of the people casting ballots voted for somebody else. in the house, as i think james carville mentioned, we picked up a seat, and the republicans now have the second smallest majority in the house in american history. in the senate, it's true the

republicans flipped four seats, and now have a majority of 53, but remember that three of those four were in blood red states that trump won by huge margins, west virginia, montana, ohio. but in the swing states it was a different story. there are seven swing states. five of them had u.s. senate races on the ballot too. democrats won four of those five and lost the fifth by .2%. so, as i say, i think it's easy to over interpret what happened. none of this is to say that i disagree with the theme that democrats have been losing the plot for some time and hopefully

we will be able to talk about that and how we might be able to reverse it, but let me let somebody else talk. >> carissa, maybe i will bounce around if you don't mind. you were the national women's vote director for joe biden in 2020 and beat trump by 15 points. hillary won by 13 points in vice president harris won only by eight points in 2024 notwithstanding the fact that hillary and biden ran before the dobbs decision, which changed the landscape in terms of politics. ape in terms of politics. what happened with women in what happened with women in america in 2024 and why did these changes come about and just explain it in the context of losing the plot. >> sure. overall i can speak to 2020, some of the trends we were seeing. we overall made sure we built a diverse coalition in 2020

that focused on all classes of women and overall i think that messaging was able to propel us to win in 2020, especially with black women showing up and doing what we have always done at the polls at 92% to 96%. we saw that was our base and were going to vote based off the issues and what would secure our kitchen tables and neighborhoods. in 2024 we saw a shift in some of that. some of that was based off the economic messaging. there was a clear narrative that it was not good for people's kitchen tables. they were looking at grocery store prices and the cost of living and i will say the messaging from republicans was successful in building the case that it was because of the biden-harris administration it costs had gone out.

we know that was not the case if you look at gdp and other facets and fact sheets that came out of congress at that time but they were successful sticking to you have a new administration and the cost of living has gone out. -- up. it was able to resonate down to kitchen tables. that was being evangelized with women voters of maybe i need to vote differently because i cannot afford the cost-of-living and despite robust economic plans and vice president harris coming in and making it clear that she had an economic plan to lift up families, whether it was through homeownership, grants or student loan repayment, it was not really resonating i think based on kind of the wall of the economic distrust that

republicans had built, particularly for women. i think we will be talking about this, of how did we go from the 15% to the 8% of women this year and i don't think i fully have the answer based off of the data. we will see the vote that took place and how people respond to it. >> i think we cannot ignore all the cultural pieces that were in play they had the advertisement about transgender people and all these pieces and the vice president talking about transgender americans. i think that played a role. i also think racism played a role. they did not know vice president harris. she is a black woman, she has south indian heritage as well, with her

mother being an indian and i think all those pieces coming together did not work in our favor and i think looking at it from an economic perspective, that's not it. we have some strong things that came out in big moments and just because she's a woman, all women don't identify with her either, so that's a big issue considering you had a black woman and other women of color but the thing we did not talk about on the campaign trail in a robust way, what was happening in the middle east and in gaza, one thing that we know or i knew from the research done was that a lot of millennial women and women of color were impacted by that and upset with the administration and that was not addressed in any form. it was this big thing that nobody talked about, this book

-- this boogie monster that we're not even going to address, on top of all offed messaging that they did directed toward these women and also fearmongering. on the flipside, i think we went so hard in on the abortion peace. which is extremely important. that doesn't resonate with everyone, though, in the same way that it does. we saw wins in the ballot every time information other states but it did not have the same kind of pull that we anticipated having. i think mostly for african-american women, i don't think it has that same kind of resonance. we're not marching in the street every day for this. but it is still an important aspect. it's not a simple answer and i don't think you can leave out the cultural or racial pieces. all of them came together in a moment that from my perspective was not good for this country.

>> let me follow-up quickly and ask you about something raised, which is the trans ad that was run by the campaign. i say this as someone who worked for michael dukakis. there was an ad we didn't deal with. we worked for john kerry and the swift boat ads came at us. we can talk about that. the trump campaign spent $125 million on that advertisement or versions of it in battleground states. when i worked for kerry in 2004, we were given a check for $76 million to run the campaign. inflation has been a lot but that's a lot of money to spend on something. did you feel pressure to deal with that in the paid media environment, exchange in the campaign in some way to engage and try to reassure voters who might be concerned about that?

>> absolutely. one of the reasons why we lost the plot is i do feel that leadership does not reflect what this country looks like. this country has changed dramatically and when you think about the people who are voting and all the walks of life they come from, you have to have people leading campaigns who reflect that diversity. i do not know how to talk to certain people but i know how to talk to others. we all have our strengths. from my perspective and the little time that i did, i was on ma alternativity leave and then he win the to help on the campaign, the little time i was there, i saw that was a major challenge. the fact that who was making the final decisions did not reflect the people we were going after. we were using a very old playbook. i worked for president obama and also led michelle obama's voting

initiative so i worked in this space of power you going to reach people and talk to them? there were so many barriers i think to doing things differently. when they had been doing things differently. they went to every nook and cranny on the web and preached their message in places that we deemed did not pass purity tests, was not presidential or appropriate and some of those places are not presidential or feel appropriate but that's what the american people are consuming. that's where they are. so if we are not going to take on things head on and push past it, people are beyond that. i often say donald trump is a reality tv show host president. we are a reality tv show culture. we want whatever feels authentic and because we have played from

such an old playbook of let's not address this and forget them and focus on those voters, it won't matter. it does matter. and i think now we see that. the challenge is how do we start changing the way in which we do this work and looking around and saying if everyone at this table looks like me this is not the right table. how to we bring the right people to the table, how do we do things out of the box and start making ourselves uncomfortable and saying some people have to pass purity tests to be at the table to help us push our messaging out there? and also addressing these issues head-on. there's a fear among us at times and too many silos. tad: after the election, i remember reading this, and i am probably one of the few people

that still gets a hard copy of the new york times every day. an article entitled democrats have won. our excuses mask a devastating reality. talk about the message of that op-ed. john: you mentioned our relationship of 37 years and also a shout out to bob for being a friend and mentor. thank you, bob. i have learned so much. [applause] tad: you are no going to tell him -- not going to talk about driving to boston to pick him up. john: i was angry. i put in some thoughts down the day after. i think the point of that is it was early and there was a lot of finger-pointing and the polling deficit in the summer was too much, the campaign was too short, inflation was too high, and focusing not entirely but a

lot on younger voters, this is a winnable race. as an example, as james carvill said earlier from this stage. if one out of every 100 people change their minds in the three midwest and the blue wall states, we don't have a president blaming d.e.i. for a tragedy in the potomac. as an example. one out of 100. an there's obviously a diverse electorate but when we look at younger people, there's been an unmistakable pattern this century. when democrats win 60% of the youth vote, they win elections. john kerry won 55%. hillary clinton won 55%. you start with 55%. injure job is to go from 55% to 60% and the math takes care of it self. the harris campaign started with 55% and rather than expanding

it, it got somewhere in the low 50's and i think that is, to connect with what stephanie said earlier, kind of a lack of listening and understanding what the real anxieties and fears were of this particular cohort of voters. there were a lot of lessons from the 2022 campaign that were not changed. they were very successful. to me a lot of the messaging is consistent with what happened in 2022. rather than talking about economics. one other point is that half of 18 to 29-year-olds more days than not over the last two weeks suffer from depression, hopelessness or anxiety.

half. 25% say they have considered self-harm in the last two weeks. a couple percent every single day. a lot of that is driven by the extent to which they can see themselves successful and having a stable future, and by not listening and addressing those issues, i think does not allow younger people to connect with someone and motivate them to turn out, and i think that's what i was trying to convey. tad: i want to ask you one more thing about that op-ed. i completely agree that young people can win elections for democrats across america, and i'm reminded that in 2008, when barack obama won indiana and north carolina, he won it by winning only one age cohort, 18 to 29-year-olds. those states were not in play until that election.

that is the power of the youth vote. this is a little technical but as a good -- as a great consumer of polling, you also read about your concern that the democratic party has replaced the art of listening to and polling voters with an almost religious devotion to data analytics. explain that. what does that mean? [laughter] john: mike will weigh in in terms of polling surveys and tracking surveys and quality of research and focus groups being replaced in my view by analytics, which don't go in depth and listen to people and instead model people and say what they predict will happen based on the model is like a radiologist.

they play an important role but that radiologist is not necessarily talking to the patients, understanding where the pain is coming from, understanding their perspective and how to get better but just one piece of it. campaigns overrelied on analytics. it brought them away from rather than closer to voters. it's obviously. if they were listening they would have made different choices in terms of where they visited, what they said. they would have gone to the dearborn coffee shop and listened to voters. a 20-point difference in certain towns in university of michigan towns between this cycle and the cycle before. this is a cohort where two out of three people have values aligned with the democratic party. so it's not a disconnect in terms of values or issues. i think it's in the execution. carissa: but they are not going to poll and listen to everybody

either. it is who do we deem important to win. raz opposed to saying, these people are a base, but let's dmek andsurehey're good. we don't do that. we didn't do that this time. i know that when we did poll people in our base, it was towards the end at a time when you couldn't turn anything around, so there's an obsession -- it's like a game we are playing. stephanie: how are we going to get the ungetable as opposed to how are we going to make sure all our people are good and then bring in some of the other folks on the end? tad: did you have something? >> mike, go ahead. >> young people obviously are important but i will tell you from the midwestern perspective we cannot ignore the other elephant in the room, which as we have been hemorrhaging working-class voters.

when bob was working for ted kennedy and i was working for john glenn, it was not just ohio that was a quintessential swing state but west virginia was bright blue. dale: everybody was a democrat in west virginia. nows one of the restest states in the union. tad: by the way, mike dukakis won west virginia. dale: i think it started 30 years ago roughly when we embraced globalization and promised everybody there will be some short-term dislocations but in the long run everyone will be better off. in fact, the benefits from globalization came, but they were not evenly distributed. people who were college educated elite, highly trained, did very well, but everybody else didn't. let me say that -- i will tell you, in a country where only 36% of the population has a college degree, becoming a party of the

college educated elite is not a recipe for winning a lot of elections. let me tell you how bad it has gotten. this last november, and the 20 states that had the highest median annual -- in the 20 states that had the highest median annual income, we won 18 of 20. in the 20 states with the lowest median family income we won three. in pennsylvania 15 years ago, democrats outnumbered republicans in registration by one million. it's now down to 200,000. the day before yesterday, the las vegas review journal reported that for the first time in 20 years there are more registered republicans in nevada than democrats. in ohio, you askd in ohio, you asked about that. in 1992, john glenn's last campaign for reelection, which i ran, the best county we had in

the state was a county called belmont, which is a working-class, blue-collar county in east central ohio along the river. we won belmont county by 36 points, better than we did in pon any of the other 80 counties in the state -- other 88 counties in the state. any of the other 80 counties in the state -- other 88 counties in the state. last november, sherrod brown lost belmont county by 30 points. we promised all these benefits were going to come from globalization but the problem is the people who live in th [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] >> we're going to leave to take you live to a hearing on risks posed by foreign nationals working at the energy department's national laboratories. the senate energy and natural resources committee is holding this hearing.