-- programs are also available as c-span podcasts. span, political- analyst charlie cook looks ahead to the 2014 midterm elections. after that, the first lady lady's encore continues with a look at the life and career of eddie ford. later, supreme court oral argument on the state's responsibility to control air pollution beyond its own borders. houseate and several seats will be decided. charlie cook of the cook political report highlighted the upcoming 2014 midterm elections and he spoken washington, d.c.

>> good morning. welcome to the campaign institute. i'm candy nelson, the academic director. this is the 35th year that we have existed. we started as a bipartisan training institute. the first speaker today is charlie cook, editor and writer for the cook political report. charlie is a political analyst for washington journal. -- national journal. he has always been very generous of his time and will start us off by talking about the political environment going into 2014.

charles cook. [applause] [applause] thank you, candy. first of all i want to compliment all of you for your decision to participate in cmi because hardly a month goes by that i don't run into somebody somewhere that didn't say, i met you, or i first heard you at the american university campaign management institute and i've been doing this for really long time. i remember my favorite story about the cmi was back in the, either very late '80s or probably early '90s. a friend of mine. leland: bill sweeney was helping to run the program. and this was march, april, may, few months after the cmi and he was walking through the capitol building and he ran into the speaker of the house, tom foley, who he knew. and speaker foley put him aside

and said, bill, a few months ago, back over the holidays, my father was very ill, so i was spending a lot of time with him. there was one night i couldn't sleep so i turned on television and started watching c-span and campaign management institute was on. then speaker of the house goes through to critique each of the speakers. just goes to show you never know who is going to be watching this kind of thing on c-span and also just what kind of terrific program that amu puts together. what i am going to do is sort of talk about the lay of the land, the political environment. thank you very much. and i used to, a million years ago, back in the '70s when i first got out of college and working in politics there was a terrific political newsletter called the american political report that a guy named kevin phillips did who had been a political strategist for president nixon in '68.

this newsletter was eight or 10 pages long, 12 pages long, every other week. the front part of it was sort of macro big picture themes of american politics and the last couple of pages was the alabama to wyoming, what is going on in each state. i was just out of college and so, to me i would go straight to the back pages, you know, alabama, arkansas, go through all the states to see what was going on and then i would read the frond part because i thought to me that was like cocktail party conversation. it was sort of vaguely interesting but not that important. but as i sort of my career progressed i started realizing, wait a minute, it is the stuff in front that drives what's happening in the back and i think as sort of as i moved along the thematics are awfully, awfully important. so i think a lot of people, particularly younger people think we put too much emphasis on some of the big picture stuff but over time it seems to matter

in a enormous amount. the beginning of each election cycle i start off and think about, ask myself two questions and the first question is, what kind of election is this going to be? and whether it is sort of what i call micro or macro. around the second is, what's the election going to be about? let's talk about these two questions. what kind of election it's going to be. the late democratic speaker of the house tip o'neill coined probably the most popular phrase in american politics. all politics is local. now to me what speaker o'neill meant, whether you're looking at a state representative or state senate race or a state, coon aggressional race, senator's race. governor's race, every jurisdiction, every race is largely independent. what's the population like in that area? what are the voting patterns and

voting history? who are the candidates? what kind of campaigns do they have. what resources money and otherwise do they have. what are local issues and circumstance that could influence that race? but the idea that each one of these contests are sort of stovepiped is the current phrase we use, french freestanding independent of all the others. a lot of elections really are like that but there are lot that aren't and from time to time we have these sort of, a lot of people call wave elections, where all politics isn't local and it's where there, almost like there is an invisible hand that sort of pushing up or forward the candidates of one party and pulling down the candidates of the other and you can go back through history, you know, 1958, 1966, '64, six at this six, '80,

'74. now it used to be a little over one a decade. they're happening more freakily because our political process is not parliamentary but seems to get more parliamentary than it used to be. people are not splitting their tickets as much as they did back when i was in school. it used to be fairly routine for someone to vote, democratic for the house, republican for senate, democrat for president or mix those any way you want but move back and forth, sort of choosing back and forth between the two. that was quite common but now we don't have those anymore. we had bonn a long time without a really big one. then in 1994 we had the newt gingrich-led republican tidal wave election during president clinton's first term election. that swept speaker foley out of office. and, then you had '94, as i said, '94, getting over a chest

cold. '94. then had '86 was a big democratic one. 2006, rather, 2010 was a big republican one. where we had these wave elections from time to time and so, whether is it going to be a micro, all politics local kind of election, or is it going to be macro, one of these sort of wave elections that strongly advantages one side or the other. the other question is, what's the theme of the election? there's a famous thing of winston how much hill where he apparently reportedly sent back dessert to the kitchen and said to the waitress, you know, madam, take this pudding away, it has no theme. so the question is sort of what's the theme of the election? what's it about? what are the key dynamic that's out there? sort of what's the current term

people use is narrative. what is the narrative of this election? and, so at the beginning of this election cycle, a year ago, i started thinking, okay, there are sort of two possible narratives in this election. and the first narrative, this is in no particular order. but the first one is, that republican brand image problems and internal problems just continue. and the problems that the republican party's currently facing with younger voters, with minority voters, with moderate voters, with women voters just sort of persist and flow as they did in 2012, on into 2014. the other theory is that this is a classic second term midterm election in which the party in the white house traditionally gets absolutely hammered in the midterm election halfway through a second term. and it's not, doesn't always

happen but it's almost always happens. and so which of these two is it going to be? let's talk about each one for a second. talk about the republican brand image problems. i don't know, if i need to dwell too much about this, got talked about a lot coming out of 2012 the republican party has profound -- you can blame mitt romney for the, his loss in his campaign and to be honest i think that was actually a very, very winnable race had it been run somewhat differently, that the obama campaign was very, very smart campaign and made a lot of very smart decisions and the romney campaign not so much. but notwithstanding that, when you sort of look at other races and look broader, you can see there is just some huge problems facing the republican party. first minority voters when african-americans make up 13% of the electorate and your

presidential candidate loses 87 points, 93-6, that is pretty bad. when hispanics make up 10% of the vote and romney lost by 44 points, 71-27. but the group that i kind of like to point to is sort of making a statement is a smaller group, asian voters which make up 3% of the electorate. now, let's do some, don't worry i'm not boeing to say anything bad. let's do some profiling here. what are the stereotypes of asians, asian-americans? hard-working, entrepreneurial, capitalistic. they have a lower unemployment rate than whites. they have a higher household income than whites. tend to be cult rattily conservative. wouldn't that kind of describe republicans. attributes one attribute to the republican party. yet romney lost the asian vote

by 47 percentage points, three points more than he lost the the hispanic vote. that is really interesting to me. the vote for confess is almost identical. you say, wait a minute, nobody was talking about asian vote. how did that, the thing about it is, when you look at the polling, when you sit through focus groups with voters, the message that minority voters across the board are getting is the republican party doesn't like anybody that doesn't look like themselves. is that a fair characterization of all republicans? no, i don't think it is but that is the message that so many minority voters are getting and, and i think to me, what is happening with the asian vote is particularly symptommic of it. that has a lot less to do with immigration or anything else, is that republicans have an enormous problem with minority

voters. and country is getting more and more, and more diverse. that romney won the 59% of the white vote in this last election. historically, if you got 59% of the site vote, you're republican and you got 59% of the site vote, you have just won the election. but that but it is no longer sufficient. and what we're seeing is the share of the white vote has been dropping, basically 15 points over six elections. so that simply winning the white, for republican winning white vote big is not enough to win anymore. and when republicans have to kind of go back and go back and look at their recipe a little bit because that is not working so well. then you look at young voters. and take voters under 30. romney lost the 18 to 29-year-olds by 23 percentage points. if you look at four age brackets

of exit poll. you draw a line at 45 years of age. voters for the most part over 45 vote pretty strongly for, for republicans, for congress an for romney and under 45 voted more for obama and for democrats. at the extremes of those age groups it's, it is even higher. now but the thing about it is, you can look at that say, well, okay, they kind of balance each other off or something. and maybe a little bit. but the thing is, when you think about the long haul, and, i just turned 60. so i can actually say this without getting into trouble. but, when i look at voters under 45, particularly under 30, i see the future. i mean that's where, that is where american politics is going to be down the road a little bit. for those of us who are over 60, we're kind of the prelaugh dead.

and, republicans are doing really, really well with the pre-dead and not so well with the future. if i were an old republican i wouldn't care. but if i were a young republican i would be really, really worried. something will change or they will not be winning many statewide or national elections. of. we get to women voters. we started hearing about a gender gap back in the reagan administration, the '80s. and i remember initially i thought, well, you know, this is kind of a glass half empty, half full kind of thing. do republicans have a problem with women vetvoters? yes. but do democrats have a problem with male voters? yes. so it kind canceled each other out. there are two problems with that notion. number one, unfortunately from my personal perspective, women live longer than men do. as a result they're 53% of the

electorate and guys are only 47% of the electorate. when you have such strong, you know, strong partisan voting patterns among the two genders that is kind after problem. but the other thing is, that democrats are doing a lot better among women than republicans are among men. this is true for congress and it was true for, in the presidential race that obama won the woman's vote by 11 percentage points and romney only one the male vote by seven percentage points. from a republican perspective, republicans are winning a smaller slice of the smaller pie. and again over the long haul that doesn't really work so well. then finally, self-described moderate voters. now, i used to completely assess independent voters, self-described independents, people that didn't call

themselves democrats or republicans. the reason i used to obsess over that, you look over time, and basically 90% plus percent of all the people who call themselves democrats, vote for democratic candidates for congress and president and 90 plus percent of self-described republicans vote for the republican candidate. and so pretty predictable. so, you look at independents. well, the problem with independents, the problem with that is that independents are not splitting, the independents are becoming a bigger and bigger role and so but, for republicans they, if you told me two years ago, three years ago, that mitt romney was going to be the republican nominee and he would win the independent vote by five percentage points, i would have assumed he won the election, you know. all other things being equal. but, what's happened is that the

makeup of independents has changed a little bit and another group has become more important and when i say the makeup of independents, has changed somewhat, i think that within the realm of self-described independents you've got one group of people in there that used to be republicans. they are very conservative but they now call themselves independents and are more sympathetic with the tea party movement and so they no longer identify as republicans but in a two-way democrat republican race you can pretty much bet on them going republican. the second thing is, i think there are some moderate republicans, people that were moderate republicans who have no longer call themselves republicans and call themselves independents but they are still more conservative than they are liberal but they have more leanings that way. but anyway romney won among independent vote by five

percentage votes but lost the election by what, 2.8 percentage points. so what is the key group? i would argue the key group that i'm play paying more attention to is self-described moderates. republicans or conservatives i should say taken solace more americans consider themselves conservative than liberals. 35% conservative, 25% liberal a 10 point gap but 40% call themselves independents. in this last election it, was actually 41% in the last election. independents voted for obama by 15 percentage points, 56-41. so if that's a group, you know, if democrats are winning among liberals and republicans winning among conservatives even though there are a lot more conservatives than liberals, if democrats are winning moderates, 41% of the electorate, by 15 percentage points that makes a huge, huge, huge, difference and it didn't used to be that wide.

and so we sort of look at these things and say, can republicans in 2014, repair their damage? wait until the end. repair their damage with, minority voters, young voters, women voters, moderate voters. and that is to me, that's a critical, critical, critical question. then we get to the second question. and that is, is this going to be a traditional second term midterm election? now, one of the things we've seen, and since end of world war --, first of all midterm elections tend to be much more often than not are bad for the party in the white house. and it is sort of, if people are unhappy for any reason, they tend to take it out on the president's party. if they're happy, they vote on some other issue but if they're unhappy, they tend to take it out on a president's party. just sort of, it is what it is but it's been like that for, you know, since the beginning of

time pretty much. but in the post-world war ii era, in terms of looking at second midterm elections. we've had six of them. five out of six the party in the white house got absolutely hammered in the second term midterm election with enormous losses in either the house or senate or usually both. and one exception, the one out of six that didn't happen was back in 1998. bill clinton's second term midterm election when there was a backlash against the republican impeachment of clinton in the house and trying him? the senate where the american people, they wean really happy with president clinton but they thought the country was doing okay. they didn't want to throw him out even though they did think that, did not necessarily approve of his behavior. so the there was a backlash against republicans. so the normal pattern was, would seem to have been broken during that time. now why, why does this tend to

happen in second terms? part of it is, think about when a brand new president is elected. all of you are young enough to remember back in 2009, whether you were a democrat, republican, liberal, moderate, maybe less so conservative, there was a real curiosity. how was this new president was going to do? and sort after curiosity, an energy, excitement, passion, whatever, how is this guy going to do? and people are hopeful, whether they voted for him or not, they generally speaking want the country to do well and so hopefully this will be a turn for the better after going through some tough times. but, and that is fairly typical when a new president is ileced. but overtime the novelty wears off and over time decisions are made, tough governing decisions are made, that tend to tick people off. and that the fresh, new ideas,

tend to dissipate some. "the a-team", the team that elected that president initially, by the time after the re-election, they generally go off to make money. so you have the b or the c team on the field. there are no new idea. they're just sort of, final thing sometimes sort of chickens come home to roost. things you said or did in the first term come back and i will use a technical political science term here, bite you on the ass in second term, things if you like your insurance you can keep it, things like that compact to haunt you in the second term. there are tendency for bad things to happen to presidents in their second terms. sometimes it is economic downturns, for example, president eisenhower had two recessions in the last two years he was in office. i didn't know you could have two recessions that close together. you could have unpopular wars

like vietnam during the kennedy-johnson administration, iraq for george w. bush. you can have scanneds like watergate, during the nixon, ford, controversy over the pardon and monica lewinsky for clinton and thing is, or iran-contra for president reagan. bad things typically happen to presidents during the second term. people just start betting tired and start to become more receptive to change. we've done this and let's do something different. but it's a pattern that holds up pretty, pretty darn well. so those are the two questions. so what's it going to be? well i, when i look, when i look at what's going on and look at the polling data and one thing, i didn't get a chance to go by the office and print this out but right, write down, our website is cook political.com.

www.cookpolitical.com. you go to the homepage, this won't make me any money, right-hand side of the page there is a box that talks about political environment and says, read more and click that. and there's, it is about 10-page document that we update several times a week with the polling date that we think is most relevant in terms of sort of ascertaining what's the political environment going to be like. and we start off with right direction, wrong track numbers. then we go to presidential approval. we have the gallup numbers and as well as abc, "washington post," nbc, "new york times,", fox, cnn, gallup and pugh. we go through consumer confidence. first of all, to the extent we are taught that midterm elections are usually a referendum on the incumbent president, then looking at the president's job approval rating is very, very important. but it's also said that

americans tend to vote their pocketbooks and they tend to vote if they are worried, scared, fearful about the economy, they tend to pessimistic, generally not so good for incumbent party. if they feel good about things, they typically vote on other things. but we have the conn conn ratings. then -- consumer confidence ratings. we have favorable, unfavorable ratings for parties from various polls. we have before that numbers from the kaiser family foundation which is largest, sort of objective body of polling on the affordable care act. sort of watching several questions there in terms of the popularity of the affordable care act. and we have the generic ballot test. maybe another question or two on there. that is sort of a good way to check in for free and look to see how things are going. so when i look at what's happening right now, the democratic party has lousy

fav-unfav numbers. the republican party has even worse favorable unfavorable numbers. the president's approval numbers are 43% where exactly president george w. bush was at this point in his second term which is after iraq already turning sour and after katrina. and so that's exactly, almost, actually some days digit for digit the same where president bush was at this point which is obviously not a good place and republicans took some pretty significant losses back in 2006. so the republican, there is no reason to believe that republicans have improved their standing one iota among minority voters, younger voters, women voters, moderate voters. none whatsoever. but at the same time, you look over and you look at the president's approval numbers and they're on the track towards

where you have bad second term midterm elections. and it is what it is. maybe things better. maybe they do. we'll have to see. you don't just take a poll and skip the election. you carry up through the election. that's why you have campaigns but the thing is right now looks like both of those things are going to happen, or both of those things look to be, if you're going to have the election today, operative. which would tend to suggest canceling each other out. when i talked about what kind of election it is going to be. at this point, there is not any evidence that this is going to be a wave election because for people to vote against somebody they kind of have to vote for somebody. and the thing is, they don't like either side here. and so i don't see them handing out compliments or willy-nilly handing out victories to either side because they're not really

happy with either one. i guess meteorologist would look at this and say it is kind of like an unstable air mass. it is very, very volatile situation but neither side looks to be sort of naturally advantaged by sort of the macro political environment. now, then you say, well, okay. that is the environment. let's get down to sort of cases. i know your next speaker will get more into races but i'm going to do it from sort of a larger sense. we got the house and senate. in house, democrats woo need a 17 net gain to get majority in the house. 17 seats. in big scheme of thing, 17 is not particularly big number. you can look, there is a great, great book, norm ornstein, tom mann and michael maalvin, vital

statistic on congress. terrific book. they have it up on the web. they don't publish it in hard copy anymore and up on the web and available for free. it is terrific. go through brookings or aei website but when you go back and look over time, trying to remember what, what my point was. as i say getting over a chest cold. i remember. 17 is not much. it really isn't but the thing about it is, but in the new world order it is kind of a lot. because there are very, very few competitive districts out there. you know i started as i mentioned earlier, my newsletter back in april of 1984. and it was not uncommon in those days to have, you know, 100, 125, 150 or more competitive districts. and now, it is sort of, you know, depending upon you determine, how you define it,

actually i was reading someplace, somebody was using our numbers, defining it as where it voted for president for one party and congress for the other, it went from 99, like 10 years ago, to only 25 now. but the better statistic is that 96% of all the democrats in the house are sitting in district that is obama carried and 93% of the republicans in the house are sitting in district that is mitt romney carried. so there is just not a lot of elasticity in the house left anymore. . . .

>> soyou want to do, if you're the dominant party in a state and you want to absolutely minimize the representation of the other party, you could do an amazing job there now, much better than you ever could before. but there are other things that are at play as well. for example, population sorting. there's a wonderful book that some of you might want to read by a guy named bill bishop called "the big sort." and he basically talks about how people, in a sense, they kind of vote with their feet in that people tend to move and concentrate with people like themselves. people are more comfortable when they're with like-minded people, and that this is becoming more and more and more so. and that when you look at, say, democratic districts -- or look

at, look geographically across the country, what are the districts the democrats tend to represent? they tend to be large urban areas and close in suburbs and college towns. and then you say, okay, where do republicans live? small town, rural america and in the more outer reaches which are the faster growing of the suburbs. but that's a clear population pattern or political pattern that's out there. so even notwithstanding any political gerrymandering that's taking place, you have this taking place as well. and then the final reason is think about the last, say, four elections. in 2008 you remember the iraq war had gotten, you know, it was getting really pretty ugly. president bush's numbers were, gosh, at one point he got down to like 30, 28%, something like that. so that 2008 you had a really, really ugly election for

republicans. and then 2010 it got even worse. i'm sorry, 2008 -- no, i'm sorry. 2008 had a ugly election for republicans, and so a lot of republicans that are sitting in competitive districts or districts that maybe a democrat ought to have, they got washed out, they got washed out back in 2008 just as they did in 2006. so you had back-to-back ugly elections for republicans, the sort of win knowed out a lot of -- winnowed out a lot of competitive districts. then in 2010 the way it went, it was a fabulous year for republicans, and it kind of washed out to sea a lot of democratics that were sitting in districts that ought to be republican. so coming out of those in 2008, you know, it was a decent election for the democrats. it wasn't a wave, but it was a decent year for democrats. so you basically went through this sort of -- it sort of sorted out. so there really aren't that many

fish out of water, so it kind of minimized the elasticity in the house of representatives. so that's made it very, very difficult for democrats to make a 17-seat gain just as it would actually be very hard for republicans to make a 17-seat gain in this environment. and when you just sort of look at the individual races one by one, and we've got a fabulous house editor, david wasserman, who does this. and all he concentrates from the day after one election to election day two years later is looking at each of the 435 congressional districts, is right now, you know, more likely than not that republicans would actually pick up a handful of seats, three, four, five, six, something like that. a very, very small number just based on where there are open seats and where there are competitive races and what's going on in each within. but that's not -- each one. so then you get over to the senate side and, again, i don't want to poach into the next side, but democrats obviously

have a lot of exposure. and the thing to remember about the senate always is that just as the house has two-year terms and so the table is set or the cards are dealt in the house two years earlier. in the senate with six-year terms, you have to go back and look six years. so whenever one party has a fabulous year in the u.s. senate, you know, six years later they're going to be playing defense. because they probably got a whole bunch of seats that they had just won over from the other side, and, you know, and a big risk of vulnerability. and that's exactly where democrats are in the u.s. senate and where, basically, of the eight seats that are most likely to make a difference in the u.s. senate, six of them are in states that mitt romney carried. anyway, but again, i don't want to poach onto the next speaker's turf. so that's sort of how i view the political environment right now. it, you know, on a micro level

democrats have a little bit more exposure in the house. in the senate they've got a lot of exposure, in the senate. but at the same time, for republicans to get a majority, they need a six-seat gain in the senate. they have to not quite run the table, but pretty close to run the table to win a majority which is why i would put a republican majority in the senate at something less, considerably less than 50/50 even though it's, you know, almost a 100%, a very, very high percentage chance that republicans will pick up senate seat, but probably not the six seats that they need. and just sort of as an aside, it sure as heck looked like they were going to get a bunch of seats in 2012, and in the end they didn't do it. and part of it were because of these brand problems we've been talking about. but the other problem is one that's going to exist again, and that is that in this sort of posts-tea party -- post-tea party era, republican primaries have become pretty exotic

places. [laughter] and there's been a increased tendency for republican primary voters to choose people who god didn't necessarily intend for them to be members of the u.s. senate. [laughter] and it's cost them seats that they should have won. and whether you're looking at, you know, nevada, colorado, delaware in 2010 or whether you're looking at missouri or indiana in 2012, you know, arguably, you know, right now the senate's 55-45. arguably, republicans should have five more seats than they do right now, but they don't because they follow nateed -- nominatedder the write flawed candidates -- nominated terribly flawed candidates that were not able to win seats that certainly appeared to be very, very winnable, if not gimme putts. anyway, that's sort of one more consideration out there. so let's just open it up for

questions, comments, accusations. you had your hand up a long time ago. let me go with you first. [inaudible conversations] >> i apologize for that, but -- >> no, that's all right. >> my question is throughout your talk you talked about two scenarios, and i completely agree, obviously, because you're the expert. but also -- [laughter] >> you don't have to. >> right. [laughter] >> also it could be something else. but they would seem to be the two most plausible. >> also through my personal experience on campaigns that seems to be quite exactly right. my question is, could you speak to the difference between the electorate who votes and the difference between midterms and presidential elections? because it seems to me that those two are quite different. >> yes. >> and also determine which two scenario, which is more dominant >> presidential elections tend to draw, obviously, a much

bigger turnout, broader turnout, and it's a turnout that more looks like the country. midterm elections you've got a lot of voters that are sort of casual voters. sometimes they vote, sometimes they don't. they oftentimes vote in presidential, but in any other kind of election, they don't show up. and the group that sort of drops off the most is younger voters, down scale voters to a certain extent, but really younger voters. and one particular group that i know stan greenberg be, the democrat pollster with james carville have the democracy corps which is kind of a polling, think tank type thing for the democratic side, that they focus on young, single women voters. that, you know, women voters under 30, 35 who were single is one of the -- it's a group that when they vote, they vote very heavily democratic, but the win

is a really operative term because a lot of times they don't show up on midterm and low visibility elections. so midterm elections do tend to have a turnout. now, it doesn't mean that, you know, republicans win all midterm lengths because, obviously -- elections because, obviously, they lost all control of congress in 2006 which was a midterm election. but generally speaking, turnout, dynamic is something that's more favorable while presidential is more favorable of the democrats. that's absolutely true. but again, it's not completely determinative, but it's an important factor. okay, you were next. >> um, so i guess you spend a lot of time studying elections. what has been the most surprising result in your time, or what result or event in an election has shocked you the most that you didn't expect? >> well, wow, that's an interesting one because there are a lot of -- i mean, you're

in this business long enough, you see stuff it's like, wow, i didn't really see that one coming. relatively recently, after barack obama won the iowa caucus and then turned around and lost the new hampshire primary to hillary clinton, that was kind of a shocker because somewhere in this big country there's somebody who predicted that hillary would win the new hampshire primary after losing the iowa caucus, but i sure as hell never met him. [laughter] anyway, that was one. but i would say just sort of professionally i would say it was that 1994 gingrich midterm election. and the reason is that we had not seen a wave election since, in 14 years, since 1980. and there were -- and i had vivid memories of the 1980 election. long before i got into this business, i'm a moderate independent now, but i, you know, got my start, grew up as a

democrat and had my first few political jobs on the democratic side. and i was -- the election of 1980 i was at the headquarters of the democratic senate or y'all campaign, and actually lucy, who's now my would have, was working there at the -- my wife, was working there at the time. anyway, 1980, indiana and kentucky with are the first states for poll closing times. birch bayh lost by 6:30 in the evening, and then democrats lost a seat every half an hour for, til well after midnight. i mean, it was like boom, boom, boom, boom. and, you know, that was the first wave election since '74. the watergate election. but, you know, i was in college in '74 and sort of, you know, i was working on the hill but not really aware of that much, you

know? but '80 was like, wow, that's really something. but we went 14 years before that was replicated. so you had people running campaign committees on each side who had never personally experienced a wave length. wave election. and there's a tendency to get too wrapped up in this all politics is local thing if you go a really long time without a wave election. and so it's sort of like hard to imagine it happening until you really see one up close and personal. and so that 1994 one was probably -- it was you sort of step back in awe and watch it happening. and i remember the person that first, you know, there's some people on each side that can be relied upon to predict that their side's going to win huge in every single election, okay? that's fine. and you kind of figure out on each side who they are, then never listen to them again. but the first person that didn't qualify in that category, we

were over -- my house editor at the time was a young man named ben who's now a lawyer and intellectual property expert at the motion picture association. but anyway, he was our house editor, our first house editor. and we were over at the democratic congressional campaign committee meeting -- we do this with each side, sit down with their staffs and, basically, do the alabama to wyoming run through of all the races. and it's just sort of on background, what are you seeing, trade notes back and forth what you're seeing. because we meet with a lot of candidates, they obviously meet with all their candidates and sort of trade notes. anyway, we were over there and had just done the alabama to wyoming rundown, and the political director at the time, david dixon, he's a media consultant now, you know, ben left, some of the other people wandered off, so it was just the two of us standing in this conference room. and he said, charlie, are you

seeing anything odd out there? and i said, no, not really. and he said, well, the last month or two we've started seeing some very -- now, this was april of '94. he said we've started seeing, we've started seeing some very odd numbers around the country in places where democratic incumbents ought to be -- now, this is in a different era, and numbers were almost universeally higher in those days than they are now -- but democratic incumbents who ought to be in the mid 50s are sitting around 50%. and people that ought to be just over 50% are well down into the 40s. and he was describing, you know, urban areas, rural areas, suburban areas, north, south, east, west, young, old, i mean, across the board. and i remember at the time thinking, gosh, i haven't noticed that, but, you know,

early on in the cycle, you don't see a whole lot of polling data on individual house races. and be i remember thinking, well, you know, dave and vic fazio, congressman fazio was the chairman of committee at that point, maybe they're just trying to lower expectations, you know, big victory. but over the next, you know, may, june, as i saw more data coming out, it started, you know, looking like you know what? i think he's on to something. and you could just start seeing it build over the summer and build and build and build and build. and at that election republicans needed a 40-seat net gain to get a majority in the house. 40 cements. and -- 40 seats. and if you gave republicans every conceivable seat that they could possibly win, they still couldn't get the 40. but it was building and building, you know, you could see the direction of the arrow,

you could tell the wind was blowing strong. and so i, at the end, i was saying, well, maybe there's a one in three chance that republicans get a majority in the house, but that's sort of like i don't know how many of you have gone bird hunting, but with a shotgun, you kind of lead the bird a little bit. if the bird's going this way, if you aim at the bird, you know, your shot's going to go behind the bird by the time it gets there. so you kind of lead the bird. and clearly it was moving this way, so i said one out of three. not only did they get 40 seats, hell, they got 52. and they, you know, you had republican candidates getting elected who didn't get a dime from their own party. their own party didn't even think they were going to win. and conversely, democrats losing that their own party didn't think were vulnerable. and that's the kind of sort of spooky, unnatural things that happened in these wave elections. so i'd have to say that one in

1994. and i remember the next really big wave election, 2006, was a wave against republicans. early on in that cycle i remember the two guys that were running the house republican committee, mike -- [inaudible] and jonathan poe be, political director, field director. they started asking me early on where they felt pretty good about things, you know, we've raised more money than democrats, we've got this and this and this and this. by the way, back in '94 what did you see and when did you see it, you know? just out of curiosity, you know? and gradually, some of those things started happening, although it started happening earlier. but anyway, i'd say '94 was like the -- the first time in your professional career you really see a bigtime wave, and is you just -- and you just go, wow, look at that. okay, there was somebody else over here. okay. we'll go here, and then we'll go back over here.

>> during your remarks you compared obama's favorability rating right now to bush's back in 2006 comparing midterms. what were the party favorability ratings for that time period? did the republicans get blamed for the iraq war as a party, or was it just bush? >> that's a excellent question. i have not looked it up. but, um, that's a excellent question. i mean, and the answer's probably. but the other thing is, um, in these midterm elections, second term midterm elections, i mean, some of it is certainly voting, you're angry at a president or a congress, you're angry at something that's going on, and you can vote against them. that's part of it. but the other part of it is let's say you're in -- let's say, let's say it's 1994.

and, well, no, let's use a more modern example. let's say it's 2006, and you're a republican. republicans have control of congress, deficits have gone up. you -- why in the hell did we get into the war in iraq. you know, you're disaffected. maybe it's not that you vote democratic, maybe you just don't vote. because, again, that high variability in midterm elections where it's more socially acceptable not to vote in a midterm election than in a presidential election. and so a lot of times it's just sort of disillusioned partisans staying home. and independents who lean your way staying home. so i have not looked at those numbers. that's a very, very good question. but i think it's safe to say that the numbers weren't that great. it's a good question. how about back on the back row? yep, jack. >> you've identified the two narratives that could happen in this midterm election as both

being branding issues for the party, it's either being associated with a president with lower approval or with the republican brand. so, and since there were just two major fights coming out of congress whether it was the shutdown or the failed rollout of obamacare, do you feel that the narratives that are going to happen at the individual campaigns trying to separate themselves from -- candidates trying to separate themselves or trying to anchor to their party? >> that's another good question. when you're a member of -- you're an incumbent and maybe you're either an enemy -- in enemy territory or a district that's not friendly. there's -- and your president is not popular. there is a tendency to trash your president and to run like hell away there the him. away from him. and as a general rule, that

doesn't work real well. at the same time, do you want to embrace him and identify yourself more closely with him? heck no, of course not. but there is something that's in between. and it's, you know, i don't agree with the president. i agree with him on some things, i don't agree with him on others and, you know, i've got some real misgivings about x, y and z. you know, where you sort of diplomatically put a distance. and sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. but the thing is one of the things -- what happens if you just trash a president from your party is among the people that normally come hell or high water are going to vote for you, you're going to turn some of them off by doing that. and they're some of the few people you can actually rely on. and so that approach generally, generally doesn't work, but you, you know, you could establish distance without trashing, you know, an incumbent for your

side. and there was a famous election, it was bush -- 1990. george h.w. bush, his midterm election. and ed rollins who had managed one of president reagan's campaigns had top staff job at the national republican congressional committee. and he wrote a memo that went out to all the republican house members saying, um, you know, effectively, you know, we all love president bush and he's a great guy and all like that, but your most important job right now is to get reelected and do whatever you need to do to get reelected, and feel prix to put distance -- free to put distance between yourself and the president. not surprisingly, the white house went crazy.

and i'm trying to remember whether ed had to resign or not. do you remember if he did or not? i remember they were calling for his resignation. i don't remember whether he actually did or not. but anyway, you know, so that's what -- it's creating distance but not trashing is generally the best thing. yeah, go ahead. >> [inaudible] about how democrats can distance themselves from obama, but for some of the races sup as all the vulnerable -- such as all the vulnerable democratic seats do you expect them to try and also distance themselves from the gop, or is that going to be an internal debate within the party? because there could be comments about, like, republican candidates having to make firm statements about whether they would, like, shut down the government or, no, i would never do that. >> well, one of the good things for republicans about this upcoming election is that at least in the senate most of the prime races are in states that romney won and that where

president obama's job approval ratings would be significantly below average. in other words, alaska, arkansas, louisiana, to a lesser extent georgia, a lesser extent north carolina. and michigan and -- wow, you can tell i've been on vacation for three weeks. [laughter] michigan and iowa are the only two where there are really, really key senate races that are in states that obama carried. now there are gradations in all of these. for example, obama lost georgia but only by eight points. there were southern states where he lost by 25 points. eight is losing, but it's not getting destroyed. north carolina obama lost but only by two percentage points, and he had carried it four years earlier. but at the same time, you know, arkansas, louisiana, kentucky

where mitch mcconnell is up, you know, obama, you know, lost by disastrous -- so each -- there -- where republicans need to do well in the u.s. senate they don't have to put as much, if any, distance between themselves and the national republican party. certainly in alaska, arkansas, louisiana, kentucky absolutely for sure. so it depends, you know, and that's the answer to almost any question is it depends on the circumstances. but in the senate there's a lot

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] announcement came in a memo through republican lawmakers. writing that is a signal that republicans will continue efforts to go after obamacare and 2014 even a term most of it has gone into effect. -- even after most of it has gone into effect. see this as key to expanding the possible house majority. that is from the hill newspaper. return fornd senate legislative business january 7. you can watch live coverage of the house, as always, here on c- span. >> about 10 or 15 years ago, we started looking at the census department data. something very strange pops out.

when you look at the profits of multinationals, looking at a map of europe's you see germany, france, italy. if you look at the data on where the profits are, italy, france, germany -- ireland. disproportionate amount of profit was in ireland so that was one indication that something was going on. >> more with marty sullivan, chief economist, on tax news and analysis sunday night at 8:00 p.m. on c-span's "q and a." we bring public affairs events from washington directly to you putting you in the room at congressional hearings among white house events, briefings and conferences offering complete gavel to gavel coverage of the u.s. house all as a public service of right in industry. created by cable television industry 34 years ago.

now you can watch us in hd. now, you can watch us in hd. few moments, our first lady's encore continues. tonight, a look at the life and career of betty ford. after that, supreme court oral argument in a case based on a state responsibility to control air pollution beyond its own borders. and later, an opportunity to hear charlie cook's thoughts on the upcoming 2014 midterm elections. ♪ >> being lady like does not require silence. why should my husband's job or yours prevent us from being ourselves? i do not believe that being first lady should prevent me