today, the house stands adjourned until 3:00 p.m. on monday, november 9, 2015, unless it soon has received a message from the senate transmitting its adoption of house concurrent resolution 92, in which case the house shall stand adjourned

we've got the same policy. there's retirement overhauls but he bottom line on it, it was $612 billion, now it's about $607 billion, about a $5 billion shave. there's the listening-range bomber program and some cuts. couple hundred million here and there. then some adjustments to fuel costs and things of that sort. by and large, still the same bill. a few small alterations. host: and it moved fairly quickly through the house. how were the leaders in the armed services committee, representatives thornberry and smith, what was their thoughts on this? guest: representative thornberry was in favor of it. congressman smith, the ranking member, last time he had opposition over those budget issues. he didn't like the use of the overseas contingency fund he just said today he had some lingering concerns about some of the guantanamo language, but he did support it and just like

most of his democratic colleagues. host: the white house also had concerns over the guantanamo language. thing to sort of lead the president to veto this second measure? guest: some of my colleagues at the white house press corps were pressing the white house secretary of that yesterday. they wouldn't commit to another full thing to ead the president veto threat. they were talking about demanding a plan from the white house. we've heard that from the president in the past. his is not the first year he's hinned to veto for his displeasure at the guantanamo language. so far he hasn't followed hrough on just that. the consensus is, with the budget stuff out of the way this is smooth sailing. host: how does this tie into the spending bill being worked on in the u.s. senate? fwoip we'll see how much the two --

guest: we'll see how much the two get intertwined here. the budget fight swallowed both of them and caused this evie toe last month by the northeast authorization bill. in the senate we're seing the defense appropriations bill come back up for another fight between republicans an democrats over whether or not they'll move ahead with that move ahead with an omnibus fwouget cover all defense spending. right now it doesn't appear the authorization bill will be caught in that. all along republicans have been saying this is mainly a policy the while it does have budget totals, this is authorizing the money, not appropriating it. so this should be separate from that larger budget fight over where the money is coming from. hopefully pentagon officials and others are hoping this is the final chapter and could be signed into law. host: does it seem like the defense spening bill will get caught up in the spending bill? they're facing a deadline to get funding done for all the departments. guest: sure, that larger appropriations question is out there lingering. a lot of folks thought we were

over the shutdown threats an the problems with the budget as soon as we got the two-year budget deal. now we'll wait and see. we've heard some tough talk from republicans and democrats. we're going to hear more later on today about whether or not this can move ahead. whether or not they can trust each other on this deal. the republicans in the senate right now want to move as quickly as they can on defense. democrats are saying we need to make sure you don't pass defense and then try and pull a fast one here and just pass the c.r. or keep spending on domestic programs down. it's going to be a bumpy next couple of weeks even with the budget deal in place. host: leo shane is congressional reporter at "military times," you can see more at militarytimes.com or follow him on twitter. guest: thank you. host: the republican conference voted to make texas republican kevin brady the next ways and means committee chair, replacing new house speaker paul ryan. this is the committee that sets

u.s. tax policy and tax levels for all americans. the vote was unanimous. last week we talked to congressman brady about his goals, should he become the ways and means committee chair. here's a look at his answer from our newsmaker program. host: would you talk about how you'd be similar to congressman ryan or different leading that committee? mr. brady: congressman ryan has a bold vision for america, he's begun that work through fixing our broken tax code, taking the first steps to saving social security and medicare for the long term. opening up new trade and new customers for american workers. we have a lot of work to do there. but i've got the experience, having led two of the key subcommittees on ways and means with major results including

solving the way we pay doctors and medicare, bipartisan, bicameral solution that we worked -- i worked to help bring republicans, democrats, the house and senate, position groups around the country together. so the chance -- and also because i've led a committee, joint economic committee, which i worked hard to revitalize into a free market think tank. that's experience and the reputation of working through all the ideologies, i think that can advance that pro-growth agenda. >> when you talk about tax reform, that's something that chairman ryan, now speaker ryan, has been working on, hasn't made a ton of progress in getting through the committee. his predecessor, dave camp, had the same thing, had a full draft that never came to committee. where do you stand on that and you do to advance that?

mr. brady: fixing the broken tax code, reining in the i.r. -- reigning in the i.r. -- reining in the i.r.s. i'm convinced republicans in the house and some democrats believe this is the priority for us. cormer chairman camp createded the first top to bottom rewrite of the tax code in decades. he proved you could make a platter, fairer, simpler, you could grow the economy he, you could encourage new jobs. so that was an important first step. chairman ryan has already taken some other steps in the interim to make sure we're advancing it. for example, getting scoring right so we know the impact of a future tax code. working with democrats and republicans on international tax reform and perhaps innovation incentive to allow american companies to do more r&d and manufacturing here in the u.s. every step he's taken has moved us closer to tax reform. here's my pledge, i'm going to relentlessly pursue fixing this broken tax code. every day, every week, we're going to take some step forward

toward fixing this broken tax code. thankfully we have a speak over -- speaker of the house in paul ryan who understand how this can grow the economy. that's what the ways and means committee and republicans are all about. growth. growth of our families' incomes, of our businesses, so this is our top priority. we're going to push it hard. >> what's a realistic time frame for that? makes sense to do something that just goes after international and try to get it done this congress? or is this a 2017 project for you? mr. brady: it could be a 2017 project. historically, comprehensive reforms -- occurred in the first year of that president's term. but in the interim, we have right in front of us an opportunity to make key parts of the tax code permanent, such as the research and development tax credit. we're the only country in the world that has major parts of its tax code temporary, where we do it one year at a time.

sometimes a few months at a time. that makes no sense at all system of i know that chairman ryan has been pursuing an agreement with the senate that could make some of these key provisions permanent. i'll do the same. we're hopeful we can come together, what we want to quit doing is at the end of the year, temporary extensions that frankly don't do the economy any good, is a disservice to our constituents. >> you can see that entire musemakers interview in the c-span video library. also today, congressman brady was indeed chosen ways and means committee chair in that meeting with the republican conference this morning. afterwards he tweeted out that tax reform is his top priority and he wants to work with ranking member carl levin. our c-span "road to the white house" bus stopped in jackson, mississippi this week. jackson, mississippi, mayor tony yarber speaks with boys and

girls clubs aboard the bus. this is the jackson state university cheerleading squad posing for a photo in the bus visit. to track the travels of our bus, follow us on twitter and instagram using cspan bus. -- using atcspanbus. >> as the nation commemorates veterans day, saturday, starting at 11:00 a.m. eastern, american history will be live if the national world war ii museum in new orleans as we look back 70 years to the war's end and its legacy. we'll tour the museum exhibit and take your calls and tweets. starting this week and every sunday morning at 10:00, our gnaw program "road to the white house rewind" takes a look at past presidential campaigns through arkivel footage. this sunday, we feature ronald reagan's 1979 campaign announcement. on c-span, saturday night at

8:30, the steam boat freedom conference debate, the effect of legalized marijuana in colorado and other states around the country. sunday evening at 6:30, our road to the white house coverage continues with former maryland governor and democratic presidential candidate martin o'malley who will speak at a town hall meeting at the university of new hampshire in durham. saturday afternoon on c-span2's book tv, starting at 4:00 eastern, the boston book festival, featuring nonfiction author presentations, including jessica stern on the terrorist group isis. joe klein and his book charlie mike about two iraq and afghanistan war veterans who used their military discipline and values to help others. and james woods and his book "the nearest thing to life" on the connection between fictional writing and life. sunday night at 11:00, a book discussion with former first lady of massachusetts, ann romney on her book "in this together" about her journey with multiple sclerosis. get our complete weekend schedule at c-span.org.

>> house speaker paul ryan held week rst end of congressional briefing earlier today. he talked about a new process for moving appropriations bills forward to allow input from members of his conference. he also commented on questions concerning the quan taun moe bay prison facility. prison sentencing legislation. and the trade agreement. mr. ryan: it's been a great week in the people's house. we just completed the work on a bipartisan highway bill. it cuts waste. it prioritizes good infrastructure. it will help create good-paying jobs. and it is a result of a more open process. over these last four days, the house has debated more amendments than in the last four months combined. on this bill, chairman shuster

worked through more than 100 amendments on the floor. when his father had this bill on the floor in 1998, there were five amendments. this is a good start. it's a glimpse of how we should be doing the people's business. but we still have a ways to go. this morning, the house republican conference held a policy conference to discuss the weeks ahead. most notably, the government runs off the money on december 11. normally, we wouldn't be talking about this yet. it's november. i'm sure someone, somewhere would be writing a bill, but only when the deadline aprofes would anyone actually see the legislation. at that point, the bill would be prenegotiated and the outcome predetermined. that's no way to conduct the people's business. so here is what we're going to do. the house has already passed six appropriations bills. negotiations on those bills are already under way.

as for the remaining bills, chairman rogs of the appropriations committee and his members will hold a series of executive sessions with our members. at these sessions, every member will have the chance to review each bill and give their input on their priorities. we've never done this before. but that's how we should work. from now on, that's how we will work. questions. >> speaker ryan -- >> i know who most of you are, but just give me the name and who you're with. >> i want to ask you on the floor just now, they were asking a question, did they prefer bringing back up the financial services bill stand alone and would they vote for it. what's the thinking behind that and what's the likely we could see that? mr. ryan: things will be done differently around here. we're going to open up this process. i lay before our conference today a choice of options. instead of having leadership

predetermine, prenegotiate, and predecide how things are going to invite our members of the conference to discuss how we move forward. we've got a tight deadline with appropriations. we're already past the fiscal year. so because we want to reopen the appropriations process, because we want to bring the article 1 powers back, the power of the purse back to the legislative branch, we're trying to figure out how to do that. instead of me deciding in the capitol how it's going to be, i wanted to lay out options in front of our conference so together we could deliberate and decide. that's what our conference is about. so we are asking our members how they want to proceed going forward. i don't know the results of that. they're still tallying it right now. but again that is how this is going to be we're going to make this a more oach process and members will have a say-so early in the process on how we move forward. >> even before you got into the speaker's race, there was some skepticism of what you were going to do based on the trade

bill. u worked so hard to get that framework through if that falls through, something you can accept at the thoached day once you get into the time frame, does it put you in a crosswind because you also want that? and you were hoping the administration would help you a pass that and on the other hand you're criticizing the administration on immigration. mr. ryan: trade is very important for america. essential that america write the rules of the global economy instead of others writing the rules of the global economy. they just sent the text this morning. so we have a lot of work to do to review this agreement. and we do not rubber stamp anything around here, let alone trade agreements. so because i was the co-author of the t.p.a. process, the american people will now get a chance to see what's in these trade agreements in addition to

representatives in congress being able to see it. it's the most transparent and open process had in considering trade agreements. so i'm going to -- i don't know the answer to what my position is on a trade agreement i have not even yet read because we just got it this morning. but again i'm pleased with the process we have before us. open, transparent, people get to see it. members of congress get to see it. then we decide independently after consulting with constituents and conscience what our position on anything will e. >> can you talk about the issue you plan to elevate to highlight the differences between the republicans an democrats? and also would cow talk about what kind of issues you plan to use to assist the eventual republican nominee for president? mr. ryan: like i said earlier on, we don't like the direction america is headed. we think the president and his policies have taken america down the wrong path. so we feel that we have a moral

obligation to our constituents and to our fellow citizens to offer a better way forward. so in the next weeks and months, we together as a republican conference in consultation with friends in the senate are going to be offering alternatives. we'll be developing those alternatives. i'm not going to do those unilaterally. we're going to do it organically in a bottom-up approach here in the congress. so on the big issues of the day, jobs, economy, poverty, national security, defense, we're going to be offering our alternatives and what we believe is the best way forward. that's a process that's going to take many months. >> can we talk about your relationship with the president and how, i'm sure you've studied that as a former opponent on the seeing s an observer,

how he interacted with speaker beaner, what do you expect to do differently? give us a sense of your relationship with the president? mr. ryan: we know each other, yes i did run against him in the last election. but i'm not -- i'm a person that can get along with people. i like people who believe passionately in things even if they're not the things i agree with. so i generally as a general matter enjoy people who fight passionately for what they believe in, again, even if it's not what i believe in. so i've always had a good way of getting along with people on the other side of the aisle. we have spoken, we have not met in person. he's overseas right now, i believe. we've had a couple of conversations on the phone, courteous conversations about it. >> there's been real movement on criminal justice reform in the senate. last month chairman goodlatte and mr. conyers put forward a house version of criminal justice reform. do you foresee criminal justice reform happen big the end of this congress? mr. ryan: i'm not going to commit to floor actions, that's something i want to make jointly with members of the caucus. i am in favor of criminal justice reform. i support those, put those in a plan i put out as budget chair,

co-sponsored bills before i became p speaker. it's an issue i think needs attending to. but we'll have the house work its will. we'll work through the committee process like i mentioned. the committee as you discussed is already work on these issues. that is an issue i think we hould be addressing. >> the president and the administration put out the idea that it is studying where to place guantanamo detainees and the possibility of the president taking whatever executive action he think he is can to try to live up to his promise to close that facility. what are your thoughts about that right now? and over on the senate side, by e way, senator shaheen who thinks the -- who thinks guantanamo should be closed. mr. ryan: i think guantanamo detainees should be in

guantanamo. we're passing the ndaa. i refer you to the legislation and macthornberry for any urther answer on that. >> how important do you think it is that planned parenthood could be in an omnibus and the government won't shut down in december? mr. ryan: i'm not going to predetermine the outcome of negotiations that haven't taken place yet. i don't think planned parenthood should get one red cent from the taxpayers. that's been my position for a listening time even before i saw the gruesome videos. that's point number one. opponent number two. we also have reconciliation process under way. and we have defunded planned parenthood through the reconciliation process which is our best chance and opportunity of actually getting a bill on the president's desk. so we are moving on planned parenthood on multiple fronts, not to mention the fact that we have a select committee through the commerce committee that's being assembled to look into these shrns.

>> mr. speaker, how did your relationship with leader mcconnell, we've seen this year sometimes the house working pretty separately from the senate, curious if you want to change that? mr. ryan: i do. i actually attended their policy lunch this last tuesday. some of you were there. that was a great start. a lot of those folks are friends of mine who served here in the house. i've invited leader mcconnell to come to our house republican conference and to address our conference and to enjoy what we call open mike period. he's taking me up on my invitation, he's going to speaking to our conference when we return to from this district work period. >> mr. speaker, you joked other the weekend that your honeymoon might be about 35 minutes long. is it over? how sit going? mr. ryan: probably. i don't think you get a lot of honeymoons for things like this. this was not a job i was looking for or seeking. it kind of sought me. i realize that it was a duty and

an obligation. now i realize it's an honor. it's an honor that i have this responsibility and this opportunity to serve. and the way i am trying to do this job is the way that i always thought it should have been done, to make this a more open process so that every citizen in this country through the their elected representatives has an opportunity to make a difference. that is the people's house. this is the branch of government closest to the people. i wanted to have a process that is more ohm, more inclusive, more deliberative, more participatory. and that's what we're trying to do. that's why i'm saying things are going to be done. the week we had on the floor, you were asking me about appropriations, that's a up to members of the caucus. that's how i want to do things. i've got to tell you, bills will come up that may not pass. we're not going to bottle up a process so much and predetermine the outcome of everything around here. i want the house to work its will. i think that's the way the funners envisioned it to work.

so that means some things will pass an some things won't and we're going to let that happen. >> another appropriations question. in 2013, 33,000 americans died from gunshot wounds, 84,000 were injured, roughly the same rate as automobiles. the house h.h.s. appropriations bill continues this decades old ban on the c.d.c. from studying gunshots as a public health issue. do you think it's appropriate to continue that ban? mr. ryan: i'll refer you to the appropriators and tom cole the chairman of the subcommittee. >> do you have an opinion? mr. ryan: i think the second amendment is a fundamental right and the supreme court has affirmed that. thank you, everybody, appreciate it. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> and the house wrapped up this eweek voting to continue transportation program for six years. the vote was 363-64 with support from both sides of the aisle.

measure also authorizes $325 billion in spending through the 2021 federal budget year. the export-import bank gets new life, providing help to overseas buyers interested in purchasing u.s. exports. the house highway bill has to conference with the senate now to craft a compromise. members also approved defense department programs and policy for the next year, setting weapons programs and policies for the pentagon. the house now in recess for the next 10 days for the veterans day holiday. live coverage here on c-span when members return. >> i've learned that you can do anything you want to. they used to ask me if i thought the first lady ought to be paid? if you get paid, i have to do what a first lady is supposed to do. but you can do anything you want to. it's such a great soap box. it's such a great opportunity.

i would advise any first lady to do what she wants to do. and you're going to be criticized no matter what you o. i could have stayed quiet at receptions and i would have been criticized. as much as i was criticized. and i got a lot of criticism. but you learn to live with it, as i said earlier. just live it. you expect it and live wit. never let it influence me. >> she was her husband's political partner from their first campaign. as first lady, she attended president jimmy carter's cabinet meetings, championed women's rights and mental health issues, even testified before congress. their partnership on health and peacekeeping issues has spanned four decades since leaving the white house. ose lindh carter -- rosalind carter, this sunday on c spmbings' series "first ladied."

examming the private lives of the first lady and their influence on the presidency. from martha washington to michelle obama. on american history tv on c-span3. >> about whom will you next write? there is only one person besides wilber force i would write. i remembered bonhoeffer. of course i did write that book. >> i thought i'm going to be standing next to the president. speaking to 3,500 of the most important people in the world in this room in d.c. who knows how i'll feel in the moment. i don't know. so i had the idea that i might do that. i thought maybe i'll give him the books later. but if i feel, you know, the word is chutzpah, if i feel the chutzpah in the moment to pull you have the goofiness, i'll do it. >> this sunday night on "q&a,"

eric metaxis on his writing career, his biography of dietrich bonhoeffer. >> i think it's important for everybody to take politics seriously and at least vote but never make an idol of politics. there are people who have done that and they're worshiping at that, they're worshiping that idol rather than the god who caused them to care for the poor and do justice. it's a fine line. it's something i talk about fairly often. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span "q&a." the u.s. secret service is now protecting the presidential campaigns of ben carson and donald trump. homeland security department says it's authorized its agents to work on protective detailers in two leading republican presidential candidates. both requested protection last month. homeland security secretary jay

johnson approved the requests after consulting with phi members of congress. the two have been leading the polls in the republican nomination a year ahead of the 2016 elections. ben carson has taken the lead over donald trump in a new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll. he got 29% of likely republican primary voters nationwide. mr. trump has 23% report. earlier this week, charlie cook presthride 2016 presidential lech he talked about the candidates on both sides of the race and who he thought might make it through to the primaries to -- might make it through the primaries to be the nominee. he talked about the democrats' chances to take the senate in 2016. this is about 90 minutes. crowd.

thank you for coming out. for a number of years, we had these sessions. i was holding out for a helicopter but you've up and sold the company, sold sikorski. i guess i have to hold out for an elevator for our house or something like that. and the great people at national journal for this. great crowd. i want to put in a plug real quickly. the brand new almanac of american politics just came out. 2,084 pages.mazing it's sort of everything you ever needed to know. and i bought my first copy in 1972 when i was a senior in high school in shreveport, louisiana. and bough every one are you from louisiana? oh, my gosh. we went to the same high school. that's right. that's right. anyway. wow. see this is a real story. i didn't make this stuff up.

so, anyway, it's now at bookstores near you and at amazon and all kinds of great places. and there's an 18-page swro ducks, essay that i wrote at the beginning. just remember that i wrote it over the summer. so you know, kind of give me a little -- cut me some slack here. anyway, what i'm going to try to do this morning is to talk a little bit, i mean if you feel confused about the 2016 campaign so far, if it seems a little disorienting, join the club. this is every election, elections are like fingerprints, every one is unique, they all have different little die nam exs and circumstances. this is obviously about as weird as they come. interesting dynamics on the democratic side and a whole lot on the republican side. what i'm going to try to do this morning is to do five things. first to try to maybe put some sense into what's going on and

why and then take a look at the democratic nominations briefly and then spend a little more time on the republican side then talk a little bit about the general election to the extent we can without necessarily knowing who the nominees are going to be. then finally talk about the u.s. senate because this kind of -- this is the undercard to use the term everybody is using these days. but i think the senate is going to be a very, very, very close fight for majority status and one that i know a lot of people in washington are going to be watching very closely and care very much about. but let's get down to it. in terms of why is this such an unusual election and what are the weird things that are making this such a highly combustible sort of -- a gumbo of different factors that are -- though that's actually the southern part of the state. not where we are. the eastern most suburb of allas.

of why this is such an odd election. i would argue that the five factors are first, ideology. second, economic anxiety. third, populism. fourth, culture of values wars that we have going on in this country. and finally, this anger, pervasive anger at politics, at politicians, and at washington. so first let's talk about the ideology for a second. i don't think there's any question that the democratic more is a heck of a lot liberal than it was when bill clinton left office 15 years ago. and at the same time the republican party is a heck of a lot more conservative than it was when george w. bush left office seven years ago. and this is manifesting itself in congress, in party primaries,

and the like where what we are seeing is that the people who were conservative moderate democrats are pretty much gone now. both in terms of the electorate and congress. and the people who are liberal, pretty republicans are much gone now. so political scientists would say the parties are more ideologically cohesive. there's been a lot of ideological sorting taking place. in congress, what that means is the people, conservative moderate democrats who are the ballast that kept democrats from going off into a ditch on the, actually this is your left, on the left, they're gone. and the liberal moderate republicans, the ballot sort of kept congressional republicans from going over into a ditch on the right-hand side, they're pretty much gone as well. and it reflects also what's happened in the primaries. and just simply democratic primaries, a lot more liberal, republican primaries more conservative. so the primaries have moved toward the extremes, the centers of gravity in each party have

moved to the extreme. the people, members that don't reflect that have sort of been purged out of -- in primaries. then we've got a median environment to sort of reinforcing all of that. whether it's fox and talk radio and the internet on the right or the primetime shows on msnbc and a little bit of talk radio and a lot of internet on the left, it's just intensifying this ideology to a point that just simply wasn't there five, 10 years ago. but there's another dimension and it used to be more when people, when you disagreed with someone, you just have different views. increasingly now, this is true on the left and right, anybody that you disagree with, they must be evil or corrupt or stupid. they can't just be wrong. there's something more than that that's taking place. so it's taken on a real edge. the whole idea of balancing competing values has kind of

gone out the way. now without enough of the esoteric stuff. let's talk about how does this affect this election? i would argue that hillary clinton and jeb bush are sort of caught in time warps. in other words they are older, i turn 62 late they are month, by the way, today is stu rothenberg's birthday if you run into him. my birthday is later in the month, i don't know what it is about november. jeb bush is 62. he's just a touch oler than i am. hillary clinton just turned 68. if you think about hillary clinton, she was, when her husband was president, she was perceived to be at the far left of her husband's administration. and yet now, she's scrambling like mad to keep up with a party that's moved considerably to her left. and at the same time, look at jeb bush. here was a guy who from 1998 to 2006 was one of the most

conservative governors in america. what's happening now? his party has move sod much farther to the right and the primary difference between jeb bush and hillary clinton is that bush has had -- has demonstrated some resistance to the idea of moving over with his party, both in terms of position and just the tone of his rhetoric, he hasn't as comfortably or hasn't moved over to keep up with it having lots and lots and lots of problems. so this idea soling a big, big, big factor. second thing real quickly is economic anxiety. it's very interesting, while we technically came out of a recession in 2009, we were seeing polls even earlier this year that were still showing a majority of americans thought we still were in a recession. and if you think about the last two years of looking at economic growth, where it's been like a

yo-yo, making people very, very nervous. just a background, since 1947, average economic growth, job growth, not job growth, economic, g.d.p. growth, has been about 3.24%. so keep that in the back of your mind. over the last two years for the quarter, starting 2013, fourth quarter, g.d.p. was at 3.8%. that's good. then it dropped down to negative .9 for the first quarter of 2014678 then it jump up to 4.6 and stayed at 4.3, dropped to 2.1 so sort of below where you want. then it dropped down to .6 of a percentage point annual growth rate for the first quarter of 2015. then it jumped up to 3.9. then just reported last week, only 1.5% for the third quarter. so this is -- what we've got is an economy that's getting buffetted and is sort of so

fragile it's getting buffetted by things like droughts in the west or west coast dock strike or what's going on in china, what's going in the uso zone and what's going on in greece -- in the injure zoe zone and what's going on in -- in the euro zone and what's going on in greece. this anxiety that never ended after the recession is over. if you look at median real household income, in other words half the families, half the households have cone better, half have done worse, household income hasn't gone up when you control for inflation since 1999. think about that. we had two terms, or will have had two terms of democratic presidents since 1999, two terms of republican presidents since then. we've had democratic majorities in the house and republican majorities. democratic senate, republican senate. so no matter who was in charge, incomes an household

haven't gone up. and that's so that people have this feeling that, well, the economy may have recovered by my economy hasn't recovered. and that's sort of added a new degree of angst. all this is an increase in populism. occupy wall he street on the left, and elizabeth warren and bernie sanders, two of the hottest characters, people, personalities in the democratic party, or whether it's the tea party movement, donald trump on the right-hand side this rise of populism that's created tensions within each of the parties. for example, the tension in the democratic party between the building construction trade unions who desperately wanted the keystone pipeline and the environmentalists who desperately did not want the keystone pipeline or look on the republican side, the export-import bank. and the tea party movement. crony capitalism all this. it's created tensions within each side. then you get to the culture wars. and where you've got sort of one

piece of america is desperately trying to protect what they see as the historic values and culture of this country, and the other side believes the culture, that values should move, change with time. and should keep up with the change in society. and it's manifesting itself on things like obvious the most recent planned parenthood, abortion, fetal tissue research issue. we're seeing same sex marriage. we're just sort of seing this over and over again. but it's like one country wants to watch father know -- wants to watch "father knows best" and the other wants to watch "modern family." it's creating sort of another tension that's out there and then finally, think about what conservatives and republicans, but mostly conservatives tone value. they tend to value freedom and liberty and liberals and democrats put a higher value on justice and equality. it's like two different value

systems. it's like that men are from mars, women are from venus or whatever that book was years and years ago. different values systems. it's driving wedges through our political process. that leads us finally to the anger at washington and the anger at career politicians. there's a recent abc "washington post" poll that asks people, do you think most people in politics can or cannot be trusted? can be trusted, 23%. cannot be trusted, 72%. wow. do you think the current political system in the united states is basically functional or basically dysfunctional? functional, 33%. dysfunctional, 64%. you know, these are very, very deeply held views. and -- but there is a party difference. one of the things that in that same abc news "washington post" poll, they asked people when thinking about the kind of

person you'd like to see as the next novet united states, which is more important to you, someone with experience in how the political system works or someone from outside the existing political establishment? now overall, 56% of americans said they would like -- they preferred experience. 56%. and 40% preferred an outsider. those are the overall numbers. but think about this. if you just talk to democratic voters, 69% experienced and only 27% outsider. but if you just talk to republican volters, it was 60% outsiders, 36% prefer experience. when you think of republicans and this kind of come into the presidential a little bit is that republicans tend not to be early adopters. and historically they've been people that sort of, they like to be comfortable with things. and they want to, you know, they've been sort of small c conservative. then we started seing that

changing some in 2012 and 2014 a great deal. so it's -- there's a difference within the two parties between the two. but on the republican side, among conservatives, this is a visceral anger. this is like that howard biel character in the movie "broadcast news." i'm mad as hell and aisle not going to take this anymore. it really eerily is that strong and just toxic. are ethis -- these are the five factors i think has helped create this instability that we're seeing in the political process. so let's talk about the democratic side first. you know, there's some precedent to what we're seeing in terms of the democratic party initially coalescing behind a frontrunner and that frontrunner is seen to be sort of, have the lock on the nomination but then a challenger comes out and makes it a little interesting for some period of time. think of walter mondale in 19 4 where you had the outsider challenge from gary hart.

or think about 2000 with al gore where he had the challenge coming from bill bradley. and that each got interesting briefly and then sort of got a interesting. obviously in 2000, things were a little different. with the democratic party a whole lot more, i think we're forgetting that my left is your left. getting so much farther to the left and to the left where hillary clinton had been and then this anger at politicians, career politicians, anger at washington, or at least the established order of things, that's created sort of more of an edge to it. but the real story, i think, with hillary clinton is when you think about, when she left office in january of 2013. when she left the job of secretary of state, she had terrific numbers overall. i mean, yes, republicans and conservatives all hated her but they, you know, hated her as long as they've known anything about her. that doesn't change. but if you look at her numbers

among democrats, liberals, among moderates and independents, hillary clinton's numbers in january of 2013 were pretty good. the truth is, they were probably unsustainably high because she was not seen as -- it was a period of time, four years, she was not seen as a politician. she was not seen as a presidential candidate. she was above politics. so her numbers among nonconservatives, up epublicans, kind of rode to an unsustainably high level. when she left office and the talks started picking up of her running for president, you saw this gradual slide down in secretary clinton's positive or favorable numbers. coming down. but it was still pretty good. and it didn't pick up steam a little bit until 2014 when she became seen in even more of a political context. then she didn't help herself with a couple of remarks and my two favorites, january of 2014,

she's out in new orleans speaking to the national automobile dealers association. and she finds the need to sort of volunteer that she hasn't en behind the wheel of a car since 1996. you know, just kind of watch that and go, what the hell would you say that for? was this your way of sucking up to a roomful of car dealers? i mean, why would you say that? and that sort of distances, she's different from us. then six months later on abc, she was being interviewed by diane sawyer and talked about, well my husband and i were dead broke when we left the white house. you know, we all know that the clintons had, you know, several million dollars' worth of legal fees from the whitewater, all that mess and impeachment and all that. yes, of course. but the thing is, obviously anybody that's getting, that can get a seven-figure book deal and six-figure speeches is not what i think most of us here would

think would be, say, dead broke. i mean it was sort of a different -- but again, it's still, her numbers were still pretty good until this email thing started catching. and i have to confess, early on, i kind of blew off the email thing because i didn't see, i mean, i know it's goofy you sort of use your work email for work stuff. but you know, obviously you're not paranoid and people really are out to get you. and not wanting whether it's the i.t. people at the state department or freedom of information act requests or congressional subpoenas and things, you know, i can see, i mean, i wouldn't have done it. she wouldn't do it if she had it do other again but then

when you started hearing, well, there may have been in some way, shape, or form some classified information flowing over and whether it was classified after the fact or before the fact or whether it was marked classified or not, but suddenly things started get manager complicated and that's when people started paying attention. that's when you started seeing her numbers among independents start really, really, really coming down to the point where they're now upside down or under water in pollster parlance. which in a democratic primary, a nomination fight is not big deal but in a general election that is a big deal and that's what sort of brought her numbers down when matched up to republicans from having a very, as healthy a lead as you can in a highly polarized country to polarized country to not having a lead at all or within the margin of error of people like donald trump and things. so this is sort of changed -- this has sort of changed things enormously. when you look at the perceptions, i was talking to pollster peter hart, they have a new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll coming out last night and this morning, i haven't seen all the guts of it but peter makes the argument

that clinton is perceived as smart and competent by most people, but they don't have this warmth. a lot of, they don't like her or they don't feel any kind of comfort with her. and they don't necessarily trust her. so it's not a competence thing, it's a personal thing. and that sort of comes into play, you know new york a general election. but in a nomination environment, you know, it's kind of hard to see how she could possibly lose the nomination to bernie sanders, barring some cataclysmic event. could bernie sanders win the iowa caucus or the new hampshire primary? yeah, that could happen. i mean, it's sort of observation changes behavior, scientists tell us. you could argue that iowa and new hampshire have been observed a whole, whole, whole lot. and that it has sort of changed their behavior some. or in some of the caucus out

there. but when it gets to primaries, nonnew hampshire, or non-new england primaries, the demographics just don't match up. and that's not going to happen. so the only way i think that there is any legitimate doubt in the democratic nomination would be if, and i would put this only a one in four or one in five or one in six shot, is if the justice department starts to kind of get, you know, well if the f.b.i. finds something and decide to pursue it and a decision goes up to the public integrity section of the justice department, and this is a group of career politicians, then again, i don't think this is going to happen, but if they do a recommendation, these career prosecutors, that's going to put the attorney general and the obama administration in a really, really tough position. because the thing is, when career prosecutors in the public

integrity section recommend prosecuting someone, a prominent person in your party, if you turn down that request, it would take maybe four minutes before it's all over the city, all over the country and you have a huge mess on your hands. if you think, this is sort of getting overplayed, think of two different settings. of all, did sandy burger, president clinton's first national security advisor, after he left the white house, did he expect to be prosecuted for mishandling classified information? what about john deutch who stepped down already as director of national intelligence for having classified information on personal computers? or what about david petraeus, while he was director of national intelligence for not appropriately handling classified information. so this is something where there is a chance that they decide to pursue this directly or

indirectly that could, for instance, secretary clinton, that could cause her real, real, real problems. the o that point about public integrity section, tell me that the bush white house, the bush administration, really wanted to prosecute ted stevens. i mean, chairman of the appropriations committee, i mean, really? i don't think they wanted to do that. but they were faced with a situation where how do you turn it down? turned out it was a garbage case that have eventually discredited after senator stevens had lost -election and after he was dead. or you think the obama white house wanted david petraeus prosecuted? close advisors to the president. heck no. these things can take on lives of their own. do i think this is going to happen? no, i don't. but there is system of chance that this sort of goes to that sort of dark side. if it did and again, i don't think -- i think we're talking about one in four, one in five, one in six chance.

if it did, i think you're going to find democrats again looking for on the wall for the in case of fire break the glass option. and you know -- so we may hear back from joe again. so anyway, but -- so let's -- enough of that. let's go to the republican side where the real fun is. couple of observations before we kind of get into the nuts and bolts handicapping. we, what historically has been said about republicans and presidential nominations? and that republicans, if you think of every republican nominee since the end of world war ii with the notable exception of barry goldwater, every single one of them has been a sitting president, a current or former president, or -- a current or former vice president, excuse me a runner up of the previous nomination a son of a former president, or a commanding general of the most

recently won world war. all of them in one of these five categories. it gets back to something i alluded to earlier, republicans historically are not early adopters. it's like your -- those comfortable ugly old bedroom slippers. they want to feel comfortable with someone, historically. but 2012 we started seeing some different behavior. and when you saw michele bachmann win the iowa republican straw poll, you know, when you saw herman cain shoot up to the top in the poll, suddenly, go through the cast of characters from 2012, but where republican voters seriously considered nominating some pretty inconceivable people. and again, it was totally against their stereotype of doing this and in the end, sure, they went back and nominated mitt romney who had been a runner up before. but only after they pursued

every possible option. they were all sort of discredited and fell by the wayside. so where i think 2012, what we saw in the republican nominations fight was a little bit of foreshadowing of some of the tumultuousness we've seen since then. one other broad point. if you think back to 2008, what's something we heard a lot of republicans say in the 2008 general election? it's a lousy idea to nominate fresh -- young freshmen senators. ok. and there's a sort of feeling among a lot of people in both parties that, well, you really want someone that maybe somebody that's begun a governor of a state that that executive experience is a better skill set than someone who has come out of congress. so you've got this over here, but there's another thing though that's also important. if you did a national poll and you basically said, asked

people, you know, what's the most important problem facing the country today? or what do you want the next president of the united states, what do you want them to focus on? and if you asked democrats that question, what they will tell income he economy, jobs inequality, wealth inequality, education. a certain constellation of issues. if you ask republicans what they'll tell you is national security, terrorism, america's lace in the world. a group of issues that are not governor-oriented. republicans have this dichotomy of what do the want that is separate from ideology. ok, so, how should we look at this race. i'm sort of a simple minded and so i like to hyper organize. because i'm adha.

-- adhd. i tend to hyper organize things. i look at it like nyaa basketball brackets. you've got the bracket over here that is sort of the convexal establishment republican party that nominated, you know, eisenhower, nixon, ford, both bushes. i exup and down that toray began, bob dole, john mccain, mitt romney. that republican party. and then there's this other republican party that's more of an outsider wing. and that outsider wing and actually interesting, rofpbled reagan would have been outsider in 1976 but by 1980 he was a member of the establishment had embraced him by then. but then you have this other. now this other outsider, other wing of -- sort of unorthodox wing of the party is actually an amal gam of four different groups. tea party, you've got the faith based conservatives, social, cultural, evangelical christians

over there. then you've got libertarians then people that are just really, really, really, five reallies, conservative. so that's the exotibbling group over here. -- exotic group over here. i would argue what's happening and weird things happening on the conventional side are totally different from the things happening on the more exotic side. on the more conventional side i think what we see, if someone told us two years ago jeb bush is absolutely positively going to run for president, what would ost of us have assumed? that he would lock up about half of the conventional party, and it is about half, he would lock up almost immediately and would have a very, very, very good chance of winning the overall republican nomination.