kids, etc. the family-friendly. kind of a genre you are familiar with, electronic dance music, the good thing about it is that i can listen to it with my kids because there is no words. a lot of them don't have words. they use samples of other songs. i would like to have some of that. maybe some of those guys or gals come in like tso, any of the other performers going on around the world. calvin harris, something like that. i like that music. kate: what kind of food would you serve? sen. rubio: that's a great question. i like tex-mex. i've always liked tex-mex. drew: when you are planning to write and doing your party thing, one of the questions we had was -- you have got --

people always ask -- the politician you want to sit down and have a beer with. sen. rubio: in the history of the world? drew: i would change the question and say -- non-politician. you can invite anybody to the white house. sen. rubio: anybody in history? drew: the white house, anybody alive. maybe historical two. who would you call up? mike: maybe watch the dolphins game. sen. rubio: that's a good question. i was a huge dan marino fan growing up. but i've gotten to know him, in the 80's and 90's. i think there are a couple of interesting things happening today. i always mess of her last name, the young lady, malaga? the courage she has taken speaking out on gun issues, impacting young girls, i'd love to be able to talk to her. i think she's 19 or 18?

she's very young but she has put a lot of work into 18 and 19 years of life. someone i've just spoken to once in my whole life, the former chess champion who was part of the political opposition in russia and cannot return to russia today. i had a chance to speak to him on the phone a few days ago. i'd like to spend some time with him i think he has a real fundamental understanding of

what's happening inside russia and what it means geopolitically for the future of our country, for theirs, for europe and beyond. those names come to mind. before this is over i will probably think of someone else. drew: that's interesting that you brought that up. politically, this race, on the other side you have clinton and sanders. you have a guy who openly says -- i'm a socialist. i would like to bring closer to socialism in the united states. you grew up in a community where a whole bunch of people fled socialism. sen. rubio: sanders -- they fled communism, he's talking what social democracy. there is a consequence to that. they fled communism. which is beyond socialism. the banning of religion, government controlled life, but i get your point. drew: when you hear him that you have been in the senate with bernie sanders, when you hear and you ever want to say -- look, bernie, take him aside, say -- here is the real deal. sen. rubio: you know what i appreciate about him? it's what he believes, he says he thinks capitalism doesn't work. it's obviously gotten him reelected in this -- in his state. my argument is -- if you want to live in a country like that,

there are dozens of countries around the world that are socialist. move there. we should continue to be america, the one place where anyone can achieve anything too hard work and perseverance. it's a debate that we should have. i think that many in his party share his view through the support he's garnered. that's why we are a pluralistic democratic society, we can have debates about policy and the implication. he's being honest about what he believes and i would love to have that debate. maybe he will be the nominee and we will. mike: while we are on the topic of foreign policy, one question that came to mind is about vladimir putin. he comes up a lot in debates, talking about how the next president will have to deal with russia and his leadership. it's interesting, he has taken on this character in american politics and society, he is hunting, riding horses, crazy stories about him fighting tigers, crazy things. there are some scary aspects to him and to russia. there is well on the world stage. how would you deal with someone like him? what would your approach? sen. rubio: on the one hand he is a leader of a country that between them and us has over 90%

of the world's nuclear weapons, so we have to deal with them. but also understand that he is basically a gangster in his activities. he is virtually indistinguishable from the head of a organized crime organization. he blew up an apartment building. he ordered the blowing up of apartment building so that he could justify a military intervention. he's also a geopolitical actor. unlike people like radical jihadists, motivated by p ride you, he is mostly motivated by pure ideological tactics. this incursion in syria is multipronged. part of it is to distract the world from ukraine, another part is the master policy. russia is on par with united states in terms of geopolitical influence. he wants to retain an air of influence in that region. retain power. there are multiple aspects to this calculation. before he takes action he weighs the costs and benefits. he most certainly did that in georgia in 2007, 2008.

he did it in ukraine and in syria. as an american president our job is to ensure that he realizes that the costs are higher than the benefits of any activity he might take. you have to begin by understanding that this is not someone that you will be able to sign some sort of cooperative agreement with. you will have to deal with him in ways that in many ways reflect back to the cold war. until such time as there's new leadership in russia -- hopefully they will have a better future there. mike: i know that we are going to jump around to a bunch of

topics, but we wanted to get to some young professional issues given that this is the primary audience. but we wanted to say if you have a question -- raise your hand, we will see it. we can get you on the microphones and you can ask a question. jessica: i really think that this is an american issue, truly. financing higher education. i am paying off my ashlar's degree, looking at paying off my masters, my son is a sophomore in college. i'm up to my eyeballs with all kind of investments in my future. i know that you have many approaches to addressing these issues. can you tell us about the student investment plan in particular? sen. rubio: first of all, i/o over $100,000 in student loans. i still of some. had i not been able to do that, i might still be paying that loan and i might have been paying it into my early 60's.

it's not that i didn't think it was a good investment, it's that especially early on it was really staggering. over $1000 -- they all added up. that's why i'm so passionate about it. i have tried to be a partisan about it. i don't think this needs to become a partisan issue. the bill that i have with senator warner in virginia is called income-based repayment. your loan payments, the automatic method of repaying them will be based on how much money you make. the more you make, the faster you pay it off. the less you make, the less of a burden it will be. to me it's a better approach than not collecting anything at all and then going into default. that debt in default ruins your credit, it can never be discharged. it blocks you out of

entrepreneurship and homeownership. the student investment plan is for individuals who instead of going the student loan route -- student loan route allows you to go to a private investment group and you present to them your background, who you are, your future goals, your resume, your gpa and transcripts and they decide whether or not you are a good investment. if you are, they pay for your tuition. this is primarily at the graduate level. in return you sign a contract to pay back a percentage of your income. if you become financially successful as a result of that education that you receive, they will make the money back on the profit. if you decide that you will drop out of society and moved to australia, live in a tent, they made a bad investment. the risk is on the investor side. the third idea is called right

to know before you go. a bipartisan idea, it says that before you take out a student loan, schools will be required to tell you how much they make when they graduate from that school with a degree you are seeking so that people understand their job prospects and earning prospects. again, we are not going to ban philosophy majors, but i think that people will make better decisions as they have access to information that informs you about your job prospects in the new economy with the degree you are seeking and you can make a decision about whether to borrow for it. kate: the student investment plan is an idea i hadn't heard of planning for today. what is the difference between that and indentured servitude? that is what comes to mind when i think -- 10 years of my life being paid over to another party. sen. rubio: a student loan, you still of the money. the difference is -- if you don't pay that -- pay back that investment group, but if you don't pay back your loan it ruins your credit. they will collect on you for the rest of your life. they will garnish your wages and take it out of your tax return if necessary. i think it's way better than the

issue of whether you want a student loan. student investment plan, the risk is on the group. if you don't make enough money to pay them back, they made a bad investment. the student loan, if you borrowed $100,000, you are 100 thousand dollars and you will oh it until you die or it is paid off. and if you don't, as i said, they will take your tax refund away from you. they can garnish wages. most importantly, they will report you to credit agencies and ruin your ability to finance a home or buy a business. if you don't make enough money to pay back a student investment group, they just made a bad loan. by the way, it's optional, not mandatory, we don't tell anyone that they have to pursue this route. but we think it's way better than owing a student loan. mike: that's the reality i'm in. i'm unable -- jessica: that's the reality i am in. i'm unable to invest in a business or buy a home. sen. rubio: it's it's on there on your debt income ratio.

they say -- you want a mortgage but you 100 thousand dollars, you already have a mortgage call the student loan. they look at that and they calculate that into your income debt ratio. it blocks people out of loans to start a business, it can block you out of homeownership. drew: speaking of being blocked out, you had a home, you had student loans. there are bureaucratic obstacles to starting a business. regulatory obstacles to going out on your own. there is also it's of interest to -- infrastructure out there in the united states designed to lock you out, little hurdles. you talk a lot about trying to break through some of that and maybe bring more opportunities into society.

sen. rubio: first of all, the idea that the government is good for people that are trying to make it, that needs to be debunked. regulations are often used by established industries to lock out innovative competitors. you are a big company and you control the marketplace. let's say you are the largest player in an industry. you have power. you hire lobbyists. you hire lawyers. to put in regulation. why? you know that those small startups cannot comply. they can never enter and compete against you. you see this in the sharing economy. whether it is on the transportation side or something else. you see them arguing that we should not allow uber or lyft, they are looking for an established regulation to prove -- protect an established industry about -- against innovative industry. second, i'm not an anarchist. i just got off commercial flight. i'm glad that the plane was regulated. someone checked to make sure that those engines work, making sure that those are really

pilots and not just someone who slept at the motel. [laughter] but too much regulation makes them uncompetitive globally and i would propose a federal regulatory budget that caps the amount of money that they can cost our economy in a given fiscal year. it would require agencies to -- if they want to impose new regulations, they will have to get rid of regulatory policy to stay within the regulatory budget. forcing a cost-benefit analysis of new regulations or existing ones. it would ultimately limit growth of the regulatory state, which serves as a massive impediment to a small business or startup entering the marketplace. drew: is massive organizations that suppress and keep people down -- mike have a pretty big segment coming up about the empire, the new star wars movie coming out. you would have been nine years old when "empire strikes back" comes out.

sen. rubio: like everyone else, i have my dvd collection. my kids are all caught up. drew: first of all, when you are watching these as a kid, who did you identify with, what action figures did you have? and are you excited about taking your kids to the theaters to see this? sen. rubio: i'm not sure if i had the action figures. i think i had the death star, and it kept breaking like in empire strikes back when it blew up, the second one, where the rocket goes in the hole. that's my favorite. i used to hate darth vader, now i feel kind of sorry for him because i know what he went through to get to that point. he's probably the most fascinating character in that movie.

he started out with a lot of promise, something went wrong, he went dark and nasty. it's kind of, they done a good job. they should have started that way. now i'm kind of torn. do i still hate darth vader? drew: i think we will find out in the next movie. sen. rubio: anakin, right? drew: right, you had luke, youth and inexperience, the whole world against him, everyone telling him that you can't do that, you are too young. [laughter] in your career -- sen. rubio: i think of her that. drew: maybe not that comparison, but you have heard that complaint. this guy is too young to be speaker of the house, too young to be senator. wait your turn, man. too young to be president. you have got a bunch of people in this room who have probably heard a little bit of that when we took on positions of responsibility. so, is that -- is that an

argument that you think works these days with this generation of gen x or millennial's, raised on star wars, harry potter, does that work? sen. rubio: first of all, i'm 45, my kids don't think that's very young. [laughter] the second point i would make is that this is a different political climate. the country is not just living through an economic downturn. this is not a cyclical thing that's happening here. we are living through a massive, rapid, ongoing economic transformation to the structure of the economy. this economy doesn't look anything like the one from 15 years ago. or even five years ago. the structure is different. the pace of change is faster than ever. it took the telephone, which is an extraordinary invention -- it took the telephone 75 years for 100 million people to use it. it took candy crush one year to

get 100 million people to use it. that's how fast things are changing. one of the largest transportation companies in the world own cars. one of the largest hospitality companies on hotels. it's a different economy that challenges policy. immigration in the higher education system. we have anti-property programs from the 1960's, tax policies will the 80's and 90's, the world has to radically changed in the last five years. this is the industrial revolution happening every five years. it is important for us to have leaders can understand that you can be a conservative, but you have got to apply those principles to the early 20th century. it requires rapid change in innovation and a need to modernize higher education. it is feasible that someone could graduate with a certain skill set and in an economy have to be retrained. we don't have a higher education system designed to deal with that. it was built by the fact that you graduated with a four-year

degree and defend -- be secure. you might be a contractor with five different employees over that time. these skills are evolving on a regular basis. we would have to become lifelong learners. all of these sorts of things need to be confronted. back to your lesson, i think the country is in desperate need of leaders who understand what life is like an the economy and we have too many people in washington who have no idea. they are still writing about

20th century solutions for twentieths -- 21st century problems. mike: besides star wars, we wanted to get to know you better through other personal interests. some of the things that you do as a person, where you get your news from, what you read. i wanted to start with football. i know you are a big football guy. i know you are dolphins fan. sen. rubio: when is tom brady retiring? is that dude ever retiring? mike: you had to say that. i was not going to bring up that deflategate tweet. sen. rubio: what do you want? we are going to lose anyway. [laughter] mike: talk about football. you grew up playing, i understand, and it's something you're passionate about. what has that meant to you? you take any lessons from that? sen. rubio: i love the game, of course. i do play in them involved in that. i think it's a great teacher of life lessons. it's a sport that teaches people to work with other people. other people on the field, if

one of the 11 doesn't do their job, they teach accountability. doing things you don't want to do, things that make you uncomfortable. in a way it created a traffic jam, it was my job and i had to do it for the other 10 people i was playing with. a bad play, an 80 yard bomb, that's just the way it is. you have to be able to mentally come back from that and pretend like you are the greatest player in the world even though you just gave up a play. you cannot be wallowing in the fact that something went wrong. losing is a great teacher. is a lessons i took for my time in football that are difficult to replicate in other sports or without sports in your life. for me it's one of the reasons as an adult i try to use for paul to instill those lessons not just in my kids but the kids have had a chance to coach.

mike: i had to ask that too. i'm a big football fan too. sen. rubio: season tickets? mike: yes. at any rate, i'm a parent to -- [indiscernible] [laughter] sen. rubio: we play them again in the last game of the year. maybe they will have had so many. mike: we will get to him. you had better watch out for him. but one of the discussions right now is the discussion of concussions. i have a young son. he may have an interest in football sunday and parents are asking himself -- do they want to let their kids play because of this concerned about the health impact? do you have a feeling on that? sen. rubio: of course. number one, if your kids don't like contact, don't force them to play. you either like the contact or

you don't. there are a lot of sports you can play. of the it's anything special. kids at nine or 10 are playing one sport year-round, i don't think that's good for them either. we are very strict about that. for example, not every parent can do this or you would never have a team, but i never let my kids play inside the box. i don't let them be a running back. they have to play receiver, corner, safety, but this age i don't let them play in the box. the other is good coaching. there's good coaching and bad coaching. we ensure that our kids are taught the proper technique for tackling. we spend a lot of time doing that. if you can teach the kids to use their shoulders, get their heads out of the way, primarily tackle the legs and of the upper body. there are things that you can do

to minimize the risk at a younger age. there is an inherent danger at any sport where people run full speed at each other. like soccer. like stunt cheerleading. i suck catastrophic injuries in that. in la crosse, flag football. people running full feed without any year on. i suppose that we can wrap kids in bubble wrap and say that nothing bad will happen to you but i think there is a balancing act and we try to make football safer. there is no activity in life that is inherently risk-free and football is one of them and it's a great game. i hope they don't kill it. kate: i want to go back to the book thing for a second. whenever my friends have a birthday or party, books or what we give. ramona quimby, age eight, the -- that was a book that had an impact on me. what did you recall from when you were younger? sen. rubio: is that even a book, it's books. the world will encyclopedia was my christmas present. maybe some people are old enough to remember what those were. one year we lost the d book, so

if i needed something that started with d, i wouldn't know it was. i was not a good student until i started paying for it in college. but i always loved to read. when i wanted to learn about something, i read the encyclopedia. every year they would update you with the look of the year or whatever. i look back at that as an example of how much the world has changed. i had to go to an encyclopedia to learn something i was that age. if they want to learn something now, you learn about it in a millisecond. virtually any topic. growing up that book had a lot of influence on me. i also read a lot of books about cuban history. i don't remember the names of all of them, but there was one book called "cuba," it was this

really thick book and it went back to their colonial days through 19 57, 19 58. those were things i was curious about and those books for that curiosity. mike: that's a great lead-in for my question -- what part of u.s. history, if given a chance, would you rewrite? slavery would be obvious, so let's may be something less heavy. sen. rubio: i think that the factors that led to the great depression could have been addressed earlier. i think that that is an arrow that people would want to revisit. i'm not sure the civil war was avoidable if you look at the great compromises that related by a number of years. slavery, as you mentioned, was always an inherent and direct conflict and was never compatible. even the founders i think understood that eventually that institution would have to be

dealt with and they took too long to do so. most certainly, even in the aftermath of slavery, the first half of the 20th century racial discrimination in america was pronounced. it's something -- my parents have a story -- they came to america and went to new york city and they were driving down to miami from new york city. i don't remember the exact dates but the car broke down somewhere in the south. a believe it was south carolina. i can't prove that, but it was the first time they ever interacted with segregation. two ahead certain segregation. if you were not spanish dissent, you could not join the havana got club. but they didn't have legal segregation. to them -- to them that was a shocking experience. they ask an african-american lady about a movie that was playing because when the car was being fixed they were going to go watch the movie and she said she didn't know because she was not allowed in their that time from the end of slavery, the civil rights era, that lingered way too long and never should have happened.

i think that's the time that we wish -- that a wish we could have avoided and dealt with much quicker, perhaps never have happened. drew: after 2008, the election of obama, race relations were supposed to get better. a lot of people would look at it and think maybe they've gotten worse in a lot of ways. you have talked about this a little bit. is there anything the president of the united states can really do? how might you -- what could be done to sort of ease tensions and maybe make things better? sen. rubio: the things that manifest as racist and government are illegal now. certainly the president is the most important public speaker in the country and you concern the call attention to major issues, but these are society -- societal issues that have deep problems to go back. the reality is that there are a significant percentage of

americans, african-americans, young males particularly, who fields committed against. if they feel that way, whether you agree with it or not, if they feel that way that is a problem. if a significant portion of your population feels like they're being treated differently, and i know people who do. it is an issue that we have to confront. there is good news and bad news. the bad news is that it continues to have lingering effect in many of our communities. the bad news is that i think that the generation that my children are a part of -- this is an anecdotal example. our team is a primarily african-american football team and i commented to one of the parents once -- these kids don't know color. 9, 10, 11, it's probably different than when i grew up because they are used to growing up in a society where different people of all backgrounds and ethnicities are together at that age. it will be interesting to see how that manifests itself. i think it already has. even when i grew was growing up

it was still a much bigger factor. over time i think that will help in that regard. in the short term i think we do need to address the reality in this country that there are millions of people feel that because of the color of their book there are millions of people who feel that because of the color of their skin they are treated differently. it is a significant percentage of american families feel this way. i don't think the answer of it -- to it, however, is to demonize police officers. 97% of them are incredible people. if any of us have a problem and feel in danger, we are going to call 911 and a police officer will respond. respond and willing to die so we are safe. i think it has gone too far in that direction. ,> we are running short on time but i know we have a question down here in front. if we could get a mic here.

>> thank you, senator, for being hit today. i think this conversation lends itself to some of the rhetoric that to those who are leading the polls on the republican side are going towards. could you speak as to how your expense is different than some of the others who are talking about building walls and having religious litmus test? how does your philosophy, your background, differ from some of the others? things i: one of the have always tried to do is a vote for me because you can't vote for someone else. everyone is accountable for their own statements, and they can answer for those statement. i can tell you two things that i think are true. is the mostresident unique political office on the planet. when you become the president of the united states, you have to bring your principles and your values. i am a conservative republican.

and if i am elected, that is who i will be. -- including people that don't like you. you have to be able to put that stuff aside. it is different from the language than a senator or a private citizen or a local state legislature. the language of the presidency is impactful. it can drive wedges in a society. and i think that both parties have been guilty of this, but i avoid and reject any language that says in order for you to be better off, you have to give me the power to make someone worse off heard the reason that you are starting or facing problems is because someone else is doing too well and it is their fault. i don't think it is good for the country. i don't happen to believe that

is true. i actually think that what unites us as a people is so much more important and powerful than what might guide us -- divide us on opinions. here's the way i viewed this campaign. i don't want my campaign to look back at it like a bad prom picture. do you know what i mean? that bad prom pictures where you my hairan't believe looks like that. i want my campaign to be something that -- i don't want my campaign to be something that my children look at in 20 years and are embarrassed. i want a campaign that they are win sof good hopefully i they will know exactly why i did my hair looks like that. it, but beyond that, i want to campaign that i will always be proud of. whether i take the debate stage or i'm here today, i want to give people a campaign that they can be proud of. i might not agree with them on

everything, but i'm proud of what he is doing. i think our country is in desperate need of that because we do have real problems, but we extraordinary opportunities. i think god everyday that i may 21st century american. we have the greatest -- the opportunity of the greatest era. >> we have been talking a lot about going back to school for education, the future for our country. do believe that higher income are important to you for

higher education? [poor audio quality] message so they care about what is happening. but ultimately, i do think that there are more ways than ever to become informed. it is easier than it has ever been to learn what i stand for, what i stand -- where i have been. if you think about the life of people today in the 21st century, i see it, my family members, my friends. you get up in the morning. it is 6:30. you have to get the kids to

school. at have to drop them off school. your rush to work. then you have to get them to soccer practice. then you hurry home and make sure the food is ready. just to come home, all this homework they do, and then you have to make sure they are in bed. and it is 10:00 and you are exhausted did and you do that again tomorrow. , child care states is more expensive than college. so, how do deal with that? that is a cost people didn't have 25, 30 years ago. all of that weighs on people. and you are kind of tired and have to go back to -- tomorrow and do it all again. and that is if you can go to sleep at 10:00 because you might have brought homework that you have to do. people are facing extraordinary strains on daily life because in

so many ways life has become so busy compared to what it once was. and technology means work doesn't leave us when rim if the office. it follows us wherever we are, seven days a week. >> we are going to wrap up. real quick, lightning round. one of the things we want to ask about his bucket list items. mr. rubio: that i have never done. >> yet. what do you want to do? what are some of the things that you want to do? mr. rubio: one of the things i always want to do eventually as i want to be able to visit a few -- free cuba, not a cuba under castro role. i want to visit the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. visit the farm where my grew up thatbrew -- grew i've heard so much about. i have been to japan, south korea, the philippines, but it is a region of the world that i

would love to learn more about. so much of the 21st century happens in the south pacific -- asia-pacific region. that is one of the items i have checked off, go to the super bowl. i would like to go to a super bowl, though, that the dolphins are playing in. [laughter] anyway, there is probably another time brady out there one day for us. >> final question, today's theme was wait for the party. to have a connect -- you have a chance not to connect with the 20 or 30 some rings. what toast with the gift of our party? things we should think about. mr. rubio: i think we have the be theunity to be as --

freest, most prosperous americans ever. we have got to do some things to make that happen. if we do it needs to be done, the 21st century is going to be the greatest era in the history of this country. there are going to be millions of people around the world who are going to be able to buy, trade, and sell things with you. we are going to be the first americans ever that leave our children worse off than ourselves. we must choose what kind of country we will be in the 21st century. if we do what we need to do, who will be greater than it has ever been paid>> with -- ever been. >> with that, we are out of time. on behalf of the panel, i want to thank you for being here. i want to think of bankamerica for making this possible. we want toportantly, thank you, senator, for joining us. mr. rubio: thank you very much.

>> [applause] thank you. >> [applause] here is a look at what some of the other presidential candidates are up to. chris christie, who got bumped in the primetime debate next week, at a town hall meeting this morning in new hampshire. hillary clinton recorded a segment last night. and former maryland governor martin o'malley was recently singing in a washington dc irish pub. the governor was therefore a campaign event. announcer: all campaign law, c-span takes you on the road to the white house. theltered access to candidates at town hall meetings, news conferences, rallies, and speeches. we are taking your comments on

twitter, on facebook, and by phone. every campaign event recover is available on her website at c-span.org. website at c-span.org. next, charlie cook previews the 2016 presidential election. he talks about candidates on both sides of the race and to thought might make it through the primaries to be the party's nominee. he also talks about the democrat's chances of retaking the senate. this is about an hour and a half. >> [applause] >> wow. great crowd, great crowd. great to see everybody. thank you for coming out. years, a number of united technologies has sponsored these sessions. i was holding out for a helicopter, but you have sold the company.

i guess i have to hold out for an elevator for our house or something like that. but anyway, the great people at the national journal for putting this together, a great crowd. i want to put in a plug really quickly. the brand-new almanac of american politics just came out. pages.is an amazing 2084 it is 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. are you from louisiana? oh, my god it we went to the -- oh, my god, we went to the same high school, that is right. [laughter] this is a real story. i didn't make this stuff up. anyway, it is now at bookstores near you and on amazon and all kinds of great places. and there is an 18 page

introduction essay that i wrote at the beginning. so just remember that i wrote it over the summer did give me -- summer. give me a little slack here. what i'm going to try to do this morning as talk a little bit. you feel confused about the 2016 campaign so far. it seems a little disorienting. join the club. this is every election. elections are like fingerprints, and every one is unique. but this one is, obviously, about as weird as they come. interesting dynamics and the democrat side, and a whole lot on the republican side. so what i'm going to try to do this morning is do five things. first, to try to maybe put some sense into what is going on and why. and then take a look at the democratic nomination side briefly, and then spend a little bit more time on the republican side. then talk a little bit all the -- about the general election,

to the extent we can. and finally, talk about the u.s. senate because it is kind of the undercard, to use the term that everybody is using these days, but i think the senate is going to be a very, very, very close , and for majority status one that i know of 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 other with things making this such a highly combustible, to use a louisiana phrase, a gumbo of different factors -- but actually that is the southern part of the state -- of why this is such an odd election. the fiveld argue that factors are, first, ideology. second, economic anxiety.

third, populism. wars weis culture value have going on. and finally, this pervasive anger at politics, at politicians, and at washing 10. first, let's talk about ideology. i don't think there is any question that the democratic party is a heck of a lot more 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 on congress and 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. liberty model republicans are pretty much gone now.

the parties are more ideologically cohesive. has been a lot of ideological sorting that has taken place. in congress, what that means is that the conservative moderate democrats that were sort of the ballots -- ballast that kept the democrats from going off a ditch, they are gone. and then literate -- liberal moderate republicans who kept the republicans from going into a ditch on the right-hand side, they are pretty much gone as well. and it reflects what has happened in the primaries. primaries are a lot more liberal than they used to. the republican primaries are a lot more conservative. the centers of gravity in each party have moved to the extreme. members that don't reflect that have sort of been purged out of in primaries. and then we have a media

environment that is sort of reinforcing all of that. radior it is fox and talk and the internet on the right, or the prime time shows on msnbc and a little bit of talk radio and a lot of internet on the left, it is just intensifying this ideology to a point that just simply wasn't there 5, 10 years ago. but there is another dimension. it used to be more when you disagreed with someone you just had different views. increasingly now, anybody you disagree with, they must be evil or corrupt or stupid. they can't just be wrong. there is something more than that that is taking place. it has taken on a real edge. and the whole idea of balancing, competing values have kind of gone out the way. 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 turned 62 later this month. by the way, today is my good friend and competitor's birthday. my birthday is later in the month. i don't know what it is about november. but jeb bush is 62, so he is just a touch older than i am. hillary clinton is 68. when her husband was president, she was perceived to be at the far left of her husband's administration. and yet now she is scrambling like mad to keep up with the party that has moved considerably to her left. at the same time, look at jeb bush. here is a guy who from 1998 to 2006 was one of the most conservative governors in america. and what is happening now? has party has moved so much father 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 positions and just the tone of his rhetoric. he hasn't moved over to keep up with it, and as a result, having lots and lots of problems. ideology is a big, big, big factor. the second thing is economic anxiety. 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. if you think about the last two years of looking at economic growth, it has been like a yo-yo , making people very, very nervous. since 1947, average economic growth, job growth -- or not to beenrowth, gdp growth, has

at about 3.4%. startinglast two years in 2013, fourth quarter, gdp was at 3.8%. then it dropped down to -0.9% for the first quarter of 2014. then it jumped up to 4.6% and stayed at 4.3%. then dropped to 2.1%. then it dropped down to 6/10 of a percentage point annual growth rate for the first quarter of 2015. then it jumped up to 3.9%. just reported last week, only 1.5% for the third quarter. what we have got is an economy that is getting buffeted. it is so fragile that it is getting buffeted by things like droughts in the last or a west coast dock strike or what is going on in china, what is going on in the euro zone, and that

anxiety is building up -- has continued this exciting that -- this anxiety that really never ended. if you look at the median real household income, in other words, half the households have got better, have to have got worse. upsehold income has not gone when you control for inflation since 1999. we have two terms, or will have had two terms of democratic presidents since 1999, two terms of republican presidents since then. we have had democratic majorities in the house and republican majorities. some -- so no matter who is in charge, real median household incomes have not gone out. the people have this feeling that, well, the economy may have recovered, but my economy has not recovered. and that has sort of added a new degree of angst.

all of this has led to populism. and whether it is the occupy wall street on the left and elizabeth one and bernie sanders n and bernie sanders, or whether it is the tea party movement, donald trump on the right-hand side, this rise of populism has great intentions within each of the party. the tension in the democratic party between the building construction unions, who desperately wanted the keystone pipeline, and the environmentalists, who desperately did not want the keystone pipeline. or on the republican side, the export import bank and the tea party movement. creating tensions within each side. then you get to the culture wars. where you have 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 has a culture that values change

with time. and it manifests itself with things like, obviously, the most recent, planned parenthood abortion fetal tissue research issue. we have seated on same-sex marriage. we are sort of saying this over and over again. one country wants to watch father knows best, and the other wants to watch "modern family." and it is creating this sort of another tension that is out there. and finally, think about what conservatives and republicans, but mostly conservatives, tend to value. they tend to value freedom and love are liberty -- freedom and liberty. and democrats put more emphasis on equality. it is like women are from venus, or whatever that book was. different value systems driving

wedges through our political process. and that leads us to the anger at washington. -- of washington. that was a recent abc poll asked people do you think most people and 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 based on a functional or basically just functional? dysfunctional, 64%. these are very, very deeply held views. and there is a party difference. one of the things in that same whenoll, they asked people thinking about the kind of person you would like to see, which is more important to you, someone with experience in how the political system works or someone from outside the existing political establishment.

overall, 56% of americans said they preferred experience. 56%. 40% preferred an outsider. if you talk to just democratic voters, 69 percent, experience. and only 27% outsider. but if you talk just to republican voters, it was 60% outsider. and when you think of republicans -- and this concept comes into the president a little bit -- republicans tend not to be early adopters. historically, the have been people that like to become to go with things. and they have been sort of conservative. then we started seeing that changing some in 2012 and 2014 a great deal. so there is a difference within the two parties between the two. but on the republican side, this

is a visceral anger. this is like that howard character in the movie "broadcast news." i am mad as hell and i will not take this anymore. it really is that strong and this toxic. so these are the five factors i think has helped create this instability that we are seeing in the political process. now let's talk about the democratic side. there is some precedent to what we are seeing in terms of the democratic party and initially coalescing behind a front-runner. and that front runner seems to have the lock on the nomination. but then the challenger comes out and makes it a little interesting for some time. 1984,of walter mondale in where he had the outsider challenge from gary hart. with think about 2000 with al gore where he had the challenge coming from bill bradley. and each got interesting briefly as that sort of got -- and it

sort of got less interesting. with the democratic party in 2000 a whole lot more -- i keep on forgetting that my left in your left -- getting so much brother to the left and to the left of where hillary clinton had been, then this anger at politicians, anger at washington, or at least the established order of thing, that has crated more of a net to it. but the real story a think with hillary clinton is when you think about when she left office in january 2013, when she left the job of secretary of state, she had terrific numbers overall. yes, republicans all hated her, but they have hated her as long as they have known anything about her. but if you look at her numbers among democrats, liberals, independents, hillary clinton's numbers back in january of 2013 were really pretty good. they were probably unsustainably

high, but since she was not seen as a politician, she was not seen as a presidential candidate, she was kind of about politics, so her numbers among non-conservatives kind of rose up to and unsustainably high level. when she left office and talk started picking up of her running for president, you saw this gradual slide down in secretary clinton's positive numbers. but it was still pretty good. and it didn't sort of pick up 2014 until you got into when she became an even more of a political context. and then she didn't help herself with a couple of remarks. my two favorite, january 2014, she is down in new orleans speaking to the national automobile dealers association. and she finds the need to sort of volunteer that she hasn't been behind the wheel of a car

and's 1996. -- since 1996. what in the hell would you say that for? was this your way of sucking up to a roomful of card dealers? why would you say that echo -- say that? abc, i months later on think she was being interviewed by diane sawyer, and she talked about how her husband and i were dead broke when we left the white house. we all know the clintons had several million dollars without mess fees from all that and impeachment and all that. yes, of course. anybody that could 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. but still, her numbers were still pretty good

until this e-mail thing started catching. i have to confess, early on, i kind of lou off the e-mail thing because i didn't see -- i thought it was kind of goofy. you use your work e-mail for work stuff. but, you know, obviously you are not paranoid. people are really out to get you. and whether it is the i.t. people at the state department or freedom of information act requests, you know, i could see -- i mean, i wouldn't have done it and she wouldn't do it if she had to do it over again, but when you start appearing, well, there may have been in some way shape or form some classified information. whether it was classified after the heart or before the war whether it was marked classified or not, but suddenly things started to get more complicated. and that is when you started seeing her numbers among start really,

really coming down. to the point where they are now upside down or underwater, which in a democratic party nomination fight is in the -- is not a big deal. but in a general election, that is a big deal. and that has brought her numbers down when matched up with republicans as having as healthy a lead is you can in a heavily polarized country to having not elite at all or within the margin of error. so this is has sort of change things loosely. when you look at the perceptions -- i was talking yesterday to peter hart. they have a new nbc-"wall street journal" poll -- 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 them, they don't like

her or they don't feel any kind of comfort with her. and they don't necessarily trust her. it is not a competence thing, it is a personal thing. and that sort of comes into play in a general election. in a nomination environment, it is kind of hard to see how she could possibly lose and nomination to bernie sanders. barring some cataclysmic event. kurt bernie sanders wendy iowa caucus? yeah, that could happen. it is sort of observation changes behavior. you can argue that iowa and new hampshire have been observed a whole lot. and that it has sort of changed their behavior some. or in some of the subsequent primary caucuses out there. but when it gets to sort of primaries, non-new england primaries, the demographics just don't match up. and that is not going happen. so the only way i think there is

any legitimate doubt in the democratic nomination would be if -- and i would put this only a one and 4, 1 and 5, 1 in six shot -- is if the justice department starts to kind of get, you know, while if the fbi find some things and they decide to pursue it and a decision goes up to the public integrity section of this justice department, and this is a group of career politicians -- again, i don't think this is going to happen -- but if they do a recommendation of these career prosecutors, that is 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 sector recommend prosecuting someone, a prominent person in your party, if you turn down that request, it would

take maybe four minutes before it is all over the city, all over the country, and you have a huge mess on your hands. and if you think of this as sort of getting overplayed, think of two different things. did sandy berger, president clinton's first national security adviser, did he expect to be prosecuted for mishandling classified information? what about john george who had stepped down -- already for having personal information on computers. or what about not appropriately handing -- handling classified information? this is something that there is a chance they decide to pursue this that could put secretary could cause her real, real problems. tell me that the bush white

house, the bush administration really wanted to prosecute ted stevens. i mean, chairman of the appropriations committee, really? oh, i don't think they wanted to do that. but they were faced with a situation of how do you turn it down. it turns out it was a garbage case that was eventually discredited after senator stevens had lost the election and after he was dead it or do you think the obama -- dead. or du think the obama administration wanted general betray us investigated -- general petri s -- there is some chance that this goes to that dark side. if it did, and again, we are talking about a small chance, if it did, i think you'll find democrats looking for on the wall for a case of fire, break the glass option.

enough of that. let's go to the republican side. where the real fun is. a couple of observations before we can get into the nuts and bolts. 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 very goldwater, every single one of them has been a sitting president, a current or former president -- current or former vice president, excuse me, a runner up of the previous nomination, the son of a former president, or a commanding general of the most recent world war. it gets back to something i alluded to earlier that republicans have historically not been early adopters.

those like your -- comfortable old ugly bedroom slippers. they want to feel comfortable. but 2012, we started seeing some different behavior. and when you saw michele bachmann win the iowa straw poll, when you saw herman cain shoot up to the top of the polls, then suddenly -- i go through all the cast of characters from 2012, but when republican voters seriously consider nominating some pretty inconceivable people. again, it was totally against their stereotype of doing this. in the and, sure, they went back and nominated mitt romney, who had been the runner-up. but it is only after they pursued every possible option and they were all discredited and fell by the wayside. so at think 2012, what we saw in the republican nomination fight

was a little bit of a foreshadowing of some of the tumultuous news we have seen since then. heard if broad point you think back -- point. if you think back to 2008, what is something we heard a lot of them say? well, it is a lousy idea to nominate young freshman senators. ok. and there was sort of this feeling among a lot of people in both parties that, well, you're may bewhat someone that a governor of a state, that that executive experience is a better skill set than some of us come out of congress. so you have this over here, but there is another thing that is also important. if you did a national poll and you basically said -- asked people, what is the most important political peace in the country today or what he wants in the next president of united states? if you ask democrats that

question, what they will tell jobs, incomeonomy, inequality, wealth inequality, education. a certain constellation of issues. but if you ask republicans that question, what they will tell you is national security, terrorism, america's place in the world, completely different group of issues which are distinctly not very governor oriented. so republicans had the sort of dichotomy of what do they want that is separate from -- from ideology. ok, so, how should we look at this race? i am sort of a simpleminded person, so i like to hyper organized. i tend to want to hyper organize things. i lookught2 look at it -- at it like ncaa basketball brackets.

you have the bracket over here that is the conventional republican party that nominated eisenhower, ford, bush, reagan, bob dole, john mccain, mitt romney, that republican party. and then there is this -- there is this other republican party that is sort of this outsider wing. ronald reagan would have been an outsider in 1976, but by 1980, the establishment had sort of embraced him by then. but then you have this other. , sort of aning orthodox wing of the party, it is a malleable of four different groups. you have the tea party, the social based, then you have libertarians, and then you have people that are just really, really, really, really, really conservative.

that is this exotic group over here. and i would argue that what is happening on the conventional side are totally different from the wind things that are happening on the more exotic side. things thatweird are happening on the more exotic side. jeb bush's ex bluefly -- bush is absolutely going to run for president. he had locked that half of the party up almost immediately. and would have a very, very, very good chance of winning the overall republican nomination. and so there is the bush thing, and then there was, well, scott walker is going to do really, really well with this. and that chris christie, you know, there was sort of a group of people that thought they could or would do really well, and what has happened is they

have all underperformed and walker has already gone. but it has left this big vacuum in the conventional side of the party that no one anticipated. what was going on here? first, with bush. i think you can say first that the bush rant has -- brand has been kind of dinged up some. this is not the brand that to w inherited1992 or in 2000. i wrote a column where i likened it to jeb bush as kind of the teenager whose older brother wrecked the family car just before you needed it for homecoming or problem or something. it is not your fault, but he erected. and you've got to deal with the consequences. and so, there is that, but closely associated with that is that the bush brand, was a terrific brand, but it is also,

w notwithstanding, it is associated with conventional, historic republican has tablets met -- republican establishment. and that has taken on a bad issue. then we have already talked about the ideological part where the republican party has simply moved way over to dad's right, to jeb's right, so that is part of it. but i also think there is one other factor here. and that when i look at -- i have met him couple of times, i don't know him well at all, but he strikes me -- jeb bush has always struck me as a smart guy and an intellectually honest guy. ways not a chameleon in any shape or form. takee is being asked to changes in what he feels is , both in terms of

substantive issue positions, as well as rhetoric, take on a rhetoric that i think the guy is really, really uncomfortable during. hillary clinton was more than happy to go ahead and move over on keystone and trade and things like that. consumeris showing resistance. and so it has not only created a political problem, but it comes across almost like his heart is not in this. and the guy who was sort of an 800 pound gorilla when he was governor of florida who exuded now weh and confidence, are sort of not seeing that anymore. and i had a co of a big company -- had a ceo of a big company that dealt with him a lot when he was governor said, when that guy walked into the room, you

knew somebody walked into the room. i don't see this happening now. i think we are saying that in the debates. we are seeing it in the interviews. we are seeing it on the campaign trail. underperforming is not even -- is an understatement, but he is in a position where he is going to have to turn things around -- he needed to the other night -- because i don't think he is getting any new donors on board, any new donors. and there are a lot of big fundraisers in the republican party that were fully prepared to go his way, but are kind of sitting back a little bit. and they are not jumping on board right now. and they are starting to look over at rubio for other folks. bushnk the idea that jeb is facing an exit stencil threat to his candidacy, i think that is very, very real at this point. and then you saw scott walker

and they had this great brand. it turns out the skill set didn't match the brand. so he is gone. and then chris christie. i think with christie, a lot of his momentum was back when there was a certainty about whether jeb bush would run. i think a lot of the people that were pushing christie, perhaps particularly in the new york metropolitan area, new jersey, all that, that once it became clear that jeb bush was going to run, it is sort of like the wind came out of christie's sales. -- sails. and then you had the bridge mass. but the fourth thing is that once chris christie -- i say that, i'm not being critical of him because i think he is who he is. the truth teller. the big, tough guy that is going this.l the troops he got out trumped.

donald trump basically stole his act. donald trump and chris christie are totally different people, but to that role sort of got stolen. you watch christie in the debates, and i think he is pretty good, but he has never been able to sort of recover and match up to what those expectations were. and then you get to -- let's do marco rubio and john kasich. then we will go over to the other side of the party. with marco rubio, toomey, you are looking -- to me, you are looking at the best raw talent. if we were talking about sports, you would say that marco rubio as the best all-around athlete in this race. that he has got a very, very, very good skill set. and that when he -- you know -- if you look at his announcement speech also in terms of reach,

if you look at his announcement speech, it was about hope, opportunity, the american dream. it was a sweeping inspirational aspirational speech that was not unlike obama, i might add, but the thing about it is the next night i had dinner with a democratic strategist who said -- who was like, you know, a democrat could have given 80% of rubio's speech because it wasn't ideological. it wasn't partisan. it was a message that could resonate across a lot of lines and particularly to independent and moderate voters. now, that is really good. the clinton folks have been terrified of marco rubio from the very beginning, both in terms of the obvious going after latino voters, but the other thing is going after younger voters. if republicans can close the gap -- for example, obama's age

group in the 2012 election was 18 to 29-year-old. that group by a 23 point margin. at ronnie's best group, 65 and over. it toepublican can cut the democratic margin among younger voters, while, that would be huge -- ow, that would be huge -- wow, that would be huge. in other words, he needs to be throwing red meat to the party base, and he hasn't been throwing that kind of red meat which is why i think rubio -- you know -- he is moving up in the polls, but not moving at a pace that you might think. but it is because he seems to be running as much for a general election as a nomination. and then we get to john kasich. some back when he

was in the house, and i like him a lot. i haven't seen him since he became governor. i would say just as marco rubio has the best skill set, i would argue that john kasich is probably the most -- [indiscernible] -- person running in either party right now. 18 years as a member of the house back when it was a functioning institution. remember the house armed services committee, the entire time he was there, which is sort of checking that national security box to governor of ohio. that is kind of a big deal. you think, wait, it is ohio. no republican has ever won the river presidency -- the presidency. i have thought of it like a bell curve, slightly asymmetric where the center of the bell curve is maybe the 40, 45 yard line on

the right side. but slightly asymmetric. on the, against sort of say, 35, 40 yard line, which is in the same sort of zone with bush and rubio. and so it is not optimal to win a republican nomination, but it is sure a sack a good place to be in a general election. and so can sick has all these kasich hast then -- all these tricks, but then he is one shortcoming. that i have 80er hd, which is no surprise to the people that work with me, that ritalin would probably change john kasich life. [laughter] you have never seen a highly successful person as unfocused and undisciplined as john kasich. and whether it is

watching his announcement speech that would sort of -- in contrast with ted cruz, ted cruz gets up and he does his announcement speech that he had memorized. i mean, it was just absolutely scripted and perfectly delivered. it was a theater in the round kind of thing. but what about john kasich? there was not a teleprompter. i don't think there was a speech written to be honest. he just kind of got up and went on a stream of conscious thing for close to 50 minutes. hey, this isohn, kind of an important event here. that sort of thing. i am aware of a fund-raising boko he made within the last month to someone, and this guy, big republican donor type, very wealthy person, it became clear that john kasich was having one, possibly two other conversations with people in the room with him while he was on the phone to

this really, really rich donor type it on the guy finally said, john, if you want to talk to me on the phone, call me and you're not having other conversations. anyway. if point of all this is that bush doesn't get stuff together really quickly -- and i think it may not be quite too late -- but you are going to see rubio take this conventional thing. christie is showing some signs of life and thinks, but i think it will be more rubio. let's go over to the exotic side. clearly tapping into this visceral anger. it is like giving the finger to career politicians and to the establishment. or let me do it differently. let's say you have people that are sort of estranged from the -- sort of strength from the establishment -- straying from

the establishment. and they are looking for the antithesis of a politician. but for different people, that is different things. it tends to skew a little bit more blue-collar, a little bit more mail, a little bit -- male, a little bit more younger, their idea is donald trump. he is the opposite of a politician in their mind. he is angry, he says what is on his mind, he doesn't care what anybody thinks. and it is a pretty good act. and so one group gravitated to him. but then there is a second group. and these are not people -- these are people that are just as a strange, but they are not increase so much. and these are people that are gravitating to ben carson. and they see him as a kind, decent, gentle man, and gentlemen, and they see him as

someone who is a role model. they see him as someone who, you know, this is what politicians ought to be like who tell the truth and a fundamentally decent people. in their mind -- and it tends to skew a little bit more white color and upscale, deeply isligious, a lot of it of -- about religion, but in their mind, ben carson is the opposite. in somewhat a smaller group, it is carly fiorina. woman, but sort of doesn't fit the mold of a career politician either. socialt of it is sort of economics, temperamental, it is what are you looking for -- you are looking for in this part of the party. we still think of the republican party as upscale people and all that. that is exaggeration. it wasn't entirely untrue,

either. keep in mind now that roughly half of the republican party is college educated. but roughly half is not good a lot of these either are, or their parents maybe were conservative democrats who moved over into the republican party and have really chilled over the last 50 years and have completely change the mix of the republican party. they have moved over. the thing is i think -- my colleague wrote a column over the summer where she said about the nomination politics that summer is for dating and winter is for mating. [laughter] i have heardeard -- republican voters say, particularly last summer, that this was like lost in -- this was like walking into a baskin-robbins and there is 31 flavors of candidates out there. and they have the little wooden

spoon and they are tasting some of of them. the establishment is petrified, but the voters are having a great time because they have never had a selection that was quite like this. the question is, we have already seen trump's averages start to come down, carson has supplanted him in some. and let me do a brief rant for a second. you can see people and the press, and not press, who will gravitate -- whatever is the new poll. and even though they have no earthly idea who the poster is, and no one has ever heard of this poster before, it is like polls have become a commodity. they are all the same. outw years back, it turned they were just making stuff up. some peopleorning on a morning show who were going crazy over a couple of state

polls that i never heard of the pollster before. ever. and, like, you know, any of you -- what is your mother's maiden name? tata? tata research just came out with a poll. [laughter] and the thing is, you could get it on television. just as much it credence as if it was an nbc or new york times poll. anyway, i think that as it gets closer to february 1, i will talk. i think as a gets from sort of the getting around phase or the having a little bit of this or that, and i think we are already seeing with child, the act --

with trump, the novelty is starting to wear off, the act is starting to wear thin. and you are starting to see it. i think carson is going to have some legs, and he will last a little longer. the funny thing -- the trump and carson vote is not interchangeable. take the carson type of voters. they see donald trump as this man who bragsne about having been on the cover of "playboy" magazine, fully closed. that is a little inconsistent with the people, the deeply religious faith-based people who are backing ben carson, who is the antithesis of donald trump. so we are talking about some different constituencies here. but when you listen to carson -- first of all, as a neurosurgeon, gosh knows the guy probably has

twice the iq points of any of us in this room, but the thing about it is when you listen to him, it is right clear. he knows very, very little about any of these things. when you heard him trying to talk about the debt limit recently, it became clear that he did not know what it was. want to get into caucuses and primaries, once you down to messing around getting to it who is going to be , who canlican nominee win a general election, who do you want to be the commander in chief to deal with all these i suspect you start to see this paid down a little bit. i think it is going to go to someone in the more exotic wing of the nomination. i think it's going to go to someone who is a vehicle for that anger, that outsider, but

-- notore and is sort of quite as flawed in one way or another. obviously, trump and carson are very different people than some of these others. could it be a carly fiorina? could it be a ted cruz? who could it be? carly fiorina, in a funny sort of way -- and i know i am in overtime here -- carly fiorina to me is a great example of how someone who has never held should notfice and necessarily know about a lot of issues,reign polymerase policy man, she knows these issues inside and out and she is honed in. she is on message. whathing about it is carson and trump do not know and understand about public policy, clearly carly fiorina has

figured it out. watching her in these debates, she is really, really, really good. i think fiorina's challenges this. despite the fact that there does not appear to be a campaign underneath her, which is a problem when you get to caucuses, but who is going to control her narrative? is her narrative going to be a of a, decisive, ceo company in a very difficult time for the industry, who had a board that went wrote on her desk wrote on her and pushed her out? is that going to be her narrative or is her narrative going to be a flawed and failed and haswas pushed out become sort of untouchable in some ways? , think about baseball or football. a manager or a coach whatever, they get fired from one team could wha,

m. what happens? they pop back up someplace else. where did carly fiorina pop up? you can make money on the board of one of these companies. as a woman, you could be on one of these boards. other than taiwanese semiconductor, i have never heard of any company that would put her on board. that tells me that that narrative is likely to go to a bad place for her. then, you get to ted cruz. remember i talked about how john kasich a have been the most qualified of these republican and that rubio probably have the best skill set in terms of candidate skill set? but one thing that rubio, that uz share --d cre

focus, disappointed they are absolutely on task and nothing you can say or do will peel them off of what they are planning to say, which is a very valuable commodity in politics. to me, when i look at ted cruz, i see somebody who -- look, i am a registered independent and middle of the road guy. i do not agree with ted cruz on , but when several of us had dinner with him in the back room of a steakhouse and sitting across the table and listening to him, he said things that the day before i would've thought were crazy. the next day, i did in fact think were crazy. but you know what? when he said it, it did not sound crazy. [laughter] in fact, it made a heck of a lot of sense. to me, this guy is brilliant. number 2 -- he is a very, very skilled communicator.

notcannot listen to him and say, wow, this guy really was a championship debater in college. finally, he is just focused and he's got a strategy. you notice he has never criticized trump or carson because he wants to inherit. he believes that their support is going to start melting off and we are already starting to see trump melt off and he wants to be the remainderman to pick up the support for you d. you do not do that by telling people their first choice was a stupid first choice. that is not how you do it. guy watching cruz as the -- and i do not have data to support this -- but he is likely to be the most likely person to inherit the exotic side of the republican party. first of all, this election is going to be about change. it's going to be about what kind of change. do you want risky change or a more safe form of change?

that was something that heart was saying the other day -- what kind of change do you want. time ofgoing to be a change election or change in american demographics? change, that for a almost inevitably leads to a republicans winning it. if it leads toward demographics, that could be a real challenge for the republican party. -- we are rating to get the rest of the nbc and wall street journal polls. their september poll asked whether what you would rather see a democrat or republican elected president. it was either 37-37 or 38-38. that is where this thing starts off and then candidates are then circumstances and then they start leaning one way or the other. sort of watch that. request a into the senate and then we need to open it up. everyone here note and most people watching c-span would

note that senate is 54 republican. if they hold the white house, five seats that they do not. -- thing that is report important to remember about the senate is that we have gone late in this boom bust cycle. john edwards used to talk about to america's and i agree. i do not do the house and have-nots. electionesidential america and midterm election america. in presidential election america, the turnout is big and broad and diverse good it looks . it looks like the country and what the census bureau reports. election is 60% high and its older and white earth and more conservative and more republican. when you see that, it is just a different, different environment. 2008 --are having is democrats have a great year and pick up the presidency and seeds in the house and senate.

2010, republicans have a great year. 2012, presidential year again and democrats get elected to the presidency. boom-bust cycle. if you are a republican and elected in a midterm election here, congratulations. you won with a 70 mile per hour wind at your back. guess what? six years later, you are up in a presidential year. the other way around, you are democrat elected in the presidential repeat congratulations. you had a 60 mile-per-hour wind at your back. midterm election, really, really different. in 2014, democrats had a whole bunch of seats up and they were in really red republican sates and they got hosed. that is a political science term. [laughter] 2016, the shoot is on the other foot. republicans have 24 seats and these were them that were up in the 2010 election.

more importantly, republicans have seven steeds that were up in 2012. there are zero democratic seats up in romney states. ,ne of those republican states one of those republican seats is and that is chuck grassley in iowa and he is not going to lose. you have six republican seats that are in real, real danger here. conversely, you only have one on the democratic side and that is in nevada. if you ask each side, what is one more? republicans would love to talk about colorado, but that does not look promising against michael bennet. like to sayuld richard burn in north carolina, but i do not think anything is going to happen there either. you look at mark kirk in illinois -- good guy, but if he got reelected, it would be an

enormous upset. i think ron johnson in wisconsin would be something of an upset. then you look at other republicans where you would not put it in the upset category, but republican incumbents that are in states that are in obamacare and have significant challenges, rob portman in ohio, pat toomey in pennsylvania, kelly ayotte in new hampshire, and finally marco rubio's open seat in florida. arerepublican seats that prime vulnerable versus harry reid's open seat in nevada. that's the only one on the democratic side. , i would bet you that if you want to mitch gave him and you shot of soaking in powerful -- sodium chemical and you gave him want to take it to see the senate lost or take your chances in the election.

i bet that he would take that to seat loss and run like a thief. realisticallys the best case scenario for 54 toans, dropping from 52. i think a three seat loss or more is plausible. it would take republicans down to 51. that starts getting close. four seats is entirely possible. that is 50-50. which way is the presence will raise going to go in terms of tiebreaking in the senate? keep in mind that some of the very closest senate rate states are the closest in presidential like florida, ohio, new hampshire, nevada. it is not necessarily true that presidentially it will go in the senate. keep in mind that whatever is the turnout dynamics and what ever is the issue agenda. , whatever is going on in these

states is going on in the other. there is some connection may that you could see more of a pop one way or another. we are looking at a real heck of a race for the senate underneath what is obviously one of the weirdest and most fun presidential races we have ever seen. i have gone over time, but i think we have time for questions or comments or accusations. [laughter] i know we have some microphones here. i'm told there is also a way to tweak questions in. -- tweak questions in. those of you watching elsewhere can do that, but questions, comments, accusations. state your name and what organization you are representing or with. so, anybody? my god. oh, you have some?

>> these are two good ones. first, how can establishment republicans win in a populist friendly year? that is a great, great question. trump is more populist. carson is less populous. populism is going on, but it's not the only thing going on. to me, i do not really call a carson is doing as populism. it is something different. it is something big and meaningful, but i think it is something other than populism. that is a really good question. happenone or two things -- republicans completely change their stripes and do something that they have only done once since the end of world war ii or it is more like 2012 where they sort of flirt with all this and really want to do this and end

up doing that. that is one course. the other course is they go with someone outside of the box or running from the outside. that is sort of my ted cruz argument. knowsan outsider, but he this. he has better candidate skills -- ben trumparson or carson. he is smart and knows his stuff and knows the issues. i think you would be very formidable. i think that's why you could have a somewhat populist or outsider run and possibly win the republican nomination, but does nots one that have some of the shortcomings of trump and carson happy the republican establishment is under siege. look at what happened at the rnc after that last debate.

they are trying to shift as quickly as they can from defense to office again. success.d if any turn things around? i think he is trying to build an edge back in. i have a very high opinion of jeb bush. i would give him a b12 shot. i personally like five hour energy and just pound them away. maybe some caffeine. how -- you have seen football games were some of the football players banged heads before the game. it's like a pair of rams, just sort of psyching themselves up for a game. this guy needs to get psyched up.

i would say whatever i needed to say. you want to go to thanksgiving and look across the table. i would say whatever i needed to say to get him angry, to get him passionate, and to let him to show that this is not something -- and i do not think that he thinks it is the right -- his right or he inherited it. i do not think that at all, but the perception is out there. he is a different person than his brother. maybe he is better or maybe he is not. he is a different person. to the honest, i do not think this is a campaign problem. i think he has rotten luck about when he's up. had he won the governor's race and george w had not, the world might have been differently. gots both timing and he has to show that he desperately, desperately wants this. as he said the other day, not

but moreconvincingly, questions. yes, sir. there is a microphone right there. >> thank you. given the impact of donald trump's campaign turning this to a schoolyard type politics, how do you see that impacting campaigns going forward? will they be less genteel? charlie: i do not know. i think gentility started going out of style a wild back. -- a wild back. back. is trump going to be a role model for some candidates in the future? yeah, i think so. i think there is only one donald trump and that is something that a lot of us are grateful for. [laughter] something of a

performance artist. you know it is funny for a guy who has never been involved in politics before, he seems to have a very real understanding of how the media works, how to manipulate the media, how to take advantage of it, which is interesting for someone who has never run for anything before. trumpempted to say that is part of a trend that we are seeing towards more outsized, more passionate, angry -- it's part of a trend that we have already seen. i think also that he is a pretty unique character. it is not something that we are going to see exactly manifest itself like that. we're going to see a lot of little trumps coming up along the way. he is awfully unique. he really, really, really is.

the other thing about trump to me is that i do not know if this is a guy who can deal well with being in second place for a very long period of time. i do not think his ego can take that coul. and in mind that he is only for $2 million so far. you can find people in the house or senate who did make it there who put an far more than $2 million of their own money. he said at one point that he would spend $100 million if necessary. first of all, let us assume he is liquid enough and camn. 100 million -- do you know what that represents? obama ann romney each spent $1 billion in that election. so 100 so 100 million, that's not pocket change. i do not think you'll soon can

donors pick up the tab behind him and take up the tab for donald trump. i do think we are seeing politics go for a time to a very, very different place. that is why i think it is important that while i personally do not think that carson and trump are going to go the distance and when the republican nomination, i think that anger they give voice to and are vehicles for that anger, i think that israel and i do not underestimate that at all. that is going to carry on. the question is who is going to be the jockey that rides that anger through to the finish line? my hunch is that it is not trump or carson. right over here. >> do you see any viable scenario in which the republicans will lose the house? y viable an scenario the republicans will lose the house.

first of all, it is hard. it is really, really, really hard and would take and a norma's amount of effort to lose the house. basically, democrats would have to hold onto 100% of their seats and win every single republican seat that is in any danger at all, 100% of those, which is hard to happen and then knock off people that do not appear to be vulnerable at all. given where people live and population patterns and where district boundaries are, this is really, really hard. if you are going to tell me, republicans have lost the house in 2016. what happened? i would assume one of two things. trump's name is on the general either as alot republican nominee or independent.

i do not think he is when to run as an independent. i do not know if carson would do that or not. that would be interesting. the thing about it is that republicans -- i think speaker ryan o speaker boehner a lot. a year or so ago, tomko, who i think the world of, said about taking the sharp instruments out of the room. ceiling and aebt budget deal, they did remove the instruments that would be most likely for them to impale themselves. it is awfully, awfully hard. , butever want to say never it is awfully, awfully, awfully hard. if i am a republican, i would should beublicans worried about the damage they are doing to their franchise both internally within the house of representatives. when i think of fortysomething

members that thought that paul ,yan is not conservative enough it is like, wow, this is really, really interesting. and i do think that a month or cantor, yeah, he let his district get out from under him, but he is a smart guy. he wrote a piece in "the wall warnedjournal" where he conservatives of following leaders who are misleading them. there is this pervasive view wehin conservatives that were told -- and i think the establishment played into this a little bit -- we were told that if we elect a republican majority to the house and to the senate that we could repeal obama care, we could turn back all the epa regulations, we could undo yo

everything obama and democrats have done and put forth our agenda and get things done. actually, speaker boehner warned of false prophets. that same sort of thing. it's sort of ignores some basic civics that you may have a majority in the house and you may have a majority in the senate, but until you have veto proof -- if you do not have the presidency and have vetoproof majorities, you do not have that kind of control. and so these conservative voters feel -- they feel like they were misled. we were promised that we could get all this done. leaders,republican obviously they could get all these things done. they have chosen not to. well, they did not choose not to -- they couldn't. look at the rules. look at how the place works.

that is, i think, primary source of all this anger and victory all you are seeing within the republican party. they think that they got lied to. maybe they were probably exaggerated where hyperbole is a politics.ocalypse -- i think they took it a little too literally and they feel the trade by their leaders -- be trade by their leaders when their leaders exaggerated somewhat. unless you have vetoproof majorities, you cannot do all of things that you guys desperately want to do. so, another question in the room? >> is there a path to victory for the gop in colorado senate? charlie: the smart alec side of

me says, get cory gardner to resign from one seat and run for that one. [laughter] here's the challenge for republicans. number 1 -- it is a presidential year as opposed to a midterm year. the electorate in colorado -- colorado is one of the closest states to being 50 yard line states out there. is a big difference between presidential year and midterm year, number one. number 2 -- mark udall was from a storied family in democratic politics. the thing is that i do not think he was a natural politician. good guy, but i do not think he was in the natural politician. bomb michael bennet is relatively speaking new to politics, i think his understanding of politics and of campaigns and how to win is very, very highly developed. i do not think he is as beautiful as udall was.

finally, there is only one cory gardner. you show me another cory gardner , someone who can cut into andpendence and moderates who can cut against the problems that the party is facing in umpteenth different groups and that person can win a general election. so far, republicans have not one there you.ther yet i'm fairly skeptical there and i have fairly skeptical in north carolina. the sanders outreach to white male voters something the gop with key demographics? hurt the gop with key demographics. me, yes, bernie sanders's support is overwhelmingly white.

i think the white males that bernie sanders is winning on board are not voters that have been swing general election voters in a long time, if ever. i'm trying to stay away from anding about volvos birkenstocks and soy lattes and things like that because i think that is not fair. the thing about it is -- >> we take you like to the white house now for president obama's announcement. president obama: we begin a review process for a proposed pipeline that would terri canadian crude oil from the pipelines of the gulf of mexico to the market. this morning, senator kerry informed me that after extensive and consultation with other cabinet agencies, the state department has decided that the keystone xl pipeline

would not serve the national interest of the united states. i agree with that decision. this morning, i also had the with prime to speak minister trudeau of canada. while he expressed his disappointment, given canada's position on this issue, we both agreed that are close friendship on a whole range of issues, including energy and climate change, should provide the basis for even closer correlation between our countries going forward. in the coming weeks, members of my team will be engaging with theirs in order to help deepen that cooperation. now for years, the keystone pipeline has occupied what i frankly consider and overinflated role in our political discourse. it became a symbol to often used as a campaign matter rather than a serious policy matter. all this obscure the fact that this pipeline would neither be a

solar bullet for the economy, as was promised by some, nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others. let mestrate this, briefly comment on some of the reasons why the state department rejected this pipeline. first, the pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy. aboutcongress is serious wanting to create jobs, this was not the way to do it. what wet to do it, but should be doing is passed bipartisan infrastructure planned that in the short term to create more than 30 times jobs per you than the pipeline would and create a better economy for workers for years to come. our business has created 262,000 new jobs last month. they created 13.5 million new jobs over the