many republican strategists feel confident because they are fighting on red terrain, largely. but as michelle put it, there are challenges they did not anticipate and missouri and , north carolina are really worrying republicans right now. greta: thank you very much for being on newsmakers. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] >> the second presidential debate is tonight in st. louis missouri. watch live coverage for a preview of the debate, and at 8:30, predebate briefing for the audience. yourcoverage at 9:00 with reaction following. the second presidential debate, watch live on c-span or on-demand using your desktop, phone, or tablet using c-span.org. you can listen with the free c-span radio app on the plate store -- google play.

we are joined by steve gibbons from washington university for tonight's debate. thank you for joining us. >> good morning, glad to be here. host: we have a little bit of a delay, so i will try not to speak over you, but if i do, i apologize. is washington university ready for the debate? >> we are. this is a culmination of six months of planning. a lot of hard work especially the last week or so. we have been ready for the media for about a week or so with forrds to facilities between 2500, 3000 members of the media here. and in the last two or three the team has arrived, and

we focused on getting the debate venue sets. late last night, and i think we are ready to go. you are also a chief of staff. how many audience members will there be tonight. we talked about members of the media. how many will be in attendance? guest: we think right about 1000. the last number i heard. that number sometimes changes as they finalize sightlines and things like that, but that does not include about 40 members of the public who will be a part of the town hall format. that is a separate, smaller audience right in front of the candidates. host: this is the fifth debate happening at washington university. what is it about the university that makes it a goto place of sorts for a presidential debate? >> you know, i guess i don't know for sure. we have a long tradition here,

as you noted, beginning back to 1992, when we hosted, for the first time, and when we did that, we did that with one week's notice, so something was happening at another site not working out, so they approached us. and we stepped up to the plate and hit a home run in 1992 with george bush senior, bill clinton, and ross perot. we have kept coming back to them every cycle, and they have been willing to give it to us. i think st. louis and the midwest is probably a good location geographically for lots of reasons -- for travel, for political demographics -- but i think, you know what we hear , from the commission is that they like our facility, they like our people, they like the attitude that we bring to this because, you know, we do not do this for a living. we are not convention planners, we are not meeting planners, we all do other things, but for the six months, we really are able to pull together and pull off

something very special. host: the estimated cost for a debate is about $5 million. can you break out what the biggest part of that cost is? >> yeah, i would say it is technology and security. you know we really have seen , both of those costs rise over time. you know, in 1992, technology for the media was literally a couple trailers of pay phones so that the media could write their stories and run out and call in their stories in to their editors. we have moved from that over time to the beginnings of the internet, to world wide web, to ethernet, and then finally today, you know, where we have very robust cell systems, you know cellular systems here, , very robust wi-fi systems for the media who are here to cover the event, and then just the tables, the pipe and trade everything we need to do to , convert what is our athletic complex, you know, into

something very different, which is a television studio with lots and lots of room for the campaign staff, for the media to work. so it, you know is taking a , building made for something totally different, transforming it into this, and then in a few days, transforming it back so our collegiate athletes and our students can continue to use the facility. that is a big turnover. it is quick. and then security has changed over years in the post-9/11 years too, it has just gotten increasingly more intricate. host: ok. is there any lesson from the first debate at hofstra that you are using to prepare tonight at washington university? >> we think they did a great job, but the short answer i guess is no. we knew what we needed to do to pull this off. we did not see anything happen there that made us force a

change in any way, so we did all the planning that we needed to do, and then once the commission got on the ground here, these last few days have been, you know tweaking little things and , making things work, but i think we are all set. host: we appreciate you taking time to join us today. steve gibbons, president of the cherry debate as well as associate vice chancellor and chief of staff at washington university, thank you so much. >> thanks. good talking to you. host: joining us here in washington now are charlie cook, washing -- editor and publisher of the cook report and stuart rothenberg, founding editor of rothenberg and gonzales political report. they are here to talk about campaign 2016 ahead of tonight's debate. gentlemen, thank you for joining us tonight. let's take a look at the

rankings for the presidential debate you have. both of your reports have ,illary clinton in the lead saying if the election were held today, that she would win. tell us a little bit about what went behind, what are sort of the reasons behind this. charlie: what we usually do is go through past election data in each state, and what you would expect from a generic republican, and then you look at the polling data specific to this race specific to each race, , and there will be some aberrations. i was usually pretty democratic, usuallyas -- iowa is solidly democratic, but it has been more for trump this year. ohio has been a little bit more trumpy, so there are variations, but we have been doing this since 1984. stua has been doing at the same period of time. his business is a couple of years older than ours is. it has worked well for us. host: according to the cook

report -- political report, it has hillary clinton at 272 electoral votes, donald trump with 197, but 69 electoral votes still up for grabs. it still seems pretty close. charlie: not really. if you were just going to go ahead and push everything one one way or the other, she would have -- hillary clinton would have about 273, and donald trump would have about 265, and that is giving trump every close state. that is giving him all romney states north carolina, where he including north carolina, where he is behind. florida andng him ohio, and that still gets him just to 265. 2.5 points is like the next margin up that clinton has over trump. host: stuart rothenberg has hillary clinton at 279, donald trump at 191 with 68 up for grabs. very similar, but a little

closer for hillary clinton. at this point, is it her race to lose? stuart: i should point out first although i offer my two cents or sometimes $.10 to my colleague, nathan gonzales, nathan really does the ratings. he is the height of the operation these days. but yes, i am there where nathan is and where charlie is, but we should offer the caveat that these ratings were done before the last 48 hours where the -- when the environment has fundamentally shifted. i agree with charlie completely. on one hand if you look at it and say, well it is close, , hillary clinton is just over 270, so anything can happen, and she could lose a state that she looks to be winning now -- but the reality is when you look at the competitive states and how -- how they have performed over the past two election cycles, and now you look at the states, more than a dozen republican officeholders have withdrawn their

endorsements, this race has blown open, and we will be seeing that in the survey data that will come out in the next week or so, depending on what happens in the debate, obviously. the next debate. but i guess if charlie and i were to push all of these undecideds out i think we would , push democratic right now. charlie: i think the odds of hillary clinton going well over 300 electoral votes is much higher than her losing. i think the odds are better of her hitting 325, 350 than of her coming in under 270. stuart: yeah, i have not thought, i have never thought the race was a tossup, even though we heard a lot of that ofm well, i guess the middle september 2 right before the first debate. i never thought it was a pure tossup. now somewhat, but you have to look at the fundamentals.

they refer to hillary clinton in this race. host: all right, we are talking to charlie cook, the editor and publisher of the cook report, as well as stuart rothenberg, the founding editor of the rothenberg and gonzales political report, about the election ahead of tonight's debate at washington university. just a reminder that you can see the debate and all of the coverage of tonight's debate on c-span beginning at 7:30 on c-span as well as c-span.org and c-span radio. so you are saying that the race has blown open. charlie: that was the phrasing are used, yeah. host: previous to this, it would seem that the race had fallen into what charlie called a predictable patterns. talk a little bit about what those are and how they might possibly be changed. charlie: if you look at this race from the first of may

onward, it has most often been at a point where clinton was ahead somewhere between three points and five points, and then everything when donald trump would go off script and mess up and clinton was doing well, the margin would grow up from five six, or seven, or eight. conversely, when donald trump stuck closely to the script, clinton makes mistakes that you have the whole follow from the pneumonia episode, trump pulls out ahead at even, but i do not really buy that. but i think three to five is kind of that default area. it will default to five. but i think now after the first debate and after the billy bush tapes, no, i think three to four, five, will probably be more like the floor rather than the main. guest: i disagree, of course. -- stuart: i disagree, of course.

i look at it a little different way to what protectable patterns means. charlie talked about it it as survey data, but when you look at the demographic groups supporting each candidate, the protectable patterns have been holding. what is the predictable pattern? the single biggest producer of who is going to vote for the republican over the democrat, donald trump or hillary clinton, the obvious one is the party of the individual voters. democrats vote democrat, republican vote republican. so that automatically gives you an insight into how the election is going to break down. we did not have that indicator in the republican primaries, did we, because it was all republican. so you take away that indicator, and suddenly it is much harder to predict what is happening. but you have how white voters will behave versus african americans or latinos. you have older voters, men, then, and when you look at electorate that way, you start seeing dramatic shifts. you have to revert back to predictable patterns that produce printable results. host: ok, we are talking to charlie cook and stuart

rothenberg about the election. viewers can call to join the conversation. (202) 748-8000 for clinton supporters. donald trump supporters can call (202) 748-8001. third-party supporters, (202) 748-8002. and undecided, (202) 748-8003. now, in the past, we have seen revelations about donald trump , things coming up from his comments from about the former miss universe, comments about insisting that those exonerated by dna evidence are guilty, those have not moved the needle. what is different about this weekend that you think will move the needle this time? stuart: well first of all the , needle has been moved because we have seen a number of republican officeholders who had endorsed him who have now unendorsed him. there have been changes. these were not the people who supported trump. that may be true, but they had

endorsed him. they have said they were not going to vote for him, and now they are not. this is just a guess. , henature of the videotape did not know he was being recorded, you get the pure, unadulterated essence of donald trump, his language who he is as , a person, how he sees himself, how he sees others, and i think that struck home with many people. charlie: let me clarify this. on the republican side, i do not think this is going to cost trump a lot of the vote he already had, and i think as sue -- as stu said, republicans are going to mostly stay in line if, for no other reason, that so many of them hate hillary clinton. so vociferously, this election is not about donald trump to them. it is about hillary clinton, so they are locked in. but what it does is it poisons the well of those undecided

voters, of those pure independents in the middle, it means folks that may not like hillary clinton much at all, but at this point, they are sort of more leaning, more likely to go ahead and hold their noses and vote for clinton because it has become so poisoned. i don't expect to see trump's actual vote share drop much at all, because his people, as you said, they have been with him through thick and thin, and as he said, he could shoot somebody in fifth avenue, and they would still be supporting him. when you look at, even before this last incident, the fox news poll that came out before the tapes did, hillary clinton was minus nine in favorable, unfavorable. pretty 5% viewed hillary clinton -- 25% viewed hillary clinton

favorable so she was viewed as unfavorably at 54%. trump was -15, and that is a lot worse even than the real clear politics of the major national polls. we are, he is -- she is -9.5, -20, -20.6. so he was in deep trouble before these tapes came out, and this just absolutely poisons the well of undecideds. host: ok, we have an undecided voter calling in from victoria, texas. owen, you are on with charlie cook and stuart rothenberg. caller: yes, yes gentlemen, , thank you, c-span. what i want to know about is open borders. this country is already in dire shape. there is no jobs to support people. the power grid is failing. our road structures are failing, and the more people that you pop into this country, the more demand for water, electricity,

roads, food -- you can only put so many people in a phone booth, and if you overpopulate this country, and then we have a natural disaster like we had in florida, people had better wake up. host: ok, let's let them address that. how big of an issue, how is that resonating in the the election? charlie: ok, that does not sound like an undecided voter, ok? [laughter] charlie: they ought to have a lie detector test when people call in and say whether they are trump, undecided, or clinton. sure, there are a lot of issues facing the country, and immigrants one, the economy one, jobs are another. there are a whole bunch of issues out there. you are looking at some really cross-pressured voters. i mean when you look at , republicans and conservatives and liberals and democrats come s, if you look at swing voters,

they tend to think that hillary clinton is smart, knowledgeable, experienced, confident, and they don't like her and they don't trust her. they look at donald trump, they like the fact that he is not a politician, he says whatever is on his mind. they may not agree with him on a couple of issues, but they question whether he has the temperament, the judgment the , personality, and even the fundamental knowledge about governing that you need to have. so these voters are very very , cross-pressured, and i think the information that is piling up that is more likely to take them to the negative side for trump is getting pretty overwhelming. stuart: it sounds like owen is a trump voter or will be a trump voter even if he has not decided , and i think immigration is certainly a big issue. some have looked at the country's history and heritage of immigration and welcoming people, and people like owen onnt out to the stresses economy, government services, and it really depends on how you see the issue. host: let's talk about polls for a minute.

what polls do you like? what should voters look in look , to it determining whether a poll is trustworthy or not? well, we talk about the -- about this all the time, and it can be a controversial subject. look, we believe, as most kind of experience old hands do, that there are certain polls that are more accurate than others. but that it is always a safe thing to look at the whole range of surveys from a particular time period. there will be surveys outside the margin of error. specifically that is the case. so the safest thing to do is to put eight, 10, 15 polls to see the general direction of the election, how it is moving, and the general contours of it. there are some polls getting a lot of attention these days that seem to be outliers consistently. the rasmussen polls are often

outliers, "the l.a. times"-usc polls have been outliers. some of those i am more skeptical about. we look at all of them. we look at major media polls. charlie: the danger is for people to do one of two things either to cherry pick where they , look for the poll that tells them what they would most like to see happen, and that is the most accurate poll in their that tellsny poll them anything differently is obviously a logically flawed poll. the other thing is to assess over whatever the most recent poll is no matter who took it, no matter whether they have any track record at all, and no matter whether it is consistent with all the other data. what i would suggest, and i will do this here for the overhead camera, look at the averages. this one is realclearpolitics.com, which is a conservative-leaning website, but they do a very good job of

doing the averages for all the major national polls and averages of the key battleground states. and if you touch the little button right here, you can change to the other set and then widen back out to the other group of battleground states. and that keeps you, but looking at the averages, it keeps you from cherry picking. it keeps you from obsessing over the most recent poll, and that is really the best way to do it. and then, polling, i will say, polling the very best pollsters , in the business, their work is not as reliable as it was 20, 30 years ago, and most people think that is because of cell phones. it is not really. that is sort of a minor problem. it is really id. the telemarketers have burned it out so that a lot of people just simply won't pick up the phone. so polling is not as reliable, which means you just have to be

more careful, and it means cherry picking is even more of a problem. so look at the averages, and then you will have the gist. i was talking to people. congresswomanto a not too long after the 2012 election, and she said "i was , stunned, i had no idea mitt romney was going to lose. all the way to election day, i thought he was going to win." and i thought, you know, "lady, you ought to get out more, and you ought to look at more than one network." i mean, really, take it all in. take it all in. don't just listen to people you agree with. host: it is rumored that mitt romney himself also thought he was going to win up to the end. up next we have dan from marietta georgia, a trump , supporter. good morning. you are on with charlie cook and stuart rothenberg. caller: first of all, i am an independent. secondly, i am an african-american woman, 59 years degree. i have a bs

what gets me mad is when i hear people always trying to put black people in one genre. we are all going to follow lockstep with the democratic party. no. and the reason that i'm voting for donald trump is because i want something different. you can't want something different if you keep voting the same way. and secondly, this being about, what he made a statement 15 years ago -- i find it really hypocritical, especially with women when bill clinton had a woman have oral sex with him in the white house. host: ok, let's lethost: charlie cook and stuart rothenberg break that down a bit. charlie: her opinion is as valuable as anybody else's, absolutely, but it is a bit of an outlier. if you look at the last three months' worth of nbc-"wall street journal" data, so it is

, among0 voters african-americans, 80% of african americans are for clinton, 5% for trump, so she has got -- hang on a second, yeah, 80% for clinton, 5% for trump. out of 28 -- interviews, only 17 2800 african-americans that were for donald trump. is the african-american community monolithic? but you know what, an 80-point -- actually, clinton got 86%. it was 86% to 5%, it was an 80-point margin. i miss read the tab. overwhelming, and the danger for the republican party is with the rhetoric going , on in the republican party, they may be turning the latino community into the next african american -- in other words among one with the republicans having a really big problem to having a really, really, really big problem. stuart: yeah, let me make two

quick points. we always say this. what charlie and i do for living is to try to explain what is happening in politics -- not what you should do, who you should vote for, what your opinion should be. i really don't care. -- the the best person viewer is the best person to judge how he or she should vote and what issues. when we talk about it as -- when we talk about an election, we talk about it as handicappers, as analysts explaining what is going on, what has happened, and what we think will happen. this is important here. and the second point, when i talked about predictable patterns by looking at demographic groups, i do not assume that all whites, african americans, or all women vote for one party or one candidate. what we do is we kind of take the baseline, how they voted in 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000 and see are the groups moving around? it doesn't mean it is an individual voter moving around.

sure it is individual votes, but we want to see how the groups are behaving so that we understand the party coalitions and the candidates' coalitions. host: talk a little bit about the hispanic voting population. they are not monolithic. it is a fast-growing segment of the united states. you see conservatives and states like florida. you see more liberals in new england and other states. talk about how that plays out. stuart: you see hispanics and latinos coming from different countries and cultures. jenna relation generationally, there is the difference between older cubans and younger cubans. you have all these subtleties in the groups. but you can step back and say what percentage of latinos did , mitt romney get in 2012? and he got 27% of them. you compare with how george bush did with latinos, he got 40%. charlie: 40% in the exit polls. some statisticians say was 44%.

but whether 40% or 44%, compared to 27%. stuart: yeah, yeah. so when we look at the map, we look at how is trump doing with that voter group, the individuals in that voter group? latinos is a growing part of the american electorate increasingly , important in several states but really throughout the country. that is why we look at latinos. that is why we look at different elements of the latino electorate. charlie: and trump is getting 17% of the latino vote, 10 points under what mitt romney did. and that was, you know, i mean the thing is 88% of all of mitt , romney's votes came from whites. 90% of john mccain's votes came from whites. 88% of george w. bush's votes came from whites. that recipe does not work anymore in a country where the share of the white vote has gone from 87% in 1992 to 72% in 2012,

and will probably be about 70%, some people say 69% in this next , election. with a republican national committee autopsy report from --3, they have got, this is they got to change. they are going to go like dinosaurs if they do not change. stuart: well they only need to change if they want to win an election. host: all right, walter is calling in from baltimore. third-party supporter. good morning, walter. caller: good morning. as an independent more than third-party, when johnson opened his mouth, it was like a clean version of trump. the man is an idiot. and so, my vote is going to hillary clinton. to your guests, indulge me with this one fact. the voter suppression of the

nation, not just african-american, but most people who, just the idea of not being allowed to have their vote counted, i beg you to add that to your mix as you comment on the idiocy and filth of that. i told you on c-span at year ago that donald trump is a filthy jerk -- host: let's let them unpack that. guest: you did have some very rigorous, onerous, depending on your perspective, of voter id and other restrictions put on since 2012. more restricted early voting, that sort of thing, in some states. it looked like it can make a difference in some states. north carolina with the near the top of the list. however, the federal courts have

started throwing out some -- not all -- of these, which will ease them up a little. the thing is if you look back, and i don't have the statistics at my fingertips, but you look at the number of voter fraud cases prosecuted during the george w. bush's eight years in office, they were miniscule. there is very, very, very little voter fraud problem in this country. and the bush administration aggressively looked for it sought it out and did not find , much. but there are a lot of republicans out there that are absolutely convinced there is a massive voter fraud problem. some efforts in state legislatures, some are sincere and some are trying to get partisan gangs to make it more difficult for strongly democratic voting groups to go. but the courts are starting to

interfere -- intervene. guest: i think i will throw a hand grenade on this one. early voting -- i am not a huge fan of early voting. i like the idea of the entire country going to vote on one day. i think there should be processes, options for people who cannot get to vote. we should make it easier for that. but people have already voted before donald trump's tape. that is their choice. they can consider it, they cannot consider it, that is their choice. but i like the idea of the whole country taking a deep breath and going and voting on whatever day it is. november 8. guest: i wrote a column about this eight or nine years ago. to me there is a certain norman rockwell thing about going up to schoolhouse and voting. maybe have your kid by the hand. i had an old high school friend who moved to oregon write me a letter, who said, "picture this. you are sitting with your spouse

at the kitchen table, and you have all of the voter guides out, and you are systematically going through the whole ballot. and some of these states have lots of ballot initiatives and things. you are really able to make a more studied decision." i am like stu, i'm old-fashioned. i like the norman rockwell thing. but the whole world is changing. i think this old curmudgeons have to go along with it. but it does reduce the volatility in the races, so latebreaking events matter less when a third of voters are casting ballots early. host: as you said, you wrote as a twice-weekly columnist for roll call. stewart -- guest: i switched a long time ago to "national journal" from "rollcall." host: thank you for that. your resumes are both long.

i am trying to pick out some things out of it. stuart rothenberg, columnist at the "washington post" as well. next, we have tim from greenwood, colorado, clinton supporter. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. gentlemen i am kind of a , political junkie. the first two sites i open in the morning is 538 for the big picture, then c-span for the individual view. my question is based on demographics and future demographics. i look at my generation i am , over 50. every time i hear callers who will call in and defend trump's positions on race or even his recent billy bush tapes, these are people who come from the "father knows best" generation. and somebody like kimberly and her generation, they do not buy into this. whether he says that or not, they don't buy into this. i am wondering if you can speak to what is going to happen over

the next 20 years as my generation gets scraped off their earth, and it is her generation and kids voting. how is that going to impact the vote? guest: let me add that kimberly is scrupulously nonpartisan and independent. but the caller makes a good point. when you look at younger generations, again, they are very different from those of us who grew up, born in the 1950's and 1960's, or 1940's or even 1970's. looking again at the nbc-"wall street journal" numbers, among voters 18 to 34, that trump is behind. by 17 points. the republicans are loaded up 65 and older.

and trump also performs a little better than the typical or as well than the typical republican among the younger group. you get under 50, he has some support, but it is not a lot. host: doesn't hillary clinton also have an issue getting millennials? guest: she is having some trouble. 18 to 35-year-olds they view her , as a traditional politician, using politician language. they seem to want more dramatic change. there is no question about that. but walter is right about how you have to look at the age cohorts, age groups. but you have to remember, as they filtered through the electorate sometimes their views change. i was born in the 1940's, older voters were very democratic because they were part of the new deal generation. they entered as new dealists and

kept that through. there were changes of course. right now, older voters are more republican because they entered at a different point in time. it is funny. many people who enter as 65-year-old republicans, they started off significantly more liberal. generations change. the basic point is younger voters generally tend to be more progressive and liberal. that is a long-term problem for republicans. they will have to change voting patterns for some groups. guest: if you think about who is the dominant political person for a generation. for people who grew up immediately after and during the great depression, it was franklin roosevelt. for the group 65 and older now, it is ronald reagan. and the voting patterns reflect that. nowadays, it is not so much ronald reagan. you have a lot of millennial voters who were not even alive when ronald reagan was president.

all of them in fact. host: ok, we have a call from coleman in tulsa, a donald trump supporter. caller: yes, we trump supporters really do not want the united states to go the way of venezuela. we talk to the issues. and the issue discussion of trump wins -- i know a lot of people elected duck talk of the issue, like the caller who called in as an independent, talking about illegal immigration and the concern of the guests who ducked it and called him a trump supporter. that is a tactic people continue to use. do not talk about the issues -- global warming, for example, is a disaster. big government takeover of energy industry and run the costs up.

no discussion on the issues. that is why the media is keeping people ignorant in order for them to vote democrat. host: let's let charlie and stuart unpack that. guest: when you look at the data, you actually use numbers -- i hear this from liberals and conservatives. democrats and republicans. they all complain that our person would win on the issues, it is the other extraneous things that are changing. i would tell coleman it is his job and donald trump's job to convince people he is right on the issues. and or to talk to people in a way in which they will hear him. and use that information to decide how to cast their votes. to blame that on the media, that we want to keep people ignorant, there is a wealth of information out there. not just very different tv channels, internet websites,

books, magazines -- there is enough information for people to decide for themselves. so i guess i do not have a lot of sympathy with coleman in this regard. i do not think it is the media's fault. i think hillary clinton supporters would say just the same as you, why can we not get back to the issues? she will win on the issues but , it is an extraneous thing. guest: i would add a depends on the issue. i am looking. this is the fox news poll taken just before the first presidential debate. i'm sorry after the first , presidential debate but before the bush thing. in terms of race relations, who would you trust more to do a better job? clinton, 58%, trump 35%. foreign policy, clinton 56%,

trump 39%. immigration, clinton 51%. trump, 45%. nominating the next supreme court justice -- clinton, 58%, trump, 44%. now we get into terrorism and national security. 47% clinton, 48% trump. handling the economy. clinton, 45%, trump, 50%. he has got a narrow edge, a five-point edge. managing tax dollars, clinton, 44%, trump, 49%. close but slight edge to trump. this join terrorist groups like -- destroying terrorist groups like isis. clinton, 41%, trump, 52%. it depends which issue you are looking at. this is the fox news poll. it is not likely it is slanted against a conservative candidate or donald trump. in terms of the ability to handle a crisis situation, clinton, 54% have confidence in her.

45% would not. she is plus nine. in the same fox poll. trump, 45% would have trust or confidence in trump's judgment in a crisis. 45% would not. he is at -10. it depends on which angle you are looking at. guest: let me add it is not always simply what is your position on issues and the other person's position. a lot of people vote in who they generally have confidence in in terms of leadership and the ability to communicate with the country. other qualities -- judgment. it is not about issues. it is about understanding problems and making the right decision, whatever issues come up. host: talking about style and substance, there are still 30 days left in the election. a lot can happen. if donald trump wins, how might that change the way campaigns

are run from here on in? guest: when you watch the tv ads of automobiles racing around mountain sides and stuff, saying "this is done on a closed track by a professional driver," what i would tell would-be candidates of the future is "do not try this at home." donald trump was born and raised in the media capital of the world. while he has never run for office before, he is clearly a lifelong student of the media and has learned how to -- and i do not say this in a pejorative way -- manipulate the media to his benefit. but we have never seen a politician able to do this. maybe there are other people in the future who will figure out how to do it. i say the average, typical person running for office, i would not try to replicate this. your odds of pulling it off are a lot less. guest: we are also at a particular time and place.

the electorate has a particular mood, which may continue indefinitely or may change, where voters are looking for a more traditional campaign. the joke around political circles is if donald trump wins, every specialist in ground game field operation will be put out of business because he did not have a field operation in the primaries and nomination fight and is only now trying to put something together. host: melvin is calling from fort lauderdale, florida, clinton supporter. good morning. caller: good morning. please give me an opportunity to get through this. com not sure i differ with leman. i have not heard donald trump explain one thing about any policy he has put out yet. he talks about the polls he is up in. he will never give you an in-depth way of how he is going to enforce any of the things he is talking about. one thing you need to do is have someone explain the differences in the borders.

there are only two or three countries where the borders are completely closed. most are controlled. most other parts are open. when the lady guest indicated hillary clinton is against trade, no. she is for fair and open trade. lastly, this thing about donald trump being a genius. how in 1998 he was able to come back. i have never heard of a genius -- where was that genius from 1998 with the bankruptcies in 2009? the only thing he is a genius at is convincing people he is a genius because no one, no genius fails three times in the same area. host: that is a lot to unpack. let's let charlie cook and stu rothenberg take a crack. guest: melvin has a favorite in the race. another candidate he does not write. for a variety of reasons, i think he made that clear.

that is a legitimate point of view, just as, to some extent, coleman's was. they like one candidate but not the other. guest: you do have to segment the trump vote into two groups. there is one group that just really likes and admires donald trump. there is a second group that despises hillary clinton. and they are willing to look past trump's problems and any shortcomings he may have, just as hillary clinton has shortcomings. they are willing to look past because the defining the pivot point, point is hillary clinton. they will be there no matter what. i do not think donald trump's vote will go away in any way, but his ability to tap into the voters between the 45 yard line, that are undecided and generally do not like hillary clinton, his ability is very restricted in terms of reaching those people. host: let's shift to the senate races.

the senate is possibly up for grabs this election year. how is the presidential race in general affecting the senate races in some of the close polls? guest: i think the dominant forces in this race are unrelated to the presidential. whenever i tell people that they want to look at the senate races nationally, i suggest they do two things. one is to think "is this a presidential election or midterm election?" presidential elections, the turnout is big and broad. it looks like the country. in midterm elections, the turnout is about 40% lower, and whiter moreder, conservative republicans. and you have to look at what happened six years earlier. in 2010, president obama's numbers were in the toilet. the affordable care act was radioactive. democrats had an awful year.

republicans had a great year. republicans were able to pick up six seats. as a result, republicans have 24 seats up in 2016. democrats only have 10. seven republican seats are up in states where obama carried. there are no democratic seats open in states mitt romney carried. so republicans just have more exposure here. it has nothing to do with donald trump or hillary clinton. no matter what is going on, they would be having some problems. i think the senate will be a photo finish. 50-50, give or take, a seat. we will have to wait and see. guest: up until a couple days ago, i thought the impact was minimal because -- and i still think until i'm disproven, which it may be disproven in the next week -- that republican senate candidates, mostly senate incumbents, have been able to run as their own candidate, localized their races and focus

on their opponent. and not have their races be a referendum on donald trump. part of this is donald trump is a pretty unique political figure and presidential candidate. i think voters have been making this distinction. "ok, there is donald trump but there's kelly ayotte." "there is donald trump, but there is pat toomey." the danger for republicans is if donald trump does so poorly that as we approach the election it looks like he will lose and lose badly there will , be a greater risk of republican voters saying "i will not even bother to vote, i will stay home." now republicans are making an effort to avoid that logic and to try to energize the republican voters and people who support toomey and ayotte and richard burr and the like. we will see how that goes. if the race is competitive, if secretary clinton is leading donald trump on election day by

3, 4, 5, 6 once, that is one thing. if it starts to look like a 10 point or 12 point race, which would be huge in the current political environment, that would be a problem for the republicans. guest: i agree completely. for republicans, the danger is turnout drops. do, or what i to think they will do is focus their argument on -- for the swing voters who do not particularly like hillary clinton but will probably end up voting for her is make the case "do not give hillary clinton a blank check." because you are going to have a lot of voters who will reluctantly voting for clinton, but they do not really like or trust her. i think this argument, "do not give clinton a blank check", could help a pat toomey in pennsylvania or richard burr or kelly ayotte in new hampshire. that could be pivotal. host: taking a look at the cook report on senate races.

the map here shows seven races play, seven tossup's including nevada, indiana, pennsylvania, north carolina, florida, as well as new hampshire. stuart rothenberg, the rothenberg and gonzales report has three tossups. they are new hampshire, nevada, and pennsylvania. but the new hampshire race in particular has been one that republicans have been watching. let's look at a political ad from democrat governor maggie hassan, who is challenging republican kelly ayotte in that race, trying to tie kelly ayotte to donald trump. [video clip] >> would you tell a child to aspire to be like donald trump? would you point to him as a role model? >> absolutely. i would do that. donald trump she gained a : massive amount of weight. it was a problem. >> donald trump called you "miss piggy." how did that make you feel? >> so sad.

donald trump here is a woman, : and she cannot make it 15 feet to her car. >> as you can see there, he suffers from a chronic condition that impairs movement of his arms. donald trump: "i do not know what i said, i do not remember." i look right in the sad, ugly face of hers. blood coming out of her wherever. >> would you tell a child to aspire to be like donald trump as a role model? , >> absolutely, i would do that. host: senator ayotte, immediately after the debate, said she misspoke and donald trump was not a role model. yesterday, she went even further, saying she will not vote -- she never endorsed donald trump it will not after the revelation of the tape with billy bush. how impactful do you think that ad will be? guest: this was a race somewhere between dead even and kelly ayotte up by three or four

points. it was awfully close. ayotte had a little bit of an advantage. my guess is it pulls it back to dead even. republican candidates -- this is just a horrible year, a year that they are having to perform all kinds of gymnastics. they're getting pulled between the trump supporters and swing voters. they are having a rough time. and the democrats have had the same thinking years with democratic tickets were having problems. guest: the presidential race has gone back and forth from being competitive to opening up four or five points. it may open up even more. the republican senate and house candidates have moved around, they thought donald trump is stronger than they thought he would be. so they were willing to say they would vote for him. but then he says something outrageous and the race changes. this is a problem. this is the ad that you showed, this is what democrats around the country are trying to do.

nationalize the race. the senate race is nothing more than a referendum on donald trump. republican candidates don't want that. kelly ayotte would love to have her comment back right now. she said yes, he is a role model. she would love to have that back because it was a mistake. host: we have richard calling in from massachusetts, an undecided voter. richard you are on with charlie , cook and stuart rothenberg. caller: thank you. first of all, i am 72. i have never voted in my life. these debates are nothing but jokes. they know what they will be asked. they call each other names and closet and what is in your closet and then they shake hands. my number one thing is this government is nothing but a camouflaged dictatorship. and you have nothing if they do not want you to say it. i do not know how may times i

called my congresspeople to brown, kennedy, mackie, now warren, and they just laugh at me. i have three letters sitting at my table, all from warren. it is the same old stuff. they do not listen to you. that is why i do not vote. they never, ever listen to you. host: let's let them respond. guest: i have been on c-span as long as there has been a c-span. stu and i have both been here. i have never said anything ugly to a caller. let me just say this. but if you think this country is a dictatorship, if you don't like what's going on in this country and your 73 euros -- years old and it never voted, i'm sorry. i have no sympathy for you whatsoever. you watched c-span, you write your member of congress, and you do not vote? good grief. host: next, alan is calling from washington, d.c., third-party voter. you are on with charlie cook and

stuart rothenberg. caller: i really appreciate your work. i am in st. louis now. i am fighting for student loan justice. i have been in philadelphia and cleveland and hofstra and longwood. i think i have a good feel on the ground and looking at polls. i can tell you that i really think a very large percentage of bernie sanders supporters are going to vote for the green party. yet i am not seeing any thing that reflects this in the polls. to me, it is mystifying. i was hoping you could comment on that. and if i could get a plug for studentloans.org. -- studentloanjustice.org. guest: you know, jill stein getting, what, 3%, more or less, which is roughly 10 times the third of 1% she got in 2012. i think there are a lot of people who do not like hillary clinton, do not like donald trump, they are tempted to vote

for a gary johnson or jill stein. but at the same time, they know the election is important, they know the outcome is important, and throwing away a vote. it is basically saying "i do not want to have to choose between hillary clinton and donald trump, so i will throw my vote to someone who has no possible chance of winning." most people do not do that. some do. there will be some that will. host: but is it a throwaway? democrats say a vote for gary johnson is essentially a vote for donald trump. guest: gary johnson and jill stein, neither will be elected president. in a sense, you are choosing not to choose between the two people who could possibly win. is that throwing it away? it is a statement. these people are making a statement that they don't like the two major party candidates. they like jill stein's agenda and gary johnson. that is fine. but it really does not make them

deciders in the choice between trump and clinton, which will decide the next president. host: a while ago, we saw an ad from new hampshire, democratic governor maggie hassan. let's look at an ad from republican senator kelly ayotte. [video clip] >> both donald trump and hillary clinton are far from perfect. i am not perfect either. so when partisan politicians shut down the government, i led the fight to re-open it. i worked to find solutions to new hampshire's heroin epidemic. i have been called a problem solver and ranked as one of the most bipartisan senators. i am kelly ayotte. i approve this message because whether i'm working with republicans, democrats, or independents, i am standing up for new hampshire. host: does that message of bipartisanship carry anymore? guest: in new hampshire it is a

good ad. she is trying to separate herself from trump, yet not get in bed with clinton. i thought it was a good ad. both the ads we watched were very good ads. guest: right in the beginning with donald trump as a nominee, she had to carve out her own personal profile. the way you do that is you talk about how bipartisan you are, how independent you are. you actually note areas where you disagree with your own party or your own party nominee. s charlie said new hampshire has , a good chunk of independent swing voters. i do not think she is trying to get hard-core democrats, but i do not think that is the purpose of the act. -- ad. but independence, soft democrats, swing voters. people who do not like donald trump, and you say you are a different politician? it is a good message. next washington journal we get your reaction