for good partnership, because of that, you know, coming in of an outsider together with all the insiders here to get something done. david: i have many questions, but i want to invite people. we have two microphones. if you make your way there, we will switch over to you and let you get a question or two in. if anybody's interested, go to the mic and i will point you. let me out. i was thinking what can i ask you now that i couldn't have asked you two years ago? i got a bump of questions. let's start with this one. who are your favorite democrats to work with? and who would mike pence be looking for to sort of work more in a bipartisan way? mr. cantor: there plenty of individuals i can name that i worked with on foreign policy issues, especially as it gamed

to middle east and israel. there are a number of democrats that would work on those things. there were other democrats who business me on issues, the jobs act, if you remember. even infrastructure. so, again, a number of people. but as we know and there's so many people in the house, there's a leadership structure in place so that you can help leverage any conversation that you have to committees and the rest. so certainly committee chairmen and on the democratic side, chuck schumer is the one with the leverage, i assume, when he becomes minority leader. he's the one with whatever leverage there is because has the ability to stand in the way to stop there being 60 votes on things that are not subject to reconciliation. i assume this white house,

incoming white house, will be very focused on making sure that he's kept in very close contact and shares with him the intention. chuck schumer is somebody who i met with regularly. i know paul did when he was budget chair and ways and means medicare on immigration issues -- and ways and means chair on immigration issues and others. i suspect that's the line of communication you should keep an eye on. mr. ellis: seems like pence will be the legislative liaison. mr. cantor: makes sense. mr. ellis: i see somebody with a question. we'll go to my left and then we'll go to my right. sorry, i didn't see you. >> donald trump broke many of the unspoken rules in the campaign around things he said and things that are not considered ok to say campaigning. and peter says listen to what means. as you said this is the persuasion of politics.

he's also indicated that he would break many of the rules of separating his own personal interests from the institution of the office. for instance, not putting his investments in a blind trust. curious if you think the republican leadership will act to try to influence him on that to maintain some of the codes that have been considered a crow sanths for the democracy. -- a crow sang for the democratcy. mr. cantor: i have nobody what everybody's thinking is. my own opinion is he needs to do that. he needs to go in and be as transparent as possible. that is the essence of who we're as a country. as i travel the world and i see these other governments, whether it is in brazil, in china, europe, or otherwise, the middle east, they look to us and know that things work here. and i think so much of that rests on you know what the rules are. people play by the rules. you have confidence in the

judiciary. and the transparency of that institution. and certainly the transparency of our lawmaking process to guard against anything even having the perception of being untoward. i believe this election showed us, clinton foundation and the rest and all that sort of hung around that controversy did have in it this notion that things were too opaque. so my counsel would be, and not asking me, my counsel would be certainly you have to be transparent. must put it and separate it out from your official duties. mr. ellis: over here. >> thank you very much for your comments and your insight this morning. we talked a lot about white middle class voter being instrumental in trump's victory from the rural areas. and your comments now you said those voters have definitely been accepted into the

republican party. so one of the other things that we saw in trump's rallies from that group of voters were comments that were negative towards people of other races. people from other countries. people from the lgbt community. i would like to know how those beliefs and views and values fit in to the republican party moving forward? mr. cantor: which believes and values? >> views that could be considered very racist. negative comments about people from -- mexico, for example. those kind of negative comments that we really saw at the trump rallies and those people coming out at the rallies. mr. cantor: there's no room in the republican party for any of that. i think that you have seen president-elect trump, his campaign denounce a lot of that. didn't always get the coverage i think it should have. perhaps early on it wasn't quick enough in coming.

but i do think you saw leaders on the hill, paul ryan, mitch mcconnell, and others denounce those type of statements, sentiments as soon as they arose. my position is absolutely no tolerance for any kind of racism, any kind of nationalism, any kind of any semitism of which i certainly have some unfortunately some experience. again, just zero tolerance on that. it should come from leaders when it occurs. mr. ellis: we've got just enough time for two questions. start here and the lady in red. >> hi, again for coming. great to see you. i'm just wondering what you think will happen now with obamacare? just a small question. mr. cantor: how long do we have? no question -- i think it's already been discussed and it was probably in the works, we

were in the works with it if romney had won, is in this ation packages fiscal year geared towards obamacare repeal and replace. i think the latter piece is really important and very difficult. and then you will have the next fiscal year a reconciliation package geared towards tax reform. we talked about the need for that in terms of the infrastructure funding. there is clearly huge problems -- i get to see it now from the business side. companies that lois works with and whether it's in the insurance arena, the medical provider arena, hospitals, this is a very challenging environment that they are operating in, and especially if you look at the exchanges and look at individuals who are receiving these premium hikes. which has ripple effect in the

private market insurance markets, and the rest. so there's a real need to fix something. even if hillary clinton were elected, she would have had to go to the congress to fix something. these things are spiraling out of control and downward. there's a great opportunity i think out there for the republicans to step up and finally coalesce around an obamacare replace. and the devil's in the details. when i was on the hill worked a lot with many of the physicians as well as committee chairs to try and gain consensus. and i think they'll get there. i do. but it's, to me, probably going to be for them a priority and should be. mr. ellis: we're running out of time. i keep my promise to the lady over there. >> thank you, peggy, congressional correspondentent for the hispanic outlook. i'm so glad you mentioned the kids act i wonder how many journalists don't even know that republicans wanted to pass a law

that would legalize the children who were brought in illegally and the democrats completely stopped it in 2013. mr. cantor: where were you two years ago? >> i was there, but nobody wants to write about it. the narrative is such. that being said, there are other piecemeal deals that the republicans have proposed over the years that never get any coverage because it's only about comprehensive. do you think now that there may be a chance for some of those piecemeal deals like e-verify or expanding investment visas or maybe giving green cards to some foreign students. by the way there's over a million foreign students now in the united states this year. over a million mark. we start legalizing we better start talking about numbers. what about some of those issues in piecemeal, not comprehensive?

mr. cantor: i hope there is incremental progress abounding together with some these larger initiatives that president-elect trump will be about. it's always been the challenge because people by definition say piecemeal is somehow a compromise because you got a vision here, and just because you're not getting all the way there you are getting here, you are compromising the rest. i don't agree with that because i think every day, each month, you kept going, you ultimately get there. i share your sentiment. mr. ellis: you reflected president obama's remarks yesterday that it's not a straight line you zig and zag. in the spirit of new day and new hope and now historic phrase, i want to present you as thanks with the "roll call" make congress great again. mr. cantor: that's awesome. thank you. [applause] mr. ellis: thank you, eric cantor. we'll take a short break.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. isit ncicap.org]

>> thank you. it's good to be here. if you were to go back and look at the tape from two years ago when i was on a panel, you will

remember that i said that donald trump would be elected president of the united states. no, that's not true. i think the tape is lost, you'll just have to believe me. i asm excited to be here today not overwhelm because the election is over and we're still living and breathing, but we have a great panel. i asked a group of party strategists, these are real party strategists, not the ones you see on cable news. i'm not sure what they do for a living. but these are the people that have been working on these races behind the scenes, working hard for months now, years going back, but this cycle. i'm excited to bring them in front of the curtain and talk about these races. independent t, expenditure director for the democratic congressional campaign committee. martha, the two-time i.e.

director for the democrat senatorial campaign committee. though not this cycle. she's playing that role today. jessica, legal counsel and i.e. director for the national republican congressional committee. and daniel, i.e. director for the national republican senatorial committee. that's a lot of -- i think i got all that right. what i want to do today is really just try to peel back the curtain and talk about how we got here. and the first question for all of you is, looking back, were there any clues that you -- any evidence that you missed or maybe dismissed that would have led you to believe that we would have the night that we had on tuesday night? >> that's a good quefment for us, for jessica and myself, that's a little bit hard to answer because our districts are

just sort of piecemeal. daniel and martha would see the whole picture in new hampshire. they would see the whole picture in nevada. in wisconsin. ours were piecemeal. it's a little bit hard to say if we missed something in the data. what i think we did miss, at least i would be curious if this is true in jessica's as well, is how well trump performed in some of our districts. iowa won, for example. we had hillary clinton winning that handily. i think i read today in one of the morning newsletters that trump actually ended up winning that district. there is something that we missed there just in the data. but i don't really know if i would say that we missed something strategically that was sort of apparent or even in retrospect. you look at the poll and no poll's right 100% of the time, but you look at what it says and

you interpret it to the best of your ability. when it's sort of off by that, it's not that you missed something, it's that the data missed something. that's a deeper question that's going to take longer to try and answer. >> i think ty is right about that. you sort of -- look, the national polling, public polling, the major networks polling, everybody had turnout assumptions. that assumed a higher democratic turnout and a slightly lower republican turnout. it's safe to say based on the numbers from tuesday. so it isn't specific to me, it's not specific to the house or the senate or internal polling or public polling. i think it's safe to say across the board the majority of -- majority of the research that was done sort of was off on the turnout model. and i think it's ok to admit that sort of we made strategic decisions with the best data we

had at the time, but that turnout model was wrong. and i think that is an important thing for us to acknowledge and to learn from going forward. and i also think there is always in these elections particularly in wave leakses which we have seen time and time again, this pretty significant group of late deciders n this election we were looking at a lot of data that said we were winning or we were tied or we were down, but that we had a significant group of undecides. these undecided and late deciders had a very significant role to play in the outcome on tuesday. nathan: i know you two wanted the best case scenario. did you see what happened on tuesday -- >> i think one thing. i hope the story is written about diving into the polling because it was interesting for us as we were watching the polls from very early on. the stories were being written in the media, trump was going to kill us.

and we were polling and not really seeing that affected our house races. i thought am i totally wrong? we weren't seeing t that's in large part, the polling after the 12th cycle, where we did miss the boat quite significantly in a lot of ways. our screens were too tight. we opened them wide up and taking in lot of these people that weren't typically voters. we were doing much larger cell phone numbers than we had previously. our polling was showing us that on the house level that a lot of our folks weren't going to be affected so much by the trump stuff as people thought they were. nathan: what were you seeing? >> the traditional polling had us down the stretch fair enough in the margins. the thing that gave us more confidence going into the election night, not that we would win or in the hunt, was the modeling analytics we had. that showed us trending in the

right direction in several key states. and some. abe data out of certain states. nathan: absentee. >> yeah. we'll know more when the files come back in january and february, but i think there is a serious turnout problem, huge turnout problem on the democrat side in several states. nathan: because the senate map overlapped with the presidential map significantly in some ways, talk about the senate races being in the hunt, what were you seeing with the trump-clinton numbers that may have led you to believe that he could have been elected president? daniel: in pennsylvania and north carolina, wisconsin, florida, ohio we finished ahead of trump. it's interesting if you look at the results between senate and presidential, we got there different paths. pennsylvania, for example, we dramatically overperformed trump in southeast pennsylvania he overperformed us slightly in

western pennsylvania. we always knew we were going to run ahead of him in certain states. it's a matter of how quickly he could -- where he closed the gap. to say that we thought he was going to win, i don't think anyone is going to say that. but we knew he was in the hunt and had been getting significantly stronger over the last 10 days. ty: i don't want to say this is something that we missed, but jess made a point i want to undouble click on. we made a calculated gamble that political gravity would take over for down ballot. when we would be in like minnesota 3 and erik paulsen would be up by 10 in the head-to-head, up by 12, but donald trump was losing the district by 22 points. history would show that a house candidate can't overperform that much. and so i don't want to say it's like something he missed, but it was a calculated gamble that at some point political gravity

would take over. that's why i think that one of the most interesting things that we'll be able to do and most useful things we'll be able to do when we finally get the data back, find out how the president ened up doing in these congressional districts. to our point, if you were making that john or eric or barbara comstock aren't going to overperform by 20 points but trump only lieses the district by six points, that then your gamble will not pay off. nathan: looking back now thursday morning quarterback, is there a strategic -- would you have made any strategic changes? today in today's "roll call" my colleague wrote a story about the house. she had a quote from the director of the house majority p.a.c., she said had we seen more accurate numbers of what that turnout looked like, we may have made some different spending decisions and we may not have talked about trump so much in some of these districts.

how does that jive with -- looking back now did democrats go too much in on trump? particularly on the house? ty: the quote before that was drawn and quarterered which is unpleasant as well. look, here is a fundamental point about house races. it is almost impossible to break out from the national narrative. so if you look at a race in new hampshire, right, we were buried under 135,000 gross rating points of television. in week one in the las vegas media market, there were 57 different political ads running. so when you are a house race, much more -- senate races now with the outside money, there was $130 million spent? pennsylvania. $120 spent in new hampshire. they can sort of create their own space and tell their own story. for house candidates, it's almost impossible to do that. to run something outside the national narrative, you need a uniquely disqualifying piece of

personal baggage, like danny tarkanian in nevada 3. and you need millions of dollars. we spent $5.1 million in nevada 3. you cannot do that in every race. for house races you are much more at the whim of what the national conversation is. and we made the conscious decision that you have to lean into that because that is really the only path we're going to take. the nrcc did it as well. a lot of their ads were about the iran deal and more national issues than kind of like local things. for a couple candidates they did local things. you are not going to beat barbara comstock because she voted against the silver line. you have to put your shoulder into some silver line riders out there -- whoa. you have to put your shoulder into that because you are very much at the whim of the national race. i don't think that i would go back and do anything differently by any means.

but we just thought that trump would not perform as well in these districts as he did. if you could go back and say what would you do strategically differently? not have donald trump run for president. all that to say we leaned in and that's what you should do and that's what you continue to do. we're going to get to a point with so much money in the system that house races are basically going to be a parliamentary election. we're going to long -- days of the john barrios of the world are going to be gone because you are very much going to live and die by your party. you just lean into that, i think. i could be wrong. nathan: one of the fascinating things about this election, there are many, is kind of an upheaval at the presidential level by electing donald trump. it's almost a status quo election in the house and senate. we're looking at plus two in the senate. plus six in the house, maybe

plus seven. but probably plus six. that's a fairly static election. daniel: early in the cycle we do an literal polling. we had a battery of questions. the democratic candidate how much do you think he or she is similar to hillary clinton on a variety of measures? same on the house side. early on that was generic as ty pointed out. as things progressed in the senate side and we did make it very much about local issues, candidate specific issues and get away from the national narrative, both our candidate and the opposition candidate in the senate races, they very much took on their unique brand. i think around plate august or september we were able to separate from trump which is why -- ty: we had the exact opposite. we started off saying some sort of version do you think that erik paulsen and donald trump share the same ideas or policies platform, however you want to do t. something like that.

and it was a pair of chopsticks. originally it was like this then it just kept getting closer and closer. jess i cana: we were the op is -- jessica: we were the opposite. i totally agree what daniel said. your point is accurate about the volume of ads. our share of voice in the market in a lot of these places. we realized if we do lean into the narrative we're going to get swallowed. we were looking to differentiate our ad. in florida and iowa we did a lot of testimonial ads. tried to tap into some sen thements people were feeling there we were seeing in our polling. we talked about how emily king was like hillary which is not something we did a lot of places. we saw that to be a big issue. we did try to bringing these issues back to the local level. that was helpful. nathan: the second biggest story of the night is the senate and what happened. is there anything you think your side could have done

differently? martha: if you look back we have had a number of wave elections. trump's certainly won in a number of places he wasn't expected to. but if you look back to 2008, in the first obama election, republicans lost eight seats, democrats picked up eight seats in the senate. on tuesday night -- guess it took until yesterday, but the democrats picked up two seats in the senate, which is hard to do when you're moving in to head winds. i think looking back illinois and new hampshire, are victories. certainly we have three -- four new women of color -- three new women of color joining the u.s. senate. that's a significant change. if it is a status quo election, i think we're making gains in -- two gains in the night where certainly expectations got away from us. it seemed like people were expecting more. two is a good night.

i think that there are certainly going to be things in each race, maybe, look back and things that you would do differently. i do think that committee deserves a lot of credit for recruiting a big map and putting a lot of seats in play, not all of those gambles paid off by electing a democrat to the senate, but i think having a big wide map and putting a lot of seats in play was definitely to the democrats' senate advantage. winning two seats, i don't want to pooh pooh it, it's a big deal to pick up two seats when the other party wins a presidential race. nathan: one of the many points of strife within the republican party is about expectations. when republicans came in the majority, there was an expectation among some base voters that, all right, now even though president obama is in the white house, we're going to repeal the affordable care act. and then when that didn't happen it created some primary issues.

what did you see in your data this cycle, what are base republicans expecting a president donald trump and republican congress to act on next year? jessica: it is hard to say in some respects because we did try to focus on keeping these things localized. there were certainly places, my first election was the committee was 2010. i was totally a nationalized election. every single ad was a national issue. we tried not to do that. there are places like minnesota 2 where we realized obamacare was deeply, deeply unpopular there. that was the main issue that we an that race on. we definitely focused on that. we really did try to look at smaller, localized issues, digging on the research. i wouldn't say our polling told us there was one overarching issue or two that people are

angry about and want to change. that wasn't what we thought this election was about. ty: the issue people cared most about and the substance were totally different. much more so than 2014 and 2012. daniel: which was surprising. especially a presidential year. i think seeing that we ran very candidate specific, state specific issues and campaigns. i think the big thing here is economic issues, pocketbook issues, that those americans clearly feel like washington left them behind. nathan: we have a divided country. some tension. i'm going to force you to, all four of you, to acknowledge that strategic decision that your counterpart our counter of the other party made you have to dmire. ty: i'll tell the story. i have been in politics for a

long time. it was the -- one of the things the bravest moves, in fact you don't have to comment this at all because i read on the internet. some people in her party might be upset with it. they ran an ad in illinois the national republican campaign committee ran an ad that basically said bob dole is independent. he's going to stand up to hillary clinton and going to stand up to donald trump. that might not seem like a big thing, but for a party committee to say that a member of their party will stand up to their presidential nominee, that is a very politically risky move. polling, it was the right move. it was the right strategic move. that was bob dole's only path. he came up short. his only path was if he gets 120% to 15% of democrats in that dis-- 10% to 15% of democrats in that district. that was his message. when i saw that come up on the national review and i saw the

ad, i was, wow, that is putting any sort of political calculus or what are the chattering heads in my party going to think? and saying like if we want to win this race, this is a hard path. and this is the only way we get it done. and be damned with whatever blowback i get on the internet, or the right wing sites. this is the path to vicktry. it was executed well. obviously bob dole came up short, but it was right in the tenor of the campaign. i would encourage you-all to go check it out because it was -- you can say it was sort of like profile in courage. but it was one of those times where i think a lot -- we don't make the right choice and say what is the right strategic choice versus what is the politically expedient choice. we had so many email chains with our consultants, with strategists in our party like wow, they are doing this.

daniel: the polling going into election day in illinois 10 i think hillary was going to win by 20. ty: i'm sure she did. look brad ran a great race. think brad will be a great member. again. ut that was a very smart move. martha: i think there is a tendency when you are feeling like you are in the bunker, which i assume that in a number of senate races the republicans felt like they were in the bunker sort of coming into labor day because they were feeling like they were down. there were moments in time, i think we have to acknowledge, there were moments in time where the clinton campaign was riding high. it didn't happen on tuesday, but there were certainly moments coming out of the debates. there were moments when trump would step in a dog pile.

there were things that happened during the campaign where democratic candidates moved up in the polls. and things that were within our control and things that weren't. but when that happens, when you're in the bunker and you're feeling like there is no way t, the very often the knee jerk reaction to that is go to the stove and crank it up to power boil and just go after your opponent with the hottest, most personal ugly negative that you can. and sometimes it works, sometimes it's the wrong thing to do. so i will say in wisconsin where i assumed ron johnson was under water many, many moments in this campaign, he made a strategic decision sometime around labor day to invest more in positive. and although we all sit around talking about elections and i'm sure many of you lamented negative ads and say you wish we -- people had a reason to vote for someone and wish they were more positive ads. when you are in that back and

forth and decisionmaking, a positive ad feels like a gamble not worth taking the risk. i do think that i -- i will give credit in wisconsin in particular and maybe other places, but ron johnson invested in a positive message in september and october that i think was the right thing to do strategically, i definitely felt this coming out of 2014 that when you are feeling the heat, the sort of tried and true path is to turn up the negative on your opponent and sometimes the right thing to do is to actually take a step back and begin to tell a story about yourself because i think we assume voters are paying attention a lot more attention than they really are. so making sure we're always -- making sure not always in every race, but many races, making sure we're taking the time to give that positive story i think is important. and i will say that i think in wisconsin it was a smart move on

ron johnson's part that flew under the radar screen. jessica: i think there are several things. the buying strategy is always so fascinating to me. if you look back at the money that is spent, i think it's interesting they make strategy decisions about which candidates they'll spend money on and which they won't. randy perkins, if he would have come to congress he would have been one of those richest members of congress we would have had. it's clear the detroit made a decision not to spend money in a that race even though from day one it was one of the races. i thought that was a smart allocation of resources, as much money as we ray it's always not enough. i also thought lasts like minnesota 2 some of the strategies they used on the ads were -- sorry, minnesota 8.

rick nolan -- you-all have a lot of members that vote conservatively. that sort of match their district. it makes it very difficult for republicans to attack them on issues because there are some things they are voting with us on. rick nolan is not one of those people. he voted for the democrats. he votes the party line. it was interesting to see the ads strategy change from this cycle to last cycle where it was the same two candidates. they made rick nolan look like anybody's grandpa. he looked like the nicest man in the world. the ad was fantastic. it made it hard for us to keep on beating this negative ideology, which was true but when you contrasted it with the ads, it was a very tough to break through. nathan: in that manumaleuma eight district, donald trump won that district i would which would have made rick nolan's path even more difficult. daniel? daniel: i think the decision to

cut off patrick murphy in florida. they went against the bernie sanders base in their party. they spent money in the primary against a popular populist primary opponent. they invested millions of dollars and everything else to prop up a double-a candidate in a major league game. they walked away from him and that took courage. nathan: martha, to put you on the spot, how much tension was there between making that strategic decision of hey, florida, we can better spend our money in north carolina, missouri, to parts of the party saying we have to stop marco rubio now. you have to look beyond. talk about that, the tension between the 2016 realities and what senator rubio might do in the future? martha: you play the game you're playing. and i think it's clear that the committee -- i'll say i wasn't in the room while these decisions were made, but i can

look back in hindsight and say that the money that was not spent in florida and you could say spent in hard money hard money or nevada. these are tough decisions when you are looking at a spread sheet. it feels like a lot of money, but when you are looking at a spread sheet of money and the amount of money it takes to run a week of television in these states on your spread sheet, it goes quick. in a state like florida which is an extremely expensive state, in excess of $3 million a week to run television, and you're balancing that with all the other races that -- where you are needed. it's a tough call. this is a tough business. i think that if the money that wasn't spent against rubio was spent against kelly ayotte, that's the payoff that you have to make. i do think that it's important to run the race that you're in. and this was the 2016 race and not the 2020 race.

i think that they made the smartest decisions that they could with the data and information that they had at the time. so i certainly don't think there's a lot of second-guessing about that. jessica:00 one thing that's unique, having served in other roles of the committee. in large part it's a thankless job because you are making these very, very difficult decisions. we're independent from the committee. we have been working with this group of people and gaining from their knowledge and having group discussions what is best, and all of a sudden the wall goes up and you're shipped off. and you can't have anybody -- you have a team, but the large people and the leadership of the committee you are separate from them. these types of funding decisions are difficult especially knowing we'll rejoin the world. we have to look at the numbers and have their trust and respect. it's a really, really tough thing to do. ty: it's also the most isolating job in washington. if you are in the committee you are dealing with the candidates,

the campaigns, the members. and all their teams. there is a lot of interaction. if you are at a super p.a.c. you are dealing with the others. if you are part of u.s.a., you are working with the senate p.a.c. -- nathan: outside groups can coordinate with outside groups. ty: it's -- there's three separate buckets. the hard side, which is candidates campaign committees. the super p.a.c. world where they can work tofplgt then there's the i.e. we're all alone. you are sort of on the committee island. as jess said, some of that's freeing. but some of it is very isolating. you talk about strategic decision, making decisions on how to spend. we ended up spending $79.4 million. between you and your team. there's a lot there. nathan: i think we'll have time

for one question from the audience. whoever gets the microphone i can see first. my last question is, we had a presidential candidate who won who was dramatically outspent on television. his own campaign did not have a ground game to speak of. how -- are we -- what changes will there be -- has campaigning changed going forward into 2018? ty: can i make one point? donald trupp was outspent on -- trump was outspent on paid media on television. his share of voice on television was exponentially larger than hillary clinton's. that is a very important factor when you're trying to extrapolate -- god knows that for colleen deacon and the new york 24th, the today show wasn't doing three segments a day on her. before we start to make this

blanket statement about how campaigns are changing, you need to realize if you are looking at television as a medium, you flip on your tv the amount of time donald trump was on tv versus hillary clinton earned and combined is much more of a complete picture. i want to double down on that. daniel: i think campaigning has totally campaigning changed in 2018 if you have a candidate who has been a celebrity for 30 years, billionaire, and donald made national news coverage. ty: donald trump because of one thing that i think he was very smart with, he realized with 144 characters he can drive the news cycle. not always for the good, but i think that he sort of -- again, that's a following that's been developed for 10 years of the "apprentice" and "home alone 2" and 20 years at miss america. before we start saying, hey, you know, random house guys, who is running in kansas, you shouldn't

do television. like donald trump did. daniel: candidates up and down the ballot that tried to replicate that model failed. nathan: i'm hoping you-all stay involved in campaigns going forward. do you think you will hear from candidates, have to explain all this and say donald trump didn't do this or that. why do i have to run -- why do i have to go through the normal steps that candidates have to go through? martha: we can deal with that. what we had with president obama when he won in 2008 was all democratic candidates thought had you to do to raise money was put up a website and send a few emails. president obama, the big story coming out of that was the online fundraising was the future. it certainly remains a big part of how we raise money for candidates. for a while we had people who didn't want to do any fundraising at all and put out a website and the money would come. i think each cycle there is a moment in time where people take

lessons, the right lessons or the wrong lessons, and test them out the next time around. i just think it's going to be less likely that people who are running think that following the trump model of campaigning will be successful for them or healthy for them. i think that it will be -- what may change is how the press covers the president, right, and how the press covers the administration for the next two years and whether donald trump as president will keep tweeting and go arne the more traditional mediums of -- around the more traditional mediums -- as president. i think it's unlikely that people will say i want to run and i'm going to follow the trump model. nathan: daniel, talk about what the committee did with digital and tv, how you handled those on the i.e. side. daniel: it's pretty technical, but long story short,

traditional you have 1,000 points of broadcast television and then you change your message and however much cable you get behind that great. we threw that model out this time. spent more on digital than we have in the past, and changed our message progression, traffic, based on 1,000 points on broadcast, we reach an aggregate impression level across screen. for the first time totally married our digital and television media plans. which allowed us to buy fewer broadcast points on you higher reach programming and use cable and dage digital to drive frequentcy. that ability to deliver that much more of our message to the target audience was a big part of why we were able to overperform trump in certain key areas. jessica: it helped us from the very beginning to daniel's point, we spent more on digital than we have in the past. one thing that allowed us to do that smartly was to create formulas where rather than just give what's leftover, typically what's been done, we looked at

how expensive cost per point was, how much money the candidate had, how connected and wired the district was. then we assigned what we thought would be a logical spend based on factors. so we were looking at digital at the same time. we were looking at our other traditional mediums of the rather than giving it leftover money. there are certain places like maine 2, that is not a wired district. it's hard to get a message across in digital. there are other places like commuser district where you have to have a big presence on line. t nathan: we were years ago in the -- i was quarneteed with a cane date from maine. had he a great mustache. i spent a lot of time with john during the anthrax scare. one quefment ty: right outside of augusta. dairy farmer. i worked on the farm. not on the campaign. on the farm.

>> looking into the future, i know a lot of new members of congress are -- don't have political experience, but the republicans have done such a good job building that branch at the state legislature level and governorship level. when will the democrats realize thee need to focus on that, especially to cherry pick candidates for congress? martha: they did not have a bad nigh all around. i think we picked up a number of chambers. there were chambers that flipped. it was more -- it was not a clean sweep on the republican side in the state legislatures. i think nevada picked up both chambers. out west -- ty: alaska house. martha: there are recounts happening in arizona that have those chambers on the brink. not to challenge you, i do think that there's still time to sort of sort through winners and losers there. i think that there might be some

democratic breaks there. look, i think it's important for lots of reasons for us to fill the pipeline with people who are strong candidates, represent their districts wisely, take the job seriously. and frankly have ambition. we have a lot of -- as you know, we have these races every two years. we have seen change. wheneats flip in the house the other party takes the white house is not something to look down on. it's a big deal. it's significant. and i think we have to continue to make investments in recruiting good candidates at the state and local level. and then supporting them. i think you're right to say that it's -- congress -- there isn't as much change at the congressional level as our districts, redirecting has made the districts more conservative

or more democratic or more republican along the way. i do think that there is a lot of important work happening at the state level and we have to stay committed to it. nathan: ty? ty: i want to make one point about that and the down ballot stuff. the way that our society is ving in terms of information becoming disaggregated, some of us probably live in communities where we don't have a local newspaper. particularly if you live in metropolitan area, wjla is not covering the state legislature. we're all in politics so we probably know who our state legislature s. but many people don't. -- lure is. but many people don't. what democrats have fallen victim two, there have been two waves in the last four years, 2010 and 2014, with them nobody knows who their state legislature s they see a d and r. they wipe out the d's and bring in the r's. with president trump if there is a bad midterm in 2018 or bad

midterm in 2022, you will see more democrats than republicans. it's not because democrats don't care about it. i think we can always invest more in down ballot. i think democrats a lot of times don't realize the power of state houses. particularly our donor base doesn't realize the power of state houses. what i would say is it's not as much you don't care, it's just that voters don't know who they are and they see and d and r. when the r wave comes there will be more r's. nathan: my mind is twisted enough i'm already looking forward to the 2018 elections. ty: go to hell. nathan: it's going to be huge. stick with "roll call" and politics coverage. i'm also editor of the gonzalez political report. if you want a three-month free trial subscription, talk to beth in the back corner. i really appreciate you-all for being here and giving us a

behind the scenes look. thank you very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. isit ncicap.org] >> coming up in a few moments, live here on c-span, pollsters, pundits, and journalists who have followed the presidential campaign. we'll be discussing the lessons learned from the 2016 elections. this event hosted by the smithsonian associates. should be getting under way in just a few moments. live on c-span.

>> good evening, everyone. my name is ruth robin, it's a pleasure to welcome you here. tonight we have an excellent and esteemed panel of experts about to discuss the recent, very recent presidential election and share their insights about the campaign and the results. before i introduce anyone, a couple of quick details. one, if you have a phone please turn it off at this point or silence it.

appreciate that very much. and two, everyone wants to sit up straight and look nice and neat and put on your nice smiles because c-span is taping us tonight. you want to look good for them. and last we will have a "q&a" section at the end of the program. just ask you to please limit your questions to one. keep it fairly short. the speakers will repeat the question so that everyone can hear. you do have a handout that has the bios of the different speakers, in the interest of time i'll keep the introductions very brief. i do have the pleasure of introducing the moderator, kenneth walsh, who is chief courthouse correspondentent for "u.s. news and world report." ken has covered the presidency and presidential campaigns and national politics since 1986. our panelists tonight are jeff, and aaron., sarah, sunlen, who was in the original

write-up, was called to new york. so we were lucky we brought in someone equally as expert, sarah murry. please -- murray. please join me in a warm welcome for ken walsh and our most distinguished guest. [applause] kenneth: thank you-all for coming. i want to thank the panelists first of all for being here and the smithsonian for sponsoring this and ruth rob bins for organizing it. i want to thank you for being here and for our c-span audience for watching. it's a very emotional time right now. we were talking earlier, should i show a clip or something? we were thinking of showing a saturday night live clip. it didn't feel right it felt like too much levity there so we decided not to do t i'm sure you are aware of the portrayals of trump and clinton by alex baldwin and kate. but we decided we didn't feel

appropriate. so we decided not to do t instead i'm going to give you a couple of quotes from abraham lincoln that mibet more appropriate. it's very emotional time for a lot of people. hillary clinton supporters really sort of reeling. they expected to have a big win today. a lot of pollsters, most of the pollsters, felt that hillary clinton would win. maybe not so big, but that they felt she would win. we have donald trump who is now president-elect. he met with president obama today. at the white house. they were supposed to meet for 15, 20 minutes and ended up meeting for about 90 minutes. in that very familiar setting in the oval office and the two chairs in front of the fireplace. he's trying to settle in as the next president. for trump supporters, this is a time of jubilation and actually not a small degree of gloating because they said this was going to happen. and it has happened.

in my due diligence checked the numbers and at this point a little bit of fluctuation here but clinton has 290 electoral votes -- trump has 290 and clinton has 232, and 270 was needed. but the popular vote is going clinton's way. she has about a 300,000 vote lead out of about 120 million votes cast. so what happened is we had an almost a split, even split in the country in the popular vote. that reflects the amazing divide we're in right now. so the question is, does donald trump, will i talk about this on the panel, does he have a mandate? didn't win the popular vote, but lots of people who are elected, very close, act as if they have had a mandate. you remember in 2000 we had that long supreme court fight and george w. bush won in the

supreme court, and he lost the popular vote by a half million votes in 2000. he claimed a mandate. as every president does when they take office. we have protesters in the streets now saying that donald trump is not their president. we have people -- i just saw some emails of organizations saying we're going to fight him every step of the way. so it's not a very pretty picture. i know when i have given talks like this before a lot of people from the audience have said that we would need some clarity in the election. we would need a clarifying election, and it doesn't appear that's what we've got. i would be interested in our pammists agree with this. in some ways our presidential campaigns have become like pen due lums, elections, we go from one party to the other. from the democrats to the republicans. in my lifetime covering politics, we have gone from jimmy carter to ronald reagan to staying with george herber walker bush, bill clinton,

george w. bush, barack obama, back and forth, back and forth. very difficult for any party to win two consecutive terms. it does happen. but didn it didn't happen this time. lincoln'sme of writings at this time, to get into the more inspirational quality of our politics. we would be wise to familiarize ourselves. address,cond inaugural the most appropriate for this moment, he calls for the famous lines of output malice toward none, charity for all. we have to see if that happens. this moment will be difficult. with a little up analysis i wanted to read briefly, and have our panel

respond. this comes from a democratic poster associated with bill mcintyre, who did an analysis with his associates. tosaid "3 forces collided elect donald trump president. first, truly clinton was a deeply flawed candidate, second mr. trump a brilliant manipulator of broadcast elements, and third, pundits consistently underestimating a large segment of our society is deeply miserably angry. they are angry at the arrogance of the rich and well educated, who don't seem to care that the working class standard of living, a third of being marked as racist and deplorables, afraid that their children do not have reasonable prospects for advancement.

that is one explanation for what happened on the trump side. and remember bernie sanders, who challenged hillary clinton and lust, appealed to that same sentiment from the left that donald trump did from the right. i would like to start asking our panel starting with jeff if you agree with that analysis, and how you see what happened here. what did happen? >> if peter hart said it, i agree with it. [laughter] no, obviously there is a lot to what peter had to say. by the way, your link" isn't that government -- your lincoln calming becauset that came before a civil war. hopefully that doesn't come before we have charity to all in the country.

the country is divided in a lot of these ways. this election reflected those divisions. the divisions are not only about economics, although there are definitely those at work. way, it is about what is happening to america -- we are at a fork in the road in some ways in terms of what we make of our diversity is a country. and people have complicated feelings about that. the work we were doing on the lead up to election night, we asked whether people saw her endeavors he is a change for the better or worse. there was nothing that drew a brighter red line than that question. that the more you tended to see

increasing diversity of the country as a change for the better, something exciting, the more likely you were to be for clinton, but if you didn't feel that way about the country, you were very likely to be for donald trump. that was being litigated. the other question i was paying attention to thinking about election night in some ways, defining an election question for election night was how much risk were milling -- risk were americans willing to take? areurns out, a lot of them willing to take out a fair amount of risk. in our survey we did on election eve, the people that voted for donald trump, 21% said he was a risky choice. and they voted for him anyway.

in part because they did not have any confidence in the alternative that hillary clinton represented, but also the ways that peter describes. taking,like a risk were even though many of them thought and think that donald trump doesn't have the knowledge and experience or president that a president should have. -- or temperament that a president should have. at that moment, people were really to take that risk. you will see how they feel about the risk a few months down the road. the last thing i will say that was important this election is that the republican party and right-wing spent a lot of time demonizing hillary clinton. that was on steroids throughout the election. the challenging thing for the media to know how to do what that -- donald trump repeatedly referred to her as a criminal in

a cynical and dangerous and demagogue way. at various points in the campaign, she did things either by convention or omission that may have exacerbated the concerns people had. it was very hard with that, given how much of the bandwidth donald trump had been taking up, for her to break through and provide the kind of confidence peter was talking about in his comments. not possible, but very challenging given the unprecedented nature of trump's contacts on her -- trump's attacks on her. at least since the start of the 20th century indymedia operated environment. immediatey in its

operated environment. >> let's talk about risk. i grew up in southwestern virginia, in the county that trump. to 18 for cole county was economically devastated certainly. inhere near among the people the high school now as grew up with me. i was talking to my wife. she said, you know, those people got a lottery ticket. i think to some extent they are right. some sortpectation is of incremental change, the situation is sufficiently devastating. that is not good enough. you are willing to risk quite a bit for the hope for dramatic change. >> [indiscernible]

>> try to speak up. thisther point in terms of historical perspective -- this should have been a republican vote. the last time a democrat got elected after a two-time democrat had served was martin van buren, i believe. it did not happen in the 20th century. martin vanronically, buren was the first professional politician. to studycond side, what they might call fundamentals. the movement of the economy, how long a party has been in power, the average predictions for people who have worked these out several months ago was that the democrats win 51% of the popular vote.

if you look at the last nine elections that were open seat election where there is not an incumbent running, the range is 54 points to 45. the median is about 49. from us historical perspective, it actually outperformed. this is not a surprise from for most productive. -- from a historical perspective. from what weing achieved-- thingsink one of the not focused on as heavily -- we know about the immigration argument, we know about the economic angst by both parties. it is worth remembering that donald trump is not a republican

from an ideological standpoint in many ways. we underestimated the impact that an excessively brutal and deeply personal election with two flawed candidates was going to have on the shape and size of the electorate. there were millions and millions of people that were modeled to show up on election day who stayed home. maybe those were republicans who could not wrap their arms around trump. we know there are millions that voted for mitt romney that did not show up for donald trump. and there were even many more millions of democrats that voted for barack obama and did not show up for hillary clinton. maybe the crooked hillary argument and the amount of time donald trump spent hammering the home that she was a criminal -- even though that is not what the fbi decided -- that stuck with people. it wasn't that they could not bring themselves to cast their ballots for one candidate, they

could not bring themselves to show up. we made a lot of assumptions about the direction that turnout moved. that was not true. it was through negative campaigning and so negative, so divisive. it has an impact. it does the press the vote. -- does depress the vote. >> i get to work on nbc wall street journal. one of the questions we wrote this year, how do you want to vote? a candidate that forms major change -- and here's the kicker -- even if you don't know what the changes going to be? or do you want to vote for a candidate that is steady, predictable, and keep going in the same direction we have been headed? we heard of it better than that, but that is the choice. in the last track last sunday,

54% of americans say, i want change even if i don't know what the changes going to be. 41% say i want steady progress. i think that is a powerful underlying thing in this election. the other thing that is quite unusual -- i said oh, by the way,, we hav one in five --by the way, we have one in five candidates that have an unfavorable idea both candidates. that is not normal. the highest poll result was in 1992, there was a time when bill clinton and george bush had 12% who didn't like either of them. in 2012, only 6% of the population were unfavorable to both obama and romney. when you are at 18%, that is three or four times the normal. if you are a voter, you just

said you have an unfavorable view of the candidates, what do you do? they voted for donald trump over hillary clinton. iserlying change means she the status quo in a third-party term. if i don't like either, i am going to vote for somebody new. should, as we always do, respect the american electorate. we have people that went to vote for the candidate that they thought was best represent their economic interests. and in parts of the country that feel very disengaged from this kind of success. doctor was kind enough to talk about his own county. is a huge number. ton obama was probably 72 28.

so when you go from pennsylvania, ohio, michigan, wisconsin, and you are taking these kinds of margins to that level, you start tipping. the last thing i will say, how could it get so close? ry grabbedomney-ker college graduates by 25 points. you would expect a huge vote. it turned out to be 27 points. if you were a white noncollege graduate, you voted for trump by 37 points, bigger than ronald reagan against mondale. if you are looking for benchmarks, that is wow. if romney carries them by 25, you carry them by 27, that is a points. the obama margin disappears in one subgroup. it is a dead even race.

>> those voters matters even more. they represent a larger share of the electorate. >> that would buy my view in terms of the reaction. -- be my view in terms of the reaction. >> the idea that trump was dangerous. that did not seem to register. that is what everybody was thinking. not the work people used, but risky. people knew they were taking a risk. t is lacking in the knowledge and experience that a president ought to have when he faced office. >> he or she. how they worried about act in commander-in-chief. they worry about his temperament and divisive impact. but for the reasons we have

discussed, there were a group of voters that said, you know what? everything else sucks pretty much, so let's take this risk. can i fact check you on one thing? 100 million people voted for either clinton or romney, but a little over 5 million voted for another third-party candidate. the vote is about 125 million overall. likely, thate, not this will be the first election since 1948 where fewer people voted in the election eight years previous. think about the amount of population growth that occurs in eight years. that really goes to sara's point of people voting with their feet. >> i think washington, and by that i mean it's ecosystem most of us spend our professional time living in -- is a negligent or. most of us was way too slow.

chamber.echo we were too slow to figure out what was going on outside the echo chamber. a lot of campaign professionals were frankly looking at the same sets of numbers. going into election nights, you can talk to republicans who do this for a living. democrats are going to win the senate and hillary clinton is going to be the next president. there were lessons that we learned through the course of this election that the hillary clinton campaign in particular completely missed. when we started out, it was going to the jeb bush versus hillary clinton. two giant professional campaigns $100$100 million or more, million for the superpac. they knew how to do it, here are the demographics, we will put those groups together and it will be a victory. jeb bush failed so quickly as i

dynastic candidate. he struggled on the stump, even though he did everything in theory that you could ever want in terms of name recognition. mixedd bag, but still, people knew his name, and he failed. and the clinton people that the process that would not matter to them later on. and they were surprised that bernie sanders was so strong. and they wrote him off as somebody who was on the french. -- on the fringe. when you're dealing with capitol hill, there is a sense that you have people on the edges that do not matter. sometimes they hold stuff up, but they are never the people running the country. i think the clinton campaign treated bernie sanders a lot like that. i covered him for four months. i felt like i was marooned on an island. no one seemed to be paying attention.

we were looking at the day after the michigan primary, which bernie sanders won. getting on a conference people with everybody at the office. they said, we are so surprised by this, we can't believe this happened. i said, well if you look when i was saying yesterday leading up to this, you will not be so surprised. [laughter] we were not surprised that it happened. i think the clinton campaign missed the action and that disconnection -- clearly there is an ideological disconnection between those who vote for bernie sanders and donald trump. they are likely to tell you they were on opposite sides. what i driving thems is feeling like the system in washington is ignoring them, and people would not even listen. there was no way to fix it. the only way they could say anything to change it to something like support bernie sanders -- i think donald trump voters felt the same way. the clinton campaign missed it entirely. you see it in john podesta's

attack e-mails. they were trying to figure out, how is she going to stand on tpp? there was a 12 e-mail chain figuring out where they would put her on this issue. i remember every time driving to a hillary clinton event, we drive through the airport, usually in the us of the city, ,r driving through a rural area all you see are trump science. -- trump signs. every clinton event was very small. it was like covering mitt romney in the final days. people were affected in getting donald trump elected. that was not true on the donald trump -- on the hillary clinton's. hindsight not having worked in the campaign, it is amazing when you look back at how hillary clinton ran her

campaign between the end of the much the notion of the system being broken, how much and message of economic populism that carried bernie sanders totally evaporated from her message. it was nowhere in the general election. >> it showed back up in michigan two days before the election. she started saying hey, working people, i feel your pain, i promise i do. >> i was out on the road to some extent. not as much as my colleagues. but there was a tremendous amount of excitement for trump. i was brought up in the school of analysis that you have to be careful at rallies. people that shoulder rallies doesn't mean that that person is going to win. kasie: you can feel a crowd. a good political campaign knows how to build a crowd. right.:

much different intensity from what hillary clinton was dealing with. michelle obama was at a rally, oneeven then, trump did rally -- i don't know if you were there. he did a giant rally. even at that the intensity was much different from the hillary rally. and i want to come back to this a little later the kind of analysis we do as political reporters and political strategists. >> and things are okay for the most part. the economy has been insulated here for a wide variety of reasons. there are these people -- there are not as many people feeling this kind of hate.

and i met so many people at bernie sanders rallies. people that you see and you say wow, i should start thinking about how hard it is for people. people working three jobs, making less money, and paying more for their health care. it defies belief. >> i want to ask our pollsters the gender question. what were numbers on the gender gap? >> the exit polls have the gender gap slightly larger than 2012. points,won women by 12 which is two points larger thing obama did. -- than obama did. the exit polls are not perfect. but they are what we have got. clinton among women. alone men.or trump

that is a net difference of 24 points. it was 17 points. a larger piece of that is more men voting for trump and more women voting for clinton. >> if not to ask exactly that, what was the turnout for men and women? >> again, the only tool we have to know that is the exit poll. the exit poll was 52 to 48. but it is so imperfect -- what will happen in a couple months from now is we will have voter files that tell you exactly who voted. that will provide a much better analysis of at least the composition of the electorate. the exit polls in 2012 we know over stated to some extent the share of the electorate under the age of 35 years old. some states understated the

share of the state that was african-american. this voter final analysis that will happen later on will be much more reliable and meaningful than exit polls. i want to put about some controversial science that the y chromosome makes people lazy. it is one more thing where men vote, where women -- they they do their stuff, and men, and the differences get especially large between fy city -- between the felicity between ethnicity and age. they are just a little drifty compared to women in that same age group.

i think as normal, we are going to see the women number go up. >> i think we have polled that b efore, right? just stepping back again and looking at this amazing year and a half. where there are one or two turning points that make a difference? i mean, at the end you had the fbi on again off again investigation, trump's tape on the bus where he talked about groping women. where there turning points? this end.an start on kasie: putting me on the spot. this may not be your question, but i think one of the things that says this in motion is what happened at the white house correspondents dinner with donald trump and barack obama. especially in the beginning, was a drive-by donald trump to prove that he could do

something that a lot of people thought he could not do and would ridicule him for. people started focusing on the character traits of, trump -- he seems to be driven by making sure that people taken seriously. i think voters identify with that. a plan of people that were motivated feel the same way. they feel like people discount them, dismiss them as deplorables, or pick your word. i think there was a kind of anti-elitism or whatever it was driving at. i think that is how this got set in motion. i think it would be helpful in terms of balance how much of this was built in by those strong structural factors,

versus campaign events. think the comey thing helped in one regard. a a group, the news covers story. there is a narrative and a storyline. switching to the comey thing snapped the entire thing about trump's behavior to women. it just stopped. by the way, he gave him 10 or 11 days to run a coherent campaign where he spoke from a teleprompter and stayed out of the news and ran a competent campaign for the last two weeks. i think that's which made the difference in terms of how we got in the campaign. sunlen: i would argue that started sooner. i think the access about donald

trump talking about women that way, the fact that he was asked if he didn't to women, and it doesn't women came out and said that he made unwanted sexual advances to them, that made a difference. internal public polling showed donald trump dead in the water, down 10 or 12 points, tracking down the senate. there was no recovering from that moment. that is what things were looking like on election day. before the comey thing happened, the obamacare announcement came out. cap felt perfectly into the notion that washington is building these systems that are not designed to make your life better. they sell them to you and say, we are doing this for you and it will improve your life, and you find out it is not going to work that way. your income isn't going up, but your obamacare premium is going up. donald trump looked at those numbers and he went to a

teleprompter. he said, let me tell you how much obama care premiums are going up wherever he was. and comey came right on the heels of that and completely changed the narrative of the campaign. questions about hillary clinton and the legacy she would carry on as president, rather than the question about donald trump. >> and the close in was to turn their fire on to call me rather to -- fire onto comey rather than explain why she was innocent. i don't think she ever got to the point where she was answering questions about her e-mail use in a way where people right, she she's didn't do anything wrong, or two, that they could forgive her for what she did because she was always so defensive. >> access hollywood tape turned out to be a turning point.

ayotteh more for kelly and those in new hampshire than donald trump. what is shocking to me, if donald trump behaves himself for five days, everything that happened before those five days was forgiven and forgotten. regardless of how horrible the thing was. starting with the primary, we said this will be a strong that breaks the camel's back. this kimmel had the strongest back in history -- camel had the strongest back in history. [laughter] and hillary was the opposite of that. as short as people's memories or about donald trump, they were just as long for hillary clinton. >> there was an argument in the media that we jumped from things too quickly and did not focus on these donald trump issues.

it was like dripping from a fire hydrant, there was one every minute it seemed. you are putting these are constantly in the battleground states right? you are advertising about trump's remarks on women and one group after another. that did not vanish from the radar screen. it is just people were paying attention to other things. >> yeah, we spent a lot of money reminding people in it different ways. the super pac for hillary clinton, reminding people about the different things he said about women in his life. the other point of focus for us at to do with his temperament as commander-in-chief, which was truly worrisome to people. came up organically in focus groups. just his general divisiveness and trump tenor. what was amazing in talking

to the donald trump voters, it serves your point how quickly they forget him for things. he became a vessel for whatever folder issues -- whatever voter issues were. you used to vote as democrat but you don't feel like you are getting ahead, then donald trump became your economic vessel. you could say, i don't agree with things he says about latinos or muslims or women, but he apologized and he has the right message on this. we have heard people say that time and time again about whenever their core issue was. >> there is a phenomenon in social psychology called culloden dissonance -- cognitive dissonance. if people really want to do something, and they really wanted to do something, they find a way to do it and explain

it to themselves. it is a powerful force. now.l eyes point to you >> trump's candidacy completely changes the race. what i worry about, given the nature of the historical dynamics, it seems certainly possible that another republican could have won, might reasonably have won, but it would not have been the same constituency. situation where you continue to double down with the twin cities that are becoming -- with constituencies that are becoming increasingly smaller, but you get more and more of them? or more of a position towards the party, or you don't get working class without a college education as much as trump does, but you do better with latinos,

women overall. in essence, you win, but you win with a different constituency. i think some people would say, that will never be possible. i don't know about that. >> that would be your nightmare. >> for a democrat that is really troubling. >> i know i have talked too much but it really is my anxiety about donald trump. [laughter] the states that made the difference in breaking what people thought of as the wall -- pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin. donald trump is a much better candidate for those states than mitt romney. alien,mney is culturally more culturally alien than clinton or barack obama.

kasie: he kept saying things that reinforced that. >> but donald trump was their guy. for the change in complexion of the vote in those three states in particular, donald trump was probably a really good candidate for them. republicansother have been much more vulnerable to the blue wall aspect. >> what does it say about hillary clinton or the electorate that donald trump, who lives in a penthouse in manhattan, who europe with -- who grew up with a cushy life, whose father gave him a multimillion dollar loan for his business captured the heart of the working-class american better than hillary clinton, who has a operating that looks a lot more similar to those people? >> issues matter. the republican party that existed before tuesday hasn't

changed. the republicans, everybody becomes its president. shifted the has orthodoxy of the republican party. on immigration, on the border wall in terms of its priority, in saying that we will be less involved around the world. those are five incredibly powerful differences from the previous republican parties. those five policy positions, when bonded together, uniquely fit the voters across the state in a way that they said it would. they said we are going to do this because no republican has ever sent this. these are things we think we should do. and he's going to try and get those things done. the donald trump republican

party is going to be a very different looking vehicle than it has been from reagan and bush eras. these will be unbelievable changes in what it means to be a republican. country, itout this will have a four year decision and two year decision. >> in the immediate issues where trump is redefining the orthodoxy of the party, does that mean that the freedom caucus and the members of congress will roll over? they have been on the other side of these issues. they genuinely felt this for a long time. do they say, never mind, we have a new president, or army in for for the -- or are we in same kind of stalemate? >> when everybody is feeling

their worst, we had that shift in 2009. republicans woke up and said wow, democrats run everything. the constitution is the genius of people in what would terms of what you have done. take 60 votes. obama was operating temporarily with 62 votes. i mean, things are not going to happen as radically as we think if every vote became a 60 vote. the republican party historically has been pretty andonsive to its president, i think -- here is the other thing that happened. geoff mentioned two candidates. republicans who withdrew their endorsement after the access hollywood story.

point he is making, those are the two republicans who lost. my candidate john mccain went through his endorsement -- withdrew his endorsement. but kelly ayotte was a senator, then john mccain was a personal brand. >> in a red state running against a candidate that was not terribly strong. >> the point being that in the republican party, that it -- it tells you how hierarchical it is that a republican can insert themselves into the congressional leadership. >> where does this leave the democrats? >> great question. speak?want me to [laughter] i think there is a short-term answer and a long-term answer to that. the short-term answer is that

this is -- when donald trump is going to do a lot of things that are harmful for people that , andrats people represent harmful to the values they hold dear. part of it is in the near-term, how can democrats most effectively extend up to that and rally the country against that. there will be opportunities for democrats to do that. for allid not sign up the things that donald trump is going to do as president. more people in our election at the polls said that hillary clinton gave them a clear idea of her priorities than donald trump did. so that he is going to do things that will really test the country and depth of his support. that happened to president reagan early on.

the longer-term -- i spoke at the center for american progress a week before the election and said i was haunted by the brexit election. ways, this was our national identity election in a same way that brexit was. the remain campaign was a campaign entirely based on fear. so the people that felt that things were working for them, there is nothing that was given people hope. haunted that we are in the same position. we are not giving people hope, who are really looking to us for that. and for the longer term, that is what the democratic party needs to figure out. the things happening to the country are real.

the things that make people anxious aren't fantasies, they are realities. emergence of new voices and new thinking. >> looking at polling of the most and least popular institutions -- [indiscernible] >> i think media was at the bottom. >> we were right about putin. [laughter] what extent was this notion that trump embodied, as you were saying, a vessel for anger and resentment? what extent was this a repudiation of wall street business, washington, congress? kasie: it was entirely that. 100% that.

if you look at -- i forget who was making this point. i should be giving them credit. there was someone who pointed out during election coverage on tuesday night that both bernie sanders' campaign and donald trump's campaign had enemies. there was an enemy -- topple the thing that is making your life harder. for bernie sanders, it was wall street. big banks in the case of -- and because of donald trump, it was immigrants. you name it. absent from were hillary clinton' campaigns, and for most of the primary challengers. there was no acknowledgment where people could say, that guy is scaring me over and i want -- wantrewing me over and i to fix it. >> do we all agree it was a

repudiation? >> i would like to be a little different spokesperson. our job is to listen to people. we wrote a question in 2014 and said hey, we just survived a great recession. how much impact that that have on your family? we asked, when you say that, what do you mean? we got, i lost my job, i lost my pension, or i have my job but in making have of when i used to make. page after page in which the lives have been interrupted after that horrible economic episode. we said two years later, how much impact did it have on your family? it dropped to 61%. we read the same stories.

when you read 80 pages about how the great recession and what it these are profoundly personal difficult stories. country is years after we think the recovery has taken place. that kind of economic dislocation, and what that has unleashed i think is something we need to speak to. i hope i am not being difficult with my panelists. i don't want to look at it as being anti-elitist. people are expressing this profound dislocation economically on how they felt and how they want that addressed in their lives. anti-elitism is quite right. people who seem to be using the system to enrich themselves.

obviously 40% must have told you, i wasn't affected. those are pretty stark lines. ground, you were right the first time. [laughter] suggest that i predicted donald trump. in 2014 we did a lot of research about trust in government. thathhing -- one thing is he will really believed, all of america believed that washington interests iial could update -- is working for them at the expense of other, regular americans. the other thing is that there were a lot of americans who felt the economy was not working for them.

there is a group of people who expected that after eight years, they would have been made whole by now. and the fact that they hadn't been made whole. it is not just about their incomes, it is about their assets. their homes and retirement accounts are not worth as much. the fact that they have not been made whole when other people are making off like bandits. street what makes wall the center of the eye of hurricane. the combination of those two things, the economy not working for people, and the government not working for people -- is toxic. it was the backdrop. obama democrats, barack was on the campaign trail saying hey, i saved us from the great recession. some said clearly he made things

to make it better, but a lot of people were not feeling that. certainly that is the argument hillary clinton tried to make. she did not say any negative things about the president for fear of alienating her coalition. but on the other hand, her other voters needed her to say something that the president did not fix it entirely. toyears of talking consultants and strategists, americans want to be rich themselves, so they don't mind people getting rich, as long as it doesn't pull them down. when they felt like someone is getting rich at my expense -- is that what happened? i worked for some very wealthy candidates across my career. they follow two camps, people who give the money, and people who made the money. when i work for candidates that

are very wealthy -- i worked for a mayor of houston that started working when he was eight years old. he never finished college, collated into the oil industry, and was conspicuously wealthy. people said that is ok, he worked for it, i don't find that. that is the wealthy candidates where they are given money, where there is resentment. mind't think americans that you worked hard and found a way to make a lot of money, that is ok. when you have been given the money, or if you delete that, our entire system is so twisted that people who have the money are the ones getting massive amounts of money -- decorate an -- that creates an angry

resentment. it is palpable. it is what you have, and where you think you are going. the polling i have seen suggests that is a different idea of what white americans if they had the same amount of money. you have to ask yourself, you have certain groups they can feel like there is promise in the future, where other groups don't. see from campaigning standpoint how important it is to identify particular for whatls to blame seems a severely complex problem. cap becomes particularly dangerous if you actually get elected. there is some expectation about

addressing that particular individual or group of people to solve a problem. if the problem does not get solved, where does that leave us? >> a couple of other quick things. the idea of race. for many years from the senses we get the idea that -- from the census that we are becoming a majority minority country. white people will no longer become a majority in the united states, roughly around 2030. the feeling that the republicans are on the wrong side of the demographics, latinos in particular were going for the democrats, trump was stirring up latinos against the republican party itself. and african-americans were solid for the democrats for a long time. how did this election strike you as far as race goes?

is there a cause a permanent divide-- quasi-permanent with minorities? >> it is developing. i think it is a central feature of the election. we talked before we started about how people felt about this exact change, whether it is change for the better. white people are very divided about this. it determined people's votes, or at least predicted people's votes. there is another side of this from the democrats. letting go into this election, oh, we've got this big blue wall, plus demographics. and with combination, we cannot lose. the world is changing in our

collection, the electric will get younger -- the world is changing in our direction, the electorate will get younger. that was not true for this election. >> more than half the kids being born in the country today -- this country will be going through an incredibly sure c hange. we have according to the u.s. census the highest amount of people born outside the country since 1880, and the highest number of people speaking other than english in the last 80 years. i believe in the american ideal. i believe america is founded on the principle. we are infinitely stronger because of this incredible influx of new people. august what has happened in every way above immigration? every wave has led to social

tension, dislocation, a battle as we assimilate people. we actually the irish with of immigration. guess what has been a happy outcome over a generation? our country capacity's to function as a nation. i think that will happen over time. we're watching the same dislocation that took place with each part of these immigration waves. i think there is a right side to history. the right side is no party is going to survive as the right party. if you do not find a way to have some inclusive message, and some capacity to motivate people around these divisions, you are not going to survive as a party. >> can i add one thing quickly? you asked about turning points. i think the emergence of the black lives matter movement was a turning point.

especially when black people were being killed by police, and when police were being killed by assassins. it came front and center for people and their way of thinking about the world. to me, donald trump did a lot of unforgivable things in this category. a a lot of them. but the most unforgivable thing h did in the campaigne was to rub these racial divisions raw. and to run a campaign that was designed to exploit them for his political advantage. that happened, and it made a difference. he won votes on that basis. but it does an unforgivable thing. i don't think he can make up for it. if he's got a job to do as president, making up for it is a good one. >> that is a good question for donald trump. i would love to know what is going through his head as he

watched people spilling into the streets and protesting. we've heard from african-americans, muslims, latinos, young women, who woke up the next morning and cried and were afraid. that is something we have not seen in this country for a long time. we saw a plot of strong feelings when president obama was elected, but this is a different story of sentiment. republicans will say it was because democrats spent a lot of time casting donald trump as an unacceptable person to president. the reality is that donald trump calleded stop and first, for a muslim ban, said horrible things about women, and he did a lot of things that gave all of these groups of people real reason for fear. but now he is a president-elect. when you see these people having

these reactions, how do you handle that? if you want to be president for all people, does he understand the amount of work that is going to take? thisel free to ask about in the questions, but the final point i want to make is about governing. what is possible? more deadlock?or is anger going to paralyze everything? is there any insight into what can be done? >> i think it is smart to focus on infrastructure. there is consensus around that-- there is a start at least. but once you get past that, the list gets long. >> what will be interesting is how the republican party on capitol hill responsd --

responds to how donald trump changes the traditional orthodox pillars on which the republican party is built. mitch mcconnell embodies what the republican party has been. now he is going to have to figure out -- they were on capitol hill today. i encourage you to look at the photo. [laughter] it is quite illuminating in showing what the republican party in washington has been, and what it is becoming. you talk to republicans, and they have no idea. [laughter] beforeave seen gridlock and we were probably see more gridlock going forward, but it is important president obama into the white house a man who is questioned his birthright to be president. hillary clinton told people you need to give donald trump a chance to govern.

we were on top of the chamber with the white house in the background. the white house is still standing. the peaceful transition of power still happening. america is still america. >> we will see if he gets his twitter account back. who knows what will happen? you had your hand up earlier. >> what was the relationship between the -- questions like legalization of marijuana and assisted suicide with the people coming to the polls, even if they did not like either of the candidates. >> did you hear that ok? we had aestion was, lot of initiatives on the ballot, marijuana and assisted suicide. those initiatives, i did the work ri