not waiting for our party. victory is winning for our country. [applause] >> president trump delivers his state of the union address from the house chamber live tuesday at 8:00 p.m. eastern followed by the democratic response with michigan governor gretchen witmer and texas restaurant -- and texas representative monica escobar. >> we have had a series of guest join us throughout the morning and we will continue with our conversations. davedes moines, iowa with price. he serves as a political director. mr. price, thank you for joining us and welcome to c-span. dave price: good morning. nice to be here. host: tell us what your

expectations are for tonight. who has the strongest chance of coming out on top right now? dave price: the consensus is that bernie sanders should have a good night and would likely be disappointed if he did not win tonight. if you go around, especially in the last couple of months, you can see the crowds that he has attracted. he has been going to some places where he can drive up to. he goes to iowa state university . he was just up in cedar rapids in the northeast part of the state over the weekend. he has been coupling his appearances, while he has been able to be here, he is also bringing in some musical guest which has helped build the crowds even more. he seems to have the enthusiasm and familiarity with people years ago.n four he is the consensus favorite to

win tonight. i think there has been more speculation in the last week, week and half that elizabeth warren will also have a good night in iowa as well. she has also been dealing with between back and forth iowa and washington, d.c. but she has been lauded for putting together the best campaign infrastructure in this state and in this caucus setting that is so viable -- vital. to have to convince people show up tonight and caucus and potentially spend 2-3 hours of their time taking part of the process. two most talked about people right now. and in doing that, we are leaving out joe biden. there has been more speculation this past week that this could be a challenging night for him. a complicatedre

process. as people get to these locations and move around and it is --ortant where you are going whether you have a favorite and a second favorite. biden with the maneuvering could still have a good night that there is more conversation i have had with people that they are questioning whether joe biden would finish second, third, or fifth depending on who you are talking to. which is odd. the fourth person would be pete buttigieg. he has a lot of organization and his crowds have been very big. he had almost 2000 yesterday at a des moines high school. there is a lot of enthusiasm with him. those are the four most talked about people. amy klobuchar on the outside. she has been peaking at the

right time. had at the crowds she has and she is bringing energy and the crowds have been bigger than she had before. there are folks that support her hoping she can surprise people nationally by bouncing into the top four. host: if you would like to ask our guest questions, the lines are there. price, when it comes to the top two candidates, is it taste strictly based on the ability to beat donald trump or is it based on policy? dave price: perhaps a little bit of both but as an anecdote, at our station, we put together a group of nine iowans. they have primarily supported democrats in the past but some have gone for republicans as well. hadet into this group, they

to say that they were completely undecided about a candidate and they would caucus for a democrat. we have been following them for three months. to your point, the biggest factor for them is that they want the candidate who can defeat donald trump. they believe in the issues. and our panel had all kinds of important -- all kinds of ideas that were important but at the end of the day, to the person, the most important thing to them is defeating donald trump. because of that, they struggled with the concept of who is the best person positioned to do that. without spoiling the end of this , of the nine people, when we last sat down, only four had made up their minds. little subset of people were very persuadable. there are a lot of people who

frankly may change their mind when they get into that individual caucus site tonight. host: is this a trend you have seen during previous caucuses or strictly this one? dave price: depending on the cycle, i moved here in 2001 so i just miss the 2000. i have had 2004 on a i don't remember a time when we have seen so many undecided -- and by that, my caveat would be to call .hem persuadable you have the initial demonstration of support but if your candidate is not viable, does not have at least 15% of the support in the room, that person could not earn delegates see you can change to another candidate. it is the moving around that makes it interesting for me tonight because you will see how people look at the realm and, as i mentioned earlier, it is so

important when we have so many undecided people that your second favorite candidate could end up helping to determine who does the best on this night because people can shift over if they are going from a candidate that did not have enough in the first round. because of that jockeying for position come it could end up changing the final result. host: our guest is the political who-tv. of the our first call for you comes from our republican line. dale from wisconsin. good morning, go ahead. caller: good morning. -- i cannotstion get a straight answer about it. i am wondering how can bernie sanders run as a candidate for

president when it has been televised that he has done exactly what they are trying to impeach donald trump for as far as the quid pro quo. dave price: i am not familiar with that allegation. and that is never anything i have heard. host: from fairlawn, new jersey, andrew. caller: this is a question about strategic voting. is it possible for a bunch of republicans to get together, sign up for the democratic caucus in iowa, with the idea that if bernie gets income he will definitely crush tromp but if they vote for -- trump but if to get himor biden on top in the iowa caucus. dave price: is that in theory,

possible? sure you could change your voter registration. that is not anything we have ever experienced before in a widespread coordinated effort like you are talking about. and i have never met anyone in this campaign cycle that has talked about doing that. iowan, do im an get to participate? dave price: you can and that is what will be so different about this year. -- the democratic party faced criticism for lack of accessibility. inlary clinton in particular 2008 and 2016 complained about this because it forces you to go to an individual caucus site, you have to be in the door before 7:00 and for a variety of reasons, people cannot do that. mobility issues,

transportation issues, child care issues. there are a lot of factors. they tried to make it more accessible so they came up with an idea of satellite caucuses. ae party put together committee and allowed people to send in applications to host a sad like caucus site from elsewhere. they went through these and ended up approving some additional locations in iowa. some are in places like as is still living and some of them got waivers so they don't have to be there at 7:00 tonight. altogether, 13 different states and washington, d.c. were approved to host remote sites and there are three foreign countries as well. these will be going on throughout the day and in fact, one in glasgow begins later this morning. we will start to get in some results before folks finally go en masse tonight at 7:00.

but to your point, that is something the party came up with this year. if you are retired and you have the money, some people like to snowbird and get out of town. this way they can do it and they don't have to fly back into town. they can assemble people in their condo village or wherever they are and that is what we are seeing in florida, arizona in particular. this is sort of an experiment. we will see how it goes. it requires people to be willing to help put on one of these things but the party's hope is that this will get more people involved in these. host: i want your perspective of on another experiment. the way the results will be reported. tonight -- weis are always use to spin -- this will give them a couple extra avenues to do this.

past, we got what works out to the percentage of delegates that the campaigns get tonight and they can spin it in whatever way they want. and then the candidates move on to new hampshire. in the effort to be more transparent about how this all happens tonight and in response to criticism from 2016 when hillary clinton barely, barely beat bernie sanders when it came to delegates. at the end of the day, we don't know if bernie sanders got more individual votes from caucus-goers than hillary clinton or not but this time they will. it is a multistep process. as you go in tonight, at 7:00 they will do speeches. into thestart getting deciding process, you divide into preference groups in the room.

everyone supporting candidate a goes over here. and so on. who count off and they see has at least 15% at least in that room to be considered viable. and then you go to the next room. that is when you can move around. that is usually the number we get. this time around, we are going to get three different numbers. the number and results from when they made the initial show of support. the realignment number or they get the percentage. and the third number will be the raw vote total. we will see three different numbers from each individual precinct site. because of that, that will give the campaigns the potential to put an additional level of spin. if you won the first round, you could say we are the real winner because that is the round that matters. people can do the same kind of

spin but the second round numbers. and you can have them spin the third round which is the raw vote total which would be similar to the numbers coming out of the primary. this brings out the potential that we could have several different campaigns claiming victory tonight in ways we have not experienced before. host: from new york, the republican line, mike. caller: the democrats have been complaining about the electoral college. i think that would be adverse to iowans. has that issue come up at all? dave price: it has and it seems like candidate talked about that early on and they were asked about it and some candidates were agreeable to the idea that maybe it is time for the country to ditch that system. i'm not sure i have heard that brought up at a campaign event in at least six months. surely it has somewhere because we can't get to every single

event. but it was a topic early on and that i can't think of any candidate that has brought it up in his or her stump speech recently. there is the fear that if this would happen, that iowa is a middle population state and it would become less relevant. clearly most likely would be less relevant -- it is the first in the nation state. but candidates would then give speeches in big cities. they fear they could lose some of their influence because of that. host: on the republican line, we have bonnie in maryland. , bernie sanders is a career politician who enjoys running. and elizabeth warren keeps everything for free.

we are in debt now. how will they keep that promise? and with joe biden, everything that donald trump has accused him of come he and his family -- every one of these golf courses they are getting paid millions because security is going there. his children have their hand in everything. i biden gets the nomination, am 76, i have been a republican since i was 18, i will vote for biden. host: that is bonnie in maryland. what is bernie sanders doing differently this time around than the last time? dave price: i think one thing i have noticed with him and you see a lot of the folks that were within the first time. a lot of his policies are the same and he has had some of these positions for a long time. one thing that might be a little

different this cycle is their effort for a latino outreach. they seem to have focused more on that. view --m an outsider's the easy thinking with this is that it is a mostly white state. that the latino population is the fastest-growing demographic section there. you are still talking about 50,000, 60,000 potential caucus-goers for tonight. and i think it is somewhere around 6% of the population right now but it is far younger than the overall population in this state and the fastest-growing and sanders has zeroed in on that in more aggressive ways than many of the other campaigns here. that is probably one of the things that sticks out to me and you will see that reflected when you go to his big rallies.

you will see more people of color in those crowds that perhaps i remember seeing four years ago. host: some people have commented on the twitter feed. because they are connected to concerts, how should you way that in -- weigh that in? dave price: very good point and it remains to be seen. the concert he did over the weekend in cedar rapids -- i think it came up during the show when they were talking about who is out of town? and especially this last week of the caucus cycle. iowa has a lot of out-of-town visitors. a lot of people choose to frankly move here temporarily and volunteer or work for these campaigns so you do get a lot of out-of-state folks here. misleadinglightly when you look at some of these crowds because you don't really know exactly how many of these and how manywans

of the people just like the music and are coming for a great concert. we do need to wait to see tonight if that translates into a win for him. from matthewear from idaho. dave pricecaller: thank you. price, i have a question and will reference the question am a female caller from several calls back. amy klobuchar. it almost sounded psychotic. is there a moderate democrat you feel can bridge and build a coalition and have a chance of getting some of the moderate republicans? because of the things that donald trump has done such as

the bailout of the farmers, that was bigger than the car bailout that obama did. chance that any of these candidates have to bridge a gap? your signal is breaking in and out but we got your point. dave price: those conversations have been happening here. if you look at amy klobuchar -- we have a mayor in a des moines suburb who is a republican and he publicly endorsed amy klobuchar. there was a woman who at one point had led a gop women's group across the state and had left the party because of donald trump and she has also decided to support amy klobuchar. you meet some of those folks when you go to klobuchar's rallies. in the past, some of these

people have voted for republicans. they see klobuchar as more pragmatic inmore the policies that she has been talking to iowans about. they don't like what they have that isdonald trump so a democrat they think they can support. joe biden -- the familiarity he has with people. when i've had conversations with republicans and i asked if it comes down to a trump-biden face-off, could they see themselves going that way? the third person would be pete -- and he might be the one of the three most openly courting moderate republicans. duplicate into some ways what barack obama did in 2007 and 2008 when he went to

some areas where traditionally some democrats may not go because there are more republicans than democrats. embraced thathas to grow the pie which is what obama did. those three people in particular -- frankly, i've also heard elizabeth warren talk about this also. her part -- her policies may be more to the left compared to these other folks but she also is making the argument that she can put some ideas out there that she hopes moderate republicans dissatisfied with the president can come over and support. host: ryan from michigan. go ahead. caller: good luck with that. it will never happen. number one, last week's hearings were devastating for the bidens. over a coupleed hundred times including corruption overseas. we know how devastating that

will be. inthe bidens moving forward light of lindsey graham announcing there is definitely going to be an investigation into the bidens out of this. polling -- washe that because of the negative polling because of biden and the investigations and everything else? thank you very much. it looks real nice there. dave price: let us unpack this. i'm going to go backwards. for the des moines register and cnn poll, i don't know of any conspiracy theory that this was dumped at the last second because it had bad news for joe biden. the reputation of the pollster, and seltzer, i think would supersede any concern for any candidate involved in this since

she has been part of this for decades and there is no way she wanted to go through this experience. the only thing i know about is you had one person who got a phone call and the person on the as adid not have buttigieg candidate choice. it was reported and went up the decision then the about the poll. at the end of the day, this may have only happened to one person. thate never heard anything has anything to do with joe biden. as far as impeachment, does this hurt biden in any way? it is a conversation that comes up here. covering the vice president at rallies here, for the most part, maybe one time i remember this coming up but for the most part, people did not bring it up. they think these are just unfounded allegations by the president's team that are coming biden that it looks like

in a head-to-head matchup could beat the president and they question why this did not come up years ago if it was truly a concern for the president. undoubtedly, the president, and grahamnst, and lindsey -- they have been talking about that this whole concept of impeachment was just a way to overturn the will of the people. but what i am seeing now from what senator joni ernst is saying, if biden becomes president, she will push the same thing she complained about. an investigation into biden. we will see how this all plays out. as of now, i don't know how heavily that is bringing down potential for biden here. having said that, you go out to his event coming he does not have the crowds at some of the

other folks have come he came into the game late and may not have the organization that these others do. could impeachment be a factor? sure but i don't think it is an overarching theme. host: joining us from des moines, the political director in des moines, iowa. mr. price, thank you for your time. dave price: you bet, good to be here. >> victory is not winning for our party. victory is winning for our country. [applause] >> president trump delivers his state of the union address from the house chamber live tuesday at 8:00 p.m. eastern followed by the democratic response with michigan governor gretchen whitner and texas representative veronica as the bar. ,ive coverage on c-span

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