♪ >> coming up, president hold a news conference at the white house. live coverage here on c-span. >> more campaign 2020 campaign discussion now with charlie cook. welcome back to the program, mr. cosby requests thank you, paul. >> we are just under two months before the big day. what is the presidential race stand right now? >> i think the president is in a tough fight. he was in a tough fight before the coronavirus hit. if you think about it, just using the gallup numbers, he had only a 38% approval rating, which was the lowest of any elected president in the first year.

attheir second year he was lower than 40%, lower than any other president in a second year in office. in his third year he was at 32%. the lowest except for jimmy carter. president that has never seen a majority approval rating. approval ratings are the best way to determine whether a present is likely to get areected or not they referenda on the incumbent. it is not like a choice alexion like you had in 2016 or 2008. even before the coronavirus hit, ahead only 4, 5, 6 points in polling. joe biden had a lead in every one of the 20 states that hillary clinton carried, with

the possible exception of minnesota, then you had the six battleground states that -- you had this again, wisconsin, and sylvania that effectively settled the last presidential election, all through within the margin of error. florida, arizona, and north carolina, he was running -- the president -- slightly ahead. in the coronavirus hit. everything changes and we are looking at, and link the average of all the polls, it is about seven. in the live telephone interview polls -- the ones i think are the logically soundest -- 10 points behind. in the swing states he is behind in all six of those. then he has got his leads in the ice is like georgia, iowa, texas, ohio. his leads are very small, if at all. he is in a whole here.

he was within striking distance before the coronavirus, and now it is not a competitive race today. he is not within striking distance today. something would have to change for him to get into a more competitive situation, just between three or four points. host: phone numbers at the bottom of the screen for charlie cook. we will separate the lines for those supporting the biden-harris ticket, the trump-pens ticket. if you are undecided, was a line for u.s. well. we welcome social media comments as well. charlie cook has been a guest on this program many times. what do you think is the best bit of good news and bad news it's of these candidates have gotten in the last several days guest: -- days? guest: i'm trying to think what is good for president trump.

biden went into the two of -- atns with a lead that point, high single digits. when you are 10 points -- actually it is about 10 points in the polls i have the most confidence in -- you cannot get a convention pounds off of 10 points. basically all you can do is hold and that is what he seems to have done. then for the president, i do not think he got much of a bounce. i think there are some signs his approval and verbal ratings have moved up a little bit, but he has not closed the gap between biden in many of these key states. in a couple of them they have. i think right now -- i am hard-pressed to say what has happened that makes the race more competitive right now for

president trump. it may be a little bit better in minnesota, but he is still behind there. host: how about the atlantic story on the war dead? the disparaging remarks that the president has pushed back on ? how big of an issue moving forward will that be? guest: we have had dozens and dozens of stories like this. i don't think these kind of story move many voters, to be perfectly honest. anybody who was likely to get outraged by anything said, did,rump allegedly said, allegedly did, i think they were outraged long ago. i think the 42% with the president, i think that is a rock solid base and they are never going to drop. anybody expecting president trump to drop one something like

this happens, you can't. it is expecting pre-trunk genes to shrink. jeans to shrink. it is like, they are not going to, because he never rose, he cannot drop. he is basically holding with his base. his ability to win over those voters, that has been severely compromised by, i think, the loss of the tailwind in terms of the economy. that was his strongest argument, that was his best issue. losing the tailwind hurt him. second, he was seeing a slow to recognize the severity of the coronavirus and has not been very effective at it. that clearly hurt him with these voters in the middle. you can sort of divide people up into trump lovers and trump low , with very fewrs

in between. he has never gone after those in between and i think after the four months, his ability to win them over has been severely compromised. that is why i think he has a difficult time getting reelected. host: robert is calling from clinton, maryland. you are up first. hello, robert. caller: hello, can you hear me ok? host: yes. caller: mr. cook stole my thunder. i was going to ask about the impact of the atlantic story on trump's reelection. i would like to say, it is my opinion that donald trump has the wrong idea about his followers and what they look for in a president. he is someone that speaks for them. there are some 30% of the population who are racists. i'm sorry to say that, because

they are racist people. if trump died tomorrow, they would find someone to take his place. he has a message for those people, and no matter what he does or says, it has no effect on them. as long as he continues to espouse their beliefs. host: a you, robert. mr. cook? focus -- me, i tend to you know, 90% of people who call themselves republicans will vote republican down the line and 90% of people who call themselves democrats will vote mccright. even of the 40% that call themselves independents, the vast majority of them lean lean democrat, 80% of them vote that way. you are only talking about somewhere between 5% and 13% that are swing voters. these are the malleable people who can move around. i think the dynamic that changes

the most, it will not be atlantic articles. we have had so many of these before. the president with this group in the middle, they thought the really strong shape. they gave him complete credit for the economy, but a lot of these people had real questions about his character, about him as a person, his morality, his his judgment, his knowledge of issues, and follow -- finally, is he willing to listen to experts? but the strong economy was keeping those problems in check. strong take away that economy and i think those concerns about him as a person and his leadership style, those concerns start going up. i think that is what has changed the most. these kinds of articles that may -- i do not think these are the things that will move them. it is more a matter of, do i want to renew his contract for

another four years, yes or no? and with incumbent races, that is what is important. biden is almost beside the point in this race, as it is normally in incumbent races. it is about the referendum. from franklin, new york. good morning. caller: i would like to make three points. the first was on inauguration day, january 21. 2017 the unemployment rate was 4.9% and it did drop under trump to around 3.9%. the heavy lifting was done under president obama and vice president biden. it went from 10.6% down to 4.9%. the second point i would like to weeks- he has now had 25

sense march. 23 of the weeks, over one million americans filed for unemployment and two of those weeks, over 6 million people filed for unemployment. that is 56 million americans have filed for unemployment insurance since march 15. that is not a good economy. it is not a great economy. that is my neighbor's children to the east of me, that is my neighbor's children to the west one and three in the other, this is not been a great economy for those young adults. the third point i would like to make, if you do not mind, the stock market, i think a lot of us are addicted to judging the economy by the stock market. the stock market is the upper part of the k. 10% of we the people own 84% of shares in the stock market. and that stock market surge that

you have seen was never discussed on september 2019 as buyfederal reserve began to up corporate debt. since september of 2019, the federal reserve has brought up $7 trillion in corporate debt. this story is not told. this is quantitative easing on steroids. host: daniel, thank you for calling. the economy, charlie cook, did those numbers that caller brought up, to what extent do they play into a biden strategy for the fall? guest: daniel is obviously extremely informed. know,ow, the economy, you it was in terrible shape when obama came into office. did get better over those eight years, very slowly. and continue to after president trump took office.

one of the things -- we have all learned in school that americans vote their pocketbooks. that is the way we always taught it. you remember the old line from james cargill from 1992 -- it is the economy, stupid. there is a wonderful book about identity politics and the 2016 election by three political scientists. things in the book i found so interesting was that from john f. kennedy's administration, all the way through george w. bush's, there was a very strong relationship between consumer confidence, how people felt about the economy, and a president's approval rating. they feel better about the economy, and the approval rating would go up. a direct relationship with consumer sentiment. then president obama came into office and under obama and under trump, that relationship has almost gone away. where now people are not voting

on the economy the same way they used to. they are voting culture and identity. it is race, it is gender, it is how much edge of -- education you have, it is where you live, rural versus urban suburban. these things come together. that is why president trump could have six months of 50 year low unemployment from september of last year to february of last year, six consecutive months of hisour unemployment and approval rating hardly went up. when the economy went into the the -- nobody thanks caused coronavirus, nobody thinks he caused the economic downturn -- the thing is, ups and downs of the economy per se do not affect job approval ratings or elections the way they used to.

it is, how are you seen as handling the job overall? the coronavirus -- he was always within striking distance until that coronavirus hit, until he was real slow taking it on. you remember, it's not much worse than the common flu and all of this. he never did fully engage with it. some of the bleach thing. i think that and the loss of that economic tailwind in this is what made the difference in this election. it is not that the president is encountering a headwind because of the economic downturn -- it is the loss of his tailwind is what i think has hurt him. his best argument. host: charlie cook, the all-important state polls. i want to redo this from fort lauderdale. threerace puts biden points ahead of trump in the first post-convention bowl.

the gap is narrowing there. take us through that if you could. honest, three points ahead in florida, i think, for biden is a good place to be. the thing is, the three that settled the presidency, those were the three that he was doing -- that biden started pulling up in first. florida was actually holding back and not doing well for biden read that is the state -- if you were going to point to one or two states where the coronavirus hurt and his handling of it hurt him more than anything else, i would say florida and michigan. but florida -- you have seen biden go up. consistently, a 4, 5-six point lead in florida. you would have to go back to when he had the 12 point lead a year ago. so this is as good as it is likely to get for biden.

and i think it is important for people to remember that because we have such hyper partisanship -- i mean, if you are a democrat, a republican president can do little or nothing right, and your side can do little or nothing wrong. and for republicans there president -- a president of their party can do very little wrong, and anything a democrat wrong -- you -- is guys get what i am getting at. the thing is what it does is creates a high floor and a low ceiling. because your party will stay with you no matter what. it creates a very strong floor, but because the other party will be against you no matter what, it creates a very strong ceiling. the kind of lead that is seven points in the real clear politics national average, eight

, nine in some of the other live television interview polls, i think that is about as big as you could get, given hyper partisanship. a three-point point lead in florida -- let's face it, a state president trump carried by a point, that republicans carried for the senate and governor by one point each in 2018 -- that is president trump running four points behind where he was in 2016. slid atthink biden has all in order. host: the tear from tammy in maine. tammy, with us? caller: i think that biden is going to throw our economy into a whirlwind and put our health back at risk with china. donald trump just brought back all kinds of businesses from

overseas and plans to bring back more and has brought our health back to the united states from china with our medications and stuff. biden plans to undo all of that. all of these businesses have taken out many loans and have gone to extensive remakes of their businesses do -- due to covid. new businesses started up, creating many jobs for the american people. we have even got new jobs through bringing our health care back to the u.s. host: more on the economy there. which reminds me that another state -- reminds me of another state both candidates have been to recently. pennsylvania, where fracking has become one of the big issues. take me through that state and

how the candidates are doing. guest: pennsylvania was fascinating state on election night. what you had seen in 2016 was the clinton campaign -- both sides spent a ton of money and attention on pennsylvania. the clinton campaign spent an enormous amount of money in southeast pennsylvania, in the philadelphia metro area and in pittsburgh, but basically said, you know what, in between there are not many people, we will let trump take that. the thing is, she came out of the city of philadelphia with a 450,000 vote margin, more than they thought they needed to win the state by. they won in pittsburgh and philadelphia by the margins we were looking for, but they just got killed in between. you had two different things. you had high shares of the vote, where there was a county or two in pennsylvania that donald trump got 80% of the vote.

there were quite a few where he got 70%. there were small counties without a lot of people, but it added up, and the turnout in small-town, rural america, in 2016 to ad level it had not before. the models were basically broken. joe biden and his campaign, they will make their own mistakes. but i can tell you, they are not going to ignore the part of pennsylvania that is between philadelphia and pittsburgh, that is for sure. they are not going to ignore or take for granted michigan and wisconsin, for that matter. he may make new mistakes but will not make the same mistakes clinton campaign hat, where they thought they had michigan in the bag and that they did not need central pennsylvania. the fracking you mentioned, that is an area where democrats were

on the wrong side, because it has created a lot of jobs. there were environmental problems. [indiscernible] but it has helped bring back a lot of jobs. the thing about it is, the fracking did not start in 2017 when president trump took office. but it is an area that has created a lot of jobs and helped us build energy independence, which is something we always thought was a pipedream, really. host: we have about 35 minutes left with charlie cook. he is the editor and publisher of the cook report. i wanted to turn to some of those key senate races. charlie cook, first question. what were lessons learned, if any, from this massachusetts senate primary?

where mr. markey beat mr. kennedy? guest: for a general election, i don't think there are a whole lot of lessons. probably the most important take away that -- was that campaigns matter. that joe kennedy started off with a really, really big lead. that was sort of the natural lead he had. ed markey, who has sort of become more of a creature of washington and a very effective member of congress, but when he was in the house and the senate, he was able to remake him into a candidate of young people, even though he has significantly older than joe kennedy is, capture sort of the environmental movement, all of this. he became the cause candidate. and joe kennedy, who is younger and, generally more exciting, became sort of the candidate of

the old establishment. so, markey's campaign was extremely effective in turning and had been a 10 or 15 deficit into a win. extrapolating that to a general election beyond that, i think, is wrong. in the senate races overall, if we were talking back -- actually you probably did, late this year, late last year, it -- last year -- i would have said there is probably not true than a one in four chance of democrats getting a majority in the senate. and the reason was the senate is 53-47. 53 republicans, 47 democrats. democrats would need a three seat again to get a 50-50 and the new vice president would break the tie for them, or four

seats to get up to 51, if president trump is reelected and vice president pence breaks the ties in the senate. democrats will lose one for sure in alabama. that means they need to beat four republican seats, win four seats and win the presidency. back in january, they only had four decent shots, four good shots at winning republican seats. in arizona, colorado, maine, and tom tillis. but where are we now? all four of those were in much tougher shape than they were at the beginning of the year. iowawe have joni ernst in who was thought to be in a competitive, not that much trouble. now that is a tossup race and

she is b