>> thursday, nominees for census bureau director and ice assistant secretary testify before confirmation hearing. live coverage begins thursday at 10:15 eastern on c-span, c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. steve when we are joined by : charlie cook, publisher of the cook political report. good morning to you. i want to start with the topic we began our program with today, the news last night that senate democrats announced the $3.5

trillion budget plan. the details are still to come. and the road ahead to move it through, budget reconciliation. but what would the battle mean for >> charlie: just a thank you for having me on. you have this in politics, you have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. you have to on the one hand keep your base satisfied so that they will -- on the other hand, you have to reach over to the middle, to 10% or less of people that are true independents, are not terribly political. political. it is almost like a balancing act, not too hot, not too cold. when they do enough to ignite their base, they know they are not helping themselves with

independents. if they are with the swing voters, you knows they are not helping themselves with their base. so it is a delicate balancing act going on, and i think one of the challenges we have these days -- and it is true both ways -- we are in a period where the parties look at everything as a zero-sum game. winner take all. no matter how small your election victory, you have a big mandate. the republicans in 2017 2018, democrats right now -- even a tiny mandate, or a tiny margin, they see as a major mandate to do big things. but i think democrats are having a hard time balancing. president biden, keeping both wings of the party happy -- that is a real challenge. and it will be a challenge in the next election. host: let's go to a different

issue -- voting rights. president biden goes to the national constitution center in philadelphia, a big speech on voting rights. democratic members of the texas state legislature in d.c. to push that issue, to not be in texas to avoid a quorum on the texas law. but f1, the for the people act, all but dead in the senate? it doesn't have the support to move on its own. do you see that balancing act there? guest: i wish chris would stop doing these kitchen sink bills where they put everything but the kitchen sink in so their individual assets -- aspect of individual legislation that people will hate, and rather take each one one at a time, up or down come each provision. and have a better chance of getting things like that through. i'm going to alienate both democrats and conservatives right here because i think the size have gotten a little bit

over there -- on both sides of the issue, fraught on one side, suppression on the other, that at the one hand there is very, very little voter fraud in this country. just look at the convictions under president trump and his justice department for four years. eight years under george w. bush. at the same time, very, very few people are encountering any obstacles to voting. i was looking at a survey taken right after this election where the voter study group -- they gave people a list of eight possible problems that they could encounter voting. among whites, it was missing the registration day, unable to get to a polling place, arriving too late. were told they did not have the right identification, was told

the registration was not on the list. among whites it was 1% to 2% for each of these problems. for african-americans, it was 3%, 4%, or 5%. for hispanics, it was six, or 7% with the leg which barrier counting along the way. i'm not saying there are not some elected officials that seem to be more republican that seem to be trying to make it more challenging for satin segments that for certain segments of the electorate to vote, and that those segments happen to be more democratic. no question about it. but when you look at the voter fraud number during the four years under president trump, there were only 184 conventions during the entire four years. and things about the election -- you had 90 different federal and state judges, where nine of them were appointed by president

trump. basically none of them found anything here. think about the eight years under president bush. george w. bush. they did a major voter -- what they call the voter integrity ballot act, the voter integrity initiative. they only charged 119 people, 86 convictions, over five years. we have seen the heritage foundation do a study where they found that there only 56 -- 563 convictions in the last 10 years voter fraud. or any kind of fraud of any kind, election fraud or voter fraud. in the last 40 years, a study found 1300 22 proving cases over 40 years. how many billions of votes were cast during that time? i think just to point out, we

are at a point in politics where nobody ever loses anything. either i win, or i have been cheated. one way or the other. we see that in both parties on both ends of the ideological spectrum. in part this is political segregation. sony people live, work come and socialize with people like themselves, so everybody they know votes, and their readership, listenership, viewership, day get to the point where they don't hear anything other than what they want to believe. it is a challenging time, no question about it. but, you know, i think it is deplorable to keep anyone who is a legitimate voter from voting, but the caller today who said if it legal image strengths -- if illegal immigrants have a drivers license they can vote. show that to me. don't just tell it to me because

you heard it on a talk show or read it someplace. show me something concrete. there is not a state in the union who allows illegal immigrants to vote. it just doesn't happen. host: i do love it when the callers say that -- charlie cook, the cook political report, his 176 appearance today, dating back to 1985, back when we were still calling you charles. it was november 1, 1985. if you want to join charlie cook this money, democrats can call in at 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001, independents, 202-748-8002. you were talking about razor thin majorities who govern as if they are not in razor thin majority. when did that start?

you went back to republicans under the trump administration. but when did they act in the old days, as it were? guest: that's a great question, john. i think our entire political system basically started changing about 30 years ago. around 1991, 1992 -- this was sort of the ultimate reach. the thing is, in the old days, you saw a fairly substantial percentage of people in one party which say they approve of the other party. eisenhower and kennedy, each of them had 60% job approval ratings among people in the opposite party. and starting in the early 1990's, we started seeing things get more and more partisan. the opposition to bill clinton when he was elected in 1992,

over the next eight years, you had a positive view of republicans toward his administration. it reached proportions we had never seen before. during the next debate with george w. bush, you saw the exactly same thing happened the other way around, where the level of animosity among republicans. it keeps building and building from that point on. so that now you have got the vast majority of voters that are just voting straight ticket voting, all republican, all democrat. now we are in a parliamentary system for the most part. i think it is remarkable that in 2016 every single u.s. senate race was won by a candidate of the same party that carried that race. every single one. then in november, it was all but one. 34 out of 35, with one exception. 96% of all members of the house

represent districts that their party carries. so we are going one way or the other. if it is a between party vote, then one vote or the other side is taken as a mandate. but i think it is the culmination of escalating waves of partisanship that sort of hits the system, and it used to be that we had, going into 1982, republicans had won four of the five most recent presidential elections, and i think it was seven out of the 11 at the end of world war ii. at the same time, democrats going into 1994, democrats had won the house 20 times in a row, and the senate, 42nd -- 30 consecutive years. in 1994, you saw partisanship

kicking in. the political behavior today bears no resemblance to what it did before 1991, 1992. host: joe is up first out of maine. you're on with charlie cook, independent. caller: thanks for taking my call. good morning, charlie. it's my understanding, you keep talking about past elections. in the 2020 election, there was one person charged with fraud. he was a republican from pennsylvania who had repeatedly voted for his passed away mother. that went through the court. he was charged and convicted. there was no hugo chavez that interrupted in the elections in 2020. there was no martian vote. there was no fraudulent vote.

there was one case. could you comment on that? my other question or comment, quick is, the republican senators all took an oath during the impeachment to be a fair and impartial juror. i know that's not exactly what you're talking about. but then let's say they'll use that for toilet paper. host: you bring up a couple of different issues. guest: i tend to forget what happened before. whether it is just one case, i was reading the other day about a case in texas where a guy had served some time in prison and was on parole. under texas law, while you are in jail and while you are still on parole, you are not allowed to vote, and afterwards you are allowed to vote. this guy was apparently at his local polling place, the last person in line to vote, was

quoted on tv or something for having waited six hours to vote. he votes, and then it comes out somebody investigates and finds out that he shouldn't have because his parole wasn't over. when prosecutors have looked at a lot of these cases, and a lot of it is just that someone thought they were registered to vote or thought they did and didn't. you know, the vast majority of these people were born and raised in the united states. there is no reason to challenge them, but people do. personally, i would go for a universal voter registration for anybody who is a citizen. when you get your drivers license or id card or welfare or whatever, you show it, and after that nobody can challenge you. you have to vote in the right place, but there is a lot. on the democrats' side, there is

a feeling that people were having to walk over broken glass to vote, or that certain people are. on the other side, that people are stealing votes left and right, when there are very few cases. it is like the sworn affidavit. it is all garbage. host: go ahead and finish her comment. guest: i forgot where i was going there. eight years under george w. bush with no republican justice department, four years under trump. if there was significant voter fraud in this country, i suspect that 12 years we would have seen more than the few cases we saw. host: we will head over to the chesapeake bay out of annapolis. scott, republican line. caller: i would like to challenge the idea that illegals are not voting in the election.

i have a personal experience where i was renewing my driver's license at the dmv, and i was chatting with the lady behind the counter about it, and she goes, "oh, we give it illegals drivers license because they all have to prove residency. the next question on the screen says, do you want to register to vote? she says i know for a fact there are illegals, many hundreds of thousands in americans that have come in, they get residency status, they get a drivers license, and then they also at the same time our signed up to register to vote." guest: have you personally witnessed a noncitizen vote? have you witnessed this, or is it secondhand? caller: i did not watch the vote, i watched a person sign up to vote at the dmv. guest: and you knew for sure that they were not a citizen?

host: i think we lost the caller. guest: it is all hearsay. i heard this, i read this, somebody told me this or that. when judges, when prosecutors go to really look at the details, they find out that that doesn't wash. you had nine different trump appointed federal judges look at these things. either hearing motions or cases. and we did not see anything. over half of the federal judges are republican appointed. why the heck happened they found more? host: gulfport, mississippi, is next. democrat, good morning. austin, are you with us? we will go to samantha in washington, d.c. go ahead, samantha.

caller: good morning. two points. i am a navy custodian, six generations. i'm african-american, and at 1.i was a republican, and when the clan took over the party, i became a democrat and proud to be. i -- my concern is the lies that are being perpetrated by the likes of the current governor. the lieutenant governor in texas, the governor doesn't run the state. the lieutenant governor runs the state. this guy is quite questionable, this dan patrick, who was -- who is out of the state american -- state of maryland, who has a shaming background and is coming to texas and had a talk show alex jones. is very racist and race -- it is very racist and anything beyond

what democrats would give people their rights. he would tax the attorney general, who has been under federal indictment since 2017, i believe, maybe earlier than that, on criminal fraud charges and so forth. and of course trump's justice department did not want to press the issue. these are people who are the worst kind of criminals you can possibly have. host: mr. cook? guest: my dog is in a nearby room and is not happy. host: we understand that. we get television. guest: when i am not talking, i will be muted. under the texas constitution scum of the lieutenant governor really does have more power, constitutionally, than the governor does.

with the legislature and all this. so that is absolutely true. and the only exception to that is if you have a governor who is very assertive, and like george w. bush, a democratic speaker, sometimes a governor can become -- constitutionally, technically speaking, that is absolute true. and the attorney general under indictment -- i don't know the d's case -- the details of the case. i'm not saying texas is getting more democratic, but it is getting less republican, and is sort of moving toward the middle. it has not moved as much as some people thought it might by november. as other people from other parts of the country move in, it becomes lex -- less texas, less

southern. that's what you're seeing with north carolina and other places, the influx of other people from other parts of the country. and its suburbs are growing, and the small town rural areas, which are the most conservative republican right now, those areas are contracting. that's why you are seeing real changes in voter behavior in some of these states. and conversely, in some of the midwest industrial states, democrats are having to peddle harder and harder because they are having more challenges with working-class white voters. there is a push-pull going on in different parts of the country. i know i didn't get into specifics, but i'm trying to stay away from subjective stuff. host: what is an example of one of the democratic states where they are pedaling harder? guest: look at pennsylvania and

had -- what is happening in those states. they were competitive, better off than where they are now. we are seeing college-educated whites, specific college education white women moving away from republican centaur democrats for the last 20 years. at the same time, working-class whites, particularly working-class white men, that are migrating to the other side. we are seeing that in state after state after state. we are going to a realignment. this country is not just an one direction realignment. host: fort collins, colorado. charles, an independent. good morning. caller: my contention about voting is gerrymandering. because what i see in gerrymandering, where a

politician can make districts that severely favor them, then we get to a point where, ok, i'm a guy, a republican in a 90% district. and i want to vote against donald trump because i don't believe he is doing something great. then everyone that districts yell rhino, and your career is over. to the extent that it was balanced, i think we would see more people coming across the aisle and be more pragmatic because their jobs are not on the line. and we we come to a better america where the republicans or democrats on either side to speak out, and that's why i'm so adamant about hr and sr one. i want to see that done. i want to see citizens -- thank

you, charlie. guest: you made one of my points for me, that hr one, i think the mistakes made was because they put everything but the kitchen sink -- gerrymandering, finance -- they put all of it into one thing and gave lots of people different reasons to oppose it. where why don't they just do gerrymandering? gerrymandering for most people, it is when the other side draws the line that you don't like. now, if i had a magic wand and i could do one political reform in this country, it would be the whole country goes to an iowa-like system where you have a commission of statisticians draw the line, ignoring where incumbents are. they are in a position of as contiguous and compact as

possible, trying to respect county and municipal lines to the extent that you can. that is the gold standard. having some other commissions that are not bad in those sections. but to me, both parties are guilty of this when they are empowered. maryland, where i live for almost 30 years, democrats control the legislature and did horrible things in terms of trying to diminish republican voting. just as republicans are right now trying to do that to them. the joke is instead of voters picking elected officials, we have election officials pick the -- elected officials picking their voters. this is a much bigger problem than campaign or voter fraud or voter suppression or anything else. i think this is the number one. i don't know of any -- i can only think of one state legislature that voluntarily gave up the right to draw maps.

they don't like to give that away. so in the states where they have been forced to buy ballot initiatives, for example, to draw maps independently, that is the places that has happened. there is a trend, but most states do not have ballot initiatives where you can force that over the objection of the state legislature. but it is a huge problem, and when you look at the votes cast for president and how many state legislators from each party, or house member, that sort of thing, you can see some pretty bad things happening that personally i am not a lawyer, but i would think under one vote would not be allowed. we will see federal courts coming in sometimes when you have really bad cases, but in my judgment not nearly enough. you did not see it in north carolina and pennsylvania before the last election. host: on the issue of

redistricting, there is a guy on twitter, the twitter handle is @ redistrict. i wonder if he would be a good twitter follower. guest: that is david wasserman, the house editor at the cook political report. he is a walking computer, just smart as he can be. and he is sort of our, our quantitative person. david is very good. you cannot go wrong if you have the slightest interest in politics, to follow to become a particular on election nights when he will say watch out, you know, ex area has not come in or something like that. there are not a whole lot of people that can do that, and david is definitely one of them. host: and he will always let you know when he has seen enough to call a race. this is tom, a republican.

good morning. caller: hi, charlie. i suggest you put your hands in your pocket, it's distracting. host: it's also distracting when you say something like that. so let's go to palm springs, california, on the line for democrats. caller: when we are listening -- an interesting point. host: yeah, bill. with the interesting point. are you still with us? john, elbow lake, minnesota. independent. good morning. caller: yeah. i would like to mention a couple things. the voter fraud cases are one of the least prosecuted cases in the country. we have a secretary of state here in minnesota that doesn't

even look into these cases. and then the mention of lower numbers. when you're in swing states, it doesn't take much to change things. people should be aware of that. guest: i'm very aware of it. it is pretty hard to prosecute things that are rare, and prosecutors do from time to time find it, but it doesn't have -- take the george w. bush-john ashcroft, and later alberto gonzales after ashcroft -- five years, they had 300 investigations, and only 119 were charged, 86 convicted. under president trump, it was 184 convictions total. the thing is, it is not that

these people -- certainly the trump administration, they were looking for it. they didn't find it. it is hard to prosecute something that hardly happens. i think this is part of that people cannot accept that they lost an election. and after the 2004 election, democrats were convinced that george w. bush and republicans stole ohio. they did not steal it. they lost an election. you can lose elections legitimately. it does not have to be theft. i keep coming back -- if there was a problem of democrats, minorities, liberals, whoever committing voting fraud, why in the world would the republican justice department's, republican attorneys general, presidents, and a republican appointed federal judge -- why would they not have found some?

i mean, some more than the microscopic numbers that we have had. i think people are just living in an alternative universe because they are absolutely convinced that when they don't win an election, it had to be stolen from them. host: 15 minutes left with charlie cook. you can continue to fall -- to call in on phone lines. 202-748-8000 for democrats, 202-748-8001 for republicans, 202-748-8002 if you are independent. who are the people, however small it is, the people in the middle? who swings the elections back and forth? guest: that is a great question. the people that are the puritans , independence, that do not even lean. they vote 90% of the time straight down the line. the only question is do they

show up or not. and then the vast majority will confess that they lean democrat or republican, and 80% that lean democrat will vote democrat down the line. they are really not independent, they just like to call themselves that. so between 5% and 10%. there are exceptions to this rule. i should put my hands down. for the most part, these are people that don't follow politics that closely. and a lot of them don't reduce papers in any form or listen to news or watch news. they tend to not be interested in politics. attention not trust politicians or political parties. they are just not terribly engaged. they tend to get interesting -- get to elections very late, when the election is getting closer. are they more centric than they

are, then people who are conservative? yes. but it is not right between the two 40 yard lines, philosophically. a lot of them just don't have strong opinions. having strong opinions about public policy, the chances are pretty good, they are conservative or liberal. one or the other. it is not of their -- it is not always, but more often than not. so these people in the middle are somewhat disengaged. part of what has happened in the process is that our policies -- and i've got to use my hands on this. our parties have become more ideologically sorted. when i came to washington almost 50 years ago, you had a lot of conservatives, moderate democrats particularly from the south and rural areas. at the same time you had a republican party, liberal

moderate republicans from the north to east, from the west coast, the suburbs of chicago. there was a substantial overlap between the two parties. but what happened in congress, what happened in conservative come and to a certain extent moderate democrats, they died, they retired, they lost general elections, they lost primary elections, or they switched parties. the same thing with the liberal circumstance, with moderate republicans dying, losing parties, whatever. then the electorate, you kind of have the same thing. where conservative democrats sort of leave the party or stop voting democratic. same thing with liberal republicans. so now the two parties are largely artificially sorted, where we have a liberal and conservative party. it is what it is, but the people

-- each party that where the ballast that kept their party from going off into a ditch on the left or the right are for the most part gone. to the extent that you have gerrymandering and to the extent that you have people who want to watch or listen or read news from the perspective that they already agree with, so it reinforces their point of view, you see this gap between the two sides getting bigger and bigger and bigger. host: what would it take to have something other than a super tight margin in upcoming elections? is that what you first see for the foreseeable future? guest: we are in an era now that because the party is so evenly divided. narrowly divided and evenly divided, each party is within striking distance, nationally

speaking and in competitive states and districts. each one stays in striking distance of the other. so the ability -- in the past we have seen -- and whether it was ronald reagan or richard nixon winning huge landslide victories, or on the other side lyndon johnson winning a landside and 64, winning in 48, 49 states, winning big percentages of the vote, toward 60%, that cannot happen now because each party has a higher floor because they have got so many people that are going to vote with them no matter what. but a higher ceiling because of people just like that on the opposite side. so our two parties are just -- they are locked in with high

floors, low ceilings, and small things that can happen can shift that little slice of independence, push them over one way or the other. i friendly see that what -- think that is what we saw for the last election. it certainly looked it was headed toward a certain outcome, and then i think for the independents, they don't trust politics or political parties. they are thinking -- they are at home talking about a democratic wave. and democrats building up a bigger majority in the house, taking on a big majority in the senate. and taking over the white house. they started thinking, what was this i heard about democratic socialism and medicare for all and this and that, and abolish the police, abolish ice, defund the police and all these things.

i think they just kinda got scared, and you saw biden to put numbers coming down a little bit at the end. you saw democrats for the house and suddenly they are coming down. democrats came down. a month out before the election, you had people, as republican and conservative as ted cruz, and ed rollins, who managed president reagan's campaign in 84 who were saying that -- in crew's case, suggesting this could be a bloodbath of watergate proportions. that is where this race was one, i think, a month out. again, it doesn't take many votes among those independents, to push the election one way or the other, in a competitive state or district, with the high

floors and low ceilings. host: about five or so minutes left. larry has been waiting from pennsylvania, he democrat. -- a democrat. caller: i want to say to mr. cook, do whatever you want to do with your hands, but i have a question. what do you think about the grassroots of your community that you live in? this is where you go to vote. when you vote there, it more controls the destiny of your state or the nationalism or which ever you want to go. i have a statement for you, too. i have not heard you say, and we have very good presidents. of all the presidents that we did have, do you think that guy put us in a state of emergency, that we all need to know where we want to vote and 80 judges

say, hey, no, there was no voter fraud, and yet if people keep saying the same thing, i bring up a lot of points. guest: before you get off, could you explain the front part of your question about people in your neighborhood? i did not get that part of the question that i focused on. host: my apologies, i cut in on larry, so he is not with us. guest: ok. there's is an old expression, words of a feather flock together. we could move to places that we feel comfortable with, people like ourselves. it is that political segregation that i was talking about earlier , but i'm not going to go into which presidents were good or bad, because it is my job to stay in the middle. but i think the one encouraging -- i think -- we just had a

record -- back to back record high election. we had the highest presidential turnout since 1900. in 2018 we had the highest midterm election turnout since 1914. one of the biggest things in this election -- it is how did those independents go, but the other thing is, which party suffers a bigger -- do the trump low there is, that hate president trump that turned out in big numbers vote against him? did they decline more? and the trump lovers, the people that turned out for him, now that he is not on the ballot, literally or figuratively, could they turn out in lower numbers? if so, how does the group in the middle -- how do they go? and which side suffers the greatest drop-off? in politics, it is when a party

is feeling it is going too far. in my mind, going too far is when parties tend to get his problems. i would point out that for the first time in american history, we now have had four consecutive presidents lose control of both the house and the senate during their presidency. four in a row. clinton, george w. bush, barack obama, donald trump. and it is because the parties are getting closer and closer together. we are seeing these swings. but the parties are becoming so monolithic, so parliamentary, and what happens as a result is public policy, what i call ping-pong policy, where it sort of careens from too far left to too far right, back and forth, which for everybody in business,

you know that is kind of hard to plan for, hard to count on. john, let me turn it back to you. host: nelson, hollywood, florida, republican. go ahead. caller: good morning, mr. cook. i'm going to have to start reading your news later that your newsletter. i'm 22 years old, i've been voting for a long time, and i have never questioned the results of a presidential or any other election, for that matter. what scares me about this last election, what makes me wonder as to what the results really were was the fact that a number of states appeared to have violated their own laws and even constitutions. i have been hearing for a long time that the united states of america is a land -- is a country of laws. when you disregard your own laws and your own constitution, you cease to be a country of laws.

that is what i believe to be the biggest threat to the future of american liberty and freedom. host: let me turn it over to charlie cook. guest: toward the violin constitutions or laws, we have to get specific. but was the united states in 2020 facing the biggest public health disaster in a century? yes. the biggest since the spanish flu of 1914 -- 1918, sorry. there were things done to accommodate getting more people a chance to vote, either by mail -- and there is absolutely no evidence, and ask any republican secretary of state or elected official that had the vote by

may election, for example, or to go and vote early so they would not be in long lines, where they could catch the coronavirus. but, yes, there were modifications made. but the thing is, we were moving toward vote by mail already. you may not know, there are already -- we were 100% vote by mail before this last election. the convenient voting, allowing people where it is 24 hours where you could drop your ballot box off, where there are libraries or low-flying mail. i personally like to vote in person, but a lot of people do not. the thing is, i defy anyone to show me any evidence at all where a state or local government violated their laws,

violated their constitution, and it may help them to change the outcome of the election. host: we will have to end there this morning. you mentioned your dog. i want to ask your dog's name before you go. guest: it is penny. we inherited the dog from our daughter. he doesn't like to be cooped up. host: penny is a good dog. thank you for joining us this morning. charlie cook with the cook political report, >> broadband ir empowerment. that is why charter has invested

millions, creating analogy and power and small. -- creating opportunities and power big and small. >> giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> sunday night, on cue and day -- q&a, jessica was the engineer of the historic vote but was called back into surface -- into service aid firefighters. in her book, she tells the story of the community of mariners who came to the rescue of thousands. >> the maritime organization is an incredible example of the goodness of people, that when you are given the opportunity to help, you have the tools, the skill set, you have the

availability. people over and over again mid the choice to put themselves in harm's way for the sake of fellow human and that is very instructive and something we need to continue to remember. >> sunday night at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. you can also listen to c-span as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. st: our first guest is david gantz, with -- a professor of law emeritus at the university of arizona. anchor for joining us this morning. guest: my pleasure. host: we are under, when it comes to trade concerns, something called the u.s. fda.