thi this sunday, another tumultuous week in washington. >> wants him to fully operate with a clean slate. >> white house staff shake-up. congress leaves town after getting nothing done. grand juris and president trump continues to call it all of it a hoax. >> the russia story is a total fabrication. it's just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of american politics. that's all it is. it all sounds so familiar. so why do we keep having weeks like this? this morning, our broken politics, two parties searching for their identities. the republicans -- >> i think to be conservative,

can't be to embrace conspiracy theories or to talk about alternative facts. >> i'll talk to senator jeff patrick in of arizona who took on his own republican party for not sticking to it's principles. and the democrats db. >> the leadership has not been clever enough or strong enough or perhaps visionary enough. >> my interview with jerry brown on how the democrats have managed to become a minority party in washington, in state houses, and voted out of the white house. we agree, washington is not working, what can we do to fix it? joining me from insight and analysis are andrea mitchell, dan balz, heather mcghee, and david french, senior writer for the national review. welcome to sunday, and a special edition of "meet the press." from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, celebrating

it's 70th year, this is a special edition of "meet the press" with chuck todd. >> good sunday morning. what was extraordinary is how ordinary it was, the russia investigation heated up again, there was a shake-up in the white house, again. congress couldn't get anything done, again. there was talk of reviving the republican health care rewrite, again. still two things stood out to us, one was a president trump's approval rating hit 33% in the queen pea yak poll. and the welcome the president received in west virginia when he attacked the investigation and the news media. >> the russia story is a total, fabrication. it's just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of american politics. it just makes them feel better when they have nothing else to talk about. >> this is where we are. our politics is broken. there are a lot of suspects, too much money, jerry handering or

growing cultural divide, if there's one thing we can agree on, they don't agree on much. today we're going to focus on our broken political party specifically. consider this, republicans have never seen more sending. they have the biggest house majority since the 1920s and more governors in multiple generations, yet, they can't get anything done. democrats have never seen more rescinded, demographics are moving relentlessly in their direction and can't win elections. both sides are focussed more on the issue of winning the next election, firing up their base, talking to people who already agree with them then they are about persuading people to eventually agree with them. senator jeff patrick in of arizona took after his own republican party perhaps to his peril. it was we conservatives who upon obama's election stated that our number one priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda, but making obama a one-term president. the corollary to this binary thinking, being that his failure would be our success.

could senator flake's words describe president trump? and we'll get to that and the democrats. senator jeff flake of arizona, senator, welcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> thanks for having me on. >> look, your book felt like a two-pronged attack, if you will, on the state of the republican party today. first on the character of the president, and then more on the issue of what's happened to conservatism. i want to focus on the issue of trump and conservatism here. you wrote the following, too often when it comes to trump, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, someone should do something without seeming to realize that that someone is us. but in defense of the republican field and conservatism 2016, a lot of o conservatives warn the country that donald trump wasn't one. take a listen. >> donald trump's candidacy is a cancer on conservatism and it

must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded. >> donald trump and hillary's policy views on issue after issue are virtually indistinguishable. >> i'm not afraid of losing our election, i'm afraid of losing our soul. >> it bothers me that someone comes to hijack that cause. drumpb's not a conservative. >> i will speak to anyone before i let a con artist get ahold of the republican party and the conservative movement. >> senator, why didn't conservatives listen to ted cruz, jeb bush, marco rubio, rick perry, all who layed it out starkly on the issue of donald trump and conservatism? >> well, what i do in the book, borrowed from barry goldwater's tone and, you know, 1960, he thought that the party had kind of given in to the new deal and felt he ought to a put a blueprint forward for conservatism. i think today conservatism is kind of economized by populism.

well, we have the house, the senate, we have the white house, republicans do, but not long ago, we had that, in 2006, and we lost it. because i don't think we acted very conservative with all the spending and everything else that went on. so, i think that just because we have the house, the senate, and the white house, we can't rest easy and we can't say that populism is a governing philosophy because i don't believe that it is. >> what -- i am curious, what motivated you to write this book? donald trump's character or this issue with conservatism that you're just making the argument and others have made to me before that goes back 20 years? >> well, i started writing this book before donald trump became president, but i am concerned at the direction that the party's going. the protectionism in particular, anti-immigranter inner have, those kind of things, i don't think will propel republicans into the future.

i think demographics are against us in that regard and i think we've got to do something different. >> but, i guess i go back -- if donald trump -- you thought he was a man of good character, but was still touting the same populist populism protectionism as you just described it when it comes to trade issues. some things that have been stuff that conservatives have argued against for years. would you have written this book with the same tone? >> well, i do think that it's not -- to be a conservative isn't just to follow conservative principles in terms of limited government, economic freedom, free trade, but it is conservative in terms of comportment and behavior. i don't think we've seen that out of the white house, it's not conservative on foreign policy, for example, to keep your allies guessing as to where you are and what you support. a conservative is steady, and measured, and sober in terms of implementation of diplomacy and use of force.

and i think that that is lacking, and i think that we've got to change course in that regard. >> well, let me ask you this, what would you -- going in hindsight now, what should the conservative movement has done in 2016 that they didn't do? mitt romney spoke out, national review did a famous, never trump endorsement if you will, endorsing anybody but, none of it seemed to work. in hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently as a conservative leader? >> well, i'm not denying that populism isn't popular, that's why it's called populism. the problem is, i think it's a first and foremost the duty of conservatives to tell the truth to the constituency, and it's easy to point to a shuddered factory and say, hey, if we had just negotiated better trade deals then those jobs would be there when really it's automation and productivity gains, it's much more complex.

and my concern is, is that populism is a sugar high. and once you come off of it, it's particularly troublesome for the party. and so, i wish that we would have been more truthful with the electorate in terms of what we can and what we cannot do in washington. >> but you were pretty rough on some conservatives, because look, the movement was split. right? you had some that stuck to their guns on this and others that you called willing accomplices, in fact, you write this on page 110, we forgot to affirm that yes, we are proud republicans, but that we believe in country before party, we forgot to do that. we were afraid to do that. are you still -- you're clearly not afraid to do that, is your party? is the conservative movement still afraid? >> well, i do think that we've seen more people ready to stand up. and i wish that we as a party would have stood up for example when the birtherism thing was going on. a lot of people did stand up, but not enough.

>> did you do enough? i'm just curious -- >> on o that, i think i did. but, on other things as well, when our party -- during rallies when the chants "lock her up," you know, we shouldn't be the party for jailing your political opponents. and anybody at that rally, anybody at those rallies ought to stand up and say that's inappropriate. we shouldn't be doing that. and i wish we as a party and elected officials would do more of that. or when particularly ugly conspiracy theories go out or simply fake news, stuff that is just demons ra bli false, we ought to stand up and say hey, that's just not right. >> what if more leaders in your party don't? is there a point where you say to yourself -- i read this book and again i go back, it's as much as of an indictment on the republican leadership over the last 15 years as it is on donald trump. it's more of on indictment on the republican leadership.

and i am just curious, did you think about leaving the party? >> no. no. not at all. i'm a proud republican, life-long republican. and from arizona. arizona tends to elect independent-minded people and people who stand on principle. so i'm doing what i think my voters expect of me. but, i think, for example, in 2006 when the party in particular had given way to inappropriate spending, earmark spending, couple of our colleagues ended up in jail. if you remember the man for drain the swamp was employed effectively by the democrats and describing the republican party at that time. and i think had we stood up at that time, then we wouldn't have lost those majorities in the house and the senate, and i fear that we might do the same again. >> you had strong words in that book, and yet, we looked at your voting record, and at this point, you vote more with the president than even some others in the senate who've taken the president on.

according to our count here, 93.5% of the time you have voited with the president. is there a point wrp you will vote potentially against your own id logical interests in order to send a message to republican leadership, in order to send a message to president trump? the question is when does character trump ideology end for you? >> what we've done in the senate so far, 36 months of any presidency, we're in the personnel business. all we're doing is approving the president's cabinet picks, justices, the president named a great supreme court justice. i was glad to support him in that. regulatory policy, i think he's on the right track. i think tax reform, he has good instincts there. i'll probably be with him. on many things like trade, i expect to vote against the president. and i'll stand up just like when president bush there was, i voted against no child left behind and the prescription drug benefit, but i was with him on most things. and i think that aisle do the same here. i'll vote with the president when i believe he's right and

vote against him when i think he's wrong. >> okay. that doesn't sound dsht tone you're taking here doesn't sound like the man who wrote this book. the man who wrote this book, you feel as if there's a sense of urgency here. things are so broken in the conservative movement. we can't stand pat anymore, but you sound like you're figuring out how to tiptoe around this still. is there a point where you're done tiptoeing? >> let me just say that during the voting we haven't voted on much where you could distinguish yourself from the direction the president is going. having said that, some of the executive orders that he's taken, for example, on the muslim ban -- well, it was a muslim ban during the campaign. what becamele travel ban. i very much spoke up against that. i don't think that's in our national security interest, i don't think that's the direction to go. immigration proposal that was put forward last week. i think it's fine to move to a points system, we did that in the bipartisan bill in the senate, but you can't cut immigration, legal immigration in half. and so i'll stand up against

that. and the behavior in the white house as well. i mean, referring to our colleagues across the aisle as losers or clowns is just not the direction to go if we are going to solve the problems in a conservative way that we need to. so i'll stand up every time to the president when he's doing things that i don't think he should be doing, but in terms of votes, we haven't had that many other than person tole distinguish ourselves either way. >> how do you fix the senate though? it's a very leadership-driven operation. both parties have accepted this premise that the rank and file are not to decide where legislation goes. only the leadership. part of your good indicts that leadership. how should mitch mcconnell respond to your book? >> i think we realize the limits what have we can do. you know, with one party. with just republican votes. and i'm not faulting mitch mcconnell at all. he is a tough job. but, i do think that we're going

sit down across the aisle with our colleagues and fix these things. if we're going to fix the big things that we need to fix and in particular our debt and deficit, that has to be done with republicans and democrats. there's no way one party will take the risk, and that's what is so broken about our politics is we just can't get together on the big things and as conservatives, we simply can't enact conservative policy if we continue these things. >> i'm going to have to leave it there. we're going discuss the lost middle in american politics up next when we get a chance. senator jeff flake, thanks for sharing your views, sir, appreciate it. >> thank you. up next, we're going to look at that, how the divisions within the gop are handcuffing and frustrating the president right now. especially when it comes to his favorite topic, russia. and later, we'll look at the troubles the democrats are facing with california governor jerry brown. and by the way, break throughout the show, you're going to see trends and statistics about how our politics has changed in the last generation.

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you get up to 5 lines of talk and text at no extra cost. [ laughing ] so all you pay for is data. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. call or go to xfinitymobile.com introducing xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. welcome a back. panel is here. dan balz, heather mcghee, andrea mitchell, and david french. david, i'm going let you take this start here. you've among the more prominent, you were recruited to run for president -- >> did that actually get -- >> i know, sometimes you're like -- um, i am struck by senator flake's, it's a two-pronged attack on the party, trump's character, conservatism, what should -- what are you gleaning from this? >> well, what i'm gleaning from this. let's keep this very real. okay. we focus an awful lot on politicians and what are politicians doings, but, there's

the people. and i live in the middle of trump country. my precinct went for trump by about 72%, what i can tell you, there is a market for what trump is selling. >> uh-huh. >> and we cannot ignore and can't focus complete oi on washington. what we are overrun is negative polarization. this is what the pew foundation has measured. people are supporting republicans not because of what they stand for, but because there's so much hostility to democrats. and that's, that's what it's about. it's about fighting, fighting we can fighting. >> it's funny you say that. listen to mitch mcconnell, we have audio, fancy farm pick mic, here's his explanation for the upside of not getting health care done, take a listen. >> even on the night we came up one vote short of our grand reveal to replace obamacare. feel better, hillary clinton could be president.

>> talk about just underscoring david's point right there, dan. >> and it's, you saw that with president trump this weekend in west virginia. the same kind of message. it's an antianti message. there's little that either side frankly has put up positively since trump was elected president and before that. i don't think that we know this didn't start with donald trump, this condition that we're in, but that, that is what's driving. if you look at the statistics on how people feel about their own party over the last 25 years, it's basically the same. they feel as good about their party as they did 20 or 25 years ago. when you look at how they feel about the opposition party, that line has gone straight down. >> wait until you see a marriage stat i'm going to show people when it comes to marrying of the opposite political party. i guess the question is when the republican's party trump or the fact that they, they don't know what the definition of conservative is right now? >> i think it's a combination. it's partly because they have this republican president who is not really a republican and not

really a conservative. and, what jeff flake was talking about is that he voted against prescription drugs, he voted against the george w. bush proposals that busted the budget in his view. he views himself as a real conservative. he's making a distinction between conservatism and populism, and i think that's a good conversation to have for republicans as well as democrats. what you're seeing, david, in your precinct and elsewhere and certainly in west virginia which is ground zero of trump country, is, anger against elites. people feeling that they've been passed over, anger, you know, you see the state, the stats on anger against league colleges, even among those college-educated. extraordinary. so it's anger against all of us, the media, as well, and trump has just tapped into that. and i really appreciated that jeff flake said the locker up, those cries at the republican convention by michael flynn no less, the call and response was really a nayier of -- what i

view as the republican party. >> she referenced a stat here i want to put it up here on this issue, anti-intellectual streak, 58% of republicans believe colleges and universities have a negative effect on the way things are going in this country. that is a -- i mean, it was a startling, wait a minute, i thought we all agreed college is good. we can have a debate about openness in ideologies at universities, but when did we go all the way there? >> well, i think you really have to sort of follow the threat of this narrative. you know, republican strategist began to really recognize how much more highly educated folks were trending towards being more liberal. and we can talk about why that might be, republicans would say it's a nefarious liberal bias on liberal campuses, it's the more than you study the history and the world, you understand how we've fallen short and you want to tend to work more veraciously

towards those goals, but if you look at right-wing media. a narrative has taken root, it's like the liberal outrage campus of the day. and that's why that's coming from. there's been a spotlight, a distortion of the news of what is coming out of college campuses, it's very clear, you start to see it pop breitbart and fox news and then it moves into the republican voter. >> you were just telling me a story of somebody accusing you of being in your ivory tower and it was a republican with a pen initiation. >> i was talking about character and politics and ivy league lawsuit conservative student told me a i was an ivory tower -- >> that's the right wing talking point now. >> and you're an iraq war veteran. >> but i will say this about the college and university piece, and i'm sure we'll get to this later. nobody made up the berkeley riots, nobody made up the attacks on, you know, on charles murray at middle berry, the

craziness at evergreen state college. these things are actually happening. and they do really cast -- >> actually happening, but also young people who are first generation college students are going to college and having more opportunities than they ever would have had, but the right wing media is focussing on making a national story out of a speaker coming to campus. >> and free speech -- >> it's a distortion. >> throughout the ivory league and elsewhere, and the elite schools, there are free speech mandates really to permit these speakers. it is as heather points out, just the sort of outliers who get focus -- >> i want to go back to the issue, if this were simply a debate about conservatism versus populism, it would be one thing, but it's trump's character, dan, that frankly complicates the debate for the right. >> well, it does, although, i think there's two problems with the pregame party has, and two different debates that they're having. there's the debate that was o during pre-donald trump which

was, in a sense kind of a ted cruz view of the world versus the marco rubio view of the world. do we need a hard line conservative to carry our banner or do we need to have something that someone who reaches out and expands the coalition? that debate got smothered in 2016 my donald trump who brought in populism. now you have this multiple clash within the party. and trump's behavior, trump's style, trump's operating style, changes the way a lot of people think about all of those aspects. >> i think that senator flake has done a great service, actually, to the debate. i think that what he's doing right now is extremely important, you know, he says, we, the republican party, created donald trump. i think that his diagnoses are spot on. i think his prescription about what to do about it is cosmetic. i mean, he says, you know, basically that donald trump is now a threat to republican, only the congress can save him. stop him, and then he just falls a little bit short. >> david, what should we do? what is it?

that was -- you're still voting with him. is he a threat or not -- if your -- -- >> well, everyone sees a conservative, i view you praise him when he's wrong, critique him with he's wrong, but you make the overall larger critique that something is very broken in the political culture and he's a big part of that. and so you can vote for lower tax rates, but don't lose sight of the bigger picture which says, donald trump is doing something to american politic that is very, very negative. >> i'm going to have to make that the last thing. we're going to get into this. we have more time for all of you, i promise. coming up, the man who embodies many of the changes the democratic party has gone through over the last four decades. california governor jerry brown. decades. california governor jerry brown. thanks for loading, sweetie.

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welcome back. we've been diving into the fractures inside the republican party and we're going to look at those fractures that the democrats have next. but what about the folks in the

middle? the disappearing center in american politics is as big of a crisis as we're seeing in the parties themselves. so how did we get here? we're going to start by looking at the red blue map of congressional districts after the 1998 midterms, the last congressional election of the 20th century. and as you'll see here, it looks like a fairly split map, if you will, fairly competitive, particularly on the east of the mississippi. and you see there in the border states, both lower midwest, upper south, fairly competitive. now look at the changes in less than 20 years. when you move over to the 2016 congressional map, as you could see, the border states, lower, midwest, now solid republican, the northeast more democrat than it was before, so you have a couple of large districts throughout that make it seem otherwise, but you could see the democrats have become coastal and the republicans dominating the middle there from literally all the way across the country.

so, let's look at two districts that tell you this story. swing districts started disappears with them. certain kind of congressman or congresswoman has sort of left the congress these days. let me explain. look in texas, second congressional district, long held by conservative democrats, blue dogs as they are described, in 1998 a democratic blue dog won the seat by 17 points. now, it's solidly in the red column. republican won last november by 25 points. the reverse is true in connecticut's 4 north 1998, the more liberal new england republicans weren't the rare breeds that they are today. they won that seat by a whooping 39 points in 2016 though, a democrat won that same district, that same high, income suburban area in connecticut by 20 points a 60-point swing in less than two decades. so what does this mean? we no longer have any ideological middle ground in our politics. the diversity is gone out of both parties, again, look at the house of representatives. 2002, 137 members fell in what

was described as an ideological center according to national journal rankings meaning those members of congress had voting records in between the most conservative democrat and the most liberal republican. in 2013, that number was down to four, four members of congress falling in the so-called middle. this trend over the last 20 years has eliminated that within the parties and left sen trysts to choose as the least offensive option. and probably only depends on where they live is how they vote. when we come back, governor jerry brown of california and what's ailing the democratic party. sion and care. sion and care. he spent decades fighting to give families a second chance. but to help others, they first had to protect themselves. i have afib. even for a nurse, it's complicated... and it puts me at higher risk of stroke. that would be devastating. i had to learn all i could to help protect myself. once i got the facts, my doctor and i chose xarelto®.

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like it or not like it, but the democrats walked away from me. today i tell you as west virginia yans, i can't help you anymore of being a democrat governor. >> west virginia governor jim justice's high profile party switch this week raised questions about whether democrats can survive in trump country. and if they're against trump, it's not so clear what the democrats are for. they are buoyed by anger and activism with liberals and the cultural left fighting the economic left. over more than four decades. governor jerry brown reinvented himself as a populist. california liberal who sometimes is a fiscal conservative. joining me now is the democratic governor of california, jerry brown, governor brown, welcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> thank, i've been doing this a long time. >> i know you have. we like having you as a guest.

this week the ranks of democratic governors shrunk by one, jim justice publicly switched parties. did so at a big event with the president. the numbers are stark, down to 15 governors for the democrats, 34 for the republicans, how do the democrats get into that mess? >> number of factors. certainly the republicans had something to do with it. the barrage, the relentless drum beat of opposition, it's been well-financed by the koch brothers, that's been relentless. the affordable care act was suddenly very new, that became a big problem. and i think also just the historic turn when lyndon johnson won over goldwater. people were writing, and i read it at the time, that the

republican party was gone. and then it comes back, and the democratic party comes back. so the nature of our business is that swing of the pendulum, and it's definitely already swinging back toward a non-republican kind of future. >> you just outlined some of this can be cyclical in nature. there was an interest surg va though conducted on behalf of house democrats, in this survey, it noted that there's a lot of work to do. there's a lot of distrust, if you will, from these white working class voters who were democrats 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and do not trust the democrats even on the economy now. how did that happen? >> it happened because the global economy is changing, america is losing manufacturing jobs, both to foreign countries, but also to technology, automation, innovation, and all of that. so we're going through a real transition, if we're looking at democratic countries around the

world, south korea or brazil or in europe, there's a lot of discontent. in america, college education is going from essentially free to now we have a trillion dollars of debt. home prices are out of the reach of many people, and jobs downward mobility, insecurity, and all the rest of it. this is a global phenomenon, and democrats have been the champion of working people, and they haven't been able to deliver in face of these global trends, and yes, you'd have to say the leadership has not been clever enough. or strong enough or perhaps visionary enough. >> and you mentioned about how you thought maybe the national democratic leadership hasn't been clever enough, perhaps either on the economic issue or -- >> or vision -- or visionary enough. i don't to want make the point, because it isn't true, clever, it takes values, believing in right and wrong, in a sense of what america's all about, and it takes a certain vision, how the

hell do we get out of this and some political skill at the same time. >> one of the reasons why i wanted you on the show to talk about this specifically is because you've seen so many of these moments inside the democratic party, some would argue, you've symbolized them, i'm going to play clips from two different announcement speeches of yours, one is for president in 1992 and one is for governor in 2010. take a listen. and i want to talk about it on the other side. >> our democracy has been the object of a hostile takeover, engineered bacon fed ra si of corruption, careerism, and campaign consultants. the leaders of washington's incumbent party, both democrats and republicans have failed their duty. republicans and democrats, oil companies and environmentalists, unions and businesses, we need to work together as californians first. >> you could look at that and say, boy, first jerry brown sounded like bernie sanders, second jerry brown sounded master's degree like hillary clinton to put it in 2016 context.

what's your take of the two differents between the jerry brown announcement speeches there? >> by the way, you're wrong, they fit perfectly together. the first one is calling attention to the bankruptcy of washington which we're now talking about. the second one is saying okay, the solution to that bankruptcy is leadership can work together across party lines, across the various interest groups. so, one is the problem, and the other is the solution. >> there you have the rub. and i say this because what do you do -- how do you tell the democratic base that says, look, sometimes you've got to compromise. so for instance, the issue of abortion. we talked about culture. you've got some inside the democratic party, some major democratic leaders from a senator in new york to others who think, the democratic party should not support democrats who are not pro-choice on abortion. but you have people like nancy pelosi and chuck schumer who say you know what, the democrats need to be a big ten, how do you tell the democratic base to compromise?

>> well first of all, i don't know who the democratic base is. it's shifted. the democratic -- the segments of our party are highly differentiated. their environmentalists, they are gun owners, there are pro choice people, there are religious, fundamentalists, not many, but they're there. even on the abortion issue, it wasn't very long ago that a number of catholic democrats were opposed to abortion. so the fact that somebody believes today what most people believed 50 years ago should not be the basis for their exclusion. and in america, we're not id logical. we're not like a marksist party in 1910. we are big ten by the very definition. we're not id logical in the european sense of what political parties used to be. even in europe now, they don't have that same id logical purity. america is not one place, you can't let hot button issues that work great in particular

congressional districts one way or the other to be the guiding, the guiding light for a national party that covers a very wide spectrum of belief. >> so you don't believe there should be a lit mist test on abortion -- is there an issue there should be one on for the democrats? >> well the lit mist test should be intelligence, caring about as harry truman the common man. we're not going to get everybody on board. and i'm sorry, but running in san francisco is not like running in modock california, much less moe beel, alabama, if we want to be gavining party of a very diverse, and i say diverse id logically as well as et anically country, then you have to have a broader, a party that rises above the more particular issues to the generic. the general issue of making america great if i might take that word.

>> going into the 2018 midterms, somebody whose been close to you far long time, nancy pelosi, i believe was your maryland state chair back in the day. >> she was. >> when you ran for president for the first time. >> that was -- i by the way, that was the high mark, it's been downhill ever since. >> fair enough. her image, her unpopularity was among the reason why is democrats, some democrats believe they lost that georgia special election that was very high profile at the time, she is very high number. there are some house democrats that say, you know what, she is too much -- she's too much weight to carry for -- in order to win back the house of republicans will be able to successfully use her against democrats. what's your advice to nancy pelosi and how to deal with this? >> well, i'd say, you have to recruit better candidates. i always hold the candidate responsible. so if some candidate doesn't win, don't blame it all on somebody else. like nancy pelosi, she's -- i know her very well.

she's really dedicated. she works very hard for this party. and the answer is, you've got to get good candidates. and as a candidate when you're running in a republican district, if you're a democrat, you better be extraordinary. and you have to relate to a very different kind of constituency that we have here in san francisco or in new york city. so, i don't put -- i think nancy pelosi has a lot of assets. is she perfect? no, am i perfect? no, and you aren't. we all have our imperfections, if you add up pluses and minuses, i think nancy pelosi is a major pillar of the democratic party and the answer is, not to try to replace her with somebody, but to make sure the candidates represent and can empathize and be a part of the district they're running in. >> your term runs out at the end of the next year, you don't sound like somebody who's done in politics. >> i have a lot to say, a lot of to learn, and a lot to collaborate with. and i'll keep doing that. i'm going back to the ranch, like ancient rome, saved the republican and then went back to

the plow. i'll be on my plow, you can find me there. >> never say never on running for office again? >> never say never. that is a true statement. >> fair enough. jerry brown, thanks for coming on. always a pleasure. >> okay. thank you. we'll be back after the break with end game. we know our politics are broken, so, are there some realistic solutions? thanks for loading, sweetie. ...oh, burnt-on gravy? ...gotta rinse that. nope. no way. nada. really? dish issues? throw it all in. new cascade platinum powers through... even burnt-on gravy. nice. cascade.

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back now with end game. all right. heather, you get to the start on this one. this is your side of the umbrella here. it was interesting to watch jerry brown, he has straddled. this fight, and i think you always articulate this well. basically the social justice wing of the party versus the economic wing and while i know you'll make an argument that you can do two together, there is a split here, isn't there? >> i think there has been a split, and it's really driven by consultants. it's really driven by this desire to sort of microtarget an audience rather than give a unified message. and i think the key thing to watch here is the millennial generation and younger who are going to be 90 million strong in the 2020 election, who more than anyone are looking -- are feeling like they inherited we, like a millennial grandmother

here, inherited an economy that is completely broken of politics, which is broken -- people are looking for a populism, but a multiracial populism. candidates who say, i'm willing to take on the wealthy and powerful and also, i'm not willing to let the wealthy and powerful divide us from each other, so that they can have the spoils of our great nation. and that is actually, i think, the message that unites identity and class because we've seen frankly the right wing in one breath talk about what's wrong with the economy and scapegoat people of color and immigrants, and i think progressives really need to similarly understand how to weave those messages together. >> the or versus the and. >> uh-huh. >> democrats have struggled with figuring out an and message. >> i think what you have articulated is the ideal, i think a the real at this point is that the democrats are still a long way from there. i think democrats are still trying to figure out exactly who they want to appeal to, do they appeal to the rising generation? do they appeal to white working class? they haven't figured out an

overall message. i mean, as governor brown said, you havele to rise above certain individual issues to have a larger vision. and i think that's what's been missing in the democrats. >> sorry, andrea, democrats unveiled something -- god, it feels like a lifetime ago, maybe ten days ago, that was saying you know what, we are from, you know, they actually schumer was able to get every democrat in the senate on an agenda, that's a relatively populist economic agenda. this better deal saying we're willing to take on corporations and create a better deal for workers with higher wages, better trade policies, more benefits, that was a huge step forward. i mean, i remember being in washington and trying to convince the democratic party to support big reforms on the affordability of college and it was -- the answer was we to want tweak interest rates. >> well it is though, they've responded to trump. this is their response to trump. >> but, i think that jerry brown, governor brown is on to something when he says the democrats have to be visionary, even in better deal, i don't think see anything that's

visionary, it's a throwback to fdr and it goes so far back. we're not looking forward as a nation, republican or democratic parties to be more visionary, to more inclusive in a really profound way. he's talking about it as the leader of a very diverse state who has evolved so much since i first covered him in the '80s and '90s when he was first running for president and had a much narrower view. he said you're wrong, chuck, there is no difference. there really is dangerous. >> he's evolved from -- >> successful politicians do. >> and if i could jump in here, look, as a conservative, i live in tennessee now. i've lived in minnesota, cam bridge, massachusetts, and center city, philly. here's something that progressives have to work on. and it's one word, intolerance, at the grassroots of the progressive movement, there is an enormous a. intolerance for id logical difference. it's not just my 80% friend is my 80% friend, it's my 80%

friend is my 1,000% enemy and monstrous human being. you see that an awful lot on college campuses to go back to what we talked about. you see this on the ground in progressive urban centers. there's a huge amount of intolerance, and people around the country see this, and reject it. they're repulsed by it. >> but one of the things that really strikes me when we talk about college campuses and millennials is the the sort of tuning out of politics, elected politics, and it gets back to what i think we really need to see in both parties, is focussing on legislatures and governors and thinking, and not being afraid of being purged from the rolls, and that is a very effective strategy by, you know, the extreme of the right wing right now is trying to claim that there was election fraud and taking this fake commission and making it into a real fear factor for people who won't tip their toes into elected politics. >> i want to pivot to we've been talking about the problems.

let's try to get some solutions. there are some structural issues here. as we said at the top of the broadcast, many reasons for the broken current politics, you could stay started with gerrymandering to to help the party, then it became more precise as technology made it easier to draw the perfect political map, then legislation designed for representation actually you could say accelerated political segregation. why they help the gop take the house in '94 for the first anytime 40 years. and yet, all of those white voters meant they haven't learned how to talk to minority voters. then mccain fine gold was toezed to take money out of politics and it shifted the money to interest groups and political parties lost control of the party and the interest groups have more personal knowledging power. the point is dan balz, there isn't one answer people will say, it's better districts, it's this, it's that. we are in technology has messed us up. there's an entire structure of our politics that no longer persuades.

all of it led to we do not try to persuade and win, we try to find people to agree with us in order to win an election. >> this is not a solution, but in one way or another, if you eliminated many of the committees like. democratic and republican campaign committees from the face of the map, you might begin to get a different dialogue in terms of campaign. so, the industry of politics over the time aye been in washington, which is a long time now, has grown and grown and grown, there was a full-time industry -- >> it's an industry. the fact that it's an industry. >> it's an industry designed to demonize and destroy the opposition as opposed to talking about what we were talking about which is providing a more visionary or more -- >> money is the root of that. mccain-finegold was part of it. >> it's not all money. >> industries are based on finance. >> here's what we're spiraling toward. i'm going to end with this, 2040, this self-segregation that was started with gerrymandering,

70% of the country is going to be represented by 30 senators. >> astounding. >> if we continue to have a geographic split in this country that goes along party lines, that is a disaster in the making, is it not? >> yeah, i mean, i've categorized it this way. we're heading for a national divorce. not any time soon, but the trends are we're separating from each other and we don't like each other, and we don't watch what each other watches on television, increase dpli, we don't even watch the same sports except for the super bowl. i mean -- we're beginning to self-segregate, and then also, we're losing that sense of individual responsibility that says i'm in primary control of my life -- >> no, blame somebody else. >> yeah. well, it's the politicians, they're going to help us. >> heather, your response? >> what is a big solution that could change and fix our broken politics. i think we have to realize that democracy is a pretty radical idea that each generation has to recommit to. and that fundamentally the

system of our democracy is not working, that is, you know, we need deep money in politics reforms and we need universal automatic voter registration. we need everybody in. and then that point of are we a demos? the people of a nation. are we a people who feel like we are united by a shared fate. and that has to do with the discourse. >> i will end it there, what a great discussion. you guys did your job on this. thank you. that's all we have for today. we'll be back next week, as you know, if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." after brushing, listerine® total care strengthens teeth, helps prevent cavities and restores tooth enamel. it's an easy way to give listerine® total care to the total family. listerine® total care. one bottle, six benefits. power to your mouth™. whuuuuuat?rtgage offer from the bank today. you never just get one offer.

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