Speaker 1: Well, joining me now is somebody who, in the world
Speaker 1: of political analysis needs no introduction.
Speaker 2: It's the legendary. It's the great Charlie Cook.
Speaker 1: And he's here because he also is part of perhaps
Speaker 1: the single most important reference book in both of our lives.
Speaker 1: It's called The Almanac of American Politics, and the latest
Speaker 1: edition is hitting bookstores now ish or really, why do
Speaker 1: we call it bookstores? Yes, there'll be a few in bookstores,
Speaker 1: but you'll get to order it directly. I'm one of
Speaker 1: those people that always says the older the Almanac, the
Speaker 1: more useful it is. So and I have to have
Speaker 1: every single one of them, and over the years my
Speaker 1: ability they go back to nineteen seventy two. I finally
Speaker 1: have a complete set and got it completed about ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen years ago. But the biggest impediment to completing
Speaker 1: the set was always Charlie Cook, because every time I
Speaker 1: went to a used bookstore in Washington, DC looking for it,
Speaker 1: I put my name on a list and they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's nice, but Charlie's ahead of you.
Speaker 2: In the list. But yeah, any bay works pretty well too.
Speaker 2: But I did have two complete sets and then was
Speaker 2: having to do a third because we were splitting the
Speaker 2: time between anyway. So now I actually gave somebody a
Speaker 2: bunch of my extras, so I've got two full sets. Though.
Speaker 1: Well, what I joke with people about this is that
Speaker 1: I'm in the sports I like sports cards. And you
Speaker 1: know there's a there is if you're trying to collect
Speaker 1: every edition of the American Politics, there is a short print,
Speaker 1: and the short print edition is nineteen seventy six, which
Speaker 1: I would argue is the single most important one of
Speaker 1: my generation because it was the first almanac after the
Speaker 1: Watergate elections, which had this massive transformation, and you.
Speaker 2: Were dying to read the Almanac.
Speaker 1: And of all years that they were short printed, that
Speaker 1: was a tough one because I think I spent five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars on my nineteen.
Speaker 2: Seventy sixth edition. It was so it was so hard
Speaker 2: to find. What I finally got first in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two is a senior in high school at a bookstore
Speaker 2: my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, and have been addicted to
Speaker 2: it ever since. I think they're at a max of
Speaker 2: twenty two hundred. I think like twenty two hundred pages
Speaker 2: is the most I think they could get into that
Speaker 2: kind of binding. Is that what it is now? And
Speaker 2: that's what that's the limited, That's what it was last
Speaker 2: two So I think that's probably what it is. It's time.
Speaker 2: I know you. My essay is about a third or
Speaker 2: fourth the size that originally was. Well, this is what
Speaker 2: I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Look, Michael Baron is the guy who came up with
Speaker 1: the concept with grand Ujifusa still his name on it.
Speaker 2: He's less involvement. I don't think there's zero involvement. If
Speaker 2: I'm not mistakes, He's still pretty involved. But you get
Speaker 2: to write the opening essay. Does he write an essay anymore? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think, Well, I haven't seen the new one, but
Speaker 2: I believe he's got Yeah. I think there are three,
Speaker 2: at least three, Lou Jacobson, who's the quarterbacking the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and Michael. I mean I think so. I think there
Speaker 2: are three, and there may actually be a couple of others,
Speaker 2: but there are a bunch of really really talented people involved.
Speaker 2: Jessica Taylor, you know a lot people you all know well.
Speaker 1: As I am a I always say that it is
Speaker 1: it's different than most reference books because it you know,
Speaker 1: there's it does have it was it's a better read
Speaker 1: than c Q. That's what I used to say, and
Speaker 1: I don't CQ sometimes had more information, but it was
Speaker 1: but you learned less about each congressional district. I mean,
Speaker 1: what Barone created was this model of essentially two profiles
Speaker 1: and one and half the profile of each district would
Speaker 1: be about the district and about the economy of the
Speaker 1: district and the culture of the district. And it really was,
Speaker 1: you know, helped you understand the tapestry of America.
Speaker 2: And then the other, frankly.
Speaker 1: Smaller part, unless it was a well known lawmaker, would
Speaker 1: be the profile of the lawmaker themselves.
Speaker 2: And literally the now I used to joke you could.
Speaker 1: Track Michael Barone's political evolution by just reading Henry waxman
Speaker 1: biography profiles from Night eighty two versus nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: you know, and you could see, you know, the question
Speaker 1: is did Henry Waxman change or did Michael Barone change?
Speaker 1: But I say this with love. I love Michael and
Speaker 1: his you know, we don't agree at everything, but the.
Speaker 2: Guy I'll go with the latter.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the guy is was a savant, is a
Speaker 1: savant on this stuff and taught us all to learn,
Speaker 1: have to learn America one district at a time.
Speaker 2: A lot of people go from you know, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to come up with a metaphor other than caterpillars and butterflies,
Speaker 2: one of this little less less judgmental. But you know,
Speaker 2: Pat Cadell, you know, who was always a maverick, but
Speaker 2: the last you know, eight ten years of his life,
Speaker 2: was much more of a maverick than even he was
Speaker 2: when he was a senior in college. And McGovern's pollster.
Speaker 1: You know, some people are always outsiders, Yeah right, no
Speaker 1: matter what, they're always outsiders, Like Bernie Sanders. Strikes me
Speaker 1: that he would always find a way to be the outsider.
Speaker 2: Even if he were put in charge. Yeah, you know right,
Speaker 2: and in some ways that's Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Well let's start with Look, the beauty of these of
Speaker 1: these almanacs is it does try to sort of paint
Speaker 1: a picture in a moment, right where are we as
Speaker 1: a country in this moment in time. This will be
Speaker 1: technically the Almanac of American Politics twenty twenty six, but
Speaker 1: it's really about twenty twenty four, you know, And what
Speaker 1: did we learn about America in twenty twenty four? And
Speaker 1: what does it say of who we are in this moment.
Speaker 1: How did you tackle your essay?
Speaker 2: Well, I have a bit of a contrarian view. To me,
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty four election was kind of a bifurcated
Speaker 2: election that at the presidential level it had one outcome
Speaker 2: and then below that it had a very different one
Speaker 2: at the top. It's astonishing how broad the declines were
Speaker 2: for Democrats, both geographically and demographically. In fact that the
Speaker 2: Catalyst study looked at one hundred different subgroups demographic subgroups,
Speaker 2: and the Democratic percentage declined in ninety two out of
Speaker 2: one hundred, and I think it went up in like
Speaker 2: three and say the same at five or something like that.
Speaker 2: And then you've seen the ones about you know, the
Speaker 2: countings and stuff. But the thing is, but at the
Speaker 2: same time, it was a tiny bit less than a
Speaker 2: point and a half and so it was a horizontal loss,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't a vertical loss either in the sense
Speaker 2: of it being down that much or but more importantly,
Speaker 2: you look down ballot, look at the house. When you
Speaker 2: have it, I mean a gain. Democrats wanted to get
Speaker 2: a majority. Yeah, absolutely, they didn't get it, but they
Speaker 2: gained seats. Now do you lose an election if you
Speaker 2: gain seats, I mean, you know, you may. It may
Speaker 2: have been a disappointing election, but it wasn't the wipeout
Speaker 2: that people suggest it is. And then you look at
Speaker 2: the Senate races, and you know, if you divide the
Speaker 2: country up seven purple states, nineteen blue states, twenty four
Speaker 2: red states, Democrats won every one of the races in
Speaker 2: blue states, Republicans won every one of the races in
Speaker 2: red states. And there were five Senate races that were
Speaker 2: in purple states and Democrats won four out of five.
Speaker 2: But the election is seen as a repudiation of the
Speaker 2: entire Democratic Party. No net change in governors, there was
Speaker 2: a net gain of one Republican in ags. There was
Speaker 2: no net change in Secretary of State races, and the
Speaker 2: change of Julia Sees. The changes in state legislative seats
Speaker 2: was less than a percentage point, So down ballot this
Speaker 2: was about as status quo or predictable election as you
Speaker 2: could possibly possibly get you.
Speaker 1: No, it reminds me, I remember the ninety eight min
Speaker 1: terms were barely budged anything. If I remember, I want
Speaker 1: to say five House seats total, maybe not a single
Speaker 1: Senate seat. It may have been zero I think, in fact,
Speaker 1: I used to joke, right, Mitch McConnell was the NRSC
Speaker 1: chair in two cycles and he had a net loss
Speaker 1: of four in those two cycles ninety eight and two
Speaker 1: thousand and two thousand, they ended up losing seats. But
Speaker 1: I remember a headline we came up with at the highline,
Speaker 1: status quo. But wow, right, because the fact that was
Speaker 1: status quo was the shock in ninety eight type of
Speaker 1: thing is I think what shocks everybody is a Trump
Speaker 1: won the popular vote, so it feels like it was monumental,
Speaker 1: but when you look at everything else, nothing really budged.
Speaker 2: That's basically what you're what you're kind of saying, Well,
Speaker 2: and you know, we're going through a period where there's
Speaker 2: virtually no third party or independent vote, and so you
Speaker 2: know there's going to be, you know, likely to be
Speaker 2: a majority, you know, or closetro majority, no matter, no
Speaker 2: matter what. But you know, I got a little bit
Speaker 2: more time on my hands. You know, when the last
Speaker 2: Democrat Democratic Senate incumbent lost re election general election in
Speaker 2: a blue state, Mark You'dahl in Colorado in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: the last Republican to lose in a red state general
Speaker 2: election was Ted Stevens in Alaska in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: and that was after he was indicted, but before the
Speaker 2: indictment was reversed, and that nowadays.
Speaker 1: So it's been over a decade, over a decade since
Speaker 1: blue stayed blue unless unless the Democrats toxic.
Speaker 2: And the same thing for Republicans in red states is
Speaker 2: that basically all the action is in purple states.
Speaker 1: And now Moore, right, like Roy Moore is about what
Speaker 1: it takes for a Democrat to win in a red state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's a good definition. Chris Kloback in Kansas,
Speaker 2: in the Kansas governor's race, you.
Speaker 1: Know, in my Castle, you know, Mike Castle died earlier
Speaker 1: this week, and they were in fact, I wanted to
Speaker 1: make a bigger.
Speaker 2: Note of it because it's funny.
Speaker 1: Mike Castle in some ways as an early victim of
Speaker 1: the mega movement. Right twenty ten primary loses to this,
Speaker 1: you know, in a small primary. The woman became famous
Speaker 1: for doing an ad saying I am not a witch.
Speaker 1: Chris Coons became a Senator for life because of.
Speaker 2: It, right, And it was a yeah, it was. I
Speaker 2: remember speaking to a group in Wilmington during that race,
Speaker 2: and both Coons and Mike Castle were on the program,
Speaker 2: and I remember listening to Coons because I didn't know
Speaker 2: that much about Coons and thinking, gosh, this guy's pretty good.
Speaker 2: If he were everybody other than other than Mike Castle,
Speaker 2: you know, this guy could seem like the Washington generals.
Speaker 1: He was the poor guy that was that they put
Speaker 1: up to the because the Delaware politics, it was always
Speaker 1: like a year turn type of thing, and it was like, well,
Speaker 1: it was Castle's turn. Everybody likes Castle fine, right, Like
Speaker 1: Biden was barely endorsing Coons at the time.
Speaker 2: It was sort of like that Castle's a good guy.
Speaker 2: It's his turn. Well, small states there, you used to
Speaker 2: have these these non aggression packs in small states where
Speaker 2: you don't screw with your colleague. And I'm trying to
Speaker 2: decide whether to tell a story or not sure what
Speaker 2: the hell I have. It was right after Biden dropped
Speaker 2: out of it. It's a it was the Neil Kennick story.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, forty eight, yeah, eighty eight, race eight eighty seven,
Speaker 1: eighty eight, nine eighty eight.
Speaker 2: And it was the next time he was up for reelection,
Speaker 2: and I get a call from his his AA chief
Speaker 2: of staff, Ted Kaufman saying when are you going to
Speaker 2: be on the hill next? And I said, well, so
Speaker 2: go buy. He pulls out this three ring binder blue
Speaker 2: that says Market Opinion Research, you know, which at the
Speaker 2: time was one of the two big Republican polling firms
Speaker 2: had the original and get through where clearly he had
Speaker 2: Roth's poll that Roth had had done and was proving
Speaker 2: to me that it had not damaged him in Delaware.
Speaker 1: So here was the Democratic chief of staff getting a
Speaker 1: Republican polsters, their Republican colleagues polling here. Why don't you
Speaker 1: take a look at this? Well, yeah, in the original notebook,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't even a photocopy. We were talking about
Speaker 1: handing over a three inch binder. And you know, you know,
Speaker 1: back in the old days you said fun times. I
Speaker 1: had a media consultant one time sitting me down with
Speaker 1: the let me look at all the cross tabs on
Speaker 1: a poll that was in anyway, it was basically proving
Speaker 1: that the guy that was likely to win the Democratic
Speaker 1: Senate nomination had no chance whatsoever in a general election.
Speaker 2: And it was completely conjurary. Well up, you and I
Speaker 2: couldn't cite it, couldn't quote it, but it was it's
Speaker 2: nice to cover an election when you have like really
Speaker 2: well informed information. Yeah yeah, but nobody else. That's not
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: It's not the world we live in these days where
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know where I feel like even
Speaker 1: the half I want to share something with you, You're like,
Speaker 1: am I being worked?
Speaker 2: I being used? Right? Like? And I'm sure you we're
Speaker 2: all trying to end. Back in the days when they
Speaker 2: were nightly.
Speaker 3: Tracking, right, and there was a cycle when I won't
Speaker 3: get specific at all, but where someone was reading to
Speaker 3: me the numbers in house races that they were getting
Speaker 3: from their tracking, and they would do a quarter of
Speaker 3: the races on Monday Tuesday, another quarter on Wednesday Thursday,
Speaker 3: and then the next week Monday Tuesday, another quarter and
Speaker 3: so every other week they had.
Speaker 2: They had current numbers with on all the rays and
Speaker 2: uh yeah, we I look pretty smart that year.
Speaker 1: So let me let's I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: conundrum that I consistently talk about, but I'm not one
Speaker 1: hundred percent sure what to do about it, which is,
Speaker 1: we live in an era of weak political parties and
Speaker 1: strong political alliances. Right, the Red and Blue has never
Speaker 1: been stronger, and the d N r has never been
Speaker 1: weaker discuss To me.
Speaker 2: The decline was, we used to have two broad based,
Speaker 2: ideologically and geographically diverse parties that overlapped substantially with conservative
Speaker 2: Democrats that represented small town, small town rural areas of
Speaker 2: the South, whatever, urban Republicans that represent major metropolitan areas
Speaker 2: that George Voinovich's or Dick Luger or whatever, and that
Speaker 2: each side had moderating influences and that and that the
Speaker 2: people on the fringes were marginalized. And it was when
Speaker 2: you started seeing the parties sorting out, and that basically
Speaker 2: anybody that was remotely conservative abandoning the Democrat Party, anybody
Speaker 2: remotely liberal abandoning the Republican Party. And suddenly you know
Speaker 2: the distance between, like right now, the distance between the
Speaker 2: most liberal and the least liberal ends of the Democrat
Speaker 2: Party aren't that far apart, and the same thing on
Speaker 2: the Republican side, most in least, and yet the gap
Speaker 2: in between is the whitest it's ever been. And so
Speaker 2: that you have two parties that have no overlap, no
Speaker 2: agreement on any significant policy, no agreement on values, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's borderline ungovernable. And but to me, it
Speaker 2: was when the parties became less diverse and more monolithic
Speaker 2: and were inward focused and not uh, they don't even
Speaker 2: understand anybody that's not in their in their world. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the theories I have, and it's just a theory.
Speaker 2: I want to run it by you.
Speaker 1: We were talking about it before we started taping, is
Speaker 1: that when when we were ignorant about what voters believed
Speaker 1: and what do I mean by that, which is there
Speaker 1: was sort of a pattern of how of how campaigns
Speaker 1: were run in the eighties and nineties and the modern
Speaker 1: TV campaigns. And on October of the election year, Democratic
Speaker 1: incumbent ran the ad that ragged about the Republican they
Speaker 1: worked with to get something passed, and the Republican incumbent
Speaker 1: and state X ragged about working with a Democrat to
Speaker 1: get something done. Because there was this agreement that the
Speaker 1: whoever was undecided by October must be vacillating between the
Speaker 1: two parties. They might be some sort of centrist independent,
Speaker 1: not just independent, but some sort of eh, they're a
Speaker 1: little this, a little of that. They really want consensus governing.
Speaker 1: So make the pitch who's the most believable consensus builder?
Speaker 1: Is how you win over that vote. And then in
Speaker 1: two thousand and four we learn more. Right, micro targeting
Speaker 1: became something, and we found out and as the campaigns
Speaker 1: learn more about these undecided voters, they realized, oh, they're
Speaker 1: not centrist, they're independents who don't neatly fit into one
Speaker 1: box or the other. But there are a handful of
Speaker 1: issues that they like on our side, so let's exploit them.
Speaker 2: Well, I highly commend your substock this morning on this,
Speaker 2: and we're to me just wording it slightly differently. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and four or probably three, Carl Rove and
Speaker 2: his team would be probably met dud and Yon von
Speaker 2: Lohausen and Melmott. Right, we're looking at the undecided is
Speaker 2: the people that were really in the middle, and realize
Speaker 2: those people really don't like President Bush and we could
Speaker 2: spend the gross domestic product of many countries and never
Speaker 2: win those people over, so that we either have to
Speaker 2: conceive the election or figure out how to organically grow
Speaker 2: our base because we're not going to get a dispurportant
Speaker 2: share of the people in the middle. And they were
Speaker 2: skillful enough, and we're a radial of ingenuity and we're
Speaker 2: able to do that and to me, the whole world
Speaker 2: went from persuasion oriented to get out your base. And
Speaker 2: I think one was wrong, but the other's wrong. But
Speaker 2: to me, you have to be able to walk and
Speaker 2: chew gum at the same time. You need to be
Speaker 2: able to persuade the people that are not locked into
Speaker 2: either party. But at the same time you do have
Speaker 2: to keep your base motivated. But right now, you know,
Speaker 2: I think you've got four When we you know, think
Speaker 2: back to the big state the swing state vote polls
Speaker 2: that we saw in the last election, undecided would be
Speaker 2: two percent. I mean like that. I mean in the
Speaker 2: old days, you saw a poll like.
Speaker 1: Some of the Okay, but there's also a part of
Speaker 1: me that believes polling has gotten so so accurate due
Speaker 1: to voter files that many times what we are calling
Speaker 1: polls are kind of voter file projections with a little
Speaker 1: bit of survey work, yeah, a little bit of a
Speaker 1: little bit a little bit of modeling, Yeah, I feel like,
Speaker 1: and so when you model it, I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: a part of me that longs for the totally open
Speaker 1: and don't go in there and give me a raw
Speaker 1: data set and let me watch the raw data set
Speaker 1: over time I feel like we're so locked into the
Speaker 1: voter file companies because we want the most accurate potential poll.
Speaker 1: Totally want that based on what we think the electric's
Speaker 1: going to be.
Speaker 2: Versus what could the electorate.
Speaker 1: Be if you start with just a huge baseline on
Speaker 1: adults and then go from there. And I do think, Nope,
Speaker 1: there's no mainstream political operative looks at the campaigns that
Speaker 1: way anymore. They almost begin with a voter file, which
Speaker 1: means you begin at forty seven percent.
Speaker 2: But let me look at it from a less technical Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, it used to be someone who said, you know, Democrat, Republican, independent,
Speaker 2: and then he said, well, do you lean Democrat, lean Republican?
Speaker 2: And they would vote that way more often than not.
Speaker 2: But right now when you look at people that say
Speaker 2: I'm independent but lean Democrat and you look at their vote,
Speaker 2: how they actually end up voting the virtually at partisan
Speaker 2: as Democrats were the same thing on the on the
Speaker 2: Republican side. So that what you've got is forty seven
Speaker 2: forty eight percent locked in for either side each side,
Speaker 2: and then the two or three percent in the middle
Speaker 2: that we used to think of as centrist, you know,
Speaker 2: equid distance between the left in the riot. They're not that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: A lot of times these are people they read, watch,
Speaker 2: listen to news, current events, less than partisans. They don't
Speaker 2: follow politics. They are even more skeptical than other people
Speaker 2: are about politicians and parties. And they vote in small,
Speaker 2: very small numbers, and so, but there are no defections.
Speaker 2: There are no democrats or independent democratically independents that will
Speaker 2: ever vote for Republican and vice versa. So there is
Speaker 2: no consensus. And we were talking before went on the air.
Speaker 2: Was the last landslide defined as ten points or more? Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: first of all, you have to give it to it
Speaker 2: would be eighty four. And why not Age? Why not
Speaker 2: eighty eight? Eighty eight? I looked at I was actually
Speaker 2: just doing some of this. It has been wait, it's
Speaker 2: been ten elections since we had a margin of nine
Speaker 2: points or more. And that was Reagan eighty four and
Speaker 2: this was eight points. I always thought that was a
Speaker 2: bigger white. I think it it was. It was like
Speaker 2: eight and seven and change. You're a little over eight.
Speaker 2: But it did not round to It didn't round Reagan
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty rounded to ten. But I went into
Speaker 2: a panic a week or two ago Dave Leap's political
Speaker 2: atlas was offline, and I for like days and I thought,
Speaker 2: oh my god, what are we going to do? Well?
Speaker 1: It was interesting about the Bush docacas because I just
Speaker 1: double checked it myself, because I you know, because Bush
Speaker 1: got over four hundred electoral votes.
Speaker 2: In your head, you.
Speaker 1: Feel like, oh, that must have been a ten point victory.
Speaker 1: And eleven point victory. Well that tells you something about
Speaker 1: how you know, he won a lot of states close right,
Speaker 1: in order to get in order to get his But
Speaker 1: he won every if I'm not mistaken, he won every
Speaker 1: big state but New York. Right, he won California, he
Speaker 1: won Texas, and he won Florida, And you win those three.
Speaker 2: That puts you in a well, that's you know, in
Speaker 2: a way you could look at this last election say,
Speaker 2: I mean where we are is that very small shifts
Speaker 2: in votes are when you have parties that are diametrically
Speaker 2: opposite of each other and the country is evenly, narrowly
Speaker 2: deeply divided, really small shifts are enormously consequential, so that
Speaker 2: you know, if someone normally would tell me that you know,
Speaker 2: a Democratic nominee would get would would drop in ninety
Speaker 2: percent of the counties of the country and drop in
Speaker 2: ninety two out of one hundred demographic groups. You'd say, gosh,
Speaker 2: they must have had the rear in hand. But the
Speaker 2: parent's only lost by one, one point four or five percent. Well,
Speaker 2: let me ask, let me frame this, because I think
Speaker 2: this is a problem. The Democratic Party has an answer.
Speaker 2: Did they lose by a little or a lot? Well? Right,
Speaker 2: how do you behave as a party?
Speaker 1: Do you behave as if you Because you know, Tommy
Speaker 1: to let me give you some interesting framework.
Speaker 2: I did this story about Wisconsin's polarization.
Speaker 1: Right, I've always said that, you know, before America got polarized,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin was there first, right the two thousand election.
Speaker 2: You know, after Florida, Wisconsin was the next closest.
Speaker 1: And Wisconsin has been consistently on Barack Obama's the only
Speaker 1: one in the twenty first century who's been able to
Speaker 1: win that state by a bigger than a couple of points.
Speaker 1: And Tommy Thompson said something. I had had a joint
Speaker 1: interview between him and Jim Doyle because they were the
Speaker 1: last two governors to win by more than five points.
Speaker 1: And Tommy said something, he goes, you know what, sometimes
Speaker 1: you don't lose by enough to do what you need.
Speaker 1: You know, when you only lose by a little, by
Speaker 1: a point, you think, oh, but for one more fundraiser,
Speaker 1: one more door knock, more better ad, you can win.
Speaker 1: So you don't think you have to change that much.
Speaker 1: When you lose by ten points, you think, huh, maybe
Speaker 1: we need to rethink this.
Speaker 2: Take the flip side of that. Let's say hypothetically a
Speaker 2: someone wins the presidency by a margin of fewer than
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty thousand votes scattered across four states.
Speaker 2: Their party only has fifty seats in the Senate, so
Speaker 2: vice president breaking a tie, they lose seats in the House,
Speaker 2: but hold on to a majority by what five six
Speaker 2: and yet a mandate to do historic and transformational things. No,
Speaker 2: he was barely one.
Speaker 1: And to me you're describing I hope people realize you're
Speaker 1: describing twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that I don't think. I think twenty twenty
Speaker 2: was a reverendum up or down on Donald Trump, and
Speaker 2: it was close, but Trump lost. But it was I
Speaker 2: only Biden had anything to do with the outcome of
Speaker 2: the two thou Then twenty twenty four, even with Biden
Speaker 2: dropping out, it was a referendum up or down on
Speaker 2: biden Care. And I don't think Donald Trump won that election.
Speaker 2: It's that Biden. Well, it was a repudiation of President Biden,
Speaker 2: the Biden Harris administration and by extension, Vice President Harris.
Speaker 2: It was up or down and that when Democrats were
Speaker 2: so pissed off at number one, how did you blow Well,
Speaker 2: first of all, how did you mismanage the economy in
Speaker 2: your first year enough to drop fourteen points in job
Speaker 2: approval rating in four months? And Afghanistan, oh, by the
Speaker 2: way to border, So it's like you and then the
Speaker 2: party gets ticked off and you lost. I mean it
Speaker 2: to me, it was Democrats punted the presidency away, and
Speaker 2: they will not acknowledge it. They will not that it
Speaker 2: was their own damn fault. Yes, no, I believe that.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they're operating.
Speaker 1: You know, as I've said, a few times, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure they've lost enough yet to make the changes they
Speaker 1: need to make.
Speaker 2: We you know, I'm not not a corner or medical examiner,
Speaker 2: what even a biology major, but I think when you
Speaker 2: do an autopsy, one of the things you try to
Speaker 2: do early on is figure out the time of death
Speaker 2: and I think the death was in the first nine
Speaker 2: months of twenty twenty one. Yeah, and that I fully agree.
Speaker 1: Think about the fact I think about this, you know,
Speaker 1: I go back and my thesis on this is that
Speaker 1: following Charlie, which was and this is where I think
Speaker 1: Trump is running into a potential juggernaut himself, a problem himself,
Speaker 1: which is. The one thing the public thought Biden was
Speaker 1: good at was phone policy. It was a core competency.
Speaker 1: And when he failed on a core competency test, it
Speaker 1: poisoned every everything else. You're like, boy, if you're terrible
Speaker 1: at that, we already you know, well forget it this
Speaker 1: whole thing, because what else explains that the minute he
Speaker 1: loses altitude on that issue, Right, he was at fifty
Speaker 1: three in July, and he goes down to forty five,
Speaker 1: and he never gets there again, right drops below forty five,
Speaker 1: never gets there again, and at that moment and he
Speaker 1: never can recover. It tells me that the public never,
Speaker 1: never was, never was bought into him. And then the
Speaker 1: minute he fails on something they thought wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be an issue, and Joe Biden informed policy, the one
Speaker 1: thing that he was a perceived expert on and this
Speaker 1: is where I think Trump is. You know, Trump was
Speaker 1: elected for one reason, fix the economy, and the economy
Speaker 1: is yeah, I like, I mean, I.
Speaker 2: Like your framework, but let me frame it slightly differently. Okay,
Speaker 2: that Biden had run for president in and eighty eight
Speaker 2: and two thousand eight, comes in fourth place in Iowa,
Speaker 2: comes in fifth place in New Hampshire. The party starts
Speaker 2: looking around and realizing that they're, you know, the the
Speaker 2: that Bernie was consolidating the left, eclipsing Warren, that the
Speaker 2: center left was split, you know, basically twelve fifteen ways
Speaker 2: with Bloomberg getting in and the party panics and Clyburn moves,
Speaker 2: and that Biden won the nomination because he wasn't Bernie
Speaker 2: Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 4: Right, He didn't win on a on a up here
Speaker 4: he went. He won because of who he was, not
Speaker 4: because of who he was, right, and then won the
Speaker 4: general election because he wasn't Donald Trump. But the thing is,
Speaker 4: they thought they were.
Speaker 2: Going with a guy to be coming in around the
Speaker 2: forty yard line thirty seven thirty eight, forty yard line
Speaker 2: left of midfield, but not that far. That's what they
Speaker 2: thought they were getting. But that's sort of they didn't
Speaker 2: govern that way. Look, I do.
Speaker 1: Ron Klain came in as chief of staff, and I
Speaker 1: didn't expect this. He ended up being much more progressive
Speaker 1: and much more with his ear to the ground on
Speaker 1: the on the on the groups than I think any
Speaker 1: of us thought. As I joke with about Ron, he
Speaker 1: wasn't Evan Buys, he wasn't even by Democrat anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think that each of the parties has
Speaker 2: become so inward focused that they don't and part of
Speaker 2: it maybe goes back to your two thousand and fourth
Speaker 2: thing is they've become so internally focused that they have
Speaker 2: no comprehension of what anyone that's not in their base
Speaker 2: thinks or views anything. And that, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: one of the things that's keeping Trump from I mean,
Speaker 2: his numbers are ready, I mean they're you know.
Speaker 1: Good, right, and it's like, yeah, yeah, dependally one of
Speaker 1: those that's ready to say forty five to the new fifty.
Speaker 2: It has been the last ten years. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But that's because of the decisions that people make. But
Speaker 2: the thing is he he thinks he hit the power ball,
Speaker 2: just the way Biden thought he hit the power ball,
Speaker 2: when basically you won because who you weren't. But but
Speaker 2: the thing is, I think one of the things that
Speaker 2: props him up some is that there are issues that
Speaker 2: Trump has correctly identified as something that a decent share
Speaker 2: of the electorate thinks is important, and so he gets
Speaker 2: the direction right, but overdoes the degree, so that I
Speaker 2: think I think a lot of most wing voters think
Speaker 2: that no president modern time has done jack on the border.
Speaker 2: Now Trump, maybe he went too far or border immigration,
Speaker 2: but at least they agree with the direction he's going.
Speaker 1: Oh, I've always thought democrats misinterpreted, you know, when the
Speaker 1: public didn't like what.
Speaker 2: Trump was doing at the border in the first term.
Speaker 1: They didn't like the tactics, they liked the goal, and
Speaker 1: I think Democrats, particularly those presidential candidates, so that I
Speaker 1: you know, I was on that stage moderating that debate
Speaker 1: when they all raised their hand to decriminalize the border,
Speaker 1: other than Biden, right, which was, my god, the smartest
Speaker 1: hand he never raised.
Speaker 2: And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: You're you know, the public didn't like the act I
Speaker 1: always say this, what makes up Look, populists are usually
Speaker 1: pretty good at identifying issues they're really bad about implementation
Speaker 1: and execution. And I think Trump identified the issues that
Speaker 1: the public does care about his execution they don't like,
Speaker 1: and Democrats misinterpreted that dislike of the execution is dislike.
Speaker 2: Of the idea, and that was the mistake. Well, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's direction and degree. I would say the
Speaker 2: same thing on trade, there's a feeling like, well, we
Speaker 2: we've been taking advantage of some So he correctly figured
Speaker 2: out a direction that was a source of frustration for people,
Speaker 2: but overdid it, you know, with the terris, I would say,
Speaker 2: keeping restraining the growth in government. Got the direction right,
Speaker 2: but the degree way off, and so he he's they
Speaker 2: don't have the ability to calibrate.
Speaker 1: Let me throw something else at you because it gets
Speaker 1: it to what you were discussing, because you said something
Speaker 1: interesting to me before we were talking that the last
Speaker 1: time a president won by more than ten points and
Speaker 1: had big majorities in Congress is basically LBJ sixty four.
Speaker 1: But there's another phenomenon that I you know, that I
Speaker 1: like to point out in my talks, which is I
Speaker 1: note that six of the last basically for the entire
Speaker 1: twenty first century, right starting with two thousand, counting that
Speaker 1: election as a twenty first century election. Six of our
Speaker 1: last seven presidential elections have been decided by five points
Speaker 1: or less. In the entire twentieth century, Charlie, we only
Speaker 1: had five decided by five points or less. Right, And
Speaker 1: in fact, the last time in the twentieth century, the
Speaker 1: latest election that was decided by five points or less
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century was sixty eight.
Speaker 5: Well, and we've had a series of what three one
Speaker 5: term and two terms. We have had straight one termers
Speaker 5: since the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: We didn't have that.
Speaker 1: We didn't have that once in the where we had
Speaker 1: three straight presidencies where we chose a different party.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean basically, when they reupt with
Speaker 2: h W after eight years of Reagan is the only
Speaker 2: time you know, certainly in our lifetimes, in anybody else's lifetime,
Speaker 2: that that's happened. But to me, when I get to
Speaker 2: the forty seven forty eight, this forty forty eight percent,
Speaker 2: and then you have this little group of people in
Speaker 2: the middle that they're not there's no they have no
Speaker 2: coher or an ideology whatsoever. I mean, they're all over
Speaker 2: the all over the place, or or more importantly, they
Speaker 2: don't vote for anybody or anything they vote against the
Speaker 2: who I'm matt at, disappointed in or afraid of. And
Speaker 2: so no matter who wins, there's not a democratic mandate.
Speaker 2: There's not a republican mandate. There's not a liberal, conservative, progressive, populist, libertaire.
Speaker 2: There are no mandates anymore. So that if a party,
Speaker 2: if someone got elected president, was smart enough to just
Speaker 2: kind of aim towards that forty yard line on whichever
Speaker 2: side they're on, they've got a fair chance of sticking
Speaker 2: around for a while.
Speaker 1: Look, it's not lost on me that Obama is the
Speaker 1: last president to at least try the whole red you know,
Speaker 1: the whole unity message.
Speaker 2: Any won by He's only one, the one by more
Speaker 2: than five, right, he won by six. Right.
Speaker 1: He did as you said, He did the walk and
Speaker 1: chew gum. He expanded his part artie base, you know,
Speaker 1: and he did that with micro targeting. But he also
Speaker 1: had a closing consensus message to try to persuade.
Speaker 2: You know, have a He won.
Speaker 1: As I always say, there's two types in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. We have two types of presidents in my lifetime,
Speaker 1: what I call the fifty percent presidents and the sixty
Speaker 1: percent presidents. Right, those that strove for a sixty percent
Speaker 1: approval rating, they know they'd never win sixty percent of
Speaker 1: the vote, but they wanted. You know, Reagan and Clinton
Speaker 1: believed they were winning if they had a sixty percent
Speaker 1: job rating. And now and then it was Bush who said, well,
Speaker 1: I only need fifty percent plus one to win. And
Speaker 1: when that became, right, when we dropped six fifty, when
Speaker 1: fifty became the new sixty, and we, by the way,
Speaker 1: talking about doing it everywhere, including in the filibuster, right
Speaker 1: when we stopped, Like to me, that's not lost on me,
Speaker 1: when we dropped the judicial nomination process essentially from needing
Speaker 1: sixty to needing fifty, we have an entirely different polarized judiciary, right,
Speaker 1: we have a judiciary polarized by ideology.
Speaker 2: When we were going for sixty, we were actual looking
Speaker 2: for umpires. Well, first of all, there's no reason to
Speaker 2: have a US Senate anymore. I mean, they were it
Speaker 2: is boy, that's a hot take. There is no reason
Speaker 2: clip that. Lord, there is no reason to have a
Speaker 2: US Senate anymore. It's Charlie. And the thing is, and
Speaker 2: I say this as someone who who started the freshman
Speaker 2: in college working in the Senate. I'm a Senate guy.
Speaker 2: Iized the Senate. I don't. For me, the beginning of
Speaker 2: the end was when the First Reconciliation Act was done,
Speaker 2: and when when you needed sixty votes for something contentious,
Speaker 2: when you dropped it so you could just jam the
Speaker 2: hell out of the other party. And you know, I
Speaker 2: think people are like voters are like animals in the center.
Speaker 2: You put them in a quarter and you if they
Speaker 2: feel threatened, they're they're gonna lash out. And it's it's
Speaker 2: it's it's when they drop the threshold down to basically
Speaker 2: majority to avoid filibuster. It's lowering the conference the the
Speaker 2: I mean, which one of these controversial cabinet members or
Speaker 2: justices would have had a chance of getting sixty votes
Speaker 2: in the Senate. None of them.
Speaker 1: And maybe Scott Bessett he might have gotten sixty. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't put him in the controversial category, right, I
Speaker 1: don't either. Absolutely Rubio would have gotten that, which because
Speaker 1: he did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I'll give you a Rubio. But
Speaker 2: it's it's when people feel threatened that they do things
Speaker 2: that they otherwise wouldn't and that now we see people
Speaker 2: in politics doing things. Everything's existential everything, And I don't know.
Speaker 2: When I got up there, it sure as hell wasn't
Speaker 2: like that. And so is this something that we had, like,
Speaker 2: you know, are you a belief? To get this back?
Speaker 1: We actually have to probably put some erect to guard
Speaker 1: like we had norms that handled this and now we don't, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, I think about.
Speaker 2: What does if we want to sort of.
Speaker 1: If we want to reanimate the republic post Trump, we
Speaker 1: might actually have to make some large changes, not small ones,
Speaker 1: and maybe they are constitutional.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've been playing with the idea of a book about
Speaker 2: how it's what we've been talking about, how things went wrong,
Speaker 2: why they went wrong, And I think, at least in
Speaker 2: my mind, I think I'm going to got it down,
Speaker 2: but I don't as a solution, I don't have one
Speaker 2: I see that could explain it all that I had
Speaker 2: heard it incredible one And it's it's kind of cheesy
Speaker 2: to write a book that goes into chapter and verse
Speaker 2: how bad things are and how they got there and
Speaker 2: not offer any hope but all on the other end
Speaker 2: of it, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Will say this, I think that if you look at
Speaker 1: our country's history, every time we've had a robust third
Speaker 1: party challenge. It sobered up the two parties, right, whether
Speaker 1: it was Roosevelt in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 2: What I could argue is, if you look at the.
Speaker 1: Various moments where we've had a insurgent challenge from the outside,
Speaker 1: George Wallace, Teddy Roosevelt, Ross Pureaut, that the outcome changed
Speaker 1: the two major parties in a way to prevent that
Speaker 1: from happening again for one reason or the other. You know,
Speaker 1: I've always looked at ninety two as it really ended up,
Speaker 1: arguably in the short term, giving more definition of both parties.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It made Republicans a little more sensitive on trade, made
Speaker 1: the Democrats a little more fiscally, a little more sensitive
Speaker 1: on deficit and fiscal issues.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton is not a deficit minded president without Ross purerout,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that the Republican already moves towards
Speaker 1: this protectionist mindset without Rossborough.
Speaker 2: Let me put a slightly different frame on it. Generally,
Speaker 2: when we've been heading down the tubes, they'd been the
Speaker 2: great person came along or the big event, and the
Speaker 2: great person. We've been lucky because that happened a lot.
Speaker 2: The question I have is would the great man, would
Speaker 2: the great woman? Would they run for elective office? And
Speaker 2: how would they win a primary? Yeah, and you can't
Speaker 2: win the general. You can't win the presidency if you're
Speaker 2: not one or the other because of the electoral college.
Speaker 2: And so you say, well, okay, what about event. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's then attack on the contrary. Okay, that worked for
Speaker 2: a couple of years after nine to eleven, and then
Speaker 2: it kind of came undone. And then you say, okay,
Speaker 2: maybe a once a century public health crisis. Oh wait,
Speaker 2: that made that worse. And so if the great man
Speaker 2: or woman is unlike to get in or get anywhere,
Speaker 2: and if the big event either has a short shelf
Speaker 2: life or makes things worse, there's only one other solution, Charlie.
Speaker 2: It's control old delete, it's reboot, and yeah it is rough.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and I don't pretend to understand how that works. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I look, it's funny you say that.
Speaker 1: On the solutions, I get very micro and some solutions,
Speaker 1: like I think uncapping the house could have a huge
Speaker 1: impact in a positive way if we double, if we mandated,
Speaker 1: I actually came up with a percentage point zero zero
Speaker 1: zero one percent of the population. No district should ever
Speaker 1: be bigger than that represent more than that which right
Speaker 1: now would put congressional districts at one per four hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: one per eight hundred thousand, which is where we're sitting.
Speaker 1: You double, you'd be essentially double the size. You'd make
Speaker 1: gerrymandering less necessary, not saying you wouldn't have it less
Speaker 1: impactful perhaps, and you might lower.
Speaker 2: The barrier of who could be in congress.
Speaker 1: Right in theory, I don't think it's there is if
Speaker 1: you're well, but smaller districts should allow more working class
Speaker 1: people to want to run.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean the thing is, I mean I've
Speaker 2: heard you talk about expanding the house when you know,
Speaker 2: I think you'd probably just get more of the same thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think size is the issue. Well,
Speaker 2: but is it? Is it closer to the people?
Speaker 1: And that's my issue is that I think right now,
Speaker 1: every congressional district when you're when you're the size of
Speaker 1: a major city, eight hundred thousand is the size of Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: which is the fifteenth largest city in America. Charlie, you
Speaker 1: can factionalize is does Austin speak as one?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You can factionalize and take charge of a community of
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand. Weirdly, in a community of four in
Speaker 1: one thousand, you might actually have to have more consensus.
Speaker 2: See, I'm trying to figure out whether the state of
Speaker 2: New Hampshire, with four hundred State House members for a
Speaker 2: state that's only big enough for two CDs, am wildly independent.
Speaker 2: I don't know New Hampshire. I think New Hampshire is
Speaker 2: some of the smartest voters in the country. Because of that,
Speaker 2: it's also is not terribly representative of a lot of places.
Speaker 2: But you know, but I.
Speaker 1: Not to full of de tooke fall on you. But
Speaker 1: that's what he marveled at. He thought it was amazing
Speaker 1: our townships and stuff.
Speaker 2: I thought, we love that. Part of the problem is
Speaker 2: that people aren't learning civics, they aren't learning history, and
Speaker 2: they're not learning economics, and that the idea of federalism.
Speaker 2: And I know you've too long ago read the Federal's
Speaker 2: papers from start to finish, the concept of separation of
Speaker 2: powers and why we have a separation of powers. And
Speaker 2: I don't think Donald Trump's record federalist papers.
Speaker 1: By the way, Charlie, excuse me, I don't think Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's ever read a federalist paper.
Speaker 2: By the way, I'm not going there, but I know
Speaker 2: that there were reasons why this system was built this way,
Speaker 2: and reason why the Senate was made this way and
Speaker 2: the House was made this way, and the check I mean,
Speaker 2: and you know, each of the three coequal branches were
Speaker 2: designed to be able to keep either of the other
Speaker 2: two from getting too powerful. I mean, it was a
Speaker 2: brilliant I always look back.
Speaker 1: The fact is they foreshadowed every potential problem we're facing,
Speaker 1: and they had a solution for it.
Speaker 2: We just don't. As I say, the tools are there,
Speaker 2: we're just choosing not to pick them up. And I'm
Speaker 2: part of it blame education, but part of it is
Speaker 2: that there's getting into your other favorite subject. People don't
Speaker 2: can see now, I mean the share of people that
Speaker 2: have any coherent intake of news in any systemic way,
Speaker 2: as opposed to just sort of a la carte, just
Speaker 2: sort of pick up whatever accidentally comes in over your
Speaker 2: Facebook or something, so that we have leaders that aren't
Speaker 2: worthy of leaders and voters that aren't really doing the
Speaker 2: due diligence that a voter should do. They're not taking
Speaker 2: their citizenship as seriously as we wish that and other
Speaker 2: than that, everything's fine. All right, let's close with this.
Speaker 1: I want to wrap up on a land the plane
Speaker 1: here because you know, the real going back to where
Speaker 1: we started, which is the almene equ American politics. You
Speaker 1: know what really sucks for all of our friends that
Speaker 1: actually have to put the book together is if there's
Speaker 1: a massive redist thing in the middle of the decade
Speaker 1: and they have to rewrite all the profiles.
Speaker 2: I just I mean, what a nightmare? What do you make?
Speaker 1: Where is the where does this end? I mean if
Speaker 1: we basically go down this road of a redistricting war
Speaker 1: between the states, right where I'm really uncomfortable where one
Speaker 1: person says, Hey, this is you're disenfranchising us in State XS.
Speaker 1: So we're going to disenfranchise voters in state Why to
Speaker 1: get back at you for State X?
Speaker 2: That doesn't end well? Well, and when if you don't
Speaker 2: like the outcome of elections, you change the rules, right,
Speaker 2: that's what you on both sides do. I mean to me,
Speaker 2: unless you've got a court order, there should be no
Speaker 2: cracking open districts during a decade. And I do think
Speaker 2: that the Supreme Court decision in the whatever common calls
Speaker 2: that that was basically we're not going to look at
Speaker 2: the federal course, are not going to look at Jerry
Speaker 2: Mannering for political purpose is they're not going to throw
Speaker 2: you know, to me, that was one of the worst
Speaker 2: decisions ever. And that's that's a big you know, uh
Speaker 2: that that's a big that's a big charge. Yeah, I'm no.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're going to say, what are the
Speaker 2: top ten or bottom ten? Yea, But it is a race.
Speaker 2: It's a race to the bottom. And I have to
Speaker 2: kind of modulate my outrage and uh well, I mean
Speaker 2: I does feel like, here's my frustration.
Speaker 1: Nobody seems to be saying, you know what, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing this in either state, right, Like, where's that
Speaker 1: set of leaders. I don't mean to sound Pollyannish and
Speaker 1: you know, yelling screaming at the cloud, but I'm stunned
Speaker 1: that nobody thinks it's good politics to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is bad in Texas and this is bad in California.
Speaker 2: Hard stop. Yeah, I mean, as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 2: I wa, I mean, for the lad I would never
Speaker 2: point to California as a fair district, the original one,
Speaker 2: you know, the one that's in place right now. I would.
Speaker 2: But to me, Iowa, I think Iowa was about the
Speaker 2: straight up drawing of Well. Now, granted it's a lily
Speaker 2: white state and all the counties are square.
Speaker 1: So you know, my my grandfather in Iowan as an engineer,
Speaker 1: and he's proud of those he was proud of those
Speaker 1: square lines.
Speaker 2: God damn it. You know it was it made sense.
Speaker 2: But there the thing is, I mean my theory is that,
Speaker 2: you know, the standard used to be compact and contiguous,
Speaker 2: and then the compact got winned away when well, to
Speaker 2: create more minority districts, we're going to have to fudge
Speaker 2: a little on this compact thing.
Speaker 1: And that was a big moment, wasn't it. The ninety
Speaker 1: one reapportionment set us on this road.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When you start creating on compact on one thing,
Speaker 2: it it it basically spreads out to other things. And
Speaker 2: it's also that was the first cycle where you had
Speaker 2: Republicans working with minority Democrats. Yeah. No, it was an
Speaker 2: interesting going I mean, there's but it was compact and
Speaker 2: contiguous work pretty damn well. And when compact went out
Speaker 2: the door, out the window, that's when we started going
Speaker 2: down this horrible path, at least on the districting part
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: All Right, Let's get to the last most important thing
Speaker 1: I like to talk to you about, which is who's
Speaker 1: got who's in better shape politically? Donald Trump or Brian
Speaker 1: Kelly head coach of LSU football. Can he survived Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has to survive twenty twenty six midterms? Will Brian
Speaker 1: Kelly be the head coach of LSU football in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six?
Speaker 2: There are so many reasons why I shouldn't address this
Speaker 2: and won't, but getting into with Chuck Todd a belt
Speaker 2: sports is not something's good. I'm guessing LSU fans have
Speaker 2: pretty high bar this year, don't they. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll admit it to one game the whole school year
Speaker 2: down there, it's uh, are you teaching this semester or springs? Now?
Speaker 2: My teaching career is over. But uh OHSU was very
Speaker 2: good to me, and they were very, very very nice
Speaker 2: people and stuff. But uh, that's a lot. Teaching is
Speaker 2: a heck of a lot harder than I ever ever
Speaker 2: thought it would be dreamed it would. Wasn't it pretty rewarding?
Speaker 2: Give you a little bit of hope? Yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 2: I think the pandemic and devices have done a lot
Speaker 2: to undermine the ability of people below a certain age
Speaker 2: to do what their older brother sisters, and you know
Speaker 2: parents were able to do. And I think it's a
Speaker 2: I think it's it's a it's a real challenge, and
Speaker 2: I think it faces you know, any any just about
Speaker 2: any state, in any state, any university. I think that's
Speaker 2: a I think the pandemic really did not only a
Speaker 2: rest arrest development, but took some away. And you know,
Speaker 2: I always thought, you know, I teach class. If I
Speaker 2: ever taught teacher, first of all, the first book would
Speaker 2: be What it Takes Richard ben Kramer. Now you can
Speaker 2: no more hand a class one thousand page book than
Speaker 2: Fly to the Moon. I know you're hand in that
Speaker 2: book and be like, good luck. It's always no I
Speaker 2: only it's dated and stuff. But I know way anyway,
Speaker 2: but they were very they were very good to me,
Speaker 2: and my esteem for the profession knows no bounds.
Speaker 1: Now you are right about that, well, Charlie Cook. It
Speaker 1: is always a pleasure to hear you. Look the mid
Speaker 1: do you have, I mean the midterms.
Speaker 2: That's the first time I think the word midterm has
Speaker 2: come up, I know. And I was just going to
Speaker 2: say because in some way.
Speaker 1: We're trying to you know, the midterms are going to
Speaker 1: be a coin flip, and yet we're going to probably
Speaker 1: take away way too much from them, aren't we.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I I The thing is that I've started, I've I've
Speaker 2: moved to using major party vote and you know three
Speaker 2: Trump averages and the Hillary uh, Hillary, Joe Biden, Kamala
Speaker 2: Harrison and then major major vote and then rank order,
Speaker 2: and when you do red blue, you're just looking to say, well,
Speaker 2: it's a after after, but sheher Steve Basheer is turned
Speaker 2: out in Kentucky after you at the next and lawn,
Speaker 2: Kelly the governor of Kansas has turned out there, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Glenn Younkin and Virginia's turned out turned out. So
Speaker 2: basically you're left with Phil Scott and Kelly Ayot will
Speaker 2: be the only governors of either party. They are in
Speaker 2: the other colors the other states color for governors, and
Speaker 2: and Susan Collins the only one, the only one in
Speaker 2: the Senate. And so it's all the action is in
Speaker 2: fourteen states. And I know you're trying to cut the
Speaker 2: but to me, it says a lot that Republicans have
Speaker 2: won only four of the twenty one Senate races in
Speaker 2: Purple States since Donald Trump has worn into office. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, because Democrats have ten out of
Speaker 2: the fourteen Senate races in Purple States, Yeah, making really
Speaker 2: hard for them to make up and to get the fifty.
Speaker 2: And each party is screwed in a different way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's astonishing that it was that the Democrats were
Speaker 1: at sixty for a brief period in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: You think, boy, I don't know when they'd ever see
Speaker 1: I don't know if they've seen sixty at our lifetime,
Speaker 1: but you never know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's but I do think that if a party.
Speaker 2: I was having coffee with a group of senators within
Speaker 2: the last year and someone say, well, do you have
Speaker 2: any advice, I say, yeah, you use your use your
Speaker 2: go at your brains and not your glance when you
Speaker 2: make decisions. I love you were very careful. You were
Speaker 2: like I got to pick my words here just right. Well, also,
Speaker 2: I was kind of reaching for it, but IM trying
Speaker 2: to remember the term I used because I know what
Speaker 2: I would use on a on a Yeah, if you
Speaker 2: weren't being recorded, Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well we'll let
Speaker 2: we'll let the audio. That's the beauty. We'll let them,
Speaker 2: We'll let them imagine the word you were out. This
Speaker 2: has been a whole lot of fun. Chalk all right,
Speaker 2: but I missed this, the almainic of American politics. Go
Speaker 2: grab it in two weeks coming out brother, see chock.
Speaker 5: Thank you,