american enterprise institute for the discussion on the midterm election results. c-span2 willern, have live coverage as academics discuss the 2018 midterms. that is hosted by american university in washington, d.c.. back on c-span, u.s. news and world reports white house -- ken wash -- walsh moderate to discuss in. live coverage starts at 6:45 eastern. watch the process unfold on c-span. >> as your primary source for campaign 2018, we brought you candidate debates in the most competitive races, only on c-span, over 160 raises from across the country. have decided on a

new congress with new leaders. watch the process on c-span. >> the cook political report's editor, charlie cook offered his postelection analysis in washington. ,efore mr. cook could review this is about one hour and 45 minutes. i am certainly on a little sleep and i'm sure all of you are as well. today's program we will have luke and charlie cook rate down the results, and more importantly, what these results may tell us for 2019 and 2020. some housekeeping items, you will see microphones in the

middle aisle. we will have question and answer after charlie's remarks. if you have a question, walk to the microphone, state your name, and organization and then ask your question. for those participating in social media we have a hashtag. #day after. and il start our program would like to introduce my colleague, luke hartig. he will walk us through a presentation on the candidates won it will be new to washington and what networks that will bring to bear. luke: good afternoon and thank you for having me. honor to speak frankly to our national journal

members and to talk about the research we are doing. it is always awkward to have to open for charlie cook. incredible icon and i am privileged to work with him. more importantly, we are all dealing -- we are all trying to understand this analyst driven, dispassionate, and careful analysis is a nice antidote to the fear and loathing of my twitter feed. let me tell you about what we do and how we approach this race. we did not approach this as a horse race. we did not did the day-to-day tracking of polls, of statements from the campaign trail or anything like that. the way that we approach this was to think about networks of influence. about for the friends, family, colleagues, top donors, major business interests.

we are thinking about a policy maker, how do they make decisions waste off of the people around that -- based off of the people around them. we picked some of the most competitive races and at the end of the day, we covered senate sent -- seven senate races and four gubernatorial races. the montana race i feel a sigh of relief does that was the one race that we did not cover. we are good. we have all of the new senators and then covered both candidates in the arizona race. we have covered 14 gubernatorial florida,io, california, and illinois. californiatalk for and illinois today. when we started out we had a couple of propositions. first, our objective is to serve you and to give you the insight

to understand in the coming weeks how you build relationships with people you may have not known before. that was the approach. in terms of analytics, we had a couple of hypotheses. about ifst one was this was a referendum on trump? there are a lot of indications that that was the case, that if you look at the networks of influence, our analysis shows that it is more complicated than that. a lot of interesting political tensions planned out -- played out and i look forward to talking through all of this. i will walk through an abbreviated version of our slides. if you have any trouble accessing,, talk to us afterwards. let us start with the first one

called for the night, that is heidi heitkamp versus kevin cramer. this is one of the least surprising given how polling was going. going to howis much is this about trump. what is interesting about kevin cramer is that he is a true trump loyalists. he supported president trump early and a lot of his key backers were involved in it. he has tapped into virtually every one of the conservative energy officials and energy donors that has supported president trump. we have relate a couple of those out there. hamm, nos harold stranger to most of the folks in the room. a major oklahoma energy baron who actually went to kevin cramer and said i want you to run on this race and kevin

cramer had his hesitations. and he said that he would chair kevin cramer's committee. a lot of people close to harold hamm came to bear for had -- for kevin cramer and brought a lot of money to the campaign. he talked a lot to local energy issues -- interest. warrens iss -- another main donor and part of that hamm connection. moving beyond the energy industry, he has ties into conservative media. he and a couple of his friends were investors in a company called back in beacon media, a radio station that present -- primarily serves oils -- oil workers in the oil fields. they have interesting ties to conservative intellectuals including sean hannity and others. also a lot of ties to the north

dakota republican party. another thing we see is that he has loyalty amongst some of his staffers. some of the players with him have been there for a long time. we have mike groom and, -- mike grumman, and he is a key player. these are guys who have been with him since he was on the public service commission. he brings that energy expertise and loyalty from his staffers. also a tightknit family. his family has, under a little bit of fire for taking compensation for serving on his campaigns. a very religious person and lost year.n earlier this if there was a real outpouring of support. a little bit of the personal color around him. is try tove done outline the main communities from which we see influence, and

presence around these policymakers. we have given you the key players and key points. at the bottom of all of these, and the senate racers has more fidelity here, we have given you information about their kind -- campaign finance. we have laid out the independent expenditures and the top industries in the middle. they are taken from open secrets. one of the most interesting things is that the in-state versus out of state funding. as you might expect, because of the deep ties to harold hamm, we see 81% of his funding coming from out of state. let us move on to the next slide. i will not go through this on everyone and not in depth, i want to give you a feel for how this plays out. we have mapped out the network around kevin cramer, and this is the data that analysts are pouring over to see where we

should focus our efforts and think are the keep points of influence. you have his family, some of his colleagues through the conservative media space, and the whole bottom quadrant is focused on some of his ties into the energy space. when you take a look at it that way, it can be powerful. i will move past that quickly. ,et us talk about mike braun another one that is not a huge surprise, given that joe donnelly was the accidental senator. it is interesting because he is a longtime indiana businessman and has been very successful. a lot of these nominees are relatively new. his biggest dent where the was spent-- stint on the jasper indiana school board. he spent four years in the

indiana house. he developederiod close relationships, particularly with a group of individuals who are focused on fiscal policy and good business-government relationships. they were invested in the indiana development corporation. mike pence is very much involved in it. it is a major area of focus, as is the broader theme of workforce development. it is an area where mike braun saw his abilities to impact indiana and national politics. how did he become so successful? a lot of this was a point of contention and they were calling him out for outsourcing. if you look at some of the business interests, he made most of his money in meyer distributing, which is in the

shipping space and focused on auto parts. he has had a number of engagements in the lumber industry, which i will talk about later. his indiana political networks are not the same kind of ideological networks that you would see for some -- from somebody who served for years. in many cases the political networks he has our business mega-donors and strong ties -- has are business mega-donors and strong ties with colleagues. on the national level it is a bit of a question mark. has supported him, but there were -- their relationship is rocky. mike braun's brother served in mike pence's administration, but he is not close with that brother. he has clashed with mike pence in the timber industry. one other thing notable is one of mike braun's closest friends

for business school is the and partf panera bread of the broader bipartisan problem solvers. looking at the expenditures, one thing interest -- interesting is the independent expenditures. he received a lot of money from the stars & stripes forever pack which was focused on driving african-american turnout and support for republican candidates. i mention that because there is aff from senator donnelly along something along an lines is such and such is african-american that he is able to do this. when you look at some of the numbers on this, it will be interesting to see if that had some kind of balance and stars & stripes forever pac had a role

in this. the in-state and out-of-state funding comes with a bit of a caveat. most of his campaign was self finance. josh hawley, fascinating guy. i think a lot of vote -- i think a lot of folks saw this as an upset. , depending on your perspective is the next great hope for an intellectual conservative leader or a young man in a hurry. one thing he has been successful about is that he has turned it into a big tent raise. if you look at the support he got from the business community and he has received a tremendous amount of support from the portions of the republican coalition. really impressive conservative

legal resume. he was a clerk on the supreme court for chief justice roberts, where he met his wife, who is also a noted legal scholar. to a range ofes supreme court alumni, some at the most prominent d.c. law forms. -- law firms. these are the types of people he continues to work with. wifes co-authored with his a bit. challengers, what do we mean by this? i'll -- a theme a lot of people have been tracking is the prominence in republican attorneys general in opposing the climate agenda of the obama administration. he comes from a similar deregulation perspective, but he has taken on a little more of a populist, activists approach. adamant in going

after facebook and google and some of these big tech groups. it is something we need to keep an eye on, somebody who is leader of this movement as we go forward. one of his biggest donors is peter teal. as if to offset that, he gave m $300.ewsu this goes back to consumer did -- conservative leadership community. he has ties in the religious freedoms space. i will lay out a couple of the key players. he is close friends with director arriaga, the of the becket fund. he was involved with the hobby lobby case, and a never -- and has been involved with bathroom bills.

we did our independent expenditure analysis, missouri was the most funded race among independent expenditures. if we look at who is supporting his candidacy, or opposing it, because most of the funding is based on -- undercutting the opponent, it is americans for prosperity, club for growth, tempo industries, which is a major funding source. you look across the board, there is a lot in the in-state or out-of-state. it comes in with a massive amount of out-of-state funding. that number is just for his campaign. of out-of-state versus in-state is a huge disparity. florida senate, let us talk about rick scott. players that we would have expected to win and

running against a lackluster opponent. he comes from a deep network of prominent is this conservatives in florida. he got his start as a health care executive at the hospital -- as a hospital executive. he has pulled in a lot of funding from american cross. one interesting thing, he has raised a lot of money in texas. he raised money out of texas in support of his campaign. when we look at how he runs his componentsand which he hires, he draws heavily on conventional mainstream gop advisers. the list from ted cruz's campaign, mitch mcconnell and a few others. when you look at how he balances this, that he has deep ties to traditional gop groups as well as to the trump world, he has actually inherited a lot of the

trump ground gain that was active in the president's victory in 2016. looking at his independent expenditures, new republican pac is the largest expenditure. it is almost entirely dedicated to propping up rick scott in moaning his candidacy. $5 million from them alone. tiesative of the strong that he has two wealthy individuals in florida, 89 percent -- 89% of his funding coming in-state versus out-of-state. marsha blackburn, one of the great hopes in a pickup with phil and one of the best candidates that she could've put -- that they could put forward in tennessee. one thing that has been noted is how close she is associated -- associated herself with president trump. when you look at the players in her inner circle, you can make a better clay -- case that she is

closer to mike pence. if you look at the individuals who work in her office, a lot of folks with ties to the freedom of the otherme members of the republican study committee. ties, itt her industry is really astonishing. they are almost exclusively in the telecom and broadcasting space. she has a number of staffers who have been consultants in that kurth tin current -- tim a recent edition. , at&t,f size to the fcc fox, verizon, and cisco. when you look at her personal networks, she has a interesting personal ties to the health space. both of her kids run a small health care company. her husband is a sales consultant. she started out in sales marketing. some interesting business ties

as well. a broad range of funding for her. about 56% out-of-state, 44% in-state. with her i would watch because she has ties to telecom and broadcasting is the possibility that she and josh hawley team up on a number of initiatives, especially those that go after big tech. rosen, pretty resounding victory, but not what we have expected going in. , compared toare some of the other players, fairly modest. we have outlined the big ones. she came to politics late in life. she and been active as a soft will -- software consultant. she had been president of her synagogue and it was harry reid who drafted her to go to

congress. she has inherited a lot of harry reid's staff and affiliated with a lot of help -- a lot of his proteges. comess where her start from and where she owes her loyalty. she has deep ties to both nevada and broader jewish communities as well. she was the former president of her synagogue. is a major leader in the jewish community in nevada and the interfaith dialogue community, and is very interesting because, if you look at the other major political , he comes that policy issues that affect the jewish-american community. she is bringing a counter rate -- a counterweight. her personal to connections, her husband is a radiologist with the va. she has been a software consultant and works for

southwest gas corporation. if you look at her independent expenditures, not a lot to say there. the thing in terms of funding is the incredible out-of-state funding. we thought this would be an incredible liability. you know the idea that rich core -- californians investing in politics is not something that people take kindly to. dedicated close to $2 million to support candidates like jacky rosen. an incredible amount of support from california donors. as i mentioned, we wanted to make sure we covered everybody. arizona senate is still too close to call, but we have given you the profiles. one is you can -- one of these you can throw away, and the other you can keep. martha mcsally, the fascinating thing is that she, like so many of the republican candidates had

to walk a line between her support for a president who is popular in her states as well as her support for more traditional elements of the gop coalition. when we look at her, one of the things that, out prominently is just how much money she has received from never trump republicans. ones karle prominent rove, who needs no introduction, but has been fervent in his anti-trump proclamations and paul singer, the original founder of this deal -- the steel dossier. when you look at her networks on the ground, this is striking. not have this well-developed, long-standing network that you might see from some of the other candidates that may have run for this position. when you look at what she

inherited, she got her start in politics as a military fellow, and inherited a lot of that network. she has worked closely with john campaign manager previously worked for john mccain. she had at least once daffern who worked for gabby giffords. -- at least one staffer who worked for gabby first. in military defense, no surprise in given her decorated history as the first female combat pilot , a lot of interest in -- a lot of ties in military. this is where we see moderation in some of her points of view and policy positions. , beyondfamous for serving in combat, she sued the department of defense over the requirement that she wear a headscarf when she was stationed in saudi arabia. peoplein contact with

fighting in greater degrees of a quality in uniform. she is a big advocate for mental health. she served at the george marshall center in germany, which is interesting, because you could see city -- her fitting into the mold that .ccain left she is someone who brings that higher-level thinking to washington. not much to say about her funding network. let us talk about kristin sinema , and a couple of big things i want to mention. first, she started as a far left progressive. if you look at how she operated early on, her first campaign was in the green party got 7% of the vote. she came back with a more moderate position and found her way into public office. she has been so pro-business. to ingratiate ton

herself of that community and received the endorsement of the chamber of commerce and received the spirit of enterprise award. she is a prominent member of the blue dog coalition. in line with that, she has been a champion for veteran's issues. both of her brothers served in the marine corps and navy. stat -- es staff that she brought over from the department of veterans affairs. she is the first openly bisexual member of congress. she has three former staffers over there. she has been a prominent avenue in for -- advocate for gays the military and being able to serve openly. inn she looks at broader cam -- when you look at broader campaign financing, she has been

the beneficiary of a ton of financing. red and gold pac is the shout out group. they have hidden their hand quite a bit through clever approaches. it is hard to hear -- to tell who is exactly behind them. i think i'm going to end on desantis to make sure i'm not standing between you all and charlie cook. is wee end with desant have covered other gubernatorial races as well, but i will stop with him. when you look at the networks, purely at the networks. is therida governor ways one that we -- race we felt was a referendum at donald trump. when you look at the people it comes out pretty clear that that is what was happening. we do not have andrew gillum

appear, but he has massive support from other major liberal donors and strong ties to the civil rights community. when you look at ron desantis he is a counter rate -- counterweight to that. his support came from mega-donors, some of them florida residents. also he has a finance committee tes all of the major funders. interesting conservative ties. usually when we profile republican members of congress, we see them having ties to industry. not so much with desantis. mostly in terms of relationships and staffers that he hires that come from the republican study committee's. those are the kind of people -- he surrounds himself with. understanding the challenges of

against, he had ingratiated himself with or to establish republicans. his running mate, jeanette nuñez is a close confidant of marco rubio. he relied heavily on marco rubio's networks to power his campaign. we laid out a couple of the other ties, he has done pretty well with the conservative business community, particularly the medical community. more stuff here, happy to go through it if you want to chat with me afterwards. i want to thank you for having toughd i know you have a job making sense of all of this and getting yourself in the best position for the organizations you represent. it has been great to be with you today. [applause] charlie: thank you. analysis tod luke's

be interesting, and then you say what do i do with all this. we are happy to help you through that as well. kevin: i will not stand between this crowd and charlie. i will not do charlie's bio. the one thing i will mention to say is congratulations. this is his 20th year with national journal. we are very pleased to have him and look forward to the analysis that he will bring to bear today. [applause] thank you very much. first of all, luke, that was fabulous. that was really good. i am extremely impressed. this is myoned that 20th year at national journal, but what that means is that this is the 10th biannual charlie cook sleep deprivation test.

i did get one hour of sleep last night. several members of our team and i were on the decision desk at nbc at 30 rockefeller plaza. mission like a nasa control except for politics. it was great fun. i did get to sleep from 5:00 until 6:00. one thing i am doing after this, my wife is in the back and she thinks i am crazy. we are going from here to the birch mere to seep -- to see petula clark. just google her and you will say. -- and you will see. i am not sleep deprived at all. coming on the heels of the most surprising of presidential elections of any of our lifetimes. this one had relatively few

surprises. and very few upsets, really. more or less in the way that we thought it would. a bunch of people characterized we were it was like having elections in two different americares. the u.s. -- and two different americas. was held in one different america and the house was in a purple and blue america. the senate races were fought in red states, states that had small town, and rural prep -- populations. the other races had a strong component of suburbs and urbanized areas.

out a lot like what we thought. our friends at nbc this morning if yougood point that look at the state exit polls and the results that they matched up really closely with where -- jobnt trump's drop approval ratings were over 50%. in those places republicans did pretty well. to the extent that they were below 50, not so well. in the senate's and -- in the senate, and i know that luke has gone through this quickly, it looks like republicans, and there are still some out, but republicans knocked off three incumbents. joe donnelly, heidi heitkamp and

claire mccaskill. and wey lost dean heller are waiting to hear about arizona, florida, and montana. arizona -- i was listening and interesting in luke -- and interested in luke's analysis. , and what in this thought was so interesting there is that martha mcsally did start off as a moderate, and then ran hard right. i thought it was just to win her primary, and then she just started going. sinema, whostin started out liberal was moving to the middle. i was like, this was interesting. will -- haver team met with martha mcsally. i think she is going to be a u.s. senator. it is the question of which seat

she is in. is she going to win this race or will be appointed to replace jon kyl when he will step down in a couple of months. that is likely to happen. really likelyoks that rick scott is going to win, but it is heading into recount territory. you never know with that. and the tester race is close in montana. scenario that was either nightmarish for delicious depending on your point of view was what had happened if democrats had picked up one seat and this seat -- this thing had gone to 50-50 with an overtime game in mississippi. that is not the case. depending on what happens in these seats that are out, you

can see republicans go all the way up to a debt gain of four, which would be an incredible win for them. or the other direction to no net change. we will have to see how that pans out. think any outcome that we are expecting, this was a good win in the senate for republicans. blessed yes they were with the best map that either parties had, and they took full advantage of it. you have got to give them that, because this was a challenging environment. had a house, some of us shock early in the evening, because in the earlier hours when we started getting returns democratsked like

would probably clear the 23 seats they needed to get a majority, but not by much. they seem to be on a lower trajectory than we thought. i thought this would be interesting. and then it cranked up. right now it seems to be headed to about a 36--- a 35 or 36 or something like that. since california takes their time in counting votes, it will be a while before we know a whole lot more about that. shocker, and i was not here for all of luke's presentation, but did you go into oklahoma five? no? people would ask, where is the surprise? there always is one. i will confess that the fifth district of oklahoma was not where we were looking.

is where steve russells, who was first elected in 2014 and was in the senate before that and a career as an army officer before that. it is oklahoma city and the suburbs around oklahoma city. is oklahoma, but it has a 41% either minority or mixed race population. it is the state capital, and it has universities. it has things so it is not just your typical southern district. wow. i did not expect this. -- she is an attorney, and this is a district that make -- that mitt romney

beat obama by 18 points. trump beat hillary by 18 points there. say thate going to there would be a race that surprises you. where i would be pick. that the underperforming in the evening was something that we had our head scratching. this was a good night for democrats. there are still three races that -- thealled but between one in alaska, the open seat where the independent was running and then dropped out. that is close. the other is the open seat in connecticut. finally georgia, and the aestion is does it go for runoff on december 4? call, and i know

campaign.' we were on a conference call with them over the weekend, and they were trying to win without a runoff. was plausiblet because the libertarian was not getting anything. they thought it would be narrow. i do not think it was overconfidence. that theyrt of it was had considerable doubt about what it would be like in a really short run off period up against the state -- the secretary of state, brian kemp. you have some rookie things is a holidayonday and all of the courthouses in the state are going to be closed. early voting would be abbreviated. there were all kinds of wrinkles

in there. they were having a hard time getting information out of some of the county courthouses. something where winning a runoff would be top. it is not that it is impossible, but it was tough. probably a good word, and this would apply to the georgia's and florida's governor's race. a lot of people in the african-american community and democratic party are very disappointed with florida and georgia have in hers -- governors' races. and then you can throw in battelle or rourke -- beto o 'rourke. short, but, came up

compared to what we saw six months ago. it is like, jeez, i did not case maden gillum's it into the general election or run as well as they did. just to use georgia as an example, georgia has changed a lot. it had to a changed a lot or you would not have seen this race as close. maybe not quite fast enough. it is gradually becoming a less red republican state. this has punctuated that. the same thing with texas. the one thing that is interesting about texas is that ,eto o'rourke coming up short this was the first serious influx of money into voter registration and get out to vote for democrats in texas since

lloyd benson left the senate. this will move democrats forward in their goal to turn texas purple. this is a lot better than what i expected. should benator cruz congratulated that that was a hard fought win. you are a republican incumbent in texas, you have an expectation that you will outspend your democratic challenger. that did not happen. impressive win for him. where democrats underperformed, we knew that the senate would be tough for them. the only question was how tough. democrats had mixed to slightly disappointing was in the state legislatures.

and have been emphasizing this for a month of 2 -- a month or two. if you think about from a policy standpoint, if democrats were going to get the majority in the have, it would not be a huge majority. it would be small, and now it will be smaller than the republican majority that republicans have right now. and they have had a hard times getting things through. it would be a small majority. what we are talking about is the ability to control the senate floor schedule and having a gavel being able to call hearings and things like that. policylly moving serious , and it was extremely likely, and now certain that republicans would have a majority in the u.s. senate, and majority will be at the other end of pennsylvania avenue.

, therepolicy perspective was not much of a prospect for change. for me, it was in the states where there was, and still is a potential for real change, because as everybody in this 20 ornows, over the last 30 years, washington has been unable or unwilling to deal with a lot of problems facing the country. as a result, it hesitate -- created a vacuum and the states have stepped in. and then you throw in the big gains that republicans had in the 2010 midterm election when they picked up six governorships and over 700 state -- state legislator's seats. the next year, they picked up two more governorships. wherever use our -- and you saw

conservative embark on an aggressive agenda over the last eight years. to an extent that the supreme court is getting more attention some of the more controversial measures have been passing on the constitutionality policies enacted by the states that have had republican majorities in the legislature and republican governors. that has been what is driving a lot of the controversy in the you arecourt, whether talking about abortion or medicaid expansion or subtraction. and then voter access, security, or subtract -- or some -- oppression. up sevencrats picking

governorships, and in the state legislatures, this is interesting. dropped a net loss of five chambers, either state house or senate chambers. democrats picked up six total. republicans went from total , in other words you have the governorship, house, and senate, republicans had 25 states where they had complete control versus eight for democrats. 14 it is closer to 21 to where republicans lost four six.s and picked up we saw a republicans picking up, and here i will cheat off of tim story, who is the elections expert at the national conference of state legislatures. and maine state

,enates, the minnesota house both chambers in new hampshire. and then you have the connecticut center -- senate went from tied to democratic control. technically speaking, democrats had a majority in the state senate. thatou had a rump group gave republicans control of the senate, and the reverse happened in alaska. now those have flipped around. the opposite way. , normally in midterm , the average loss of chambers for a chip -- for a was 12.t's party this looks like it will be about six. that is where it has been disappointing, where democrats had some good games, but we were

saying five to 10 something like that. this looks like it will be on the lower end of that. i'm going to skip over the exit poll stock. what does this mean? during and after the kavanaugh referring to it as a color enhancement event. it made the reds redder and the and did not change a whole lot of people from one side to the other, but it did do a lot of motivating. given that democrats were incredibly motivated going in, it did not benefit democrats so much, particularly in the suburbs. it did not benefit them that much. where republicans gained enormously in the states -- in

the red states. --hink the president kevin: the president's focus on the kavanaugh, i, and think it made a real difference in a couple of senate races out there. it did not do anything to help them, or did little to help them at all in the suburbs and congressional and other things. it sure as heck help them on the u.s. senate level. about whate careful you say and write about turn out. big, we know it went up. the thing is, there are a whole lot of votes that have not been counted yet. some states like california are notoriously slow about counting votes.

we do not know anything. on election night, anybody who writes off of election night about turn out are making stuff up, because you cannot know anything this soon. clearly, it went up. we can look at the exit polls and make gesutimates. -- guestimates. it does not look like young people as opposed to the rest of the electorate went up much. i had said before the election that i expected that we would have a midterm -- we would set a record number of young people voting. but if only 100 of them voted, that would be a record. .t was a really low bar what does this mean going forward and thinking about 2020. democrats had disappointments

and the senate was one. -- there were points where it looked like are they going to go north of 40 or north of 45. there was a chance of that. i do not think it was likely. i think in my last column i said, if you let me get away with a ridiculously wide range, it would be 25 to 45. it looks like it is going to be's rate in the -- be straight in the middle of that. democrats had high hopes. pre-kavanaugh it was never better than one in three that they could get a majority. they were losing ground as they were going to, and it was a disappointment. the thing about it, democrats are not big on introspection or

they have not been in recent years. thathink about 2016, after crushing loss that they suffered. it is easy for democrats to blame hillary clinton, and she had accumulated an enormous amount of baggage and did make mistakes. like going along with the private female server, -- the private e-mail server. i am sure the word portable cost cost or-- deplorable some million votes. democrats can blame jim comey and the fbi, they can blame the russians. all of that -- it is so convenient to blame these things rather than maybe the party has

some problems. yes america is changing, it has changed and is changing. absolutely. maybe it had not changed at quite the pace that they thought it was, and maybe it triggered a little bit of a backlash. where democrats have to think consequences, the economic consequences of things that they pushed, and whether you are looking back at the clinton administration and trade for folks that believe that free trade is the right way to go and that nafta was a good thing to do, that is fine and good. you would have a hard time making the case that democrats did enough to mitigate the job losses to a lot of people that

were hurt economically by trade. granted, a lot of the job losses out there that are being blamed on trade, a lot of it is technology and that sort of thing. there were people hurt in manufacturing areas by trade. i heard a statistic that are only 100,000 people currently in trade adjustment job retraining programs. 100,000 for the whole country. that is a drop in the bucket. for the obama administration, maybe there -- their environmental agenda may have been the right thing to do, but did they mitigate the people who would be economically hurt? if you looked in a coal sector or what ever. -- whatever. democrats are having problems

with working-class white voters who were once a central part of the new deal coalition, and now that is called part of the republican base. ought to look in the mirror and say what did we and whate these people can we do to keep from losing more of them. they ought to be thinking about that. , and ire some things know it is important to remember, midterm elections have no predictive value whatsoever in terms of what will happen two years later. in the two quick easy examples are the something that democrats got in 1994 with bill clinton, and then he was reelected two years later. problemssident obama's with 2010 and then he got reelected over mitt romney.

there is not a predictive value. what is worth looking at is to think what were the states that cost democrats so many problems -- caused sony problems in 2016, and is there anything about what you can look at here. in michigan, democrats gained the governorship and won the senate seat easily. democratsver problem may have had in michigan in 2016, and maybe it was a clinton-specific problem. whatever it was, it did not work against him a craft as much this ase -- democrats as much this time and last time. or ohio where you had sherrod brown winning and democrats coming close to winning the

governorship there. wisconsin, winning the senate seat easily. and then beating scott walker with walker, i have a theory that god didn't intend governors to serve more than two terms. [laughter] charlie: and there's a reason why a lot of states don't allow it, because it is unnatural. andrew cuomo is cheating the gods. he was able to do it and got away with it, but hey it's new york state. hard for a democrat to lose there. but whatever was the problem in wisconsin that led to republicans winning, donald trump winning wisconsin by 7/10 of one point, same thing. or pennsylvania, winning the governorship, holding onto the governorship easily and holding onto a senate

seat very, very easily. and then you think of florida, coming up it looks like just short in both the senate and governors races, but very, very competitively. obama carried it by one point. trump carried it by 1.2 percentage points in both these races were really close. i mentioned ohio. what i meant was, that was one where normally, it is a purple state in presidential elections, but democrats just were not even close. six, seven points, something like that. democrats lost in 2016, but here they ran pretty well here. so those are some things that are worth looking at here. i do think the presidential election, the campaign starts today. there will be people jumping in immediately and i think it's going to be a field that will be of roughly the same size as the republican field was back in

2016. but it will have some interesting dynamics to it that what we are going to see, we will see things we've never had before. for example, we had african-americans run for democratic nominations before. jesse jackson ran twice. obviously barack obama ran , successfully twice. but to have two, three, four well-funded, well-organized very prominent african-americans running like kamala harris, like corey booker, possibly eric holder, duval patrick. wow, that is a new and different dynamic here. and i think it is a mistake to think of the democratic nomination fight like ncaa basketball brackets, but -- because it is not that simple and that's not the way it is. but it's a way to structure thinking and we've had women run for democratic nominations

before, but we are going to have two, three, four in addition to elizabeth warren almost certainly going to run and possibly amy klobuchar and possibly kirsten gillibrand -- and i am missing someone -- kamala harris, who i mentioned. two, three, and four women running. i don't think we've had a strong latino candidate for democratic nomination before but we are going to have eric garcetti, the mayor of los angeles as well as the former hud secretary. that will be an interesting dynamic. we're going to have -- democrats have actually done pretty well in the past with current and former governors. i think we'll have a ton of current or former governors, mayors running besides garcetti,

besides castro, john hicken looper. we are going to have big group of those and sort of the normal folks that will be getting in. does joe biden jump in or not? does john kerry? i saw him in something a month ago and he was certainly not closing the door. what about bernie sanders? you know, sure, why not? being an effective member of congress clearly has never been a priority. [laughter] charlie: you know what, if i had remembered that c-span was doing this, i probably would not have said that. [laughter] charlie: sleep deprivation. c-span fans. mike bloomberg, who spent $100 million, and can everything that bloomberg has done on

environmental and gun issues that the democratic base likes, would that undo the connection to wall street and maybe some of the criminal justice practices that have fallen out of favor that he pursued, the nypd pursued when he was mayor? just sort of the age thing and, at he at one point was republican. can it undo all that? well, we'll have to wait and see. we are going to have a big, complex, boisterous democratic primary. people are talking about, well, democrats didn't have a message in 2018. yeah, they did. they were running against president trump. i mean, that was the message. why get in the way of something like that? in 2020, that's when democrats need to have a message coming together. that is where something like that will be really, really important. so take all that together and you know, this is going to be

like a barrel of monkeys. it's going to be a lot of fun to watch. things like income tax returns and subpoenas and all kinds of interesting things. president trump, i think he can brag that he did make a positive difference for republicans in the senate. but i think he -- there's some former republican members of the house who might not be former republican members had the president been a little tamer, a little more subdued in some of his rhetoric. so why don't i stop at this point? we've got microphones here and here. i don't know if there is a third one over there. anyone that has a question, and i do not have the latest figures on any percentages or numbers on individual races.

you guys have your phones and ipads and things next to you can take care of that. yes, sir? >> thank you for doing this, charlie, as always. you talked about the prospect of gridlock in washington looking to states for policy action. it looks like from the conversations pelosi has been having and signals from the white house there might be a few areas where at least the white house and house would have an incentive to cooperate on infrastructure, prescription drug pricing to have a record of something to run on. the senate seems to be the place where mcconnell wants to confirm judges and not too much else. if the white house and the house had incentives to cooperate on some big issues, could they jam it through the senate and get something done? charlie: on paper, you've got -- first of all, you are making point. on paper, it seems possible that what you're describing may happen.

but president trump has some -- finel buttes, attributes, but sticking to a script, staying on message, staying focused, and negotiating , they are not among his strongest suits. he -- everything he roles a grenade down the aisle, it undoes the potential for some of these where there are opportunities. if i were him, the first thing i would have done last year would have been infrastructure. that arehings unifying, bring people together. can he stay disciplined on that?

history suggests that as a challenge, but maybe. but i am a little skeptical that also, thinking about president george w. bush, you do not become president under circumstances much worse than he did. , youose the popular vote win in florida with contested thing that goes to a supreme -- and theren, but was so much bitterness out of florida. at the same time, he was able to do something with that and to work with senator kennedy on education and able to do some things. people forget that his first job approval rating, first gallup job approval rating after taking office was 56%.

clearly people who didn't vote for him were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. but it is addition, not subtraction. that is why it is perplexing to watch trump do his doubling down strategy to the extent he has and not try to expand that 46% that voted for him, not to try to push that up because there are no guarantees there is going to be a jill stein type green party candidate pulling the support she did. not all of it came out of hillary clinton, but a brief, fair share of it. 46% may not be able to get 302 or whatever number of electoral votes he got, so ought to be able to do that, do what you are

suggesting, but i will be from missouri on this one. he will have to show me he is willing to stay hardest -- harnessed. yes, sir. >> you mentioned that midterms are not predictor of what happens in the next presidential. something like that was for the u.s. as a whole, but are there signals that we see at the county or congressional or state level comparing midterm to the previous presidential performance that have any meaning going forward to the next one? like, do we see reversals in counties that trump flipped? start moving the other way, does that have any meaning, or that is just how it is? charlie: that is a really good question. i suspect before you get home tonight, there will be national

journal's presentation people tracking that data down and building slides on it. but that is kind of what i was getting at. i have not looked at the historic on that thing, but what i was getting at talking about wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania and some of these places that sent this presidential election into a very, very different place than we expected. normally, 2.1% popular vote win is enough to get you to 270 electoral votes. to have the biggest divergence between the popular vote and electoral college in 140 years since 1876, we remember fondly when samuel tilden won the popular vote by three percentage points and rutherford b. hayes won the electoral college by one vote. i think there were some

contested things in there. i think looking at only individual states or county level is a legit way looking at it, but it is -- and particularly with this being a split decision, do you make that based on the house, or on the senate? the house also, the president's approval ratings, going into last week, they were kind of, i mean, there were 40's and 41's, but there were 46's and 47's. that is a fairly wide span. if you are down below 46%, the average with a 40-seat loss in the house, normally you don't have this map to deal with. but your point is well taken.

i would bet, i am fairly confident the presentation printer people will be working on that and i can steal from them. any more questions, comments, accusations? you have never been shy before. >> i have a quick question. what are your thoughts on house leadership? is pelosi going to see any challengers? i saw someone challenging clyburn for whip. any thoughts? charlie: oh. [laughter] charlie: i know, i know specifically -- i -- [laughter] charlie: the conventional wisdom was that the lower the number, assuming democrats got a majority, the lower the majority, the tougher it would be for her, that she would not have a lot of cushion in terms of getting 218 votes.

but that if she won, if they won 45, 60 -- 60 is never going to number, thea big conventional wisdom is that would give a cushion and she could drop some people and still be in a position to get 218 on the floor vote, given the members that have said publicly or privately that they can't and won't support her. but there was a -- there is a a contra argument there, and this is overly simplistic, that the first 25, the first 25 republican seats in districts clinton carried. so roughly speaking, the first 25 gains the democrats would have would be mostly in hillary clinton districts where nancy pelosi would not be terribly problematic, and a lot of those folks might not have been backed into making a promise or might not have been anxious to make a

promise that they would never support her. but anything north of that, bigger than that would mean new incoming democrats coming in in districts that president trump won in 2016 where nancy pelosi would be somewhat more problematic. i think i am going to go with the conventional wisdom the lower number -- we ended up with 35, 36, that is in the middle. i guess if i had to put a number on it, i realize this is , but i have been accused of being a fool before. 60% chance, maybe a touch above 60% that she wins, but you know, this -- when democrats meet,

this could be -- i went to a catholic university, but i am not catholic. when you are waiting for the pope to be named and the puffs of smoke coming out of the chimney, there are all kinds of names of people that are mentioned that if push comes to shove, democrats may turn to. when i ask people around what are some -- you hear hakeem jeffries and cheri bustos and adam schiff, all kinds of people. obviously clyburn over here, you have a big mix of people. i tend to think if nancy pelosi gets pushed out, it will be generational change. whoever they get will be on the younger side of 60, 65, maybe even 55. you know, i think there is still

some doubt there, but i noticed last night, i couldn't hear it, but i was in front of a computer. they had a monitor up. i saw nancy pelosi and steny hoyer and jim clyburn on the stage at the dccc victory party. she was positively euphoric. steny hoyer, who i like a lot, looked at he was at a funeral. i mean, not that he wasn't happy, really happy about democrats picking up a bunch of seeds. -- seats. he had been in districts and worked hard, but you know, i am not sure he enjoyed her taking a victory lap like that. we will have to kind of weight -- wait and see.

one of the cornerstones of our democracy is the faith and trust we have any process. when you use the words that are boils down to security or -- suppression, i'm wondering if you have thoughts about the short-term or long-term effects of things like an election official passing the spotlight. now we see it in kansas, georgia, new hampshire on both sides of the aisle, in which money is starting to really work its way into those that are managing the process. i was hoping you could share some thoughts about the effect that may have. charlie: those are good thoughts. we have had secretaries of state running for governor, for senate. i do not ever remember it being as georgia and

kansas word. maybe that just says something andt the hyper partisanship increased acrimony in our that a fairly previously innocuous position suddenly become so highly charged. that is new. one thing that republicans did over the last decade that was the republican party invested a boatload of money in state elections over the last decade, state legislative and attorney generals, secretary of state races. they invested a heck of a lot and they have done extremely well in those races. what is interesting is, on the train all the way to new york, going back and forth the last few days, yesterday afternoon, i

was looking and i could not quickly find a partisan breakdown of secretaries of state. i am sure it is out there. but you could find that very easily. it had never been really considered where the partisanship was that important. i personally would like -- would prefer that we have some kind of or nonpartisan, nonpolitical people administering elections. the other thing, to our broader point, we do not -- we spend very little money -- we spent a lot of money on campaigns. we do not spend a lot of money i am justns, and making this up, but my guess is, most counties spend more money on food in the county jail than they do on elections.

we are not paying for precision. we are not spending enough money on these election administration. we are just spending enough to get kind of close. want precision, you have to pay a heck of a lot more than we do. it would probably help not to be , often elderly people using new technology. that is kind of a recipe for disaster. of course, this is from the guy who is two weeks away from being 65. who am i to talk? i do not -- i think -- i worry -- the security

of our elections and the process , but i worry even more about the lack of confidence that somee have, and we saw articles in the last few days about people who think my vote doesn't matter. people saying, i do not even know if it is going to be counted. you go, wow, that is pretty self-defeating. that is a terrible, terrible attitude. electione need to take administration more seriously and i do think that i personally -- you need to consider the source. i am from louisiana, the original good government state. i think there is very little voter fraud in this country, very little. at the same time, a know i lot -- a lot of conservatives are convinced voter fraud is

rampant. i am more skeptical about that. that is ok. there is not a lot of confidence in our system from either side, and that is a real problem that we need to address. anybody else? right here. my question with ohio, usually, when you have a statewide election, like florida , you see it trend the way florida is looking like it is trending. browno, you had sherrod who ran away with it. do you have any insights, especially given it being a purple state, a swing state, important to 2020? you can state rules and then you can start finding exceptions to the rule.

we are seeing less ticket splitting than we have ever seen before. thate seeing more people are just going straight down the line, either republican, democrat, or staying home, then we ever saw before. that was a great statistic have been, there something like 73 u.s. senate elections before yesterday, and by theof 73 were won same party that carried the state in the most recent presidential. in 2016, every u.s. senate race went exactly the same way that state was going that night in the presidential. so we are seeing a lot less ticket's, but we are still betweenome, and the gap sherrod brown's victory and

richard cordray's loss, that was a gap that was where. -- that was there. abbott, i doernor not know what his margin ended up being. it was a big margin. ted cruz's was very close. you had all kinds of strange things going on in texas, strange other than the beto o'rourke-ted cruz race. you had a republican attorney general who has been under indictment since moby dick was a guppy. state agriculture commissioner that somehow offended all the barbecue joint owners with some kind of --ssions thing -- omissions emissions thing, which perplexes me. that smells good.

why would you want to restrict that? apparently the land commissioner offended the daughters of the , some sacredething site in texas that i do not understand. that was pressing him down. you had all kinds of things going on that caused a big gap. the general rule is still there that there is less ticket seen in athan we have long time. they're absolutely are examples absolutely are examples of it. race never was close. ohio and pennsylvania senate races, sherrod brown and bob casey, those were the dogs that did not bark.

it never got completely engaged. i think the general trend towards less ticket splitting is absolutely there. been -- have >> i saw you at something the other day. >> i am stalking you. [laughter] charlie: my wife is sitting back there. >> some people have mentioned the changing nature of the republican party the and more and more trumpian. do you think there will be any -- senator- i forgot of utah --? , formerlymney presidential candidate. does he have any impact at all in the senate? charlie: i think senator elect

romney is a bright, talented, mature. i think he will be a worthy addition to the u.s. senate. i would not hold my -- i would not expect him to become a thorn in the side of president trump because, number one, that is not his personal style. --ber two, we had -- we saw think about senator flake and his book. his book that was so critical of president trump ended up being the political equivalent of 166 whereuicide note that -- -- i do not think -- i think the world of senator flake, but i do not think he could have won a republican primary when all was said and done. bob corker did not even write a book, but his criticism of

president trump made it where he would've had a hard time beating marsha blackburn, had he run for his seat again. there is little tolerance for dissent in the republican party right now. there would have to have been -- house and lost two senate seats and control of the senate, that might have changed things but that did not happen. seeingink that we are signs of a realignment that is taking place in this country. it is going in both directions and we are seeing a lot of high income, well educated people that are moving from roots in the republican party more towards democrats because of their pro-choice, pro-environment, anti-gun, they

don't like donald trump. in thisshing over direction towards democrats. at the same time, you have working class whites, that are moving equally fast over towards theyepublican party and tend to like president trump. there,s a swing element socially culturally -- that are moving that way. knowe seeing -- i don't what the republican party is orng to look like in 2021 2025 wants the president is gone. i don't think it will go bay -- back and look the way it used to look. think we are seeing some

changes there but on the other end, these people that are moving towards the democratic present ademocrats face and open arms and an nominee who would be a good receiver for some of these people or not? i do think that one of the things that -- for democrats, most of a kratz and liberals i the worstto them thing met could happen in 2021 -- or 2020 is if president trump gets reelected. think about when you go to an investment advisor, what are you objectives, with see everything? what is your risk tolerance? that is a real important question for democrats to exam risk examine, what is the

tolerance of having something that they really don't want happening. at the same time it elected billy is not a major concern of people when they are deciding who to support for the party's presidential nomination. credit a democratic asked that's right but what about on elect to ability? -- on electability? ,'m not sure he or she can win and be willing to look at their second or third choice, and by be someone who would be not electable. at the same time, someone coming from the left can fire up the enthusiasmand we saw

-- democrats came up short in florida and georgia and texas statewide, but they sure as heck beat the point spread. -- what might have been expected of them several months earlier. obvioust -- it's not as as it first sounds. >> we talked earlier this week about the way that polling and survey work took a beating in 2016. 24 hours later, how do you feel based on the outcome about the performance of your peers? like some of the integrity or credibility has been restored?

>> that's a great question. that i haven't had this conversation with, if we were talking five years ago when i would have said and i am not a pollster now but i was a pollster earlier in my life. finest pollsters in the incredibly bright, rigorous people with a lot of intelligence in both parties, they are not as accurate as they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. telemarketers basically messed it up for everybody.

the caller id and voicemail, all these things have made it very hard to get a representative sample. attendance -- telephone interviewing is not perfected yet. we are not there yet completely pointnline and so at this where the old way is it as good as it used to be but the new way isn't quite ready yet. i got into the business during a previous transition point in the late 1970's for personal intervenors where they would knock on your door and interview you on the doorstep. that's the way it was back into the 60's into the late 70's. to telephone after that. there are some systemic problems in the business, but i have to -- thet the pollsters

professional pollsters on both sides are very good. recordlook at the track for special elections this year, their numbers were pretty much spot on. polls -- inonal , the clear politics average click -- had clinton up by three, nbc wall street journal had her at four, popular vote, 2.1. the average was off 9/10 of a that's about as accurate as you are going to get in polling. poll storee an abc

fox or cnn, these are high quality surveys that are generally pretty good. surveys, what is spotty is the state polling and even in 2016, the vast majority of states went exactly the way they were expected and the polls indicated. it was the epic hole failure, miss -- whole failure. they were just off. the pollsters did a little bit better this year. we have to be more discerning at the state level polling, and being a little bit more discriminating. maybe those polls -- and the fact is a lot of people will say , cell phones. the pollsters are calling cell phones.

half of their samples are going to cell phones. that is not as big a problem. the problem is the caller id and voicemail. exit polls, what wondering what you were thinking when information came out. gop approval numbers seem to be underwater, country on the wrong track and thinking this might bode well for democrats. do you think that played out or what's your view on the polls? to me, the most important value of exit polls is for speech materials after the elections are over. there is considerable research that the exit polls were off a fair amount act in 2016.

we will see how they did this time. the thing about it is, people forget exit polls -- they have been abused, they were never designed to predict what was going to happen in a state. exit polls were designed to kind of give you a flavor that men are doing this and women are and to give you some explainand flavor and what is going on. element that goes into projections, but only in races that aren't even close. are they the intro go part of the projections at the networks.

confess, i deliberately did not show up until 6:00 last nbc. at mbc, because -- at think theys, i don't are very -- if a race is so close, a senate or governor's race, if you can't figure out from last week's time magazine an exit pollll win not be a lot of value telling you what it is. they are not that accurate. two stories you might find interesting. to cbs.as a consultant they had a handful of pollsters and others that were consulting various teams. at lunchtime, we were in a

having lunchom with the anchors, dan rather. it was after 1 p.m. and the first round of exit polls had come in. all of us had expected -- governor clinton was challenging george h.w. bush. i think all of us expected that clinton would win but that it was a competitive race. it sure seemed like clinton had an advantage. the early exit polls started coming in that showed clinton with this massive lead over president bush. that just didn't reflect at all the race that we have been watching. we were busy scrambling around trying to concoct in our mind a rationale and explanation for why this election seemed to be taking this unexpected turn.

over the course of the afternoon , a close in came in to the point where it be came closer to what we expected. but the exit polls were incredibly misleading. and with john kerry based on bush in 2004, the 1990 two experience, i made arrangements to have a lunch with a friend in connecticut, to stay away. i didn't want to get consumed by these exit polls that i didn't have an enormous amount of respect for in this context. everybody thought kerry would be by a decent margin and it turned out they were just wrong.

research using showed thats that maybe they are not capturing the very best or accurate picture of what happened on election day. i think for the purposes of seeing what did very us ok,graphic groups do, it's .t's not the be all and and all i think they have been over used or misused, in a way that they should not have been. i think they should be taken with a grain of salt. having said that, i have the tabs tabs and vertical that i can use for speech materials. you have to be a little careful. anybody else? i want to thank you all for

being national journal members, your support has helped us do what we are doing and i am proud with being associated with national journal for 20 use -- years. all very much for coming out. >> thank you for joining us this afternoon. you will receive an event email recap and a couple of days. we would love to hear feedback on how we can improve in the future and be more viable to you. -- i invite you to join us for perception i we are having this afternoon. thank you and have a good day.

president trump has ordered flags to be lowered for victims of the mass shooting in california. last night a former marine opened fire during a college in southernht are california, 12 people died in the incident. georgiaion update, republican update carol karen handel has conceded in the sixth house district.

ther carefully reviewing results data it's clear that i came up a bit short on tuesday. only good thoughts and much prayer for the journey that lies ahead or. members of the new congress meet next week to choose leadership and hakeem jeffries has announced he was to be democratic caucus chair. two other members have already said they are running. you will find plenty of election reviews on the seas and network today. coming up that used in, live to the american enterprise institute for a discussion on the midterm results. 1230 eastern c-span2 have live

coverage as academics and journalists discuss the results of the midterms in an event instanty the american enterprise institute. white house and political monitors thealch result of the midterm elections. new congress, new leaders. watch the process unfold on c-span. >> as your primary source for campaign 2018 we brought you candidate debates and in the most racist. watch the process unfold on c-span. >> i thought about that and it

occurred to me that it was something we had in common, they were forgotten but also perhaps significant. university of north carolina constitutional law professor michael gerhardt talks about two of his book, a forgotten president and impeachment. i think we can do a lot to measure impeachment. the new members of congress will be looking for him to make mistakes, when he makes the mistakes and letter -- later testified under oath which he , billter held in contempt clinton made his impeachment almost inevitable. >> on c-span's q&a. of conservative political groups discuss the