I would like to begin by thanking our hosts tonight, the. Ust needs the japanese and cspan for the broadcast. [applause] our mission is to connect people to each other can we are a Nonprofit Organization publishing an online magazine and live events that examine essential questions in a broadminded and potential spear. Since our founding in 2003 p represented presented 548 events featuring 2184 speakers in 23 cities and seven states and six countries. We do all this with a staff of eight people. [applause] so we thank you for joining us today at even number 549. As always, this is free and everyone is welcome. At a time when our countrys public sphere and our conversation has become polarized and segregated, it is important to provide a welcoming space, because democracy is as much a culture as a system and we believe in creating meaningful opportunities for people to learn about one another is as important as ever. And in everything we do across our defense and our journalism, were dedicated to expanding dialogue, not shutting it down, and viewing the world ally. Doscopic it is not in here with a panel, the discussion is followed by a question and answer session with the audience, as well as a reception to which everybody is invited to grab a beer, a glass of wine, water and soda and continue the conversation with our guests as well as with each other. Check us out. Become a fan on facebook must Facebook Follow us on twitter. If you have not already, take a moment to silence your cell phones. Again, after the program i hope you will join us in the lobby for drinks. It is not my great pleasure to introduce tonights moderator, ms. Christina bellantoni. She is an assistant managing editor of politics at the los angeles times. She previously spent 12 years covering politics in washington, as editor in chief and Political Editor at pbs newshour. She has covered three president ial campaigns and the virginia statehouse. She has also served as Vice President of the board of the Washington Press club foundation. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to miss christina bellantoni. [applause] christina thank you and keep those hands ready because we will be giving a warm welcome to will will be giving a warm welcome to our panel as well. Really lucky to have such an esteemed panel and im glad to be here. I think it will be a good conversation. In the green room we mostly talked about our children, but i think we will have fun talking about the important conversation in politics right now. What is the future of the Republican Party, effectively . And what is next . And what does that mean for you democrats and those Bigger Picture political questions so many people are engaged in now more than ever. A so i appreciate everybody being here. Is being here. First in no particular order, i you will start with leslie graves, who is the publisher of you ballotpedia. The encyclopedia of american politics. She founded the organization to youshe founded the organization to equip everyday citizens with accurate and objective information about elections and politics. Admirable cause. [applause] christina you probably read a lot of mike madrids name in the los angeles times, because he is a political consultant based in sacramento at grassrootslab and he has served as the political director for the California Republican party and is well known in the state, as is everybody in the panel. A [applause] christina thank you. Cassandra pye is to my right, a Public Affairs strategist and the board president for california women lead. She was also the deputy chief of staff to Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was governor and political director for the California Chamber of commerce. Please give her a warm welcome. [applause] christina and as you know, we will be taking questions after, so lets engage in a wonderful discussion starting with the premise of this conversation. Im asking each of you, is the Republican Party dead . Cassandra . Cassandra since you asked the question, um, it depends on you where. Generally i think one has , probably got the notion that there is at least a nail or two in the coffin in california, because the numbers are so low. I have a numbers guy next to me so i will have him help me cheat. Numbers are low. Dems are holding. My view at the state level is that, if the party is any dish is in a position to mount a Successful Campaign for a statewide office at this point of any kind, probably not governor, but maybe but , certainly in a statewide office i tend to think it will help the brand in a sort of balance out some of what comes from washington and stopped at our borders. That will take quite a few things. I am certainly curious to hear my friends comments in reaction to this comment. I think it will take a great candidate. I think it will take a lot of cash. It will take good timing and a little bit of luck. The last race i worked on was the u. S. Senate campaign. He came in third. I like to tell him that he won at least one the republican primary. [laughter] cassandra i think he came in with about seven points. If there had been just us on the ballot, i think the numbers could have been around 22 or 23 , and he wouldve come in second place ahead of sanchez and he wouldve had a race on your hands. But 2016 was 2016, so he did that with great messaging and he did it going out and is speaking with womens groups, i could go on about how it happened, but a lot of things would have to happen for us to get a statewide candidate that is viable statewide and then i think there is a chance. I will stop talking and leave it to my friends. And come back to it. Christina leslie . Leslie i would say i am giving a talk in dallas next week, the title of it, is i would be making that up, because it will not be happening. But it could happen. The Republican Party is enjoying electoral success right now. They have 34 governorships as of a week ago. There are two dozen states where the governors are republicans the state senate controlled by , the Republican Party. And they are passing legislation in those states, achieving a lot of what the Republican Party has cherished and wanted to do for years, if they had the reins of power at the state level. The Republican Party is struggling and a lot of areas, right . But it is probably struggling less than the Democratic Party, so you could say it is the party that is in the least trouble, except for the other one. [laughter] christina fair enough. Mike . Mike i remember on november 5 or 6, i had probably a dozen this one withike the exact title. How could the party come back from the debacle of the november elections . Then we woke up and things changed and it are not to be dramatically different than i think most of us anticipated. My cell certainly, i was surprised as anyone in this room. Certainly, i was a price as anyone in this room. And i think the point in that year that was brought up is an accurate one. We are at a time where both parties are dealing with very serious cleavages in their base. They do not tend to be necessarily just linear, with moderates and progressives or moderates and conservatives, the populist dynamic driving both parties is really across the spectrum. And if there is really about four have a five different factions in each party. So the fact that they Republican Party stands today, and is in a strong position nationally in its entire history, going back to the lincoln days. The Republican Party has never been stronger. Where it is weak, it is exceptionally weak, and california is one of those places. And i think cassandra articulated it well, the many things that would have to break right to have a possible chance for these to change in california. A lot of that has to do with this natural sorting that people are going through. It is not just gerrymandering or gamesmanship. It has a lot to do with, we need to be mindful as citizens of the country, not just republicans and democrats, but we are going through something very extraordinary right now. We are seeing i do not want to say collapse, but a transformation of the twoparty system. I do not believe we will look at the twoparty system in 10 years and say things do not change much, i think they are changing extraordinarily fast, i think we are trying to figure out what it means. Right now, we are kind of stuck in this institutionalized twoparty system that is creating a lot of angst and fear and anger on both sides, and it is not healthy. But i also believe that we are a resilient society, a resilient democracy, and we will figure it out. Christina one of the words nobody has uttered yet, i guess i will be the first to say, President Trump because it is an interesting question. He is a republican, he won the presidency with an r next to his name on the ballot. When he speaks, he does not say, we need to do blank as a reppo can party. He doesnt say we are trying the Republican Party. He says those guys. As were speaking with mitch mcconnell, who would be his closest ally in theory trying to get his agenda passed on capitol hill. So i think question also s to is trump , representative of the Republican Party . I will come back to mike on that. Mike i think he is now. I will say that for somebody that spent 25 years working on republican politics, he looks nothing like the conservative movement in the conservative party that i joined. I will say this. I do not believe donald trump is a conservative. He may be a republican, but a conservative and republican are two Different Things and that is the largest chasm between the factions in the party at this point in time. You have to remember, President Donald Trump was elected and he was running against the party in many ways. He was running against paul ryan, taking the gloves off with ted cruz and with very strong conservatives. He was running against everything. So when he speaks and says words like they, he means it. I do not think he has an affinity to the party. What he is trying to a comment, i still do not know what that is. So that unease has created a wide segment of the republic and Republican Party that does not have a home. I am a republican and as we were sharing in the green room, in large part this is important because i think a lot of us can say this in our country today i am a republican because i know i am not a democrat. And there are a lot of democrats who can say i am a democrat but not a republican. There are few people who can identify where they are for. We are increasingly a society that is defining who we are by what we are against. And i think donald trump is a living embodiment to that sentiment. Can i jump in . Who does donald trump represent . Leslie i think we could argue he represents the voters in the counties in our country, they voted for barack obama in 2012 and they voted for donald trump in 2016. I believe that donald trump and his campaign saw that that was a possibility. And that those people who are these voters are who donald trump is representing. And to just add to what you are saying, there is an interesting constituency called the donald haters peers haters. They hate donald trump and who do they hate even more . On november 8, they hated hillary just a little bit more and they voted for donald trump and i do not think that dynamic has been lost. So going into november 2018, when they go into the voting booth i do not, i think the Democratic Party, the leaders are struggling right now during the elections, and the elections in new jersey and virginia this year, to figure out a way to get those voters back. There is a lot of experimentation going on. But right now, the dynamic of double hating and favoring the republican candidate is enforced. Cassandra i am here to keep honest for californians. I have to ask, we are ahead of the curve again with the nonparty voters being on the rise, some of the people, not all, but there are some cannot be a republican or a democrat . Mike i think there is no question. It is not from registration numbers, it is in low turnouts. If you do not have a message and the democrats are suffering from extraordinarily huge, unprecedented turnout problems, these are voters that do not like republicans but they are not motivated by the Democratic Party. There are double haters in reverse. Double apathies. Mike i really do not like republicans, but i really do not want to vote for democrats. Mike what about millennials . I am older than michael. Cassandra on the whole approve and disapprove rating, millennials not millennials, 1834yearolds, 67 disapproval nationally of the president. Nationally, pretty much everybody else in the 40s and up. The other problem to your point about the way that this is breaking a number of ways, the other problem i think the party has is whether or not he turns his presidency, his presidency turns off a block of voters that are making their mines up about what party they will belong to and will probably belong to this cat this, this was my case and i switch parties in my earlier 20s and that happens with a lot of Younger Voters. Christina when howard dean was chairman, he would go around and say, if you can get a voter to vote for the same party for three elections in a row, you will have them for life. Barack obama captured two thirds of that and a lot of those voters not only did not stick with the Democratic Party, they got so disgusted with politics and that sort of feet into this, i feel like we had the antiestablishment, we want change election at the national level. You know, you saw parties get swept out of power very quickly and it had not happened in the last two decades, these last couple of years. So could there be another one . Have we seen enough change . Or are people generally unhappy with what the establishment is doing at their National Government . Mike i do not think it is unhappy, i think they do not believe in it anymore. Whether youre on the right or left, i think we have faith in most of our institutions, whether it is religious institutions, civic institutions, political institutions, financial institutions, i could go on. I love some of the language where if you say big anything, it is evil. Big plastic, big oil, big water, whatever it is. There is a reason for that. That is not there is something to listen to, people are saying we do not trust our institutions. And i think it manifests itself on the left. On the right, it is just kind of angry tweets. Ande is anger on both sides there is frustration and a complete loss of confidence in where we are at. I will give you a couple of other brief examples. The economy on paper, you keep hearing that things are doing really well. In the polling we see issues like crime, homelessness, poverty. In california rising to the top. , we just passed the in on this Homelessness Tax. A Homelessness Tax in los angeles county. That will raise a white flag. That is saying we dont know what to do anymore much to stroke money at it and take care of this problem. I said that because when you leave confidence in your institutions, you are also losing, i think we see it in the Republican Party to your point, it is easier to run against the whole thing without any sort of solutions. Leslie just to clarify, people lost confidence in institutions. That is not changed. Cassandra we had a conversation about reallife problems when we were talking about our kids. Leslie i was around during the vietnam war and at that time , every family in america knew at least one other family that lost a son in vietnam. My family knew many families that had lost sons in the war. Now every family in america knows other families that are struggling and in really deep and serious ways, that was not the case 10 or 20 years ago. People see it in their neighborhood, they see it in their family, or in their church. They see a lot of struggles that was not as widespread 20 years ago. Until that changes, you will see change elections. Christina when you say they think the government is not working for them, is that the donothing congress, like they are not passing enough bills . Or is it frustration that they are not repealing the Affordable Care act . What specifically . Leslie what the National Media is look at the dysfunctions that are sort of interesting to look at coming out of washington, interesting for us. People who vote in november, they are not basing it on that, they are basing it on a live the life on a daily basis. And until that changes, they do not care what kind of games are being played in washington dc. Mike about five years ago we started asking a question in our polling. We knew that people do not trust politicians to do the right thing, democrats the same as republicans. We started to ask the question, do you think that our government is capable of solving the problems . And overwhelmingly people said no. It is not like people, you are right, what has driven that is people seeing the dysfunction between the two parties and fighting and acrimony and doing nothing, and not listening to the other side and it is the height of hypocrisy for me to have one side that says, you will not even talk about it, and the other one takes over and says the exact same thing, a tennis match going back and forth. But when you believe it is not capable, even if we started to work together, can the government solve these problems . Overwhelmingly, people are saying no. Leslie the millennials. I will call them uber voters. They are choosing not to vote, because whether a 25yearold is democrat or republican, they get together to look at how their life has been made better by things like uber or all of the, or by different ways you can clean up your house so that you can have a nicer evening, they are looking for ways for a happier life that work for making your life better today, ne