Always ask this question. She was new. Ok. This is housed in this building that was commissioned as a hospital for the navy in 1864 by president lincoln. It was the forerunner of the bethesda naval hospital, it started here. Hospitals after the made it to the suburbs, this building was allowed to go derelict. It did not meet code. It had a lot of problems and the city pretty much walked away from it. Ago, a group years of neighbors got together when we heard there was going to be a request of proposals from the city for the renovation and reuse of this place for some community purpose. That is how this foundation was born and how hill center came into being. To make sure this place continues in its current wonderful condition, for generations to come, we do have a Fundraising Campaign going on now to create a hill center endowment. Has given too bad, along with your neighbors and we ask you remember the hill center preservation in your charitable giving. I dont normally provide the hill Center Introduction for these events. I pulled drink tonight in part because charlie cook is a man i have known and loved since we briefly were colleagues in a Political Campaign in pennsylvania in 1980. Before he launched the political report. Thelie has prospered on desperate wish of political junkies to know the future. Unlike a lot of prognosticators out there, charlie and his team theirly based prognostications on research and on their political instincts that have been acquired from years in the political trenches. It is a delight to have him back. He was here before with bill press. Bill press, i think you all know and love. Without further ado, please welcome bill press and charlie cook. [applause] phones, turn off your cell phones, please. Thank you. Charlie good evening. Thank you, john. It is great to see you all and it is great to welcome our friends from cspan around the world tonight to the health center. Stiffw we have some competition tonight because it is a playoff game for the nats. Go nats. The game does not start until 8 00 p. M. We promise to have you out in time to get home and watch the game. I want you to know that charlie cook made the ultimate sacrifice tonight. He has tickets to the game. He gave them to his son so he could join us. [applause] small price to pay. We thank you for that. That weted to mention have a couple of exciting. Rograms coming up senator Sherrod Brown joins us november 19 and susan rice, former National Security adviser, on january 14. As john mentioned, there is no better place for political junkies to go what is going on than the Cook Political Report. Charlie cook, the editor, the founder, publisher, and theyve been very good to the hill center, by the way. Charlie was here a few years ago. Jennifer duffy and david, who covers the senate and the house, theyve been here with us. , we are in the0 middle of it. This is a good time to have charlie cook back and he generously agreed to come with us. Good to see you and thank you for coming back. Charlie my pleasure. Bill you and i talked about this evening, it was as if some weeks ago. Something big has happened since then. Looming over the political landscape. Way,t to get it out of the the impeachment inquiry. Ont impact will this have the 2020 campaign . First let me say john knows, 1980 was an interesting experience for me. I learned actually i did know something about politics and i should never be a manager. It was a real educational experience. It steered me the right way. It is a pleasure to be here. We talked earlier about, lets not let this thing focus on impeachment because there is an election. Im glad we are approaching it this way. Everybody has an opinion. , if i were adont democrat, i would not do this. Ofe lived here through two them. I was in college during the nixon impeachment and the clinton impeachment. Forget what the president is alleged to have said or done. Forget whether he deserves it or not. It sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. Im an independent. If i were a democrat, i would bit of energy to be focused on winning the election and not on this, regardless of what the merits may be. Having a focus on the election and impeachment are somewhat contradictory. Ideaot sure how great an it is to say for the president to have a victory to be acquitted by the senate. I was tried by the senate and acquitted. I was found innocent. The charges were false. Anybody doubt that is what he would say . The chances of there being 20 republican senators joining the 47 democrats, they are nonexistent. Whatever the evidence, its not going to happen. There is no tolerance for any dissent of the president. Flake, markjeff sanford, there isnt any. If i were them, i would not do it. Whatever. And this segues into the impact on the president himself bill let me jump in. Here,of you who have been charlie and i have 30 minutes. We need more time than that but we will hold it to 30 minutes. Democratsmean for they ought to get this done fast , before the end of the year . And then leave time for other issues . Is, the the thing speaker was correct the first this is nothe said what democrats ought to be doing. Im not convinced she has changed her mind, to be honest. After all this ukraine stuff started, there was no point in digging in her heels. It was going to go to another level whether she was on board or not. I do find it interesting somehow the judiciary committee, this has moved away from them, which suggests maybe it is not, it is more of an inquiry and we already had that going on. Im not sure whether things have changed. Bill maybe they are trusting adam schiff more. Now that they have started down that road, would you agree the sooner they get to a vote, without rushing, the better . Charlie the vote in the senate will be where Mitch Mcconnell decides. I would not do it. Bill lets go to joe biden. Do you believe in the primary this helps joe biden or hurts him because of all these rumors . Charlie i dont think it is helpful. I dont know if we know whether it is going to hurt him or not. Forget justification or anything, we saw Hillary Clinton turned into crooked hillary. We are now seeing an effort to turn Vice President biden into crooked joe. There are people who have known joe biden for a billion years, as i have. If somebody wanted me to make a case against joe biden being the nominee, i could throw out a few reasons. Crooked joe, i dont think there is a crooked bone in his body. That is not who he is. Any suggestiond he did anything inappropriate. His son may have taken on a business deal he should not have. Anyway. The thing is the Biden Campaign made a mistake when they allowed all of their eggs to be put in the electability basket. That works well as long as you are perceived to be the most delectable. Whole, basket develops a you dont have a lot left. If i were them, i would say this is about experience. I look around this field and i see some amazingly talented people and probably one or two that are going to be president someday. Right now with where the country is, you need experience to undo x, y, and z. Ive got more than the rest of the field combined. And by the way, i am the most delectable. Delectable. It gets stripped away. If there is not a lot there in terms of your case, anything that makes you look less electable, it is not just ideology. There are many aspects of it. Advantagesf the many to being a subscriber to be Cook Political Report, you get things like this that i got 10 minutes ago. Things we trust. Charlie tuesday treats. Bill i want to ask about some of the things you trust. These are based on poles. Why should we trust any poll . Do you . Isrlie first of all there an urban legend out there. The polls were wrong in 2016. Which ones are you talking about . Polls that showed the average of all the major that had Hillary Clinton ahead by three points . What do those measure . The popular vote. What did she win by . 2. 1 percentage points. As fact is, this is about close as this gets. It is closer than it had been in 2012 when the National Polls were suggesting a closer race between obama and romney. Basically 40 states went the way we thought. Seven we knew or were going to be close. They were close. There were three where everything was wrong. Michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania. We could spend two hours talking about those three. That is and it was statelevel polling. Polls are commodities. People think one is good as another. That is like one car is as good as another. That is not true. There are polls you look at , the telephonels ones. I think online is more problematic. Ne well ore do badly. , fox news,ne polls nbc wall street journal is one of my favorites, these polls are very highquality. They are very expensive. I think they are trustworthy. Some of the universities do a nice job. Some dont. The thing is, there are some , you polls out there that will never see me quote certain polls because i think they are flawed and i wont do it. Sometimes i give a hard time to journalist friends of mine whose site polls they know are lousy. Bill the first thing you trust, s Approval Rating, 44 disapprove. 53 , do you trust it . A 44 was approved. The thing about President Trumps Approval Rating, i hear people say either this time is different. They are really going to drop now. This is the straw that broke the camels back. We have a barn full of straw. [laughter] things that were supposed to be, this time is different. The other thing, people say, why dont the president s numbers fall . For something to fall, theyve got to rise first. You are looking at a president that had the narrowest trading range of any president. We are at 354 Major National his jobve tested Approval Rating. One, with higher disapproval then approval. Thats never happened. Was the first fox news in february 2017, the president approve. 47 disapprove. Upsidether one has been down. Normally in the first three years of president , theres maybe a 20 point gap between the peak, which is their honeymoon, and their trough, where they have some bad stuff happened. There is variation that is there. For President Trump, that has not been the case. In best job Approval Rating gallup was 46 . The worst was 35 . Fox news is a 10 point range. Happen, his things numbers hardly go up. Bad things happen, they dont tend to go down. It is a product of the hyper partisanship and the tribalism we have now. Theres one group of people, there is nothing he could do that is wrong. Another group, there is nothing he could do that is right. That is three quarters of the electorate. Has the president who never been above 50 , is he in trouble for reelection . Charlie yeah, yeah. Onthis is just a referendum trump, thats it, its very hard to see how he wins the popular vote and the Electoral College as well. Its like the story about the woman who was asked, how is your husband . And she says compared to what. [laughter] democrat, you wanted to be a referendum. If it is a choice, a choice between trump and white, or who. A democratic socialism . Is it the squad . Between . S a choice if i were a democrat, i would not want it to be a choice. I would want a referendum. Bill the second thing, you go to the democratic primary quoting the latest poll, looking at spending. Elizabeth warren, 27 . Joe biden 25 . Bernie sanders 16 . Kamala harris 3 . Elizabeth warren. The momentum. That is the thing is the only one that has shown her in first place. It closing upave a lot. It is closing. The thing is, she has momentum. I watched her several times in iowa and once in new hampshire. , i saw saying anything two of the best president ial stump speeches ive seen in my career. They were good. Whether nominating her is a good idea or bad idea for democrats is another question. , as if somebody had the best clinical speech in coach onbest speaking the planet working with her. It was smooth as silk. Shes operating as a candidate on a level higher than any other candidate. And her campaign is higher than any other democrat. Is she going to win the nomination . We dont know. Lots of polls show it closing. That is the only one that has it ahead. You blown away by joe bidens Campaign Speeches . I was talking to one of the networks, these young reporters that are following fulltime. Its funny, by the time these campaigns get going, they know word for word the candidates speech. If one word is different, one sentence is different, therir ears perk up. Two joe bidens. Teleprompter joe and nonteleprompter joe. Joe, youprompter doe never know where that is going. I thought it was like bird hunting. Theyve got the caller and where give an electric jolt to the dog to get their attention. Bidens staff should put one around his ankle. I wase starts going, driving the Pacific Coast highway one time, you nudge him back over. [laughter] is, everybodyhing has assets and liabilities. For biden, hes got more restience than the entire of the field put together. Age a liability . Heck yeah. All of these candidates have liability. To joeas it boiled down biden and Elizabeth Warren . Charlie i think bernie is fading. I think so. Andsee Bernie Sanders now it is almost word for word for word the same speech as four years ago. This is version 1. 1. It has not of off. You take out Hillary Clinton and you throwing trump. It is basically the same. With sanders and warren, what not michael this is do caucus liberalism. It is more he we long populism. Populism the whole system is totally screwed up and weve got to blow it up. Its about big change. And to me the choice the democrats have is to go big or go home. Big is big, bold, exciting, risky, like Elizabeth Warren. Something that is familiar, something that is comfortable. Something that is safe, joe biden. For anybody else, they will have to elbow their way in. I have not seen anybody able to do that. Biden, thereng on have been three trajectories for biden. Goes on to win the nomination. The second one, he fades. The third one, biden collapses. , somethingething happens and he goes down. Three, its two and matters, when does that happen . If it happens early on while there are centerleft alternatives, or late in the process where it is just biden and warren. If that does happen, when does it happen . The centerleft establishment friendly alternatives, they are on borderline life support right now. Why, watch this carefully. Right now, technically it is a three way race. We kind of know which direction burning is going bernie is going. Right now there is no momentum for any of the other candidates. Look overall at the political landscape, has it changed since 2016 . Particularly in the heartland. You mentioned the key states. Michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania. Do you detect a change . Can we read a change . Charlie we have seen some change. We have to think about, what did happen in 2016 . Why did it happen . What were the proportions . How much was about donald trump . How much was about Hillary Clinton . What was that about . Clinton, shetary and her husband have always been polarizing. She had 25 years of accumulated baggage. Whether justified or not is for somebody else to decide. It was interesting watching them, until the me too movement arrived, it was like he had a teflon coating. Stuff did not seem to stick to him. Teflon, secretary clinton had velcro. Whether it should or not, it did. Theory, and i go with a lot of data, but this is my own instinct, i think there were a lot of voters that were never going to vote for donald trump. It wasnt going to happen. They were not excited about Hillary Clinton. They were going to do it. Nose they would hold their. One month out, the billy bush tape comes out. Suddenly the election is over. Theres no way trump can win. Theres no way clinton could lose. The republican speaker of the house suggests may be the nominee should step aside. This is over. Suddenly there was intensity among the trump people where a lot of them did not think he was going to win. There was so much ambivalence on this other side, anybody that was not excited about Hillary Clinton got a pass. They did not have to. They did not have to do anything they did not want to. She was going to win anyway. Old016, to remember the gomer pyle show, surprise, surprise, surprise. I dont think it was about lying to pollsters. It was more there was so much ambivalence on one side and they did not think they needed to vote. They didnt. Bill particularly in which again in michigan and wisconsin in pennsylvania. Charlie three states in the northeast and states that have. Ad manufacturing that has been a tough sector. There are lots of things going on. If you are going to put together a list of all the states in the of the, these are three states with the most restrictive early voting in the country. Virtually all the votes in those states were cast on election day. You look at these other states, most of them, people had been voting for weeks. Does that change . I dont know. It suggests it is more than coincidental. Of the three, the Clinton Campaign did not target them. They thought they were fine. First democratic nominee since 1972 two not set foot in the state of wisconsin. Two friends from michigan who warned me about michigan. Watch out. She may not have this. Did charlie listen . No. [laughter] there were these warning signals. You dont know which ones to Pay Attention to. People areand more also looking, is it realistic, at texas . Six republican members of congress have announced they are retiring. Some people read they know texas or maybemoving purple even light blue. Is getting less republican. Texas is becoming a purple state. Several of these people, there is not a chance they could lose. They were safe. I think part of it was a reflection of an expectation republicans are not going to get a majority anytime soon. Ins like, being a minority the house kind of sucks. Particularly if you have been term limited out of being a committee or subcommittee chair or ranking member. It is changing. A lot of people recognize the growing mi