World tonight to the hill center. 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 hill center. We know we have some stiff 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. Also wanted to mention that we have a couple of exciting programs 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 go to know 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. Coming into 2020, we are in the middle of it. We thought this is a good time hcharlicook back and he generously agreed to come with us. Good to see you and thank you for coming back thank you. My pleasure, bill. Let me just start off you know when 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. Landscape. I want to get it out of the way, the impeachment inquiry. What impact will this have on the 2020 campaign . Primary and general . Sure. 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. Nobody is going to change anybodys mind. I personally dont, if i were a democrat, i would not do this. Ive lived here through two of them. I was inollege during the nixon impeachment and the clinton impeachment. To me, impeachments, forget what the president is alleged to have said or done. Forget whether he deserves it or not. Throw all of that aside. It sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. Im an independent. Im a moderate. If i were a democrat, i would want every bit of energy to be focused on winning the november 3 election and not on this, regardless of what the merits may be. I think having a focus on the election and impeachment are somewhat contradictory. Im not sure how great an idea if youre a democrat 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 found to be 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. You can ask jeff flake, mark sanford, there isnt any. If i were them, i would not do it. Thats not me, so whatever. In terms of in this and this kind of segues into what impact would this have on the president himself . Let me jump in. Those of you who have been here, charlie and i have 30 minutes. We need more time than that but we will hold it to 30 minutes. Then open it up for your questions. Just to jump in on that, does that mean for democrats they ought to get this done fast, before the end of the year and then leave time for other issues . Well, the thing is, the speaker was correct the first time where she said this is not 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. Lets go to joe biden. Do you believe in the primary this helps joe biden or hurts of all these rumors and allegations . Its helpful at all. I dont know if we know whether or not. Ng to hurt him we saw forget merit or anything, we or saw Hillary Clinton turned into hillary. Were now seeing an effort to biden intoresident crooked joe. The thing is, there are people here who known joe biden for a as i have. Rs if somebody wanted me to make a the against joe biden being democratic nominee, i can throw reasons. But crooked joe, i dont think there is a crooked bone in his body. That is not who he is. Ive never heard any suggestion he did anything inappropriate. His son may have taken on a business deal or two that he should not have, but anyway. The thing is the Biden Campaign made a mistake when they allowed all of their eggs to be put in the electability basket. Because that works well as long as you are perceived to be the most electable. But if that basket develops a hole in it, you dont have a lot left. If i were them, i would be saying, 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 someda right now with where the country is, you need experience to undo x, y, and z. And ive got more than the rest of the field combined. And by the way, i am the most electable. It gets stripped away. Electability being the cherry on top. If there is not a lot there in terms of your case, anything that makes you look less electable, because it is not just ideology. There are many aspects of it. Bill one of the great advantages of being a subscriber to the Cook Political Report, you get things like this that i got 10 minutes ago. Things we trust. Charlie what i call tuesday treats. Bill i want to ask about some of the things you trust. These are based on polls. Why should we trust any poll . Do you trust any poll today . Charlie first of all there is an urban legend out there. The polls were wrong in 2016. Which ones are you talking about . The National Polls that showed the average of all the major that had Hillary Clinton ahead by three points . What do those measure . The National Popular vote. What did she win by . 2. 1 percentage points. The fact is, this is about as 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. There were six or seven we knew 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. The polls are commodities. People think one poll is as good as another. That is like one car is as good as another. That is not true. There are polls you look at the network polls, the telephone ones. I think online is more problematic. They can be done well or badly. Most of them are done badly. The telephone polls, fox news, 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 lousy polls out there that, you 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 who cite polls they know are lousy. Bill the first thing you trust, is trumps Approval Rating, 44 disapprove. 53 , do you trust it . Charlie the 44 was approved. The thing about President Trumps Approval Rating, i hear people say either a, this time is different. They are really going to drop now. This is the straw that broke the camels back. Well, 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 in the history of polling. We are at 354 major National Polls have tested his job Approval Rating. In all 353 but one, there is higher disapproval than approval. Thats never happened. The one was the first fox news in february 2017, the president had 48 approve. 47 disapprove. Every other one has been upside down. Normally in the first three years, a 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. The best job Approval Rating in gallup was 46 . The worst was 35 . An 11point range. Fox news is a 10 point range. So when good things happen, his 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, that there is nothing he could do that is wrong. And another group, there is nothing he could do that is right. That is three quarters of the electorate. Bill the president who has never been above 50 , is he in trouble for reelection . Charlie yeah, yeah. If this is just a referendum on President Trump, thats it, its very hard to see how he wins the popular vote and the electoral college, as well. But its like the story about the woman who was asked, how is your husband . And she replied, compared to what . [laughter] if you are a democrat, you wanted to be a referendum. You know . If it is a choice, a choice between trump and what, or who . Is a democratic socialism . Is it the squad . What it is a choice between . 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 Quinnipiac University latest poll, looking at spending. Elizabeth warren, 27 . Joe biden, 25 . Bernie sanders, 16 . Kamala harris, 3 . Pete buttigieg, 7 . Elizabeth warren. The momentum. Charlie the thing is, that National Poll is the only one that has shown her in first place. Most of them have it closing up a lot. It is closing. The thing is, she has enormous amounts of momentum. I watched her several times in iowa and once in new hampshire. Without saying anything, i saw two of the best president ial stump speeches ive ever seen in my entire career. They were good. Whether nominating her is a good idea or bad idea for democrats is another question. It was like, as if somebody had had the best speaking coach on the planet working with her for years. It was smooth as silk. Shes operating as a candidate on a level higher than any other candidate. And her campaign is on a plane 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. Bill were you equally blown away by joe bidens Campaign Speeches . Charlie i was talking to one of the networks, these young reporters that are following fulltime. Its funny, by the time these campaignget going, they know word for word the candidates stump speech. If one word is different, one sentence is different, their ears perk up. There are two joe bidens. Teleprompter joe and nonteleprompter joe. Teleprompter joe does fine. Nonteleprompter joe, you never know where that is going. I thought it was like bird hunting. Theyve got the caller and where the guide or hunter can give an electric jolt to the dog to get their attention. Bidens staff should put one around his ankle. [laughter] when he starts going, i was driving the Pacific Coast highway one time, you nudge him back over. A jolt. [laughter] no, but, the thing is, everybody has assets and liabilities. For biden, hes got more experience than the entire rest of the field put together. Is age a liability . Heck yeah. But all of these candidates have assets and liabilities. Bill has it boiled down to joe biden and Elizabeth Warren . With bernie fading . Charlie i think bernie is fading. After a good fundraising quarter. I think so. You see Bernie Sanders now and it is almost word for word for word the same speech as four years ago. This is version 1. 1. You take out Hillary Clinton and you throw in trump. It is basically the same speech. With sanders and warren, what you have is, this is not Michael Dukakis liberalism. It is more huey long populism. Populism this is about the whole system is totally screwed up and weve got to blow the whole thing up. Its about big change. And to me the choice the democrats have is to go big or go home. Where big is big, bold, exciting, risky, like Elizabeth Warren. Or, go home to 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. One other thing on biden, there have been three trajectories for biden. Biden holds on and goes on to win the nomination. The second one, he fades. The third one, biden collapses. He does something, something happens, and he goes down. For numbers two and three, it matters, when does that happen . If it happens early on, while there are centerleft establishmentfiendly 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. That is why, watch this carefully. Right now, technically it is a threeway race. We kind of know which direction bernie is going. It is a twoway unless kamala, or amy klobuchar, or buttigieg. Right now, there is no momentum for any of the other candidates. Bill when you 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 . I think secretary clinton, she 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 that much. If clinton had teflon, secretary clinton had velcro. Whether it should or not, it did. My 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. Maybe they would hold their nose. One month out, the billy bush access Hollywood 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 maybe 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. So i dont have to vote. In 2016, to remember the old 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 michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania. By not that many votes. Charlie three states in the northeast and states that have had manufacturing. That has been a tough sector. There are lots of things going on. For example, if you are going to put together a list of all the states in the country, these are three of the states with the most restrictive early voting in the country. Where 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. In two of the three, the Clinton Campaign did not target them. They thought they were fine. The first democratic nominee since 1972 to not set foot in the state of wisconsin. I had two friends who are members of congress from michigan who warned me about michigan. Watch out. She may not have this in the bag. Did charlie listen . No. [laughter] the thing is, there were these warning signals. You dont know which ones to Pay Attention to. Bill more and more people are also looking, is it realistic, at texas . Six republican members of congress have announced they are retiring. Some people read as they know texas could be moving purple or maybe even light blue. Charlie texas is getting less republican. Texas is in the process of 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 back in the house anytime soon. Its like, being a minority in 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 minority population. The big thing is the suburbs. You have lots of people from other parts of the country moving into texas and they are not voting like texans. It is becoming a purple state. I think it will be 2024 before it is legitimately purple. That is where the math changes for republicans. Its going to be close right now. I dont think it switches. Going into the 2018 election, republicans had governorship in two out of the three. Scott walker loses reelection in wisconsin. Republicans los