President ial election and what to expect from a Biden Administration. And Mccain Institute heard from former obama and Mccain Campaign managers, and a white house correspondent, Maggie Haberman. This is one hour and 10 minutes. Good afternoon and i would like to welcome you to the second part of the Mccain InstituteStraight Talk live and my clock is ringing. Im so sorry. Thank you to our eminently qualified panelists, the Campaign Managers for both the mccain and obama campaigns, rick davis and david plus, election law expert trevor potter, and New York Times white house correspondent, Maggie Haberman. , they by alex wagoner will offer their analysis on what will surely be an insightful discussion on this National Election held just nine days ago and still counting. Which of thel us last outcomes surprise them and andh met their expectations its effect on american politics in the months and years to come. Thise many questions about wild and Unusual Campaign as i suspect all of you do. And i cant wait to hear our panelists take them on. Littley be allowed a editorializing, i would like to say a few words on behalf of my husband on the importance of the american election. Thatbelieved selfgovernment was the only moral government and every human being on earth was entitled to it. He believed it was americas great because in the world and he served it with unwavering dedication. He loved nothing as much as traveling abroad to observe the first free elections held in countries emerging from decades of tierney. So moved, even to tears sometimes, to see again the joy, the hope, and the faces of people who had long been oppressed and were now claiming their freedoms and equal justice by exercising their right to choose who would govern them. For all that we take for granted, our elections are a sacred endeavor and we should respect them as such. They are the source of our strength. Our enemies know that and they are trying to reverse that as we speak, to use our elections to weaken us. That is why they spend so much doubt on theo cast integrity of our election process. A democracyda in that is as corrupt as their own regimes are. Joe biden was elected our next president and he will soon be fully certified as the winner. On january 20, he will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Pretending that there is some doubt about this for the sake of thugscs is doing these worldwide, doing their work for them. I feel certain john, if he were still here, would be making the same point emphatically. It is in the American Peoples vital interest at the transition from the incumbent administration to the Biden Administration is orderly as it was thorough when the transition from the Obama Administration to the Trump Administration. And i hope american patriots on both sides of this see it for what it is. That is the end of my brief editorial and now i will turn it over to alex and our panel to explain just how we got here. Thank you. Former Vice President joe biden will win pennsylvania and nevada, putting him over the 270 electoral votes he needs to become the 46th president of the United States. On this program exactly one month ago, some of our most agile political minds ok the video alex can you hear me . Can anyone hear me . Im just going to keep talking. Apologies. I blame zoom. Thank you, cindy and we all hope there is going to be an orderly transition soon. My own resting heart rate has tripled in the last week alone. Thank you to everyone joining us today. This is Straight Talk live, the second installment of a twopart series from the Mccain Institute examining the 2020 election. Im alex wagoner and its great to be with you this afternoon. In part one of this program, one month ago, which feels like a lifetime ago, some of our most agile political minds discuss the fate of the president ial election and boldly main sub predictions for what was to come in november. Made somedly predictions for was to come in november. Its fairly certain what has happened but a sizable portion of the country remains unconvinced. Because of this, there are a plethora of pressing issues to discuss, including ongoing legal actions from the Trump Administration, the biden transition, the very crowded agenda for the incoming urgently,and, most whether it is possible for the United States to come together and find Common Ground or if our divisions will grow deeper. Today, we are once again joined by some of the sharpest minds in politics to discuss the ways forward for the United States and the world. First, i would like to introduce chair trevor potter, founder and president of the Campaign Legal center. He served as general counsel to john mccains 2000 and 2008 president ial campaign and will give us an update on the current legal issues related to the election. He will tell us what we can expect from the lawsuits coming out of the Trump Administration that are challenging the real it the Election Results. Welcome, trevor. While we have the tradition in this country of the loser in the election conceding, thats not a constitutional requirement. If President Trump loses this election and wants to say he doesnt think it was fair or he thinks as he said when he one last time, millions of illegal votes cast, he can say that, but it doesnt change the outcome. Alex you go right ahead. Trevor good to be with you all today. In the past couple days, Vice President biden has been declared president elect by the ap and a number of tv and cable networks. This reflects his apparent wins and states having more than 270 electoral votes. Up,he current total holds he will have earned around 306 Electoral College votes, which President Trump termed a landslide when he got that number four years ago. He will have slipped arizona, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania and georgia. We all understand these are unofficial results published by state Election Officials and they still need to go ahead and canvassed them, which means check them and produce final numbers. State where the totals are sufficiently close, georgia, that there will be an official recount, a hand recount, and there are two other states, nevada and wisconsin, where the losing candidate may ask for a recount and trump has said he will do so. The important thing to understand about these recounts is that they are unlikely to change any state Election Results. The 200 are normally in to 300 vote range. These margins are 20,000 in wisconsin for biden, 14 in georgia, nevada, around 20. So it is unlikely they will have any effect on the certifications coming out of those states. Furthermore, Vice President biden does not need those three states to get to 270 Electoral College votes. If he even were to lose all three recounts, he would still be the Electoral College winner. This explains the Trump Campaigns current negation strategy where they have filed suits in michigan and with much bigger vote margins in those states, 45,000 four biden in pennsylvania and rising and 140 5000 in michigan. Arizona, which is closer, does not allow recounts in the circumstance. So in all of those states, it looks as though the Trump Campaign is in court or will be in court asking federal court judges to stop the certification process. Those lawsuits say basically that there is a problem with mailin ballots and the fact they are counted in a different process than the votes fed into the machine by voters on election day and that represents what is called an equal protection problem under the bush v gore decision. They also say there may have been fraught in those states and they were not sure because they didnt have enough election observers close enough to follow. And they finally say they have some evidence of dead voters or other people who moved out of state and voted anyway. I dont believe these lawsuits are actually going anywhere. The mailin Ballot System particular should have been brought before the election and there simply no way the federal courts are going to throw out two point 5 million votes in pennsylvania, 40 of the total cast in that state, after voters have relied on the existing mail in system to cast their ballots. The observer issue has already been litigated in pennsylvania and the Trump Campaign lost. They said they did not have observers and then they admitted in court that they actually did have. The fraud and error allegations either are few and scattered or have already been debunked in those states. All that said, i expect we will see more litigation filed as we stateoward the final of electionn totals, which will be by the end of this month alex thank you, trevor. We will see you back on the program a little later in the hour. Before we get to our big discussion, lets first get to our initial polling question, one of several throughout this event. A box is going to come up on your screen. Please respond to the question. It will give everybody a second to check it out and log in their responses. Ok. Answeredeverybody has the poll question, lets get to our panelists. It is my great pleasure to introduce Maggie Haberman, rick davis and David Plouffe. A reporterrman is for the New York Times and we have news this morning that maggie will be writing a book about President Trump to be released in the next year or so, i believe. Im sure we will be preordering on amazon. Rick davis served in multiple capacities in the reagan and George H W Bush administrations as well as multiple president ial campaigns, including the first president bush, bob dole, john now, ain 2000, 2008, and successful career in the private sector. Longtimeuffe is a political strategist, Campaign Manager for barack obama positivist successful 2008 president ial campaign, served as Senior Advisor to the president. Since then, david worked in senior positions at uber and the chainzuckerberg initiative. Welcome, folks. Im excited to have this conversation with all of you. There is a subset of the american electorate that has given up on the institutions and rule of law. He was talking about fox polls. He wasnt talking about jobs or covid. The decisionmaking at the top has always been donald trump. He is running the bus and the bus is very all over the road. And then with the coronavirus, if you talk to republican pollsters they saw the bottom dropping out if you talk to the republican pollsters, they will tell you that they saw the bottom dropping out. Alex thank you for bearing with our technical difficulties. Have we done the poll . The firstng to get to polling question. If you havent seen it, a box is going to come up on your screen, please respond to the question if you havent already. Pleasure toat maggiece our panelists, haberman, rick davis and David Plouffe. A reporterr said is for the New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for her investigation on donald trump and his associates in russia. She is writing a book on the Trump Administration. Rick davis served in multiple capacities in the reagan and george w. Bush administrations including from multiple president ial campaigns including the first president bush, and john mccain. He now has a successful career in the private sector. Notably thee was Campaign Manager for Barack Obamas successful 2008 residential campaign, then served as Senior Advisor to the president. Since, david worked at senior positions at uber in the chanzuckerberg initiative. Welcome, folks. I hope you can hear me. My zoom is malfunctioning. But the brilliant insight is going to make up for technical difficulties. Thank you. Maggie, i want to start with you, my friend. A lot of americans are not necessarily surprised President Trump has refused to concede the election. But i wonder if there is anything about the aftermath of eitherriod that has shocked or surprised you, given the fact you are a font of information and prognosis about the information about the administration. Maggie first of all, thank you for the kind introduction and thank you for having me on the panel. It is a pleasure to be here. I am not surprised by how he is conducting himself. I am surprised at how many republicans have gone along with it over the last couple of days. And i shouldnt be, given the tight hold he keeps over his party. And he has made clear he is not going to reseed from the spotlight when he leaves office. To be clear, i think he will leave office. I think it will just keep saying all the things he is saying about rigged elections, as he is walking out the door. Awarethink he is well that he has won the secondmost votes in an election in history. Jill biden won the first. He is going to use that to propel himself commercially and potentially politically in the future. That is making other republicans very nervous, particularly as they face runoffs in georgia in january. More republicans in the senate, in particular, were saying, if they were saying it was time to go, that might expedite it. Lindsey graham has been one of the most vocal defenders of the president s right to raise what have been specious questions about fraud in various states, even Lindsey Graham said today, joe ought to be getting intelligence briefing spirit so you are seeing some cracks. Intelligence briefings. So you are seeing some cracks. But what is interesting is what republicans are saying in public, versus private. That discrepancy tells you a lot about where we are. David, rick, i would love to get you to weigh in on the data we are processing in this election. David, this was a very close election. If you look at what was happening in some of these battleground states, these were hardwon electoral votes. Inould love for you to weigh on the efficacy of the Trump Campaign strategy and rick, i would love for you to talk about the biden Campaign Strategy on a statebystate level, if you could, not every state, but how you see the battle landscape in the aftermath. David . Thanks, alex. It will take months to analyze the data. This was not a close race. They are battleground states for a reason. Biden has a healthy number of electoral votes, the same number thep won by a 2016, but biden margins in michigan and pennsylvania are much wider. Not howlar vote, it is we elect our president , but the biden margins could be struck obamas in 2012, shy of what he had in 2008, so a big number. So i think the Trump Campaign did well. This is a race donald trump hadd clearly have won, he campaigned more effectively in the closing week, had he had a better first debate. The original sin is not taking the pandemic as seriously as the American People would have liked, but even when polls showed biden winning a lot, his people were coming up. And when his people come out, the watermark rises. Wisconsin is a great example. Waited 2016 was 1. 4 million votes. Iden was able to get over that trump had a great turnout. His urban margins held up. Turned up 2016 was not an anomaly. I think some of that is going to continue in terms of our parties. Suburbanorrhaged in areas and in urban areas that were near suburban areas. Erie county, pennsylvania. Northampton county, pennsylvania. Three key counties outside milwaukee he was able to gain back. So trump did a remarkable job of turnout. I think they knew that they were in Good Standing in ohio and iowa, they cut back resources there, they felt better about florida than most people thought. They thought flora florida would be a possible win for them. And like in 2016, they focused like a laser on pennsylvania. They probably wish they did better in georgia, and my guess is they wish they would have done more in arizona. Based on data i have seen around spending and resources, arizona was not important to them as it was to biden. They did a lot of things well. I am sure one of the reasons he is so outraged and refuses to cede to reality is that he probably does think it was a winnable race. One of the questions is, is this what republican is going to turn what republican turnout is going to be in 2022, 2026, or was it because of resident from or was it because of President Trump . Rick i think he is spot on with the differences. I would even drill down and say, from my biden perspective, he knew it was always going to be about donald trump. He didnt get in the way of the debate everybody was going to have anyway. So i lot of criticism early on about campaigning from his basement, reinforced the covid page and brought it home