Maggie haberman. This is an hour and 10 minutes. Election law expert trevor potter, and New York TimesWhite House CorrespondentMaggie Haberman, guided by our capable moderator journalist alex wagoner will offer their analysis in what will surely be an insightful discussion of this National Election held nine days ago and still counting. Of thell tell us which last tuesdays outcomes surprised them and what their expectations are for what it means for american politics for years to come. I have many questions about this wild, unusual campaign, and i cant wait to hear our panelists take them on. If i may be allowed a little editorializing, i would like to say a few words on behalf of my husband about the importance of the american election. John believed that selfgovernment was the only moral government, and every human being on earth was entitled to it. It was americas great cause in the world, and he served it with unwavering dedication. Asloved nothing as much traveling abroad. Moved to seeo again the joy, the hope, and the faces of people who had long been oppressed and were claiming their freedom and equal justice by exercising their right to choose who will govern them. For all 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. Spend so muchey time trying to cast out on the integrity of our election process, and propaganda in the democracy that they say are as corrupt as their own regimes are. We shouldnt do their work for them. Elected our next president , and he will soon be 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 politics is doing these thugs 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. Alex on this program exactly one month ago, some of our most agile political minds ok the video 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, 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. And boldly made some 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 president and, most urgently, 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. If the current total holds up, 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. There is one 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. Recounts are normally in the 200 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. This explain the Trump Campaigns current litigation strategy, where they have filed lawsuits in michigan and pennsylvania. Bigger vote margins in those states, when hundred at004 biden in pennsylvania, 145,000 in michigan. Doesna, which is closer, not allow recounting this circumstance. So in all those states, it looks as though the Trump Campaign is in court or will be in court, asking federal courts, judges, to stop the certification process. Now, those lawsuits say basically that there is a with mail problem in ballots, the fact they are counted by different process than the votes vented to machines on election day and that that represents what is called an equal protection problem under the bush versus gore decision. They also say there may have been fraud in those states, because there werent enough election observers to follow, they say. And they finally say that they have evidence from people who voted out of state. I dont think these lawsuits are going anywhere. The male in lawsuit challenge in particular should have been brought before the election. There is simply no way that federal courts are going to throw out two point 5 million votes in pennsylvania, 40 of the total in that state, after voters relied on the existing mail in system to cast their ballots. Has already issue been litigated in pennsylvania and the Trump Campaign lost. They said they didnt have observers and then admitted in court they actually did. They did have observers in those rooms. And terrore fraud allegations either are really very few and scattered, or have been debunked in those states. I expect we will see more litigation filed as we move towards the final state certifications of election totals, which will be by the end of this month in every one of those states. That leads to the Electoral College vote november 14 and congressional acceptance of those notes january 6. Alex thank you, trevor. We will see you back on the Program Later in the hour. Before we get to our big discussion, lets first get to our initial polling question, one of several we will have 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. Assuming everybody has answered that poll question, lets get to our panelists. It is my great pleasure to introduce Maggie Haberman, rick davis and David Plouffe. Maggie haberman is a white house the new yorkfor times who won a Pulitzer Prize investigating President Trump and his advisors ties to russia, 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, right after the segment is over. 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 mccain in 2000, 2008, and now, a successful career in the private sector. David plouffe is a longtime political strategist, most notably Campaign Manager for Barack Obamas successful 2008 president ial campaign, served as Senior Advisor to the president. Since then, david worked in senior positions at uber and the chanzuckerberg initiative. Welcome, folks. Im excited to have this conversation with all of you. There is a subsection of the american electorate that has given up on the institutions and rule of law. He looked defeated. He was talking about fox polls. And he wasnt talking about jobs or health care or covid. The decisionmaking at the top has always been donald trump. He is running the bus and the bus is veering all over the road. And then with the coronavirus, if you talk to republican pollsters, they will tell you that they saw the bottom dropping out. [no audio] alex thank you for bearing with our technical difficulties. Have we done the poll . Have we done the poll . We are going to get to the first 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. And we are going to get right to our discussion. It is my great pleasure to introduce our panelists, Maggie Haberman, rick davis and David Plouffe. Maggie haberman, you know her byline, she is a White House Correspondent for the New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work investigating President Trump and his advisors ties to russia. We have news this morning, she is writing a book about President Trump that will be available sometime in rick davis 2022. Served in multiple capacities in george h wagan and bush administrations, as well as multiple president ial campaigns including for the first president bush, bob dole, and john mccain in 2000 and he now 2008. Has a successful career in the private sector. And David Plouffe was notably the Campaign Manager for Barack Obamas successful 2008 president ial campaign, and then served as Senior Advisor to the president. Since then david worked at , senior positions at uber in the chanzuckerberg initiative. Welcome, folks. I hope you can hear me. My zoom is malfunctioning. But i know that your brilliant insight is going to make up for technical difficulties. So thank you in advance. Maggie, i want to start with you, my friend. I think a lot of americans are not necessarily surprised that President Trump has refused to concede the election. But i wonder if there is anything in particular about the aftermath of this period that has either shocked or surprised you, given the fact you are a font of information and prognosis about the administration. Maggie first of all, thank you for the kind introduction and thank you for having me on the panel. It is great to be here and i hope that enough people can hear me through our zoom challenges. Alex 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 recede from the spotlight when he leaves office. And 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. But i think he is well aware that he has won the secondmost votes in an election in history. Jill biden won the first. And he is going to use that to propel himself, both commercially and potentially politically in the future. That has made other republicans very nervous, particularly as they face these two runoffs in georgia in january. I think more republicans in the i think if more republicans in the senate, in particular, were saying, it is 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 biden ought to be getting intelligence briefings. So you are seeing some cracks. But what is interesting is what republicans are saying in public, versus private. Almost all of them have said that they look forward to the end of this era, privately. Alex 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. And david, in specific this was , a very close election. If you look at what was happening on the ground in some of these battleground states, these were hardwon electoral votes. I would love for you, david to , weigh in 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, why dont you start . David thanks, alex. There is still a lot of data for us to land for us to analyze. It will take months. I will say this was not a particularly close race. They are battleground states for a reason. Biden will have a healthy number of electoral votes, the same number trump won by a 2016, but the biden margins in michigan and pennsylvania are much wider. The popular vote, it is not how we elect our president , but the margins are going to be stronger than 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 won had herly have had 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 they drove strong turnouts. That is the thing. Even when polls showed biden kept tellinglot, i people his people were coming , up. And when his people come out, the watermark rises. Wisconsin is a great example. The trump wind in 2016 was was 1. 4 million votes. He increased by 200,000 votes. In wisconsin, that is a huge increase. Biden was able to get over that. Trump had a great turnout. His urban margins held up. Turned out that 2016 was not an anomaly. I think some of that is going to continue in terms of our parties. But trump was particularly strong there. He obviously hemorrhaged in suburban areas, and hemorrhaged in x urban areas that were close to suburban areas. That is were biden did well, northampton county, pennsylvania. Erie county, pennsylvania. The three key counties outside milwaukee he was able to gain back. So trump did a remarkable job of turnout. And 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 florida would be a more comfortable win for them than a lot of people thought. And just 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. That was a core battleground for them. But based on data i have seen around spending and resources, 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. But they deserved enormous amount of credit for turnout. And one of the questions is, is this what republican turnout is going to be in 2022, 2022, 2026, or how much of it was unique to trump . If this kind of turnout is an indicator for republicans, democrats are going to have a very hard time winning elections. Alex rick .