Next, a look at the 2020 Election Results with atlantic Senior Editor Ron Brownstein and editor andcal report etiquett publisher charlie cook. They talked about how the election outcome impact future policymaking. This is just under an hour. Leah good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all so much for joining us today. I am with charlie cook and Ron Brownstein. Leah askarinam, the editor of the hotline. Excuse for me to ask some questions, and hopefully we will all leave this discussion with a better of what may be a chaotic four years. Before we get started, if you would like to submit a question during the session, please do so in the q and a section on the righthand side of your screen. We will try to get to as many of your questions as possible during the hour. Lets start off with what everybody has been thinking of for the past two weeks. There has been a lot of handwringing among democrats about the direction of their party and a lot of republicans taking a victory lap. Republicans may pick up close to 10 seats in the house, but they will not flip it. They will likely lose one senate seat and are still at risk of losing the majority, and they lost the white house. On the other hand, democrats lost the expectations game. They did not flinch the senate majority, leaving a slim window to do so if they win both runoffs in georgia in january. Not ae president was definitive win or landslide. If there were a winner in the 2020 election, who was it . Charlie i will refer to ron, my elder and better. Ron thanks, charlie. Im not sure if either of those are true. Thecribe this in atlantic as the antietam election, in that it bloodied both sides without providing a clear winner or clear resolution of the conflict. In fact, it points toward extended conflict between the two sides where neither, i think, can decisively pull away from the other. In some ways, the election unfolded pretty much the way we expected. Saw an enormous trench between metro and nonMetro America. The democrats consolidated Metro America to a pretty remarkable extent. If you look at the margins and how much they increased in places like the philadelphia suburbs, denver and its three surrounding counties, Northern Virginia, atlanta and its suburbs, houston, dallas, austin, san antonio, all of those places, enormously expanded on the margins. We can talk about that more later. The 100 he won 91 of largest counties in america by our count, even more than obama or clinton did four ears ago. Years ago. All of that unfolded pretty much as expected. We saw a big movement in the white collar suburbs. We saw small gains from trump in the actual Metro Centers themselves, but overall Metro America moved largely toward biden. NonMetro America consolidated solidly behind trump. He turned out more people than pollsters expected, and thats why the margin ended up being four points instead of six or seven or eight. Biden made a few games in midsized bluecollar places outside of the metros e , green bay. N by and large, that side of the world turned out very heavily for trump and reinforced the divide. The thing that surprised me the most and im guessing surprised charlie the most was that when you went down ballot, the red side voted republican up and down the ballot and Metro America did not vote democratic up and down the ballot. I was not surprised the democrats lost some of the house seats they won in 2018 in the far frontiers of Trump Country. With him on the ballot, you would not be surprised that those go back. But what is surprising as they did not offset that by winning more of the suburban seats within their reach, and where biden actually improved. Biden won better in Orange County, california, than clinton did and they still lost two house seats. Did not win seats that they were expected to win, like in texas, missouri, or indiana. What did biden win pennsylvania 1 by . And yet they did not when the house seat there. When you look at all of that, it says to me the following. Trump had some success at branding the democrats as dangerous and kind of extreme, even as voters were clearly tiring of the trump show. He is going to lose by close to 6 million votes. And when you go forward, we had the same dynamic that we have had for a while, which is as the metros move toward democrats, they are becoming more dominant in the popular vote, but if they cant compete beyond the metros, they have a tough time in the senate because there are so many states that are rural, white, christian, and even in the house it gets narrow you cant expand beyond the metro tour. Republicans have drawn these districts in kind of a power shaped and kind of a pieshaped fashion to draw suburban boats into their rural constituency. Hadink both sides problems. It probably sets us up for a very difficult decade of a widening difference between two coalitions that are increasingly antagonistic towards the other, that reject the legitimacy of the other, but which may find it difficult to score a decisive victory nonetheless. The way i look at it, first, the president ial race was really more of a continuation of what happened in the midterm elections, in a lot of ways. You look at what happened in the house of representatives, echoing what ron said, where did democrats pick up seats in the house in 2018 . Atlanta,s of dallas, houston, kansas city, richmond, virginia. Those are just ones in the south. If i were to characterize the overall election, it would be a defeat for President Trump but not a defeat for the Republican Party at all. At this point, they still have not lost a single incumbent in the house of representatives. Thats amazing. Our house editor never that republicans have not lost a single one of their tossup seats. They have not lost any yet. In that sense it was not a repudiation of the Republican Party at all, but it was a very personal repudiation of President Trump, even though it was not by a really wide margin. , though im going to differ. I guess we will talk about georgia. I was fascinated listening to lukes presentation before. I learned a lot and a good way to look at things. What i disagreed on is i am totally agnostic on the Georgia Senate race. I would say georgia right now is the most closely divided state in the country that, when you , just theell republican percentage, 49 , perdue 49. 7 . The combined republican vote in the state was 49. 3 , and Stacey Abrams was 50. 2 . All of the democratic numbers were 49 , 48 , like that. This is a very evenly divided state, and quite prickly, i think what happened in 1992 and 2008 has no relevance whatsoever. It is a different state that it was 12 years ago, let alone back in 1992. List i mentioned to my column this last night that the least likely outcome in be a split. Oing to weve got a parliamentary situation here. There is no ticket splitting. Candidates do not matter one iota. It is just going to be a party vote. Will republicans and the trump base feel outraged, or will they be disillusioned, despondent over there guys loss . Will democrats be concerned that they killed her nemesis, or will they have a search for going ahead and getting the senate . I think it is a 5050 race. Thatll, i honestly believe there was a way. I think it was a very real way. You dont get the kind of reports we were getting from all the different places we were getting them. Ron and leah, i am sure you were hearing the same thing. I think something happened that diverted the wave. I think it was a realization that President Trump was probably going to lose, which threw most of the year, most people did not think that was the case, and a feeling that they were ok with giving joe biden the keys to the car, but they were not going to give him a credit card and a full tank of gas. They did not trust democrats. Police,m, defund the fear of single medicare for all as a trojan horse for singlepayer. I think they just decided they wanted President Trump out, but they were not really sure about giving all the power to democrats. Thathere is some evidence backs that up. If you look at the polling, for the most part, biden and democrats, in most cases, they got exactly the percentage they were getting. Its just that the undecideds went virtually all republican. This is not a matter of pauls beingwrong of polls wrong, it is undecided voters being undecided voters, and a lot of them decide and vote after all. It is not the first time that has happened. Leah i want to follow up on that polling point. It does seem that, at least on Election Night, i they get has waned a little bit since then in just the reaction that the polls are wrong. But i have noticed some nuance. You are paying attention to the biden margin in places like pennsylvania, michigan. It does seem like that ended up pretty much where it needed to be. People point to sarah gedeon following so far behind, the democrat in the main senate race, but that it is not take into account rates choice voting. That does not take into account rankedchoice voting. Was the polling as wrong as people are saying it is . Charlie i think the polling is not nearly as bad as peoples interpretation of polling. Why did they think it was bad in 2016 . Because the polls said Hillary Clinton would be elected president . No, they said she was leading in the popular vote, which she did. It is not the pollsters fault that people confuse the Electoral College with the popular vote. And undecided, pollsters are not mind readers, and polls are not crystal balls. They cannot tell you where the undecided voters are going to go. Just like you saw with 1980, carterreagan, where the undecideds picked up in the last five days and just moved entirely to the reagan column. I think that is a lot. I think there are problems facing polls, absolutely, but for the most part, Election Night was weird because it was affected a lot by florida and texas being the first two meaningful states coming in, and they were two states that w orked out very well for the president and republicans, and that set the tone for the evening, but we knew it was going to be a weird type reporting weird night reporting. Ron i am more negative about the polling, more uncertain about what we know and do not know. I thought it was clear the undecideds moved toward trump, but there was no reason in the polling to expect such a decisive outcome. Those voters, when they were measuring their undecided, they were unfavorable toward trump. We saw isrt of what that trump turned out more of his voters again then pollsters expected, even after adjusting for the possibility following 2016. It seemed to be a bigger problem in the rust belt states than in the sun belt. Even most of the polls in texas had it at like four or five. A couple headed closer. Within one a finish point in wisconsin is not i dont think we can explain that solely by the undecided. In aolling was giving mind much safer leave their was giving biden a much safer lead there. I think there is a problem when pollsters say there may be kind of a cultural refusal in Trump Country voters to participate in polls, along with believing the Mainstream Media and really participating anything outside their experience. There is a soft form of secession going on, i think, in the country. To a genuineted problem. 2018 was a lot better. This may be unique to when trump is on the ballot. Not like. More likely to pick up a pole when it is about the senate race than the president ial, its just that not many people turn out. If you consider how badly he did in the metros, even allowing for ,ome improvement counterintuitively, in heavily africanamerican and hispanic precincts, even in a place like philadelphia or chicago, where he did a little better. The only way trump stays in this is by really showing the power of his ability to turn out supporters. I dont think polling fully captured that. Charlie i think one thing that happened, though, i think the Trump Campaign early on spent a lot of money on identifying unregistered people who looked, talked, acted, it would vote like the people who elected him in 2016. I think they identified him, registered him, and got him out, but they did the spade work before the pandemic hit. At awere well into that point when joe biden was just getting his nomination and his campaign did not have two quarters to rub together, and then the pandemic hit. Maybe democrats got punished a little bit for adhering to the pandemic. Basically, democrats said, our voters dont want anybody knocking on their doors. Our voters dont want rallies. And they honored that. That hustling may have made a difference as well. That is something hard for polls to pick up from a superior organization. Right, also has the potential to backfire, because of democrats did go out there and did not endorse, that would theoretically undermine joe biden. It just seemed like it was kind of tough. Luckily our job is not deciding how things could have gone differently. I want to go into a couple of specific counties, like orange texas. And lets start with Orange County. Chairmanear ago, the of the nrcc told me republicans were poised not only to flip the house, but the path to get there was there easily. He pointed out how republicans could recapture the suburban districts that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. It looks like republicans will recapture at least two Orange County seats in the house. It seems unthinkable the republicans could lose all of Orange County just a few years ago. Now it looks like they have won a few back. Was 2018 a fluke in Orange County, where democrats got lucky, or was 2020 a fluke . On orangect the rap county districts by democrats to be further in 2022 . Republicanshink running asian ethnic candidates in Orange County made a big difference. I think republicans started doing something differently than they have done before. It raises an interesting question about ethnic voting. You did see President Trump and republicans making some incursions with latino voters, particularly in florida. I think it is a couple different things. Males, for workingclass there are economic concerns and frustrations about not having the opportunities that they thought they would get or should got,or that their parents and they are voting like bluecollar people, whether they are white, black, or brown. They share the same concerns. Democrats tend to look at them as more on ethnicity and less on, what is their life experience, what is going on there . I was talking yesterday with a friend from texas about what was going on along the border. A lot of these voters in south texas, they work for the border patrol. They worked at the checkpoints. To go back tot where things were because they are fairly poor areas and a lot the jobs there are based on whats going on along the border. It is not exactly what people think. I dont know. Ron this is interesting for a lot of reasons, but if you look at what happened in 2018, the biggest thing, as charlie said and i mentioned, the bigger thing that happened in 2018 is that democrats consolidated control of house seats inside the major metros, not only in metros that have previously been drifting toward them and where a few republicans have been holding out, like chicago and minneapolis and denver, but also in new terrain that had not previously shown much interest in democrats richmond, a suburban seat there, atlanta, houston, dallas, oklahoma city, South Carolina, charleston as well. If you look at 2020, by and with thee democrats exception of what happened in miami, which is very specific and a very significant problem for democrats, but kind of in its own class, by and large, the democrats have kind of cleaned out the last republicans in. Hese bluetrending metros they did not lose. Jason crow did not have a serious race in denver. The Northern Virginia seed, virginia 10, that was not contested. Large, they held those. It was when you got into the next tier of places that had more republican dna that they saw some erosion. I think that was voters in those places still dont like trump, but that doesnt mean they want to get the democrats free reign. What i think was even more important in those losses were the lack of gains. They could not follow up already and fletcher in texas by winning the open seats in fort bend and outside of dallas, dallasfort worth, or beating chip roy or even why not just even winning will heard or even winning hurds seat. There are other places where democrats had a shot, indiana 5, missouri 2. They could not push further into places with more republican dna than the places they won in 2018. I think that is releasing up and. That is really significant. They have to push a little further into those places to be comfortable, because the rural thing is going to keep happening. They are not Many Democrats left in those kinds of districts, but the few that are, new mexico 2 and some of the upstate new york districts, there are even less of them. If joe biden, a 77yearold White Catholic career politician who does not scream revolution, much less cultural revolution, if he could not recover more of that ground style of trumpian appeal, racial solidarity and antielitism, it may not be recoverable for democrats. Theyd is hard to see House Democrats do better in semi rural it is hard to see House Democrats do better in semi rural and exurban areas with a kamala or Pete Buttigieg ticket then with a biden ticket. They have to win suburban seats in places like texas, arizona, places like georgia and North Carolina. But the failures mean they are mean the republicans are going to control redistricting and redraw. Though, thatsay, biden did he needed to do, the problem was it does not translate down about the house and senate . Anything, biden had more credibility that he is not a socialist and is not bernie sanders. In fact, thats the reason he is nominated, because he was not bernie sanders. Democrats were like, what are we running on . We the people. Last time, that was the slogan for a personal Injury Law Firm in florida. There is no agenda for democrats. Ron can on health care charlie other than, we are not the party of donald trump. I think there was a real fear of what would giving democrats control of everything be, and when with that manifest itself in republican leaning areas, areas that might be prepared to repudiate President Trump, but not necessarily sign on entirely with democrats up and down the ballot. Ron it will be interesting to see, charlie, when we have the theses, how many of republicans won seats where biden won. Biden won fort bend county. Texas 22, evenon though the republican won pretty comfortably . More. County, he won by it certainly seems possible. I think the house is a little different than the senate. The senate, the core problem that democrats face is we are complete almost overlap between president ial outcomes and senate outcomes, especially in the president ial year itself. Obviously, 2016 was the First Time Ever in American History that every senate race went the same way as the president ial race in that state. 2020, they all went the same way again except for Susan Collins in maine. Now we have two elections in a row where the democrats could not beat a single republican in a state donald trump carried. For that matter, no republican could do the reverse except for collins in maine. The reason this is so problematic for democrats, even though they have won the popular vote in the last seven of eight president ial elections, republicans have won more states. There were 20 states that voted against trump both times, and democrats have 39 of their 40 senate seats, everyone except collins, thats pretty good, but there 25 states that voted both times for trump and republicans now have 47 of their 50 senate seats. You can see how narrow a ledge that leaves you. Democrats do have most of the senate seats in a state that split between 2016 and 2020, but they are now going to have to win to get even to 50. Two senate seats in georgia. They can totally do it, but its just a reminder that after an election in which biden is going to win by 5. 5 million or 6 million votes, that is the branch on which its like crouching tiger, hidden dragon you are trying to walk across bamboo shoes to get to a senate majority, even though they keep winning the president ial popular vote. Tough. H money did they how much money did they spent in a southina, iowa carolina, iowa, and neither of those candidates ran more than a point and a half behind biden. Charlie davis told us yesterday that money cant buy you love. Living democrats learned that two weeks ago, simply spending more money is not enough. Sometimes there are other things that work. Ron, you just brought up joe manchin, ron tester, Sherrod Brown. Charlie, you said earlier racedate, depending on the , won iowa. I think a is a good chance they all wouldve lost. They happened to be running in a good democratic year with a pretty wide map of against them. Where do candidates matter . Because it seems like voters put agether the joe biden was not socialist. On the senate side it seemed like all democrats in the most competitive races tended to run kind of as a blank slate but none of them ran progressively either. The senate race didnt seem to matter at all. I guess john hickenlooper. Where does it matter . Charlie i think as a general rule, we are getting more parliamentary. People are voting as if personalities dont matter. But we make an exception. They can matter for good or i ll. I think there would be a fairly good chance that how cunningham would be going through orientation had he been a little better behaved. That is where a candidate mattered, to their detriment. I think if Donna Shalala spoke spanish in a heavily spanishspeaking district that would have been helpful. The candidate can matter. In the case of maine, we spent a lot of time in maine, and i am sitting here right now sara gideon was a blank slate. To run ethical ads against her that raise questions that were never answered a blank slate having tough questions asked about, did she look the other way when there was a Child Predator in the state legislature while she was speaker, or i dont know what , buteck behind on taxes for someone with a longterm relationship like Susan Collins had, in the other blank slate with real questions being asked, that can matter. I think we started seeing how you separate yourself a little from the cory gardner, Martha Mcsorley in the early part of the summer. He was not headed where they were, and where looks like he was headed until his scandal where tillis looks like he was headed until his scandal. If the color of the jersey, not the name on his jersey. I give you credit every time i use that, ron. Ron i get my little nickel every time somebody uses that. Ok, think about South Carolina and iowa. Have spent a little in iowa but he didnt really spend any money in iowa, certainly didnt spend in the in iowa. Democratic candidates stand between them, what, 350 million in those states . Carolina, biden got 43. 5 of the vote. The number of candidates on either side that ran one or two points behind his 30 small. Kelly ended up being two points behind biden. , ran four points ahead but that was from 4044 . I think it is really hard now to win senate races that go the other way for president. Obviously not possible. In 08 we had six Senate Candidate that won in states be the other way. I think it was one in 20. I think in the off year there is more opportunity to separate. Even in the house, less time, charlie, it was, what, 28 split districts . Lit house leah it was 24. Ron 23 republicans and four or trumpemocrats in districts. It will probably be somewhere in the low number again and this has consequences for governing. If you are joe biden and you are trying to get senators to vote for you in a state that just voted for donald trump, good luck. It is not easy. Ist is why the system becoming more parliamentary at every level the way it operates from washington and the way voters respond to it. Leah we have a question about asking,m the audience can you help us better understand what you mean when you say, there is little to no ticketsplitting, versus the idea that voters preferred biden but didnt want to give him a stronger hand in congress . How can both statements true . Charlie i think there will be some ticket splitting at the house level ron i think republicans a won in places that died in one. You have the dominant factor in places that biden won. You have the dominant factor. Trump did a very effective job of demonizing democrats to his voters and they came out in big numbers. And i think there is splitting in the senate races. For example, thom tillis in North Carolina lost wake, mecklenburg and durham counties, 7000 fewer votes than trumpeted. In georgia, purdue lost the Atlanta Metro by 50,000 votes. Ewer than trumpeted there was splitting of the votes, but it wasnt big enough to split any of the results. I think especially in house races but such an incident legislature races, voters wanted to get rid of trump, they thought trump was too much but they didnt trust democrats . Charlie he also had a pretty theificant dropoff between president ial vote and does for example, by then ran about 4 million votes over house what the Congressional Democrats got. The gap between trump and commissioner republicans is like unto million. Somewhere along the way, democrats left some votes on the is where, it is not a huge number, but it was enough to make the difference in a whole bunch of these races where people went from a mindset of, i dont like trump, we never should have elected him and these guys are enabling him, 10 then fear to then of, i am an independent and net on trust either side. I am hearing way too much about the fund the police and way too court,out packing the and way too much again, it doesnt have to be a lot to be decisive in binary elections. Leah we have another question from the audience. Who had a better chance of retaining this level of turnout in 2022 and 2024 . Or democrats . Ron its a great question. Obviously the two biggest questions that we are facing as trump sort of exits the stage is kevin from the considered the exits the stage, is can republicans generate the massive rural turnout in 2016 . I dont think it can happen again. He will dangle the possibility of running for three years or however many months is until the iowa caucus. I dont think the issue for democrats is so much turnout, it is suburban margin. If you have a more normal Republican Party that is kind of less inyourface about culture do democrats win ake and and cobb and w mecklenburg by the margins they did in 2020 . The answer is not. The will have some reversal to the mean in both sides in 2022. Not that republicans will start running the rural areas, but i am not sure the gap between them will be quite as big as it was this year. It defendsthink on what happens between here and then. Between now and then. Dark asd of looking as wrong has been talking. I actually think that even though we are coming out of we have come through in of the most bitterly partisan times since reconstruction, i think there is actually a little window here and things might k to family when you think things might work slightly differently. Think about it, from 1960 for the next 16 years, you had for president in a row four president a in a row where all four had served in the house, three had served in the senate, two in congressional leadership posts, gerald ford and lyndon johnson, and two had been Vice President. But people that had serious washington experience but more importantly understood the institutions, the process, and the people and had relationships there. Then we went through it a road period ofrs a governors very had bill clinton, carter. Bush, jimmy none of them had ever worked a day actually, i think linton had been an intern on the hill in college, but other than that, no real washington connection. Hadin the next few years, george h. W. Bush, with an enormous amount. Event obama, he was technically in the senate for four years. Only in washington for delta years if that because he was running for president and he was kind of aloof, didnt really build a lot of relationships there. I think having someone that years inr of the senate before Mitch Mcconnell ever got elected, served with Mitch Mcconnell for 24 years, had extensive relationships throughout and then continued on as Vice President , and i think for mcconnell and for biden, these are two old guys that this is going to be their last laugh around the track last lap around the truck. I think that no mcconnell has his judges, he will look for Something Else to be on his tombstone besides. As accomplishments and they think there is a possibility we could be seeing for some time some governing from the middle side hashes neither enough of the margin to do anything with it from an ideological or partisan perspective. I am semioptimistic that we , aht have a little window recess from the partisanship. It is possible it could happen. If maybe under this way, no. Ther way leah game of thrones, anyone . Smoothly, relatively this leads relatively smoothly into another question from another audience, what is your take on why key voters who supported trump in 2016 not vote for him in 2020 . Was at his handling of the . Andemic above. Left out all the ron i dont think it was primarily the pandemic, the die was cast before. If you look at polling before the pandemic head, the most striking thing to me and the thing i thought would be decisive would be voters who said they were satisfied with his handling of the economy, but still disapproved him over all and intended to vote for biden. That was much larger than we had seen front coming president. 20 of the voters who said they approved of him on the economy still said they were voting for biden. It was largely tone and race and the way he talked about women. Belligerentsly the but the cultural aspect, the cultural affinity that he signaled. I dont think covid changed but that much. If anything, the strange thing at the end is the fear of further lockdowns may have helped him with some of the where hecommunities improved among hispanic voters, in particular, certainly in south texas, that the College White rejection of trump personally and what he said about race and gender and all the make America Great again project restoration, i think that is what doomed him. As charlie said in the beginning, it was basically a continuation of 2018. That was the single most important factor of why he lost. It leaves the Republican Party with the election lefty in a d ifle bit of damne you do and damned if you dont. The fact that the biden counties account for 70 of the total gdp show you the limits of trumps projection. But he performed well enough done ballot that there is basically no chance for those who are critical of him to say this was a deadend, we have to completely abandon it. Especially if he will be threatening to run in 2024, it will be a real shadow over their shoulders on what they do and how they respond to biden. How they talk about the way he talked, for example. Charlie ron was referencing the brookings study that showed that 70 of the Economic Activity in this country was in counties that joe biden carried as opposed to trump counties. It made me kind of chuckle, because we have all heard phil gramm back when he was on the campaign trail talking about the people that pulled the wagon versus the people that were riding in the wagon, the freeloaders versus the people that were powering the economy. It would seem that different people are pulling it and different people are riding in the wagon. One could make that case. Forgot what i was going to say there is a political scientist professor in harvard, to me onewas saying time a couple of years ago that on so many issues that trump polls 10 points below his own positions, below his own policies, he was knocked off on style points. A republican pollster marveling a year or so ago, with this economy, if he doesnt have a 60 job Approval Rating, he ought to be pretty close to a 60. And when you take these things and superimpose over just for historic purposes we have to use gallup because they are the only ones who have been around all this time but when you first year average gallup job Approval Rating is 38 for the whole year . Your first year in office, the lowest first year of any elected incumbent in postworld war ii history, and for your second year dust the Second Lowest was bill clinton at 49 . Second year in office it had , theup two points to 40 lowest second year of any elected incumbent in postwar history. Third year, 42 . That was the lowest, jimmy carter that wasnt the lowest because jimmy carter had 37 . If you never cracked above 49 your entire term in office in either a gallup or fox or nbc wall street journal poll, odds are youre not going to get reelected. And that is all prepandemic. Ron and yet he got 47 of the vote, which seems higher than he could get. You have 46 in 2016. Republicans got 45 in the total 2016. Popular votes in i thought it would be 5245 election. To it is going to be 51 47. 1. So he pushed it higher than any suggested and that is really a function i think of his success at producing an electorate different than any pollster expected. Leah so lets talk about the blue wall, a term that ron happened to coin in the national. Ournal i have a picture of it. It happened in a magazine. Ron i was thinking about making it my twitter handle, actually. Leah i will send it to you. We can work that out later. Biden resurrected the blue wall, and then lost ohio and iowa, both pretty white states, and and expended his coalition into arizona and georgia. Will featured Democratic Candidates need that blue wall to win or is this the last election in which of the wall will be intact . Ron so the blue wall originally 2009, and in january at that point there were 18 states that had voted democratic in the previous five elections. And it was a most states and the most Electoral College votes they had won in any fiveelection sequence since fdr and truman. 11 states from maryland and maine, new hampshire, three west coast states, hawaii, michigan, and wisconsin. And then again they won them again in 2016 and 2012. I am trying to remember the history of the blue wall does i think that was certainly the most states they had ever won in exquisite elections and i think it was the most states that any party had ever won in six consecutive elections. Then in 2016 donald trump dislodges three of the original blue wall states, michigan, pennsylvania and wisconsin which were always the least likely bricks in the wall in that they were much more bluecollar than almost anything else on the list, maybe with the exception of maine. So they were always, you looked up the different ways in which i transitioningtes, from the postindustrial economy, by the number of immigrants in the state, by the share of voters in the state who are students, and college graduates, generally speaking on most of those measures Carbon Emissions per capita, which is another one which i wrote about today in most of those measures, michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania were the outliers. Whereas republicans had been holding onto states where a lot of those ways, they looks like the rest of the blue wall, places like georgia and arizona and North Carolina. And in the middle are the states that were not part of the blue wall but now have been voting reliably democratic, like nevada, colorado, virginia, hampshire and colorado. It is not clear that those states are blue states anymore. Certainly virginia and colorado were doubledigit. It is possible. Democrats will be competitive. Michigan still leads to wear them. They will be competitive in pennsylvania and wisconsin. But they cannot count on them. That is what this election showed. Hillary was not an anomaly, it was not that she was uniquely bad, it is because a Republican Party that speaks in this way has such a hold on bluecollar voters, in wisconsin and pennsylvania especially, that even maybe not michigan can be secure. In the future, democrats, not that they are always going to lose those states, but they are not always going to win them anymore. That means you have to breakthrough in North Carolina, georgia, arizona and eventually texas, leaving aside florida as a rubiks cube that can never be solved. In the long run, the flags may belt,lanted in the sun they are going to have to expand from, because i dont think they can count on the original blue wall, all 18 of the original blue wall states going forward. Charlie i think it will come down to which party does a better job of mitigating their weaknesses. You think about what ron was talking about a week ago, workingclass, bluecollar, once part of the Franklin Roosevelt new deal coalition, they have been transitioning over 40 years away from the Democratic Party towards the Republican Party. That is why people say the Democratic Party has gotten more liberal than it used to be, is least liberal people left, basically white workingclass. The small group and smalltown rural leaving the Democratic Party going this way. Meanwhile, suburban, collegeeducated whites, particularly women, moving the opposite way. The question is which side can slowtheir hole up and erosion . Can democrats reach out to the small town, Rural America or reach out to workingclass voters and do a better job of slowing down the erosion or can republicans do a better job of slowing down their erosion among collegeeducated white voters . The other twist here was where republicans did find that they can make some cracks among ethnics, whether it is running someone who actually speaks spanish against Donna Shalala in runningr whether it is ethnic asians in large asian population districts, which should not be that shocking, but which side does a better job of running their holes . That is the side that might be able to do better. Ron and if you are the democrats biden did a little better among bluecollar white women especially. There is evidence that in some of the key states, he improved a little in these midsize bluecollar places like erie, bayish. Green over all you would have to say to democrats it was pretty daunting that this is all you could recover with him as a nominee in the middle of a pandemic. It says that. This is very rocky terrain and you have limited capacity. One thing you have going for you is in fact, every four years the twoe voter pool points every four years. Said 28 of the voters were white evangelical. If that is true that means they were double the share of the electorate than they are of the population. It gives you a sense of how much trump is motivating people. But i think if you are a democrat, you have to be realistic. If biden could not do more of this, it is not clear who can. Maybe against someone who isnt runningf you are Sherrod Brown against nikki haley, may be able get a little better . You cant deny that race is part of this, and kind of a sense of racial defensiveness about a change in america. But, it is going to be very tough to ring for democrats in the 2020s, and their future clearly leans more toward mobilizing the emerging diversity of the country, and continuing to put down more roots in whitecollar places, including those that were just a time, bridge too far this like fort worth, and minneapolis and missouri, which they couldnt get. Charlie wrong touched on something a little while ago that i know a lot of people ron touched on something a little while ago that i know political experts will be doing lots of presentations in a , there wereion two computing exit polls. It was not hard to find an example where one of them looks right and the other one you wonder whether they were interviewing people in this planet or some other planet. I dont think that College Educated white suburban women voted for trump or one point. Im sorry, i dont believe that. You cank at both both, and if, get you need a tiebreaker, look at the 10,000 sample pew poll from a month ago and go with whichever side, two out of three, go with and you will be better there. But be careful. I have never had a lot of infidence in term exit polls terms of calling races, which is not what they are supposed to do anyway, but there are some intty outrageous artifacts the data and you would hate to be given a presentation to your orses or members or clients whatever and have somebody point to a piece of data that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, so be careful. Ron i agree, it is hard to square the exit or the ap vote cast with the actual countybycounty precinct by precinct results. It is not a great year to parse through that. That is why i have been emphasizing the county results, which i love. They dont ring true at this time. Cc,lie where does that congressional as i that is soon. Ron that had an overall lead for biden that was bigger than it played out. The cc, those of the Public Opinion strategists, which in many ways seems to be the best on of all. That had the college whit educated what women at 10 plus points for biden not 1. Few nonCollege Whites in the sample and that distorted everything. It forced you to twist all the numbers around and it looks like exits. Problem with the leah i hate to cut it off here because i am sure we could go on just about exit polls for another hour but we are out of. Ime charlie in another hour we could probably get through this alcohol. It would be a lot of fun. [laughter] hour. Happy but i am sure we will be doing a lot of writing on georgia. Definitely keep an eye out for georgia articles, they will be plentiful, i am sure. Thanks so much to run and charlie for your time ron and charlie for your time, and thank you everyone for joining us today. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy, visit ncicap. Org] lookout for charlies podcast. What changed this election cycle for women and why. Find cspans the weekly where you get your podcasts. Coming up wednesday on cspan, the house is back at 10 00 a. M. Eastern for general speeches, legislative business at noon. Members take on several bills from the Foreign Affairs committee. They also vote on whether to go to conference in the senate to working on differences on selfdefense programs and policy for fiscal year 2021. On cspan2, the Senate Returns at 10 00 a. M. To consider judicial nominations. At the same time on cspan3, a confirmation hearing for three nominees it to serve as members of the federal election commission. Later in the day, a federal Governmental Affairs committee looks at how employees are handling teleworking during the pandemic. That gets underway at 3 00 p. M. Eastern. Use your mobile devices and go to cspan. Org for the latest video, live and ondemand, to follow the transition of power. President trump, president elect biden, news conferences, at cspan. Org. At the pentagon, acting defense secretary Christopher Miller outlined plans to draw down u. S. Troops in afghanistan and iraq by midjanuary to less than 3000 Service Members in country. The announcement came nearly one week after secretary miller replaced mark esper as head of the Defense Department under the direction of President Trump
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