the mountains turned out to be a secret trip turned out to be a trip to see his mistress. and when a company struggles, the ceo gets the ax and the manager or the coach is usually the first to go when a sports team falters. so is it smart or foolish for the democrats to keep pelosi and the rest of their congressional leadership team in place as is after devastating midterm election losses? >> i think we missed an opportunity today. to send a signal to america that we understand what happened this past election. >> now, we were planning to begin right there, with the debate about the democrats and their future. but then came this 2012 tease. >> i'm looking at the lay of the land now, and trying to figure that out, if it's a good thing for the country, for the discourse, for my family, if it's a good thing. >> if you ran for president, could you beat barack obama? >> i believe so. >> can she? democratic polster cornell belcher is with us, along with correspondent dana bash, also cnn contributors john avlon and erick erickson. and our reporter jessica yellin. she just said, cornell belcher, she believes she can beat obama. you've worked with the obama white house. can she? >> well, mainstream media, i think we're putting the cart before the horse. there's a lot of republicans out there. first she has to beat the republican establishment. there's a lot of republican governors out there who quite frankly are afraid of her. she clearly is sort of the anti-establishment can't. i think what we have to be mindful of, is she raised heck in the primaries this season. so you can't bat against her in the republican primaries and knocking over the establishment. however, she will enter that race with some of the highest negatives of any candidate. >> you're out at this republican governors meeting out in san diego. if you look at the map, a lot of the people at that meeting, successful governors from the red states, are running for president or at least we think so. tim paw landy, the governor, wants to run, no doubt about that. mitch daniels, indiana, he likes to say he has the fiscal conservative record that washington could use. governor haley barbour of mississippi, former chairman of the republican national committee, he told me he's looking hard at it, another republican governor you're with, gov rick perry of texas, just won re-election. some say, hmm, will the texas governor run? there are others as well, jessica yellin, out at that meeting. as they size each other up, do they complain at all, saying, wow, why does she keep talking about this, and do they see palin as a obstacle to the nomination? >> i think palin is the political third rail out here. when you ask people about her, they're very careful. nobody wants to explicitly say they will support her for president. nobody explicitly says they wouldn't. they just wish we wouldn't ask the question. there are so many candidates, i should say governors-elect out here, who were endorsed by her, who basically are sitting where they are because she gave them her support. there's a lot of people here who owe sarah palin a lot. but many of the presidential konder its who no doubt wish she would take a lower profile or be less controversial for the party as a whole, as they're trying to rebrand this party, as very inclusive, she is a much more polarizing figure than many of the leadership would like her to be out here, john. >> erick, many of the others wish she would take a lower profile, maybe to get out of the way, maybe to give them a chance to get attention. she's doing just the opposite. she has that new show. "sarah palin's alaska." as much as she says mainstream media, you just saw the interview with barbara walters. she is clearly analyzing her weaknesses and strength. this is what she told "the new york times." i know that a hurdle i would have to cross that some other potential candidates wouldn't have to cross right out of the chute is proving my record. that's the most frustrating thing for me. it's been much more perplexing to me than where the lamestream media has wanted to go about my personal life. and other candidates haven't faced these criticisms the way i have. clearly looking back at the '08 campaign experience and the criticism when she decided to resign as alaska governor and clearly thinking, erick erickson, if she jumps in, first foray would be, i'm not who you think i am. >> i will support whoever the republican nominee is. you know, she's -- >> -- that new secretary of state erick erickson, where did this come from? >> absolutely. she's got some hurdles. a lot of these governors would like her to exit the stage for a little while, to let them get some traction. she's not going to. but, you know, a lot of people back in 2008 said that the republicans could not win in 2010, and yet they did. and a lot of people in 2010 are saying sarah palin can't win in 2012. i'm not so sure. i mean, heck, her followers are getting bristol palin into the finals of "dancing with the stars," anything is possible. >> i'm not sure that's the right barometer, obviously. first of all, she does suck up all the oxygen out of the room. even people beating her in the polls have a hard time getting press attention because she's such a media force. but let's look at the numbers. she's not only polarizing the american people. and, in fact, one poll showed only a quarter of americans think she's qualifies to be president. even among republicans and tea party supporters, many of the folks who really love her, an april 2010 poll found over 10% of self-identified tea party supporters did not think she was qualified for president and would not support her. >> she's never been led by the polls and i don't think she's going to start. if there's one thing about palin, she certainly goes off and generally does her own thing which drives a lot of pundits and people on her own staff crazy but it gets her attention. >> what i'm trying to figure out, it's a mystery, is whether she's doing this because she loves the spotlight or doing this as a calculated strategy. john just used the term "sucks up all the oxygen." i took a trip with warner, the senator from virginia, late in 2007, he went up to test the waters in new hampshire. a credible candidate, a very successful businessman, a governor from then what was a red state. who thought the democrats needed to move a little to the middle. he got up there and he said, oba obama, hillary clinton, john edwards, he said there was no oxygen left in the room and said forget about it, i'm not going to run. is sarah palin trying to take up so much oxygen to keep the lesser knowns out? >> is she trying to do it? unclear. is that the result of what she's doing? it could certainly be. i talked to somebody who is considering running in 2012 today, who said that he's not really sure if the calendar is the way they thought it was even just a couple of weeks ago, in that, you know, unlike four years ago, knowledge of these candidates were waiting and thought, you know what, the electorate is so unsure, we're going to wait longer than we have in the past. now that sarah palin is doing this, not so sure that others feel they can do that any more. >> can i say this, i mean, as a democrat, i got to tell you, looking at what she did in the primaries is remarkable coming from outside. erick, i think she speaks to the energized base in the party none of those other candidates do. i find it hard to bet against her. >> you know, cornell, i think you're right. she has tapped into something that really -- everyone use the reagan comparison and it's so overdone. if you go back to '76, he didn't beat gerald ford but he was able to tap into something that no one quite understood. she's doing the same thing. i'm not sure she's tapped into exactly the same thing but it's something people don't understand right now. >> nobody should doubt how beloved sarah palin is by her supporters. notice the democrat is the one saying sort of subtlety pushing her candidacy on this panel here. >> yeah, a lot of republicans push barack obama in 2008. >> here's another factor in all of this because some people have gamed this out, looking at sarah palin through the 2008 exit polls, what we knew about her after the 2008 campaign, and talked about, well, maybe she couldn't win one on one with barack obama but what if we had a third candidate or a fourth candidate, would that make a difference? one of the most talked about potential independent candidate, the new york city mayor michael bloomberg, said this yesterday at a conference sponsored by "the wall street journal." many thought, is he going to try this? he said, party affiliate is so strong with enough people that the democrats and republicans, no matter who their candidates were, no matter who voted would get enough votes that you could get every independent vote it would still not be a majority. now, technically, john avlon, you wouldn't need a majority, but bloomberg seems to saying -- we all know he's studied this for a long time. he seems to be saying i've looked hard enough to figure out i can't do it. >> i mean, that is a pretty, you know, analytical statement. the real challenge for a candidate is the electoral college. strictly speaking, 37% of americans identify as independents. that would triumph in a three-way race. mike bloomberg knows what he's talking about here. there have been studies on this. that's a pretty analytical, informed statement of "i'm not interested, folks" from bloomberg. >> let me get back to jessica yellin. who out there, jessica, do people talk about? forget palin for a second. who of those governors is working the hardest? >> is working the hardest? i'll tell you the one who's really getting eyebrows raised out here is nikki haley. her message when she was among the first speakers, south carolina governor-elect, a tea party candidate, backed by sarah palin who is where she is, she's one of those because of sarah palin's early support in the primary. her message, john, was, look, there is an empowered new voter out here who is a new dynamic in this country. it is a voter who is not democrat or republican, not necessarily political before this moment. and someone who just wants to see us do what we promised to do. and if we don't, they will change parties, they will change allegiances and keep us to our word. this is the kind of movement you hear tea party activists talk about. and it's something that these governors here are really attuned to. and trying to shift the party in that direction. but it's not clear that it's a party aligned energy. it's something that nikki haley seems very tapped into. >> jess, i'll point this out, this is one of the things that drives others crazy about sarah palin. the mitt romney people will tell you, we endorsed her first. that's the way life in politics works. >> i endorsed her first actually. >> president erick erickson first. cornell, to jess's point, somebody about a new face, a nikki haley, now, nikki haley's not going to run for president in '12 but do we think by the old rules all the time, and we don't realize after an election like this, maybe it won't be somebody who's on the track right now? >> no, i think that's right. i think that's sort of why these outside candidates have such a shot. obama was an outside candidate because voters were looking for change. after eight years of bush, they really were looking for change. i think the next election is going to be about change as well. the candidate -- i mean, the ideal that you've got to have all this experience, we turned that on its head with hillary clinton. i think that's going to continue to be the story. >> there's no question. i mean, anything that we thought as political observers in the past, we should basically just throw out. i mean, that's basically what the last election -- i'm serious, and the election before that taught us. >> there are some republicans who think marco rubio will run. some think rand paul might run. we will watch this play out. i'm going to continue to throw all this out. up neck, the democrats put down an eternal revolt and vote to stay the course with pelosi as their leader. plus, i wish rockefeller had a neels sen box. >> there's a little bug inside me that wants to say to fox and msnbc, out, off, end, good-bye. 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[trumpet playing "reveille" fades to silence] nancy pelosi was elected minority leader today. some former supporters say it's time for a change. one of those defectors joins me now from capitol hill, congressman peter defauso of oregon. i want to read from the letter you and marcy kaptur sent. following the loss of our majority, we should understand the causes of our losses before we begin the process of rebuilding. speaker pelosi says it was not her, that it was the economy. you disagree. >> well, it certainly was the economy but we could have done a lot better by the economy. i think we planted the seeds o f our failure by accepting the obama-negotiated senate stimulus bill which cut back on real investment, transportation, infrastructure, school building, education. things that would have put people to work, provided benefits to future generations. for tax cuts that nobody knew they got that didn't put anybody to work. the invisible larry summers tax cults. we didn't push back hard enough in my opinion against the white house on a number of measures, and then going from there to cap and trade was a huge mistake. we should have been focussed on the economy and on jobs. your previous discussion there about experience -- you know, there's no one in the caucus who denies the experience of the speaker and the tremendous record she has. but the thing is, we're now not looking back, we're looking forward into a very changed world. the greatest majority losses in the house in more than half a century. i think we need to think about, you know, a different message coming out to the american people and saying, we got it, here's some things we're going to do different, and here's our leadership team, as opposed to just, hear's our leadership team. >> who would you have made your leader in place of nancy pelosi? who would be a better leader for the democrats? >> we have a lot of very talented people in our caucus, younger people in particular. and what we wanted to see was give this a chance to gestate. we just started to heal and understand in the last two days. six-hour caucus yesterday, mostly devoted to people who lost their races. you know, a lengthy discussion of our proposal today. we got 68 votes. that's respectable. not great but respectable in the caucus. there is concern that a rush forward with the same leadership. we wanted to have a few weeks of discussion, bring in some people who could, you know, tell us about the results of the election. really parse into it. and then have people present to us their ideas on how we go forward. i don't even know who those people might have been. it might have been the current leadership, it could have been others. >> i want to continue the conversation with the group. what you're arguing is that those compromises with the senate that many would say moderated or made the legislation less liberal was what hurt the democrats, and of course, dana, you spoke to allen boyd today, one of the conservative democrats who was defeated. he argued the opposite. he told you by keeping pelosi as the leader, the democrats will hurt themselves when it comes to candidate recruitment in much of the country in the next election. let's listen to boyd. >> i don't know how we go into these districts like the one that i represented, do represent now, will be giving up in january, and recruit good moderate democratic candidates, if you have the same leadership team. >> so there's disgruntlement from both ends with the leadership. still debate over what the lesson is to be learned. >> big debate. i think that's why the congressman says hold on, let's just give it a little more time to keep having that debate. because it's important. allen boyd is not alone. i think that is one of the more interesting arguments that i have heard against nancy pelosi, from those who were defeated and those who weren't. they're look ahead and they're very concerned that despite the prowess that pelosi has in raising money, millions of dollars, that they're not going to get the best people to try to take that back. and one other point i would make, you know, the congressman said 68 votes is not that great but i was out there with him and the other members. a lot of people were surprised it was actually that high. this is a woman who ruled the caucus with an iron fist. that many people said effectively, we want to hold off or not have you, is pretty amazing. >> what does that tell you, cornell? you heard the congressman's dissatisfaction with the president and the team and the strategy. the dissatisfaction that maybe we need a change in leadership. is the party making a mistake by not changing any of its leadership? >> no. and let me tell you this, i think fundamentally is what's happening to leader pelosi is fundamentally unfair. history will hold that she went down as one of the strongest speakers in our history. she moved legislation with the help of the congressmen that pulled us backrom a great depression. she did everything asked of her on the legislative side showing strength and integrity. >> if it's not her fault going back, john avlon, to congressman boyd's point, you studied middle america as well as anybody. maybe she didn't cause 9.6% unemployment. but she became the face. there was a new study out today, you know, upping the 75 milli