Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140103

They facilitate what we call social selling. It enables a salesperson or professional to leverage their network and ultimately convert what would have been a cold call into a warm prospect. Tell me a little bit about your process. Inhouse you build something or tools for your company to use. If you liked it well enough, you would push it out to the public. Tell me what youre working on in this area. I think youre referring specifically to how we at linkedin is leveraging it as a platform to generate value for our employees. It is important to draw distinctions between what historically has been public professional network, which is what linkedin is. Most of is publicly available by design. There is a private professional network of which you will increasingly see within the enterprise. There is sensitive, competitive situation. At linkedin, we are Building Tools allow us to collect values from our own platform. We want to have the right kind of engagement and productivity enhancement. It sounds like a type of interface. We wanted to be specific and unique to what we offer today. We have professional identity, for example. Again, no definitive plans to offer that as a project product. Who do you consider a competitor for the economic graph . People like to reference facebook. Occasionally they will do some sort of professional up a delegate people buzzing. So far, it is a broader layer. Who else is doing that . There is no company right now that has the professional focus at the scale that we do. That doesnt mean that we are not focused on the Competitive Landscape and future competitors and current competitors. There are other social platforms that operate with a far greater horizontal focus and a third party developer. It can serve our members and customers well. 80 of members are reinforcing that we keep the professional and personal lives separate. We will continue to keep an i out for future competitors. Google and google plus . If there are any Search Engines that decide to focus within a professional context, that could introduce a new dynamic. As a result of focus, we can create relevancy and value. To your point earlier, Large Companies are going to be thinking about how they leverage social assets and platforms to make things more productive and successful. Tell me more about your plans. From afar, it is hard for me to tell if you are trying to make linkedin into a sort of bloomberg type where you have news on top of your professional network. You havent described it quite that way. Where do you see linkedin going and content properties . The objective is to be the definitive professional platform. We make it easy for publishers and anyone who wants to share content to do so. For membership, they can cap that intelligence to do better at the job they are in. There has been a big move in that direction. Historically, there were some people that would have said linkedin is a way to get a job. With the launch of influencers and people like Richard Branson being followed by more than 2 million of our members, sharing information on how to become an entrepreneur and how to build the company, he is not alone. You provide personal philosophies for people . If they were to offer original content we are lucky to have a guy who has built a Wonderful Group that helps curate our sites. It is not at the exclusion of the social conductivity and that dynamics that allow us to generate a signal. It is taking the best of all of those disciplines to great the best experience. You are looking at a medium instead of a competitor these days . A medium is there are a lot of contents in the world. You package up the most relevant content you can find. Are used to working on your developer platform . I know you launched a few versions of that. And that is fairly constrictive compared to other platforms. Still pushing that with developers . We are. Salesforce is one of the better examples . Salesforce. There are millions of unique domains. We are working with publishers like yourself. In terms of sharing data to others, are you looking at doing anything more along those lines . Where are you focused more on as a content Publisher Company . We are investing heavily in mobility and with these apis, we dont want people tethered to the desktop to get a platform. Students have benefited quite a bit that people without work or suddenly needing to go out and buy new jobs. Linkedin is a natural way for them to do that. What are the trends youre seeing in the workplace . What industries are growing . I think there are a few trends. We have seen consistent patterns where the technology sector, Financial Services has regained some of its footing. Health care is a highgrowth industry. In terms of broader i do not think that is going away anytime soon. People are taking temporary work whether they want to. Or because the longerterm, fulltime opportunities do not exist. Probably one of the most important dynamics that we track is the skills gap in the widening skills gap. A lot of people do not realize where unemployment is roughly at 7. 5 , theres over 3. 8 million available jobs today in the u. S. One of the things that has happened is opportunities are being created by virtue of new technologies. But technologies are evolving so rapidly that it is challenging to train people to keep up with the technology that is being created. A lot of jobs are being automated and will not come back. It is not the growth of new jobs is not equal to the loss of jobs. A lot of people are wondering where their place is in the world. Door have to be a Data Scientist to be to get a job do i have to be an engineer or a Data Scientist to get a job . Roughly two thirds of those our nontechnical in major. Looking at the resurgence of the economy in a city like new york mayor bloomberg was the first to tell you they have created 300 more jobs than they lost during the recession following 2008. A good chunk of those hospitality, instruction are starting to come back online and create jobs. Also with regards to technology, there are hybrid sects. Companies like huber allow uber. There certainly economic value that is being added. Where do you see that going . I know there are right spots and technology, but there are losses in a lot of areas. How do you see this evolving . You are building your business around that evolution. There are three things we need to invest in. First, education. It is not just primary school. It will take at least a generation to improve and make sure we do not have an antiquated system that is preparing kids for jobs that once were instead of the jobs that will be. You have to have an adaptive learning platform. Also with regard to education, with that love to see greater focus on vocational things. There are jobs that exist today. We can make sure that the current workforce is better trained to take the jobs that exist there are a lot of retail jobs. To be can do better job with Vocational Training and make sure we are not just innovating when it comes to hire educating him about vocational, that will have an immediate term impact. Immigration reform is critical. There are people born outside this country that have unique skills to take the jobs that are available that are going unfilled. As a result, salaries are not being paid. Tax revenues not being generated. Most importantly, these immigrants what are the types of jobs that, you know, people that we need a visa for . What is it that you are seeing . I do not think Immigration Reform is one thing or another. There are many in this country that are working hard. You have a situation where in Silicon Valley and the jobs you referenced earlier, engineering jobs, it data science, significant skills are required. These jobs are going unfilled because the bar for allowing people from outside this country to work in this country is too high. I always recalled a statistic. 40 of fortune 500 were founded by immigrants of the children of immigrants. These companies are creating economic opportunities. A third area is to invest in infrastructure. Make it easier for people to access information they need to develop the training to obtain opportunities going forward. In terms of going back to a topic we went over earlier, things are popping up in the last years where people are doing their work online and hiring and firing each other based on their work online. That is happening within professional communities. It is not really what linkedin hatched. Linkedin is not hosting someones developers work. More and more people are living are living their resume. Were referred to that as inferred identity. It would not necessarily enlisting your experiences, but showcasing your work. It could be artistry. One of the things we are doing is starting to evolve the profile experience on linkedin so its not traditional text like a resume. It is a portfolio. You get to show the stories you have written or photographs you have taken. Patents you have generated. We allow as much flux ability as possible for professionals flexibility as possible for professionals of many backgrounds. What might that look like in the future for linkedin . We will be integrated into the site . The ability to log in with linkedin is something we have invested in. We continue to see good traction there. Going back to something we talked about, our goal to enable our members to generate value no matter where there are, not just on linkedin. Com. They can put their professional identity wherever they are going. Great. Thank you for your time. Give him a big hand, everyone. [applause] our next guest created a unique management style that he teaches a course for employees. Please welcome the twitter ceo, dick costello. [applause] whats happening . Thank you for having me here. I love coming and talking to groups like this. You guys have the most fun. You are the most fun stage of the company. Whether it is just a few of you and everything is possible and there are no barnacles on the organization or the product. You are up all night. You are the ceo and buying printer paper and all of that stuff. Amazing time for the company. Why do i want to come here and talk to you now for a few minutes right before lunch about how to lead when there are two or three of you and youre looking at each other. Why is that important . The reason it is important is because even at this stage as you go from two people to if you dont deal with these things, dysfunction becomes embedded in your company. It becomes learned. It is almost impossible to eradicate. I will talk about two specific things about how to manage and how to lead in your company. First, a paradox, the ultimate paradox of being a leader or manager. As leader, you need to care deeply, deeply about your people while not worrying or caring about what they think about you. Managing by trying to be like is the path to ruin. That is easy to say and think. The reality is there are all these little ways that managing by trying to be liked or telling people what they want to hear creeps into the organization. You will walk down the hall and speak about something they did that annoyed you the other day or that they need to change. You think they are busy. They look like they are having a rough morning. I would talk to them tomorrow. Or you are trying to create some award and the way you deal is instead of getting them in the room and talking about the fact that we have to do this and i need you to do this, you tell them, hey, we need to do this. You will do this. He called the second person in the room, right now, dont worry, you look get the next thing. Dont leave that way. Lead by being forthright. The way you build trust with your team and the people is by being forthright and clear with them from day one. Communicating with them based on clarity communicate with them based on clarity. That is the most important management tip i can give you. It is an understanding of that paradox and how important it is to care deeply about your team and not worrying about what they think about you. Second thing i will tell you, it is critical here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley there are many different ways to be successful. Ok . The problem in San Francisco and Silicon Valley years is we set people up to be an amazing leaders. If they are geniuses. Books are written about them. They show us how to do things the way they do it. They are constantly on tv and in the media. This is how this person does this thing. This is why they do it this way. We try to imitate what they have done to be successful. The reality is these people are the same people they were 10 years ago and are going to be. The person they are today may be frowned upon 10 years from now are was frowned upon 10 years earlier. It is critical as you great your company and your cultures that you absolutely internalize this fact. There are many different ways to be successful. I was having a conversation with the ceo of pinterest. He said, all these women out there who are leaders, there is this superpower that has enabled them to do amazing things. They are all different. I thought that was an amazing insight. When i tell you and implore you to find your own means of being successful and understand there are many different ways to be successful, i will frame it in his language. Find your individual superpower and leverage that. Be successful in your own way. If you manage by deep caring about your people while not worrying about what they think about you, you will be a successful as successful as you can possibly be. Always remember when you are about communicating clearly with people, you may think people are fooled if youre telling them what they want to hear they are looking at you all the time. If you try to lead in some way that is not true to who you are, they can see it. They will see through it. You will lose the trust of the team. It is those simple pieces of advice of how to lead. Have a great life. Lunch. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] we have been showing encore a. Sentations of q1 day q discussing her recent biography on calvin coolidge. Here is a preview. The single thing that helidge did is that when left office the budget was lower than when he came in. Now. Is the story for us how did he do that . Unemployment was below five percent. The budget was balanced. How did he manage that to make the budget goal lower and how did that help the economy . A lot because he got the government out of the way of the economy. Do you remember how big the budget was . The way he counted it was about 3 billion. Less than five percent of the economy. That was his holy grail. Is so longthis book is the middle section of the book is about his effort with another new englander from maine to cut the budget. They did not just cut the tax rate. They cut the budget. This is different from our modern supplysider. You will see a photo of two lion cubs he had. He said you cant just cut taxes, you have to cut budget. Namedlion cubs were Budget Bureau and tax reduction. You can see more of that interview today at 7 00 p. M. Eastern. Part of our encore presentations. I think it is really interesting to sit here and talk about how the Republican Party is less unified than the Democratic Party when we think about this historically. I think it is an interesting time to study this. The interplay of what happened in dealing with what happened. More than the underlying scandal itself. Especially if you are running in a context in which you can present yourself as an abused part of an abused group. Abused by the system. You can play that quite well. Whether that is the case is that jeff talked about. Alabama. Ore in who used the 10 commandments controversy quite effectively. I think that is very much the case. Of the National Parties this weekend on c span. Saturday morning at 10 00 eastern. Live on sunday, your calls and comments with mark levin. The author of five books. That is at noon on book tv. Span 3, American History tv looks back 15 years at the impeachment of president William Jefferson clinton. 35 senate and 435 house races will be decided in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Talks aboute cook what he expects in the coming months leading up to the elections. He spoke at American Universitys Campaign Management institute. Good morning. Welcome to the Campaign Management institute. I am candy nelson. I am the academic director. This is the 35th year that we have existed. We started as a bipartisan training institute. Everve been going strong since. Our first speaker today is charlie cook. He is the editor and publisher of the cook a lyrical report which he founded Cook Political Report which he founded 30 years ago. Analystso a political and a regular contributor to cnn, cbs, and abc. He is always very generous with his time. He will start us off by talking about the general political environment going into 2014. [applause] thank you. Thank you. First of all, i want to complement all of you on your decision to participate in cmi. Hardly a month goes by that i dont run into somebody somewhere that didnt say i first heard you at the American University Campaign Management institute. I have been doing this for a really long time. I remember my favorite story about the cmi. Late 1980sin the or early 1990s. Bill sweeney was hoping to run the program. This was a few months after the cmi. He was walking through the Capitol Building and he ran into the speaker of the house, tom foley. The speaker pulled him aside and said, a few months ago, over the holidays, my father was very ill and was spending a lot of time with him and one night i could not sleep and started watching television and the Management Institute was on. The speaker of the house goes on to critique each of the speakers. You never know who will be watching this kind of thing on cspan and also a terrific program that is put together. What i will do is talk about the lay of the land, the political environment. A million years ago back in the 1970s when i first got out of college and was working in politics, there was a terrific political news later that a guy named Evan Phillips did, a political political strategist for nick and. Nixon. It was produced every other week. The first part of it was fake themes of american politics. The last couple of pages was the alabama to wyoming, what is going on in each state. I was just out of college. I would go straight to the back pages. I would go through all the states to see what was going on and then i would read the front part because that was like Cocktail Party conversation. As my career progressed i started realizing, wait a minute, it is the stuff in the front that drives what is happening in the back. As i moved along, the semantics are off awfully important. I think a lot of people tend to think we put too much emphasis on some of the big picture stuff. At the beginning of each election cycle. The second is what will the election will be about. Lets talk about these two questions. What kind of election will this be. The late democratic speaker of the house, tip oneill coined probably the most popular phrase, all politics is local. To me what this beaker meant was that whether you are looking at a state representative or state senate race or congressional race, governors, whatever, that every district or jurisdiction is largely independent. What is the population like in that area . What are the voting patterns and voting history. Go who are the candidates . What kind of resources do they have . What are the local issues and circumstances that can influence that race . The idea that each one of these contests are still piped pretty much freestanding independent of all the problem of all the others. There are a lot better not. From time to time we have these wave elections where all politics is not local. It is almost like there is an invisible hand that is pushing up or forward the candidates of one party in pushing down the candidates of another. It used to be one per decade and now happening more frequently. Our political process is not parliamentary. It is getting more parliamentary than it used to be. People are not splitting the ticket as much as they used to be back when i was in school. It used to be fairly routine for someone to vote democratic for the house, republican for the senate, democrat for president were mixed any of those of the way you want and move back and forth. The choosing back and forth between the two. That was quite common. Now we do not have those anymore. We have gone a long time without a really big one and in 1994 we have the new gingrich election during president clintons first Midterm Election. That was one that swept speaker fully foley out of office. Then you had 1994. 1986 was a big democratic one. 2006 rather. 2010 was a republican one. You have these wave elections from time to time. Whether it is a micro all politics is local kind of thing or not grow, one of these wave elections where it strongly advantages one side or the other. The other question is, what is the theme of the election . There is a famous saying of Winston Churchill where he apparently or reportedly sent act the desert to the kitchen and said to the waitresses, take this putting away some it has no theme. The question is, what is the theme of the election, what is it about . Sort of what is the current term that people use, the narrative of the election . So at the beginning of this election cycle a year ago, i started thinking, ok, there are two possible narratives in this election. The first is public brand image problems and internal problems just continue. The problems with the younger voters, minority voters, women voters persist and flow, as they did in 2012 on into 2014. The other theory is this is a Midterm Election in which the party of the white house traditionally get absolutely hammered in the Midterm Election halfway through the second term. It does not always happen but almost always. Which so which will it be. Lets talk about each one of them for a second. We are talking about republican brand image problems. I do not know if we should read too much into this, because it got caught talk a lot talked a lot about in 2012. You can blame mitt romney for his loss in the campaign. To be honest, i think that was a very winnable race had it been run somewhat differently. The Obama Campaign was a very Smart Campaign and made a lot of very smart decisions. The Mitt Romney Campaign not so much. When you look at other races in the broader, you can see there are huge problems facing the Republican Party. First, minority voters, African Americans make up or 10 of the electorate and president ial candidate loses by 87 points, that is pretty bad. When hispanics take up 10 of the votes admit romney lost by 44 points, the group i like to point to is making a statement is a smaller group, asian voters that make up three percent of the electorate. Lets do some profiling here. What are the stereotypes of Asian Americans . Hardworking, capitalistic. A lower Unemployment Rate than whites. Higher household income. They tend to be culturally conservative. That describes republicans. Attributes that one was described as the Republican Party. Mitt romney lost the asian vote by 47 percentage points, three points more than he lost the hispanic vote. That is really interesting to me. The vote for congress was almost identical. You say no one was talking about the asian vote. When you look at the polling, when you sit through focus group , the message with minority voters across the board are getting is the Republican Party does not seem to like anybody that does not look just like themselves. Is that a fair characterization of all republicans . I do not think it is. That is the message so many are getting. What is happening with the asian vote is particularly symptomatic because it has a lot less to do with immigration or anything else. Republicans have an enormous problem with minority voters, and the country is getting more and more diverse. Mitt romney won the 59 of the white vote in the last election. Historically, if you are a republican income 59 of the white vote, you just won the election. It is no longer sufficient. What we see is the share is dropping basically 15 points over six elections. The simply winning the white vote is just not enough to win anymore. When republicans have to go back and look at the recipe a little bit, because that is not working so well. Then you look at young voters. Mitt romney lost by 23 percentage points. What you can actually do is look at each of the four age breaks, and there is basically a line of 45 years of age. Voters over the age of 40 five vote pretty strongly for republicans for congress and under 45 voted for obama and democrats. It is even higher. They balance each other off or something and maybe a little bit but when you look at the long haul, and i just turned 60 so i can say this without getting into trouble but when i look at voters under 45, particularly under 30, i see the future. That is where american politics will be down the road just a little bit. For those of us over 60, we are kind of the predead. [laughter] republicans are doing really well with the predead and not so well with the future, which if i were an old republican, i would not scared, but if i were a young republican, i would be really worried because something has to change or they will not be winning many statewide or national elections. Then you get to women voters. I used to think we started hearing about a gender gap back in the reagan administration. I remember initially i thought this was a glass half empty halffull kind of thing. Republicans have a problem with women voters . So they cancel each other out. There are two problems with that notion. Number one, women live longer than men do. As a result, they are 53 of the electorate. Guys are only 57 . When you have such strong that is voting patterns , a problem. The other problem is democrats are doing a lot better among women and republicans are among men. This is true im among congress and in the president ial race mitt romney only one the male vote by seven percentage points. From a republican perspective, republicans are winning a smaller slice of the smaller pipe. High pie. Over the long haul, that does not really work so well. Another thing is self described moderate boaters. I used to completely obsessed over independent voters. People that did not call themselves republicans or in republicans or democrats. You look over time, and basically 90 plus are sent of all the people who call themselves democrats vote for democrats for president and 94 of selfdescribed republicans vote for republican candidates. So pretty predictable. The problem is independence are becoming a bigger and bigger role. So for republicans, if you told me two years ago, three years ago that mitt romney would either republicans would win the independent vote five percentage point, i would have assumed he won the election. All of the things being equal. But what is has but what has happened is the makeup has changed a little bit and another group has become more important. When i say the makeup of independence has changed somewhat, i think from within the realm of selfdescribed independents, you have one group of people that used to be republicans. They are very conservative, but they now call themselves independents and are more sympathetic of the tea party movement. So they no longer identify as republicans but in a twoway democratic republican race, you can pretty much bet on them going republican. There are some moderate republicans. They no longer call themselves republicans or independent but still more conservative than they are liberal. Anyway, admit romney won among five of the independent vote, and then lost the election by 2. 8 percentage points. What im trying to describe is self ascribed moderates. About 40 all themselves independent. The last election was 41 . Independent voted for obama by 15 percentage points. If that is a group is democrats are winning among liberals and republicans among conservatives, if democrats are winning moderates, 41 of the electorate by 15 percentage points, that makes a huge, huge difference and did not used to be that wide. We look at these things and say can republicans in 2014 repair the damage with minority voters, young voters, women voters and moderate voters . To me, that is a critical question. Then we get to the sick second question. That is going to be a traditional second Midterm Election. One of the things we have seen, first of all, Midterm Elections in general tend to be much more often than not that are bad for the party of the white house. If people are unhappy for any reason, they tend to take it out on the president s party. If they are happy, they vote on another issue but if they are unhappy they will take it out on the president s party. In the postworld war ii era, we have had 6 of them. Five out of six the party at the white house got hammered in the second term Midterm Election with enormous losses in either the house or the senate or usually both. The one exception, the one out of six that that did not happen was back in 1998. Bill clinton second Midterm Election when there was a backlash against the republican impeachment of clinton in the house in trying him in the senate where the american people, they were not really happy with president clinton but thought the country was doing ok and did not want to throw him out, even though they did not necessarily approve of his behavior. There was a backlash against republicans. Why does this tend to happen in second terms . Think about when a brandnew president is elected and you are young enough to remember in 2009 , whether you were democrat or republican, liberal, moderate, conservative, there was a real curiosity how this new president is going to do and an excitement, passion, how is this guy going to do . Generally people wanted the country to do well after tough times, and that is fairly typical when a new president is elected. But over time, the novelty wears off, and over time for my decisions are made, tough, governing decisions are made that tend to tick people off, and that the fresh, new ideas and to dissipate some. The ateam, the team that elected the president lycian , they generally go off and make money. So they have the cteam on the field. The final thing is chickens come home to roost, things that you said or did in the first term come back to you, and they will bite you on your ass, things like that come back to haunt you in the second term. Also, there is a tendency for bad things to happen to president s in their second terms great sometimes it is economic downturns. For example, president eisenhower had two recessions in the last two years he was in office. I did not know you could have two recessions that close together. You could have unpopular wars in the kennedy and johnson administrations. Iraq for george w. Bush. You could have scandals like watergate in nixon and ford. Monica lewinsky for clinton. And the thing is, iran contra for president reagan, but that things usually happen in the second term and people getting and tired. People become more receptive to change. Lets do something different. It is a pattern that holds up pretty darn well. So those are the two questions. What is it going to be . Well, when i look at what is going on and look at the polling data, and one thing i needed to get a chance to go by the office and print this out our website is cookpoli tical. Com, and when you go up on the home page it is all free you look on the righthand side of the page and theres a box, and it talks about the political environment, and then it says read more. Click that, and there is a it is about a 10page document that we update several times a week with the polling data that we think of polling data that is most relevant ascertaining what is the environment going to be like. To start off with right direction, wrong track numbers, and then we go to president ial approval, and we have the gallup numbers, fox, cnn, and pew, and then we go through consuming or Consumer Confidence. To the extent we are taught Midterm Elections are a referendum on the incumbent , then looking at the president s job Approval Rating is important. It is said that americans vote their pocketbooks then they tend to vote if they are worried, scared, fearful about the economy. They tend to be more pessimistic, which is not good for an incumbent party. As they feel good about things they typically vote on other things, but we have a Consumer Confidence rating. Then we have Favorable Unfavorable ratings for both parties from the various polls, and before that some numbers from the Kaiser Family foundation, which is the largest objective body of polling on the Affordable Care act, watching several questions there in terms of their popularity, and we have the generic ballot texts, maybe a couple other questions on there. That is a good way to check in and see how things are going. When i look at what is happening right now, the Democratic Party has lousy favor numbers. Republican party has worse numbers. The president s approval numbers right now are about 42 , which is exactly where president bush was at this point in his second term, which is after iraq turning sour and after katrina. It is for some days digit four digit the same where president bush was at this point, which is not a good place, and republicans took some significant losses in 2006. The republican theres no reason to believe that republicans have improved their standing one iota among minority voters, younger voters, women voters, moderate voters none whatsoever. At the same time you look over and you look at the president s of approval numbers and they are on the track toward where you have bad second term Midterm Elections, and it is what it is. Maybe things get better, maybe they do. We will see. That is why you do not just take a poll and skip the election. That is why you have campaigns. Right now it looks like both of those things are going to happen or both of those things look to be if you were going to have the election today operative, which would tend to suggest canceling each other out. When i talked about what kind of election it is going to be, at this point am a theres not any evidence that this is going to be a wave election, because for people to vote against somebody, they kind of have to vote for somebody. And the thing is they do not like either side here, and so i do not see them handing out compliments or willynilly handing out victories to either side because they are not really happy with either one. I guess a meteorologist would say it is like an unstable air mass a meteorologist would say it is like an unstable air mass. Neither side looks naturally advantaged by the macro political environment. Then you say, ok, that is the environment, lets get down to cases, and next speaker is going to get into races, but i want to do it from a larger sense. You have the house and the senate. In the house immigrants would democrats would need a 17 seat net gain to get a majority in the house. In the big scheme of things, 73 is not a particularly big number. You can look there is a great book that norm ornstein, tom mann, michael malbon, and they now have it up on the web. They will publish they do not publish on hardcopy anymore. Go through the brookings or the aei website. When you go back and look over time i am trying to remember what my point was im getting over a chest cold 17 is not much. It really is not. But the thing about it is in the new world order, it kind of is a lot, because there are very few competitive districts out there. I started as i mentioned earlier, my newsletter in april of 1984, and it was not uncommon in those days to have 100, 125, 150 or more competitive districts. Now dependent on how you determined define it and i was reading someplace they were using higher numbers, and saying the finding it defining it as a voting for president in one party and congress for another, it went from 99 10 years to only 25 now. The better statistics is that 96 of all the democrats in the house are sitting in districts that obama carried, and 92 of the republicans in the house are sitting in districts that mitt romney carried. Theres just not a lot of elasticity in the house left anymore. Part of this is redistricting, and we have had you can either call it gerrymandering we have had it as long as we have had congressional districts. Because state capitals are now adding so much more polarized along partisan lines, because computer map making has gotten so much more sophisticated than back in the old days when people were working off of a card, cards, numbers on paper, it has gotten awfully good right now. If you are the dominant party in a state and you want to absolutely minimize the representation of the other party, you could do an amazing job there now much better than you could before. There are other things that are a place as well. For example, population sorting. There is a wonderful book that some of you might want to read by a guy named bill bishop, and he talks about how people in a sense vote with their feet, in that people tend to move and concentrate with people like themselves. People are more comfortable when they are with likeminded people. And this is becoming more and more and more so. When you look at democratic districts look geographically across the country, one of the districts that democrats tend to represent, they can to be large urban areas, closein suburbs, and college towns. Where do republicans live . Smalltown, rural america, and in the exurbs, the outer reaches of the suburbs. That is a clear pattern or political pattern that is out there. Even notwithstanding any political gerrymandering that is taking place, you have this taking place as well. Then the final reason is to get about the last four elections. In 2008, you were member the iraq war was getting really pretty ugly. President bushs numbers were down to 28 , Something Like that. The 2008 election, you had a really ugly election for republicans. Then 2010, it got even worse i am sorry, 2008 an ugly election for republicans, and so a lot of republicans that are sitting in competitive streaks or districts that may be a they had backtoback ugly elections for republicans, that wiped out a lot of republicans in competitive districts. In 2010, the way it went the other way, was a fabulous year for republicans, and it washed out to sea of a lot of democrats that were sitting in districts that should have been republican. Coming out of those in 2008 was a decent election for democrats, a decent year for democrats. You sorted it out so there are not many fish out of water that are out there. It has been minimized, the elasticity in the house. It has made it difficult for the press to make a 17seat gains as it would be difficult for republicans to make a 17seat gain in this environment. And you look at the individual races one by one and we have a fabulous house editor David Wasserman who does this, and all he does from one election date to the one two years later is right now more likely than not that republicans would actually pick up a handful of seats, 3, 4, 5, 6, a very small number, based on where there are open seats and where the competitive races are, and that is not based on any macro assumption whatsoever. Then you get over to the senate side, and i do not want to poach into that, but democrats have a lot of exposure. The thing to remember about the senate always is that just as the house has twoyear terms, the table is set in a house two years earlier. In the senate with sixyear terms, so when one party has a fabulous year in the senate, six years later they are going to be playing defense, and a big risk of vulnerability. That is exactly where democrats are in the senate and where basically of the 8 seats that are most likely to make a difference, six of them are in states that mitt romney carried. Again, i do not want to poach on to the next speakers turf. That is how i view the political environment right now. On a micro level, democrats have a little bit more exposure in the house. In the senate they have a lot of exposure. In the senate, at the same time for republicans, to get a majority they need a sixseat gain. They have to not run the table, but pretty close to win the majority, which is why i would put the republican prospects considerably less than 5050, even though it is almost a 100 chance that republicans will pick up seats, but not the six seats that they need. And just sort of as an aside, it sure as heck looks like republicans were going to pick up a bunch of seats in 2012 and in the end they did not do that. Part of that was because of these brand problems we were talking about. The other problem will exist again, and that is that in this posttea party era, republican primaries have become ready exotic places great there has been an increased tendency for republican primary voters to choose people who god did not necessarily intend for them to be members of the u. S. Senate. [laughter] it has cost them seats that they should have won. Whether you are looking at nevada, colorado, delaware in 2010, or at missouri or indiana in 2012, arguably, right now the senate is 5545, and republicans should have five more seats than they do right now, but they do not because they nominated terribly flawed candidates that were not able to win seats that appeared to be very winnable, if not [indiscernible] that is one more consideration out there. Lets open this up for questions, comments, accusations. You had your hand up a long time ago. Let me go with you first. I apologize for that, but my question is you talked about two scenarios, and i agree because you are the expert. It could be something else, but those would seem to be the two most possible. That seems to be exactly right. My question is, could you speak to the difference between the electorate who votes and the efforts between midterms in president ial elections, because it seems to me that those are quite different and also determine which scenario is more dominant . President ial elections tend to draw obviously a much bigger turnout, broader turnout, and it is a turnout that more looks like the country. Midterm elections, you have got a lot of voters that are sort of casual voters. Sometimes they vote, sometimes they do not. They oftentimes vote president ial, but in any election other than that, they do not show up. The group that drops off the most is younger voters, downscale voters, you really younger voters, and one particular group that stan greenberg, the democrat pollster, who with James Carville had this polling think tank thing for the democratic side that they focused on the young single women voters, the women voters under 30, 35 who were single is one it is a group that when they vote they vote. Heavily democratic, but is an opportune term because they do not turn up for Midterm Elections. It does not mean that republicans win all Midterm Elections because they lost control of congress in 2006, which was a Midterm Election. Generally speaking, the Midterm Election turnout dynamic is something that is more favorable, while a democratic while president s role is more favorable to democrats, that is true. It is not determinative, but it is an important factor. You were next. I guess you spent a lot of time studying elections. What has been the most surprising result in your time, or what results in the last election shock you the most that you did not expect . Well, that is an interesting one because there are a lot of surprises you are in this business long enough, you see stuff that i did not see that coming, and relatively recently, after barack obama won the iowa caucus and then lost the New Hampshire primary to hillary clinton, that was a shocker because somewhere in this big country there somebody who predicted that hillary would win the New Hampshire primary after losing the iowa caucus, but i never met them. That was one. I would say professionally i would say it was at 1994, the gingrich Midterm Election. The reason is that we had not seen a wave election since in 14 years, since 1980. And i had vivid memories of the 1980 election. Long before i got in this business i am a moderate independent now, but i got my start, grew up as a democrat and had my first few political jobs on the democrat side. The election by 1980, i was at the headquarters of the democratic senatorial having committee. I was visiting some friends. Actually, lucy, who is now my wife, was working there at the time. 1980, indiana was the first state indiana and kentucky are the first states whose polls closed. Birch bayh lost at about 6 30 in the evening. The democrats kept losing until well after midnight. It was like boom, boom, boom. That was the first wave election since 1974, the watergate election, but i was in college in 1974 and was working on the hill, but not aware that much. 1980 was that was really something. We went 14 years before that was replicated. You had people Running Campaign committees on each side who had never personally experienced a wave election. There is a tendency to get a little too wrapped up in this all politics is local think if you go a long time without a wave election. And so it is like hard to imagine it happening until you really see one up close and personal. So that 1994 one was probably you step back in awe. There can be some people that will be relied on to predict that their people will win every single election. You can figure out who they are and never listen to them. The first person that did not qualify in that category we were my house editor at the time was a young man who is now a lawyer and intellectual property expert at the Motion Picture association. He was our first house editor. We were over at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee we do this with each side on their staffs, run through the races, and on background, what are you seeing, trade notes back and forth, because we meet with a loud of candidates, and they meet with the candidates and trade notes. Anyway, we were over there, and had just done the alabamato wyoming rundown. The political director at the time, a Media Consultant now, said the meeting was over. Some of the people wandered off. It was just two of us standing in the conference room. He said, charlie, are you seeing anything odd out there . And i said, no, not really. He said, the last month or two we started seeing some now, this was april of 1994. He said, we started seeing some very odd numbers around the country in places where democratic incumbents are to be this is in a different era and numbers were inversely higher than but democratic incumbents that are in the mid 50s that should be in the mid50s are just over 50 . He described urban areas, rural areas, suburban areas, north, south, east, west, across the board, and i remember at the time thinking i have not noticed that. Early on a cycle you do not see a lot of polling data on the house level, individual house races. I remembered thinking, dave and vic fazio, the chairmen of the committee at that point, maybe they are trying to lower expectations so if they had a good election result, a big victory. Over the next may, june, as i see more data coming out, it started looking like, i think he is on to something. You can start seeing it built over the summer and build and build and build and build. At that election, republicans needed a 40seat net gain to get a majority in the house. If you gave republicans every conceivable seat that they could possibly win, they still could not get to 40. It was building and building you could see the direction of the arrow. You can tell the wind was blowing strong. At the end, i was saying maybe there is a one in three chance that republicans get a majority in the house, but that is like how many of you have gone bird hunting. If it is a shotgun, you lead the bird a little bit. If you aim at the bird, your shot will go behind the bird. You lead the bird. It was going this way, so i was saying one out of three. Not only did they get 40 seats, they got 52. You had republican candidates getting elected who did not get a dime from their own party, that their own party did not even think they were going to win. Conversely, democrats losing and their party did not think they were of all vulnerable. That was the spooky, a natural thing that happened in these wave elections. I would have to say that one in 1994 and i remember the next really big wave election, 2006, was a wave against republicans. Early on in that cycle i remember the two guys running for the House Republican committee, they started asking me early on if they felt pretty good about things. They raised more money than democrats. We got this and this and this. Back in 1994, what did you see and when did you see it, out of curiosity . Gradually, some of those things started happening, although its happened earlier. By 1994, it was the first time in your professional career or you really see a bigtime wave and you just go, wow, look at that. There were somebody else over here. Ok. Here and then we will go back. During your remarks you compared obamas favorability rating to bushs. What were the Party Favorability ratings at those times . That is an excellent question. I have not looked it up. And the answer is probably the other thing is in these Midterm Elections, some of it is certainly you are voting you are angry at a president , congress, something that is going on, and you can vote against them. The other part of it is lets say its 1994. No, lets use a more modern example. 2006. You are a republican, republicans have control of congress, deficits have gone up. Maybe you just do not vote, because that high variability in Midterm Elections where it is more socially acceptable not to vote in Midterm Elections than in a president ial election. A lot of times it is sort of disillusioned partisans staying home and independents who lean your way staying home. I have not looked at those numbers. That is a very good question. I think it is safe to say that the numbers were not that great. That is a good question. How about back in the row. Can you identify the two narratives, as being associated with a president with a lower approval or with a republican brand. Since there are two major fights in congress, do you feel the narratives that will happen at the individual campaigns will be candidates trying to separate themselves from their party as much the can or trying to anchor their opponent about their partys record . Another good question. When you are a member of one party, you are an incumbent, and maybe you are either in Enemy Territory or a district that is not friendly. And your president is not popular. There is a tendency, and some people get into this tendency, to trash were president and to run like hell away from them. As a general rule, that does not work real well. At the same time, do you want to embrace him and identify yourself more closely with him . Of course not. Theres something that is in between. I do not agree with the president i agree with him on some things, i do not agree with him on others, and i have got some real misgivings about x, y, and z. Sometimes that works, sometimes it does not, but the thing is one of the things is what happens if you just trash the president from your party, among the people that normally come hell or high water who will vote for you, you will turn some of them off by doing that. Those are some people that you can actually rely on. That generally does not work, but you could establish distance without trashing an incumbent for your side. And there was a famous election. It was bush 1990, george h. W. Bush, his Midterm Election, and ed rollins, who had managed president reagans campaigns, had a top job at the Republican National committee. He wrote a memo that went out to all the Republican House members saying effectively we all love president bush and he is a great guy and all that, but your most important job right now is to get reelected and do whatever you need to do to get reelected and feel free to put distance between yourself and the president. Not surprisingly, the white house went crazy. I am trying to remember whether ed had to resign or not. Do you remember if he did or not . They were calling for his for his resignation. [indiscernible] for some of the races such as the Vulnerable Democratic Senate seats where you have nonincumbent republican candidates for senate, do you expect them to distance themselves from the key, or is that going to be an internal debate within the party, because there could be comments about republicans to make firm statements about other they would shut down the government or know they would never do that . One of the good things about this upcoming election for republicans is at least in the senate most of the prime races are in states that romney won and that where president obamas job Approval Ratings would be significantly below average. In other words, alaska, arkansas, louisiana, and to elect certain extent georgia, a lesser extent north carolina, and michigan you can tell i have been on vacation for three weeks. Michigan and iowa are the only two that are in states that obama carried. There are gradations in all of these. For example, obama lost georgia, but only by eight points. There were some states where he lost by 25 points. 8 is losing, but not getting destroyed. North carolina, obama lost but only two percentage points, and he had carried it four years earlier. At the same time, arkansas, louisiana, kentucky where Mitch Mcconnell is up, obama lost by disastrous amounts. Where republicans need to do well in the u. S. Senate they do not have to put as much, if any distance, between themselves and the national Republican Party. Certainly in alaska, arkansas, louisiana, kentucky, absolutely, for sure. It depends, and that is the answer to almost any question. It depends on the circumstances. In the senate there is a lot less of that that has to take place. Yeah. I guess you highlighted in 2006, the last couple midterms that happened, and one thing our distinguished presser has pointed out, there has been an increased polarization within the legislative branch. Does that translate to more of a wave effect given the increased polarization from these different midterms it throws off a little differently than the president ial elections, but midterms, especially the last two, do you see that as being one of the catalysts . I think i follow what you are saying, and if i do understand it, i would say what has been going on the last 20, 30 years tends to amplify these kinds of wave elections and make them more likely. Back when i moved to washington, 1972, as a freshman in college, there were a ton of moderate democrats from the south and elsewhere. There were a ton of liberal moderate republicans from the north, northeast, the west. So the parties say this is the democrat party, the Republican Party, there was a substantial overlap between the parties. And so was the Republican Party a rightofcenter party . Yeah, but there were a lot of people on the right on the Democratic Party, too. They had some awfully conservative people who were a lot more conservative than some of the republicans. The conservative moderate democrats acted as a balance that kept the democrats from going off on the ditch on the left as liberal moderate democrats republicans were keeping the republicans from going on the ditch to the right. I think it does make there is a i think to the next that this is maybe it is a slight exaggeration, not too much, but instead of having a Leftof Center party and a rightof center party, we now have a fairly left party and a very right party. People are angry at some saying, it is a lot easier for them to pick out the red jerseys and the blue jerseys now, that there is more ideological cohesion there, but also at the same time, the force in the opposite direction is that so few of them are in districts that are really Enemy Territory kind of districts that that tends to be an offsetting factor. Im not sure how to answer that. The thing is a lot of this stuff is a lot more complicated than it sounds on paper. Ok. The world is a lot simpler in the highdigit networks. Yeah. Speaking to that, my question and i hold an unpopular view that the democratization of primaries is a bad thing and has increased only polarization. Can you speak to that idea that the democratization of primaries has only led to more conservative and more liberal candidates . Let me address that differently. If i could wave a magic wand and do two Major Political reforms in this country, the first would be for redistricting reform, and the second would be for primary nomination reform. And on the former there are a lot of different ways to do it. Iowa walk has a terrific system where they have a room full of statisticians sitting in a basement that you get, and it is as close to an honest redistricting as humans can probably do. Again, it is not hard in iowa because you have a state that is very white and all the counties are square. It is not a heavy lift doing that when you do not have to worry about Voting Rights act considerations and things like that. California in 2012 went to a new system, and it is this very, very elaborate, complicated process of selecting these commissioners that in turn select the people that draw whatever and someone said if you diagrammed it out it would look like the old diagrams of the hillarycare, it would look like a pile of spaghetti in terms of branches of authority. But it works very well, and you saw as much competition in congressional races in california in 2012 than you had seen in the last years. Again, each state decides its own election law and no two states are identical. Some states have party registration, some do not. For example, in maryland, my wife is a registered democrat. I am a registered independent. I cannot vote in any primaries at all. She can only vote in democrat primaries. I think if you allowed independents to choose on election day, you take either a democratic or republican ballots on voting day, i think it would help bring things back toward the center as with redistricting reform. I do not think either of these are a Silver Bullet or will solve the problem, but could address things. I think some of the bad things that have happened, i think having nomination conventions for races below president is really bad. In utah, for example, you remember senator robert bennett, who was by any rational definition a very conservative incumbent senator and hard working and very high really regarded, could not get on the primary ballot because of the rise of the tea party movement, and he had voted for tarp, and that was back in 2008, and he could not get on the primary ballot in 2010. He would have won a primary if he had gotten on the ballot. Virginia has these goofy conventions where they allow some pretty exotic people, particularly the lieutenant governor, governor, things like that so that even a pretty mainstream, relatively mainstream candidate for attorney general cannot even win. It is that kind of environment. I would do that. After that, it is a lot harder to do things. I think the increasingly ideologically polarized nature of certain elements in the news media with very clear, very clear right, that is, to pour gasoline on the fire as well, with certain blog sites, that kind of thing. There are a lot of moving parts here. Yeah. Hang on one second. Another reform that has been done in california and louisiana, i wanted to ask you about it, the idea that theres a primary the top two candidates and those are the twp top candidates for the november election. Would that help as well . I think it might. Those systems are not identical, but they are pretty close. It certainly has not done anything to moderate anything in louisiana. But in california, i think it contributed to that. Where you saw cases where two democratic incumbents thrown together by redistricting, and they are competing, but in a general election environment so that you have fairly liberal democratic members going out trying to get republican votes, moderate independent votes, a vote is a vote, get it wherever you came, and that reduces some of the ideological, some of the rhetoric, and brings it back down. There are a lot of different ways to fix things. You never know which ones are going to work and which do not, and a lot of times you have a lot of unintended consequences where you set out to do something that is an admirable objective, but that makes it worse. For example, the mccainfeingold finance reform made things worse than before. So you always have to be careful with that. Anybody that has not asked a question yet first, and then we will double back . There has been discussion in recent years about the political of young people. Have you seen an increased turnout in young people, or is it that a small amount of us are more vocal . It has ticked up some, maybe not as much as adjusted by the popular press. But 2008, the proportion picked up some. The thing i noticed with millennial voters and the institute at politics at harvard has done a lot of work in this area, but i have spent a lot of time on campuses, and my impression looking on the data, as well as anecdotal, is the millennial generation, is an interesting group. Unlike conservatives, they do not hate government, but unlike liberals, they do not love government. Their experience with government has been it does not work very well. It is not very effective. And so this is a generation that at least on economic role of government, in that narrow sense, is more jump ball, open to private sector solutions, alternative to traditional government solutions. However, there also a very libertarian generation. And that libertarian aspect, including abortion, gay rights, among other issues, cuts absolutely against the grain of where the Republican Party has been and is one of the Major Barriers to the Republican Party doing better with young voters. You just look at the data on samesex marriage. It is kind of a nobrainer. I was talking to a conservative leader who had been visiting campuses in a southern state, meeting with people that are in the individual chapters of an extremely conservative organization, ok. And she had just come back from a couple of campuses, and she asked these conservative student leaders what they thought about samesex marriage. And none of them had a problem with it. And these were kids that were like really, really, really, really, really conservative, and it is like, wow. Obviously there are some people who do not hold that view. And i am not suggesting the Republican Party change their positions or anything, but i think they ought to look at how they do the weighting of issues and turning the volume and frequency down on certain issues, they could be more marketable to this newer generation. Yep, harry. You mentioned a couple times there was not a lot of flexibility, especially in the house. Do you see that to be a more permanent thing . Well, i do not often tour around terms like permanent and ever, because they imply a really long time. And stuff happens. And so that is one of the advantages of doing this for a really long time, is you have heard people make these grand statements of permanent this and that, and then it is not so much. I have heard the demise of each of the parties rejected several times in my career. I will not say. I think this is a very real trend. It is showing some durability. But it is not to say that you could not have events or circumstances that could reverse it. In terms of the better nature of the partisanship of politics, theres no way to quantify this or prove it or not, but to me 9 11 was an event that could have been a real game changer in terms of the political environment. And that the date after the 9 11 attacks, members of congress gathered on the steps of the Capitol Building and sang god bless america. I was thinking, maybe possibly something good could come out of this horrific tragedy of where people learn to Work Together and stuff. But after that brief kumbaya moment, but that controversy of should we invade iraq yesterday broke out, and that fight over iraq, not afghanistan, is what tore the two sides back apart to the point where it is worse than it was before. So you think, wow, if an event like 9 11 cannot effectively change the dynamics, what would it take . That is pretty scary. A lot of what has happened, it has been coming a long way. To quote tom mann and norm ornstein a second time, they have another book, it is as bad as you think, which i agree that things actually in washington are probably worse, even worse than most people think but tom and norm, who are good friends of mine and i respect enormously, they put a disproportionate level of the blame on republicans. And while if you were just talk about the last year or two or three, maybe, but when i step back and go back to the 1980s and look at how did we get to this poisonous environment, i think theres plenty of blame on both sides, a lot of blame on both sides. I can point to just as many examples of democrats doing things that contributed to the environment getting to where it is as republicans, and just to throw two out, there was a house race in indiana in 1984, the first year i started my newsletter, in the eighth district, between two people where there is no need to remember who they were. The election result was kind of like florida 2000. It was basically a tie. God only knows who really won that race. Different counts have different what they probably should have done is what New Hampshire had done in a senate race in the previous decade and what louisiana had done in a house race, which is basically say rerun the damn thing. We cannot tell who won. The democratic leadership and only the speaker jim wright was majority leader then and my understanding was that jim wright urged and convinced oneill to basically gavel it through, basically say the house, constitutionally the house is the final judge of its members. We are seating our guy. Up until that point the republican minority in that house had been in that minority for 30 years, 15 consecutive elections. They were a pretty docile group. With very few of them having any realistic hope of being in the majority unless they change parties. This seating of the one over the other, and the brazen, arrogant approach to it, it is so it so enraged republicans against that some of the most moderate, mildmannered republicans in the house went crazy. Nancy johnson, a moderate liberal republican from connecticut. That led to the rise of Newt Gingrich and pushing aside of bob michael, who was the Old School Republican leader. Newt gets in. Jim wright becomes speaker. He goes on wright on ethics stuff. Warfare develops. I do not want to put all the blame on democrats, but that is where sooner or later maybe this would have happened, but that triggered it. It was mostly in the house of representatives, where you had this bitter artisanship. The senate was not like that at all. Gradually, you begin seeing house members, democrat and republican, coming over to the senate. In the house, it is majority rules. If the majority does not like how things are going, that is tough. In the senate, with filibusters, consent, the senate cannot deal with that kind of partisanship and still function appropriately. And so as you start seeing these house members move to the senate, it was like a contagion coming into a new body. Then the bork nomination. Up to that point, if you were rejected it was one or two reasons either you were not ethical or you were not qualified. The idea that you were rejected because people do not agree with you, that had never happened before. When democrats rejected the bork nomination, forcing it to be withdrawn, that was the first sign that that contamination had started to enter into the senate, and now the senate is probably even worse than the house because its rules it cannot move it was a body designed by the Founding Fathers to not move easily, quickly. It was supposed to move deliberately. You interject that kind of partisanship and hatred, particularly now, where you have leaders on both sides, harry reid and mitch oconnell, who despise each other and despise the other side, on top of a very partisan body that is not designed to function like that, you have a pretty dysfunctional situation. I do not remember your question. [laughter] who else . Jack, you got the question. Lets go to jeffrey first. You said early most of these elections midcycle, they vote their pocketbooks, but we talked about young people and their social views. Do you see social cues becoming more important in how people vote in some of these elections . I think voters do not americans used to vote their economic selfinterest much more than they do today. Or to put it differently, they now vote on issues that are completely aside from that economic selfinterest. That is why you see a pretty large number of very highincome people, highly educated people, people in very high tax brackets who are voting democratic. Why are they voting democratic . Maybe they are prochoice, maybe green on the environment, they support samesex marriage whatever reason. At the same time you see a fairly large number of down scale whites who at least theoretically, historically, you would say would be better off with democrats, who are voting more and more republican and are getting more and more conservative. They may or may not be voting against their selfinterest, but they are voting on cultural, social issues than along sort of straight economic class lines. Yes, i think we have really moved away from that to a large extent, not totally, but to a large extent, absolutely. It has made things very complicated. It has made things very complicated, so that a poor state like West Virginia has become a very republican state, at least on federal issues, despite the fact they used to be as rockribbed democrat as any. Hang on. We are going to give this guy a workout. Clicks you mentioned tickets in terms of house, senate, and the presidency. Can you speak a little bit how an active and especially competitive governors race could affect that . Specifically we have competitive races in florida, george or a georgia, and a lot of open house seat. How does a governors race affect the National Campaign . I think active, high visibility races, races that engage people, they obviously draw a lot of attention and can help increase turnout. How much . You know, one of my beefs with political scientists is that sometimes they try to quantify the unquantifiable. But sure, it happens. How much . Who the hell knows . But of course, it happens. But theoretically, if you have a knockdown, drag out, high visibility engagement on a mayors race, it could drive turnout in that city. But as opposed to really blah, then why vote . We hear less about it now than we used to, how a lot of white americans dont vote compared to other countries. Ive always felt that if you talk to a european, for example, and you ask them how many opportunities do you have to vote over four years, and generally, they will come up with two or three. There might be a state election, the federal election, and maybe one for the eu. That is basically it. And generally only one thing on the ballot for each one or two. For each one, or two. You think of here, think of federal elections, sometimes state elections, sometimes municipal elections, bond issues, special elections all of these things so that over a fouryear timeframe, im guessing, in a lot of states, you could vote 10 or 12 times. You could be asked to vote 10 or 12 times over four years. Does that devalue the importance of voting some . Yeah, i think so, particularly in states like virginia, kentucky, louisiana, new jersey, mississippi, that have already or state elections. And a lot of the municipalities have odd year elections. It devalues it. The second thing is, we elect jobs in this country that for the life of me i do not know why we vote on them. I consider myself a relatively politically sophisticated person. The Maryland Special Court of appeals, who are they . What do they do . Why are they special . [laughter] you look at a bunch of names where you could say, oh, my god. Nobody knows who these people are. Or, in my home state of louisiana, you know, we elect parish corners. Coroners. Who the hell here is qualified to judge who would be a good coroner . [laughter] one of my favorites is in South Carolina i think they still do this. They a lack they elected the adjutant general, the head of the state national guard. Really . To me, if we want to consolidate elections and prudent ballots prune ballots, and why are secretaries of state selected . Why is there a commissioner of agriculture . Who is from texas . I think there is Something Like 11 statewide officeholders in texas. I think americans probably vote more than anyone else in the world. But it is spread out over a lot of things. I think if we consolidated it, it would raise the value of voting and our turnout levels would go back up. Who has not asked the question . The two opposing narratives that you presented earlier and low favorability in both parties, do you think that is a possibility for more thirdparty candidates to enter the field . And if they do, do you think they are likely to be elected . Do you have a grandfather that is a big lobbyist here in washington . There was a big agricultural lobbyist here years ago, bill taggart. First, i think it is important to make a distinction between thirdparty and independent. We often use it as a generic term. And third party, libertarian, natural law, green party emma versus just pure independent green party, versus just. Henan. I think we will have more variety of candidates running for a particular thing. Let me put it a different way. Im trying to figure out how to say this. One time, there was the mayor of an extremely large city who was very wealthy, who thought about running as an independent for president. And he sat down with lots of people to just sort of talk about whether an independent can win, that sort of thing. My view at the time was that people were really sick and tired of both parties. They were quick to say they were sick and tired of both parties. There was an openness to this. This would have been about 2006 or 2007. This mayor proceeded to, in the course of the conversation, basically convince me that there was no way in hell and independent candidate could win a competitive threeway race for presidency where there is a democratic nominee and a republican nominee. And the argument let like this. Lets say, you were the richest person in the world, the smartest person in the world, a fabulous candidate with a great story to tell and you never make mistakes. And lets say, i you run as you run as an independent for president. Theres a democrat of the here and a republican over here. What would happen . Resume ugly, you would win a priority plurality of the popular vote, which would give you a plurality of the Electoral College vote. But nobody got a majority. The election gets thrown to the house of representatives where each state has one vote california one vote, wyoming one vote. And at that time, i think republicans had Something Like 29 delegations, Something Like that. There is no way the independent would win. And at the same time, there was this group a couple of years later, americans elect, that were out trying to get valid positions in all 50 states for an independent candidate to get on the ballot. And i remember meeting the guy who was the executive director at a lunch conference in arkansas. And i kind of laid this out and said, explain to me why it is not impossible effectively for an independent to win a three way race. And clearly, this had never occurred to him. And prior to this other conversation, it had never occurred to me, so i could not knock him. But it seems to me if you had a group like that that wanted to do something good, what they would do is try to find really substantial, accomplished people to run as independents for the u. S. Senate and house. Because if you had serious, serious people who were accomplished and had done things in life and worthy of respect, and clearly, competent to do this, you put three or four of them that are legitimately independent that these faux independents like Bernie Sanders or angus king will stop three or four like Bernie Sanders or angus king. Three or four of those, and you know with Committee Assignments and whatnot, if you want my support on anything, i would like one Committee Assignment for each party. And if not, you will not be looking for my vote on anything. I think Something Like that would do a world of good. Is it ever going to happen . No, no. But for president , i do not see the point. And while with ross perot in 1992, the exit polls showed first of all, the conventional wisdom is that perot cost george h. W. Bush the election. The exit polls showed that of the people who did vote for ross perot in 1992, half of them if you asked them who they were voting for if perot were not running, half said clinton and have said bush. And half of them said bush. I would suggest that perot actually made no difference. In reality, i would i bet if they would have been asked a year or two earlier, who are you supporting, i bet the vast majority had supported president bush. And perot had been so critical so early on of president bush that i think his candidacy acted as a chisel that effectively pushed chipped a lot of people off of supporting resident bush, and if perot had dropped out, half of them would have gone back, but half would not have. Deep down, he probably did cost bush the election, but not necessarily as clear cut as it seems. There is no question in my mind that nader cost gore in florida the election. That is why we have seen Third Party Candidates get less support since 2000. The idea that not only that you are throwing your vote away, but potentially tipping the election toward your least favorite candidate, you know, if you are rare per public and in 1990 2000. If you were a republican in 1992 and a democrat in 2000. Thank you all, very much. [applause] live at 1 40 5 p. M. Eastern, jack martin of the federal great of the federation for american it Immigration Reform. First ladies with Rosalynn Carter at nine. Coming up next on washington journal. Former Senior Advisor to president ial candidate mitt romney. Jennifer lawless from the women in Politics Institute in American University, talks about the impact that women are having in todays politics. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] clemency forr Edward Snowden. Be our topic for this mornings washington journal, whether or not Edward Snowden deserves clemency. Contact us via social media