Then he is going to head to chicago on tuesday. During another big event, talking about the actions he has taken. Schedule . His. Will have more details he will talk in chicago. Now are here you are here now. Craigs and do not have the locations for youth this moment. We do not have the locations for you at this moment. One view of critics is that the president has decided to receive in this fashion after be boehner. Er chris the president has shown tremendous patience or nutrition reform. On Immigration Reform. Speaker boehner said many times you try to pass legislation to address our immigration system. They did not take one single step to address immigration. Used the smallest steps called a blowup. Now that we have a more conservative congress, this could be read rather corner. Every day that the president weight, these families are really under the fear of deportation. He will continue to work with congress to see if we can get this done. The steps he took are important steps. , and he andts hope the white house spoke a lot about this yesterday, it is the republicans to not use assessment excuse to not work with us on other issues. If you think our tax code should be reformed, if you think we should be investing what he inroads of bridges, if you happy with the status quo, you are welcome to be here. This one involves three year. Why the change from 23 years. Why the change to three years . Did you do that to force the republicans on this . I suspect this will be an intense debate within the Republican Congress and also the president ial primaries starting fairly soon, i believe. We picked three years for more stability in the program. Republican reaction was not a driving factor in the decision. This morning, eric holder released a video ahead of the decision in ferguson. I wonder if we will hear from the president about the ferguson decision. In advance of the decision . Nothing in advance at this point. There is nothing in the can. The president spoke to Governor Nixon in the last week or so, maybe right before he went to asia. The white house has been in contact with local officials and with the Justice Department to stay on top of the situation involving a potential reaction to the decision. We are monitoring the situation carefully. Why eric holder and not the president . This is more in the spirit of the department of justice. Holder is the one that went there. Im not ruling out the president speaking before or after a decision, but theres nothing imminent. The mood after the election, you have had net neutrality, china, the immigration speech. There is a sense of momentum. He has gotten off the sidelines after the midterm elections. I could wonder if you could talk about whether he feels liberated after the midterms. I am curious if that will free up the president to engage more on issues like ferguson down the road. Over the summer, he was slow to get out in front. I will take ferguson first. The president has to walk a careful line because of the fact it was an open criminal investigation. That will be true no matter what year the presidency is in similar matters. You have seen that in other situations where there is an open matter, where the president is careful about specifics. On the broader question, we feel good on how the last two and a half weeks have gone here. Typically when you have a change in power in congress, the new congressional majority dominates the conversation and drives the discussion. Since right after the election, the president has been driving the discussions moving forward aggressively on core priorities. We are going to be looking for opportunities to work with republicans. We have made it clear where we have authority to act and can move the ball forward, we will do that. I think we do feel a sense of momentum. I dont know if liberated is the right word. There is no question for an array of reasons, the geography of the various senate races, the president was not in a position let me put it this way. The 2014 congressional action was very much around local issues. It was not about a broader discussion. I think that was the right strategic decision. We were not in the place to make an aggressive argument for our agenda like the president did last night. I think we feel postelection we have had good opportunities to do that around the climate agreement with china, net neutrality, and now around immigration last night. A followup. You said he felt it was the right position [indiscernible] i am wondering. We heard a little bit of it from josh. A sense that had the president been out there more aggressively, what we are seeing now i think democrats were dealt an incredibly tough hand in 2014. Think of the 24 states governor romney won, 79 had senate races. That is hard. The president did not get more than 41 even if he was winning an historic victory in 2012. It was a very tough hand. I think people played the hand as best they could. I am hesitant to say if we had just done this tactical thing differently it would have tipped the balance. If this election came down to one or two races, maybe you could say a little here or there would have made a big difference. I think there is a tendency among people of your profession and mine to believe it is all about tactical maneuvers and messaging. A lot of times, things are about bigger forces. In this case you have the demographic turnout differences between midterms and president ials and a challenging map that basically took all the advantages democrats have in president ials and took them away from us. Even though it was a midterm, we were operating in a 2014 and did not have the capacity to expand the electorate. Jonathan karl . Looking back at what happened, the way this blew up in congress, 68 votes coming out of the senate. You are trying to move it through the house. You said there was a firm line that whatever came out of congress had to include a path to citizenship. I am wondering if now you think that might have been a tactical mistake given the what the president has done does not have a path to citizenship or legal status and can easily be undone by the next president. Was that a tactical mistake to set such a firm line . It was a firm line for republicans, too. I think you could make that argument if the republicans had in the entire time of the two years come up with a single plan to deal with the question of people already in the country. They did not do that. It was not like they came up with a plan and we said we are not going to accept that plan. Lets remember. Jeff denham, a Republican Congressman, had a very narrow immigration bill that dealt with the specific issue around family members, family of service members. That issue was so toxic in the Republican Caucus that it blew it up and they could not bring it to the floor. This was a targeted, vulnerable member with a large hispanic population in his district they were trying to help, and they could not do that. The idea that we set somebody could not meet when they could not even take the single first step says this is all about them and not about us. We are going to go next to john gibson from fox. On immigration again. John boehners spokesman has said the president s line was not honest. A senior administrator said the president would veto any legislation that does not do the same as executive action. Is that not true . Do you have any response . I think boehners spokesperson is confused on several fronts. We have said if the republicans decide they want to shut down the government but then a bill that will put millions of folks, that will reinstate authority of deportation on millions of folks, the president will not sign a bill. The president said if you pass conference of reform that will fix the problem, he will sign that bill. When that happens, it will supersede anything the president did in the president ial actions will go away. The attorney general, when he came into office, said americans were cowards on race. I am wondering with the prospect this weekend of a no bill, which a lot of people believe will come out of the grand jury, 100 or more cities, demonstrations planned in response to that, what does that say about the evolution of the race discussion in this country over the last six years . The president has talked about this a number of times over the years. Perhaps most memorably in the wake of the Trayvon Martin decision last year, i guess that was. I think the president would say we have made tremendous progress over the years. One of the greatest points is the fact even eight or 10 years ago, it would not be possible you would have a twoterm africanamerican president sitting in the white house. But there is a lot more work to do. You see that on a daily basis across the country. The tensions we saw in ferguson earlier this year speak to that. Mike dorning from bloomberg. Now that you have put this order in place that challenges the republicans to act on Immigration Reform, the funding in december, and it will be passed one way or another. How much of this do you intend to use to leverage and impressed them to act on immigration now and move this idea forward . One way i imagine you would be doing that if that was your intention, and other people might claim it was crass political motives but not you. [laughter] you are both evil and good. [laughter] or selfinterested and idealistic. You mentioned you will go to chicago after this, and after going to nevada. To what degree is the president going to in the months ahead drive this message forward in places where you would actually put political pressure on republicans to act on this, going to swing states in a president ial election like florida and colorado and make an affirmative action to make the republicans feel [indiscernible] on this . For the next nominee, whoever this might be. We want to make the case to the country about what we did, why we did it, i would explain how it is consistent with past practices of both parties. There will be a governmental sales job, and we will certainly do that. I think we will travel all over the country to do this. Sometimes it will be swing states. Sometimes it will be blue states, sometimes red states. I dont think republicans need us to tell them about the president ial election your impact of this. I think that is evident. The r. N. C. Did an entire report after the 2012 election about how this was an issue they had to address if they wanted to win future elections. We will be making the case about what we did and the need for congress to finish the job. I think our travel will not be specific to just swing states. It will be all over the place. The president s travel . Yes, not mine. I dont think that will impress anyone. I think the president travels. The Vice President and others will be involved as well. Beyond december . Absolutely. An incredibly important priority next year . Absolutely. This is a twopart question. You said the white house [indiscernible] there is a lot of space between that and the senate bill. I am wondering the minimum the president would like to see passed. You mentioned this executive action would have to do with impeachment. I wondered about that. It is hard to negotiate when you have no one to negotiate with. Lets see if they make a serious attempt to move forward. We hope they do. There are people, a lot of folks in the Republican Caucus that are wellintentioned on this. I would include Speaker Boehner on that list, who i think genuinely would like to see comprehensive Immigration Reform done. Lets see if they have the ability and willingness to move forward. Then we will see what compromises are available. On the second question, our hope is republicans will listen to senator mcconnell who has said it is important for republicans to demonstrate to the country they can govern and that there be no shutdowns or threats like before. Nothing changed in our stance on that. You have some republican members who have floated the idea. No one takes him up on it. We will see what the reaction is from the republicans and particularly when they come back after the thanksgiving holiday how they want to brush this. The president has used authority [indiscernible] recalcitrant i know where youre going. It is the sausage that does it. Recalcitrant congress. How concerned are you that a future republican president will do the same thing on a less progressive issue . I think it is important to note how insistent this action is in the Legal Authority used. Even the federalist society, i read yesterday, grudgingly admitted the president had this authority. But also in the scope. When george h. W. Bush did this, he dealt with 1. 5 million individuals, about 40 of the overall population of undocumented. The numbers we are talking about here, between four and five million, is about 45 of the undocumented population. The gross numbers are different but on a percentage basis, they are about the same. We live in a world where there is nothing the president does that comes without significant republican opposition. Getting out of bed in the morning comes with republican opposition. If the test is you can only do things that are not going to make some republicans very mad, we would do nothing. That may be what they want. But that is not what we will do. Alexis . Like 10 seconds after the midterm elections were counted, members of the president s own party were criticizing the economic message of nafta. Can you describe how the president or either party is thinking and analyzing what happened, the economic message, and what the agenda should be Going Forward the next two years on this front . I think the party as a whole and the white house included from the president down is thinking deeply about what went wrong in november. We had a tough map. But no one sat around saying it was just because of a tough map that we have the results we had. There is a coalition of voters the president brought into the process in 2008 who showed up. 2010, they did not show up. 2012, they showed up again. 2014, they did not. We have to understand exactly why that happened. One thing that worries me is too often you hear folks in our party believe in a simple equation, demographics plus technology equals victory. What was at the heart and core of the obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012 is we had great organization. We built a better mousetrap. We broke barriers. But organization is only a mechanism to harness enthusiasm. There was not enough democratic enthusiasm in this election. We have to look at why that is. It is a question of message, policy, message delivery. We are looking at all of that. Our role in the d. N. C. Is undertaking a broad look at it. Where we need to make changes, we will do that. What do you think about the criticism of the economic message . I think it was hard to break through because, in part because of two issues that dominated the discussion for the last 90 days or so, which was isil and ebola. The president was not out to make the case because he had to be back at the white house dealing with those issues. Even when were talking about it, you were not covering it. This is not one of those situations where we bemoaned the fact the president was covering some take issue. Those were real issues people are interested in that should be covered. It is hard to get the minimum wage and economic mobility messages out. Sometimes things happen at the end of the campaign that make it hard to get your message out. We have to ensure we find the appropriate balance. It is not just the president. It is the entire party. We need more unanimity and discipline around this as a party talking about the important progress we have made. That is something democrats should be proud of. The legislative efforts they contributed to it were things done almost entirely by democrats because republican sat on the sidelines. Where we have had problems and setbacks it is because of republican partisanship. People dont feel as good about it as they should because of a decadeslong trend around wage stagnation. Even if you think the economy is Getting Better but you are not making progress about being able to save for retirement because you have not gotten a raise in a while, we have to speak to that rhetorically and with policies. I think youll hear more from the president in the state of the union on that. You are offering citizenship to a large number of workers to work in hospitals and drug companies. Americans want those jobs. The president called this influx good for business in his book. Why do you expect the professional class and middle class to support your labor policies that are outsourcing these skilled, high wage jobs . Oregon voted two to one against drivers license. You cannot get bluer than oregon. I dont know the studies there. If youre just asking the pure Public Opinion question, research is clear the cohorts you talk about overwhelmingly support comprehensive Immigration Reform. The study is being put out as we sit here by economic advisers about the economic benefits for growth but also for wages that come from our executive action, a small part of what overall comprehensive Immigration Reform would do. It has never been easy. We did not do this for politics. We did it because it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do over the long term. It has been a divisive issue for as long as it has been around and will continue to be so. This is an important step. In the history of our progress on Immigration Reform, i think the future will be an important part. John . A number of the president s friend and your former colleagues have used the term liberated or energized talking about the president in the postelection period. And he is starting to feel the icy hand of the end of his term. Do you buy that . When you look at the immigration climate, his comments on net neutrality, that he is invigorated and no longer has to worry about protecting democrats . I think the idea he does not have another election to worry about, i certainly dispute and think he would. An important thing for him will be to be succeeded by a democrat. That is the best way to preserve. To have somebody who can come in with a similar worldview of the president to continue to implement our policies they agree with is very important. In the context of thinking about politics over the next two years, that will be in our heads. There will be important Congressional Elections in 2016. We will have important purple and blue states where republicans rode the wave in 2010 that are up in 2016. One of the challenges over the last several months because of the events i talked about but also the nature of the elections was the president