My interactions with Mitch Mcconnell, hes always been very straightforward with me. To his credit hes never made a promise that he couldnt deliver. The relationship i have with the president has always been cordial. Theres no, not a personality problem here or anything like that. I think my attitude about all this at this point is trust, trust but verify. Good morning. It is thursday november 6th. Welcome to morning joe. With us on set, former Communications Director for president george w. Bush and cohost of the view, nicole wallace. And in washington, sam stein. And White House Correspondent for the wall street journal carol leigh. Im looking at these headlines, after shocks of tuesday. You got the boston globe, a republican governor in boston. Again. The Washington Post, you will look at all of the voice, all the new voices that are coming to washington, d. C. The president saying i hear you. Heres the interesting thing. Average age of the people that won going to senate, 16 years younger than the people they replaced. This is a much younger u. S. State senate. A lot more women. President obama appears to be heading towards a showdown with the soon to be republicanled
senate. Hes promising to work with republicans in congress after the gop regained control of the senate and expanded its margin of power in the house. But at the same time he says theres no reason to change his policies because of the midterm results and hes vowing to still take executive action on Immigration Reform. The speech led politico to describe president obama as defiant with the hill calling him quote unrepentant. Although the president extend an olive branch to Mitch Mcconnells new majority, the Washington Post said the tone of his speech made him seem numb to the results. Obviously republicans had a good night and they deserve credit for running good campaigns. Beyond that ill leave it to all of you and the professional pundits to pick through yesterdays results. To everyone who voted i want you to know i hear you. To the twothirds of voters who knows not to participate in the process yesterday, i hear you too. I think that every election is a
moment for reflection. And, you know, i think that everybody in this white house is going to look and say, all right, what do we need to do differently. But the principles that were fighting for, the things that motivate me every single day and motivate my staff every single day, those things arent going to change. What tuning, mika doesnt look defiant or unrepentant to me. It looks like he hears us. I dont know what possibly could get done with this new dynamic. What do you think . I think a lot of things can get done. First of all the president will wake up one day and realize for the first time in his life hell actually have to deal with republicans. He doesnt know how to deal with republicans. He looks at republicans and people in his white house look at republicans even if they like them as kind of alien, off
kilter. Their characters are flawed, they do. I have a lot of friends in the white house. Thats their attitude. Who you talking about, the republicans or obama . Im talking about president obama. This is because hes never had to deal with republicans once in his life. Ekept them pushed away and they are alien. Bill clinton, he either worked with conservatives and republicans or got nothing done in arkansas for 12 years. Rsh either worked with liberals in sacramento, california or got nothing done. Thats why Ronald Reagan did some things conservatives to this day still complain about. But hes going to get things done. Republicans will have to get things done because they dont want to repeat what happened in 2010. In 2010 they won a huge majority. We win. Were on top of the mountain. Two years later, they are wiped out. Thats not going to happen again. They know they have to get things done. Yesterday, that was Opening Statement from Mitch Mcconnell and barack obama. Quite frankly Mitch Mcconnell looked more gracious. Im stunned those words just came out of my mouth. But de. I will say there was a part, willie, that just even though im optimistic that things are going to get done, the president of the United States saying well, im going to let pundits, you professional pundits read the tea leaves and try to figure out what happened yesterday. Listen, my 6yearold boy while playing mind craft could tell me what happened yesterday. Democrats got shellacked. The president got rejected. After saying this is about me, about my policies the American People rose up and said were not only going to beat you in red states, were going to beat you in massachusetts and in
maryland and in illinois and in michigan and in wisconsin and in some of the bluest of blue states that you carried by 25 . Thats the only part of the attitude that concerns me. Im way above this, im just too cool. You pundits, you tea leaf no thats like frazier, you know, knocking ali down with a left hook and i have to read the tea leaves to see what happened. He knows what happened. Everybody in the white house knows what happened. You know, were listening to all this im looking at an oped column in the wall street journal that john boehner and Mitch Mcconnell wrote we now can get congress going. But when you know the history of the relationship between white house and Mitch Mcconnell and white house and john boehner, you worry a little bit because the first thing that the president talked about was
executive action on Immigration Reform and Mitch Mcconnell said you better not do that. Mitch mcconnell wrote about repealing obamacare, obama said you better not do that. They went to their separate corners. Listen, i guess the reason why im not concerned about any of this is they have to do two things at once. They have to come together which we know is hard for them. They also have to play to their base. Barack obama has to let his base know im not going to cower in the corner because i was once again wiped out and i would do the same thing. I would start strong. I would start with executive action. Theyve done nothing. They begged me to wait until after the campaign. My own party did. Im sick and tired of doing nothing. Im going to get this done. Which is basically what the president said. I understand that. Mitch mcconnell is saying what hes saying. But the best part of yesterdays press conference was when he said, you know what . Im just going to wait and talk to Mitch Mcconnell instead of hearing you talk to me what Mitch Mcconnell said. That was a reason for americans to be helpful. I thought the questions at the press conference were so refreshing. It took them six years to be that aggressive with the president is somewhat disappointing, but as a republican ill take it when it comes. I thought his answer, im going to wait and hear from the sources instead of taking your word from it was the first sort of window into how on the fence of becoming peakish he is. He chose yesterday to narrow cast. He had a National Audience but only speaking to the people who are still behind him and reassuring them. I think thats where some of the disconnect everybody was watching but i think he was only speaking to a very small slice of the country now which is the people who are still squarely behind him which really doesnt even include a lot of democrats on capitol hill. Again, that makes sense. So, carol leigh, what was your take in there at the press conference yesterday other than the fact that Major Garrett somehow managed to squeeze in 47 questions. Okay, heres the deal, major, you pick one. You just pick one. Okay. Which one do you want me to answer . Neither is famous for that in the White House Press conference. I mean there were a couple of things that stuck out to me. To your point you were making earlier in terms of the president not wanting to read the tea leaves that was something his senior advisors were adamant about in the weeks leading up to the election. They knew it would be bad. They didnt expect it to be as bad as it was. He were adamant but not uttering a single word about shellacking. The press corps tried to get him to Say Something along those
lines in a number of ways and he never did. They were successful at that. He left at any time republicans had a good night. In trying to do that he made himself seemed so distant from the results as if he had no bearing on it. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. You cant say that your policies every single one of them is on the ballot and then say im not going to look into that and im not going to change my policies. Another thing to watch for what he does with immigration. Theres a number of things that he can do. He can go really far. He can go halfway. And so how he calibrates that in terms of not wanting to poison the well or in terms of going out there that would be an interesting thing. We ought to play the sound bite again. Both were gracious. Both went to their corners. You know what . The president made a point about the pundits and the chatterers
because if you look at all the names he was called for being gracious and getting in his corner im not sure what else really can back up i mean they call him numb, they call him unrepentant. I dont get it. He says i hear you. He did exactly what Mitch Mcconnell did. Exactly. They were equally gracious. But he didnt do what george w. Bush did in 2006. He got shellacked or got a thumping. He called it a thumping. You pay a price with the public, with congress and media when you look like youre disconnected from what just happened. Thats always been a narrative with him. I dont think the republicans have gotten that. Thats the biggest problem. His narrative hes been disconnected. It didnt play well yesterday as it would have with somebody else, an observer. . Democrats find themselves in
the same position republicans did two years ago performing an autopsy on what went wrong. The impact of characterized best by democratic senator joe manchin who told okeefe of the the Washington Post the outcome was a real whooping except he put it less delicately. In a sprawling article published early wednesday morning there was back biting on the record harry reid chief of staff called out the Obama Administration said reids camp was beating their heads against the wall. Reids camp spent tens of millions of dollars going after kansas businessmen that nobody knew. This is harry reids loss as much or more than Barack Obamas and sam stein, you may disagree with me but theres i am starting to hear from Democratic Senators who said you know what . He should of let us vote on a few bills instead he and barack
obama killing absolutely everything, except for what they wanted us to vote on. So i had to go back to my state and say i had a 97 voting record with barack obama. It was stifled and democrats didnt like it any more than republicans. Yeah. I mean theres two threads of thought im picking up from democrats. The first is that we didnt stand for anything, right. If you were going to distance yourself from barack obama, if you were going to run away from the Health Care Law, if you were going to punt on immigration executive action then you werent presenting your voters with much to go vote for. Thats one thread of vote. Second thread of thought which is from the hill they couldnt associate themselves with the president because his Approval Ratings were abysmal. They couldnt associate themselves with the health care because rollout was a calamity. When you take those two threads youre left with nothing and that ended up being the problem
for the president and his party that they couldnt agree on any sort of platform. They were light on get out the vote tactics. When you cant get voters to get out and vote for something you wont win. The president was very disappointed in his party and the candidates who fell for the poll numbers which are accurate and real and represent the way people feel but there was a narrative they could have attached themselves to that has successes that are attached to this president despite the republicans. On any of the positive things that are going on in this country due to him starting with the economy, the auto industry, Foreign Policy. Look, he can even do it. He tried three times the other day. He said okay youre a democrat say what you would say. If youre a democrat, if you believe in what the president believes in there are a lot of things. I thought yesterday the president was great talking about obamacare saying okay listen heres the deal. Maybe theres some problems. The problems are fixed. But lets be careful about
fixing it because Health Care Inflation is at its lowest rate in 50 years. Thats going to save us well over 100 billion over an extended time period. I mean there are a lot of good talking points. Many democrats were cowards. Republicans were cowards as well. Both sides were afraid to talk about what they really believed in. It cost the democrats more this year because its their president in the white house. He could have talked about deficit reduction, the Unemployment Rate coming down. New news yesterday on that. Privatesector jobs. What we learned again is that voters are a lot smarter than these campaigns. They dont believe cory gardner will ban condemns in colorado. They dont believe Koch Brothers will take over america. They want jobs. They want things that matter in their lives not other things that harry reid and others beat
the podium about that didnt work. If i was a democrat running i would keep it simple. Heres the deal. When we got into power we were facing the great depression. We were in a Great Recession and facing a great depression. The president saved us. He saved gm. That saved not only gm but saved the car industry, that saved michigan, that saved ohio, that saved the midwest. That saved a lot of us. Unemployment drops to under 6 . Thats peg. The deficit slashed by over a trillion dollars down to 450 billion. Thats pretty good. Health care, look at health care. Health care is growing at its slowest rate. In a generation. I mean, again, if im a democrat if im a democrat thats pretty darn easy to do. Poll numbers say i cant say that. I dont get it. One of the best lines this
week came from Steve Schmidt, and he said it may be hard but theres only one way through that pass, through that mountain pass. You dont have any other choice. And sam, its what i would say months ago. I had a guy i campaigned against back in 94 who wouldnt admit he voted for bill clinton two years earlier. Let me get this straight you dont support his Health Care Plan . No. You dont support his crime bill . No. Did you even vote for him . Well i he wouldnt answer. And i was like please come on give me a break. Exactly. The democrats were cowards and paid for it. I talked to a bunch of people who feel this way. It becomes a selffulfilling prophecy. The president is not popular and his Health Care Law is not popular i cant go out there and champion it. If the health care and president dont have public champions then
they dont gain in popularity. The other point they make democrats spent a generation more than a generation, 50 plus years trying to get universal Health Care Reform and they took it took a lot of effort, a lot of hard work just to get it passed. And what do they do after they pass the law . They completely abandon it. This is what im hearing from democrats. So, yeah, of course these laws arent going to be popular and the president wont be popular because he doesnt have people touting what he does. We have to go to break. When i think about that story you tell when you were running and how you actually told this is so weird the truth. Yes. When it wasnt popular to Senior Citizens. I got elected in 94. Had to cut medicare in 95. Bill clinton said we had to do the same thing in 1993. They are cutting medicare for
tax cuts for the rich. I got hammered the first couple of stops. I got so pissed off. This campaign from now on will be a referendum why i cut medicare. You can ask me about education ill talk about why i had to cut medicare. You can ask me about military ill tell you why we had to cut we went on and on. I went through the entire campaign. There was only one way, it wasnt a cut but by liberal standards it was a cut. By campaigning standards it was a cut. There was one way through that pass. Its all i talked about at the end of the campaign. I had somebody from Public Opinion strategy call me we polled over 100 districts, what are you doing with seniors . I said why . Because you got the highest Approval Rating of any republican, of the 100 people
weve done among Senior Citizens. I said i told them the truth. They responded to the truth. Tell people the truth like you said. They can handle it. Weve got a big show ahead. White House Press Secretary josh earnest will join us. We can ask him about all these things. Actor Jake Gyllenhall is here. Governor Daniel Malloy and cedric the entertainer will be here in our 8 00 hour. But first arod does something he has never done before. Whatnot take drugs for a week . President obama answered a lot of critics including Michael Jordan. Well play you the president s
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