if people are saying that the economy is going well, jobs are improving, i think that is very helpful to the republicans. >> katherine, that's one of the mysteries of this presidency. oddities at least. if you look at the public's assessment of the economy, you'd normally expect the president and his party to be faring better in polling. >> these are not normal times, right? there's the trump factor. trump is different from every other president. trump has been surrounded by scandal after scandal after scandal. by crazy tweets. by all sorts of other distractions that would maybe make the economy not the most salient factor in how people judge how well the country is doing and how well they assess the presidency. >> beth, something i picked up on talking to republicans, we talk about motivation, who's going to turn up and vote. we see the democratic base very motivated. republicans are telling me their folks are motivated by trump. if you don't have his name on the ballot, the party label's not doing it for them. >> you could make that argument given what we saw happen in alabama and virginia and the