xenophobia in a way that hasn t occurred in a long time since the know nothing party back at the end of the 19th century. folks, the american people are with us. i know it doesn t feel that way. i am telling you, the american people agree with us, we will take a while to overcome. look, you are talking about somebody who is talking about a minority within a minority party within a minority and the vast majority of the american people, here s what they still believe, the american people are decent. they re basically, basically decent. the vice president, of course, weighing whether to jump into the race for the democratic nomination. i want to shift back to the republican debate where we are waiting for that moment. joining me again the executive editor of cnn politics, mark preston. i want to talk about who has the most to lose on this stage tonight. jeb bush, the bush people.
for that, let s bring in the executive editor of cnn politics, mark preston. mark, give us the rule book here. reporter: well, john, this certainly is christmas for political geeks like kate and yourself. here we are, we re just hours away right now. and on the stage, we re going to see 15 presidential candidates broken up into two separate groups. the first group starts at 6:00 p.m. eastern time. and in that group, we will see four candidates. these are candidates who didn t poll high enough to get into the main debate. and then at 8:00, it will be the main debate. 11 candidates. now, if there s a question directed by a moderator or one of our questioners, hugh hewitt, a conservative radio host, or our own dana bash, then that person has one minute to answer the question. if that person were to invoke someone s name on the stage, that person then would get 30 seconds. now, those sound like they re pretty strict rules. however, this is a debate. they re not here to give
but the stakes loom large for the four in this non prime time showdown. they are fighting for survival with the luxury of more time to introduce themselves and sell their message. mark preston is executive editor of cnn politics, joining us live from the reagan presidential library. good morning. good morning. so an article in the washington post begins this way, how in the world do you begin a debate for losers? ouch. that is a big ouch. yeah. and in fact, you know, a lot of people are really down playing what is going to happen before the quotish/unquote main event. and i really do think that is a problem and really not true. if we look at what happened with carly fiorina back in august. she was in the quote unquote happy hour debate. and she did so well that she s now in the main debate. when you look at the likes of
power could undergo a major overhaul. the stakes are high. we don t have to tell you that. higher than the usual number of races that are going on. explain this. you have a lot of things coming together. you have incumbents in trouble and that are leaving. this is very unusual for us. the math makes it. yeah. a ton of elections this year. this is from the election center at cnn.politics. what we have this year in the senate, 37 races instead of the usual 34 because of special elections going on. i have cool graphics for you here. this is how it s shaking out. we are going to start with the senate. the incumbents up for re-election, you have 12 democrats and 11 republicans. over here, open seats in the
together and perhaps act as role models for future young black americans. it was a really interesting interview. here on cnn politics .com. again it does have a political tone to it, but interesting to see if these two gentlemen ever got together. brooke? interesting, michael steele and the president. thank you to both of you. and just let s reiterate what that url is want more information, want to read mark s write-up, cnnpollitics.com, another political update in the next hour. they are hip, they are on twitter, both maybe paul, mark if they are on twitter per se, political ticker is on twitter and you can go to at political ticker for that. meantime, to chillily, the rescue hold that could free 33 trapped miners is now only about 300 feet away from these men. so time line-wise, how soon can we expect them to be pulled out? how long would that take? what do they have to go through and what about those families waiting you and waiting for weeks for good news? that s next. [ i isti