else. i thought one of the most interesting comments came from david axelrod who was an adviser to president obama and he said that it takes a lot of work to lose to donald trump and, you know, if you look at the campaign, not going to wisconsin, not going to michigan, not reaching out to those voters, that s why she lost and had nothing to do with comey. paul: he never made it to milwaukee. she lost narrowly in wisconsin. dan, wikileaks, the russian hacking stuff really didn t add that much to the campaign basically all we found out that democratic operatives didn t like bernie sanders, we knew that and some to have clinton operatives didn t like traditional catholics, there wasn t much else that really influenced the campaign? yeah, once again one may dispute her assertion that her problems began on october 28th. i think it s generally seen and
a game-changer because we got increases in defense spending without corresponding increases elsewhere. it s a kick the can kind of thing and you know that tweet that you mentioned by president trump shutdown, he was right in the first part, the reason he had this is the 60 votes in the senate, if we get more republicans in the senate or we take another look at this. paul: they did get, to bill s point, the republicans did break the obama pattern of say if you want increase of 1 dollar in defense, you have to have increase of 1 dollar in other domestic spending. instead you got a bigger increase in defense and a bigger increase in homeland security and smaller increases in domestic spending. here is the issue. this isn t draining the swamp. this is big change in washington, this is basically status quo government. well, it s on the defense side it s the old guns and butter debate that you always have and currently have between republicans and democrats.
quite good at giving speeches and selling ideas to the country whereas president obama president trump not so good at at that and really hasn t done very much other than the occasional tweet to sell the details of this plan and that s one of the reasons, i think, the plan right now isn t isn t all that popular in the polls. it s actually health care is not his forte. going back to primary debates, he was ridiculed sometimes at not having a strong grasp of it and so you have seen mike pence give some very good speeches on the policy questions and what they want to have done, tom price who is running the health and human services department knows this inside and out. but the chief spokesman, you re right, has not been much of a force for this. that has not provided a lot of direction for the party. paul: all right, move to the senate, joe, the same media folks that said this could never pass the house now say can never pass the senate. what are the prospects?
do something when you have that sort of full government control and it looked like they were on the brink of not being able to do that. i have to agree with the point that president trump just made, it s about i think it s a down payment hopefully on party unity as opposed to the basically fracturing and chaos that we have experienced over at least at least since about 2010. and you have to understand, a lot of the new members of congress haven t been there for that long. they have spent their entire careers in opposition. paul: right. fighting obama. have raised money, given hundreds of speeches all about opposition and i think this experience finally made clear to them that if they only do that, they will fail. you could see them coming around during this compromise over the house bill to the point where they said, if we don t figure out a way to work together, we will be seen as failures. paul: kim, what role did donald trump play in making this happening in.
he played a smart role. he layed out some principals about what they we wanted to see in a health care bill and they let the house get on with it, but stepped in whenever was necessary to host a meeting, lobby the right people n. the last few days he was on the phone with individual congressmen, exerting pressure and in general making clear that he was still open to yet more deals, final compromises, remember, at the very end what got the final votes was an agreement with michigan congressman fred upton for $8 billion to help people with preexisting conditions and so he was very much about making deals. paul: kim, i want to you re talking about an inside game, right? you re talking to members, working one-on-one, getting them in for small groups. that s something that president obama rarely did. president obama hated that kind of personal engagement politics. this is what trump is really good at. on the other hand, obama was