new election wins, republicans are about to hold another presidential debate without their front-runner. both parties studying the results and assessing their 2024 strategies as donald trump's gop rivals are getting ready to take the stage. president biden is touting his party's new wins as defeats for trump and maga republicans. democrats' political hopes rising amid fresh evidence their defensive abortion rights is a winning issue even as the president's bleak poll numbers are raising some serious red flags. and the state of new york just rested its case in the civil fraud trial against donald trump and his family business. this after ivanka trump's testimony and her attempt to down play her involvement in the trump organization. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." tonight, donald trump is deflecting blame for new republican election losses as he's set to skip another gop presidential debate tonight. we're tracking the fallout for republicans and the bolstered hopes for democrats right now with the first contest of 2024 just around the corner. jeff is following it all for us. he's in miami. the site of tonight's gop debate. jeff, the candidates are coming into this debate with a political environment very different from just 24 hours ago. >> wolf, it is a very different view in a much more challenging view for the republican party. that is why i am told that to a person, the candidates will argue on stage tonight that it is indeed time to have a new face of the republican party. a new leader of the future of the party. that argument of course though is complicated not by the rivals on stage, but by the one who is not on stage. that of course is former president trump. he'll be holding a competing rally just miles way from here in highleah, florida. he has a commanding lead in this race. that, however, will not change the dynamic. for the third debate, it is a much different atmosphere. a much different time and tone. the dynamics going into this include five candidates on stage. much different than the eight on stage at the first debate and the seven at the second. that will give all of the candidates more time to make their pitches and their claims and then go after their rivals. nikki haley comes into this debate riding a wave of momentum. also an argument which she has been making from the beginning that she says republicans as a party must stop losing the popular vote. that they have lost in the last seven of the eight presidential elections. so she is casting herself as a new leader for this time. she is on a collision course with florida governor desantis. there's no question those who, they've been going after each other for weeks. we're going to see it up close center stage. but wolf, because of the outcome of the elections last night, no doubt, abortion is front and center in this debate tonight. nikki haley has been talking about trying to find a consensus on the complicated and very personal issue of abortion. that's putting her at odds with some of her rivals including desantis who has signed a six-week abortion ban here in florida. the other rivals have different views. look for that to be front and center as well as many other issues but there is no doubt. time is running out for these candidates to make their own claim to be the leading alternative to trump all the while he of course will just be down the road. >> jeff, thank you very much. there's a lot to discuss with our political experts and jon king, let me start with you. democrats had a good night last night in virginia, ohio, and kentucky but there are these polls coming out that are pretty bad for the president of the united states. so what's going on? >> it's a great debate within the democratic party. the white house would tell you governor beshear won. that when joe biden is on the ballot, those issues will play out the same way. that's the white house argument. and that joe biden has structural problems for an imcouple bent. he's down with carter. trump. two presidents that ended up being one-term presidents. if it was a referendum on biden tomorrow, he would lose. what they hope to do is number one, they think the abortion issue is proven winner for them. the question is is it a winner in wisconsin, pennsylvania, places with democratic governors where abortion rights are under immediate threat. the president has a problem with his coalition. they need to fix it. the white house says they have time. you can look to yesterday and say, okay, if you have time, if you focus, maybe you can pull this off. if they think because of yesterday they don't have a problem, then they have a problem. >> kate, how do you see this dilemma facing the democrats? the democratic brand seems to be okay. the president of the united states brand not necessarily that good. >> i don't know that it's a dilemma. i think jon's point is right. they have time. and also what's going to happen here is what you're going to see is joe biden running against an opponent. presumably, it's going to be donald trump. there's no indication at this moment despite what may happen tonight that it's going to be trump. when he's running against an opponent he's going to have sharp contrasts to draw. on abortion. we saw in a poll last night, people believe joe biden is more trust worthy and honest. there will be a real character component there. you have to remember trump has sort of weirdly been in the background here to the extent he's been front and center, it's been in the context of these trials. not in the context of him making his kind of most bombastic and inciting shall we say political statements. so i think as trump comes to the forefront, the biden campaign has an enormous opportunity to draw that contrast and to build on the success of last night, where we saw these issues are popular and they turn people out to vote for democrats. >> interesting. kristen, you predicted what happened last night a few days ago. so you had a sense of what was about to happen and you were right. >> if you turned on the tv here in washington, d.c. in an expensive media market, you were seeing ad after ad after ad going after state legislative candidates in virginia around abortion and what they call maga extremism. so just seeing that alone in addition to the polling and chitchat i've had with other strategists, it was not surprising to see this turnout. frankly, i think the youngkin team may have gotten out over and set expectations too high. republicans in virginia last night did better than perhaps trump did in 2020. it wasn't enough to hang on to the legislature. right now, the biggest benefit trump is getting is the fact that joe biden continues to poll so low. it has really undercut republicans' ability to say we have a big problem, we need to turn the page. right now, there's still too much finger pointing about what happened last night, what is going to happen next fall for them to clear the decks and set a new strategy. >> daniel, i want to play a clip for you. this is republican senator steve dans of montana. he chairs the republican campaign committee. he says 2024 will be very different than what happened last night. listen to this. >> the democrats will have to defend joe biden, his policies, for the disaster at the southern border, the economy, geopolitically. big difference between state races and federal races. these are state issues they were battling. it would be a very different set of issues in '24 as we look at the united states senate. >> what do you make of that? >> he sure hopes so after last night but at the same time, yeah, it's true in the sense that a different, larger voting electorate will be activated and republicans will look to contrast themselves in some way with their opponents while also tieing their opponents to this incumbent white house here. but at the same time, it's pretty clear that most of the republicans who come out of these primaries are very conservative, do sort of fit the bill of a maga extremist in some way and that democrats are very eager to hammer them and ask again and again, where are you on abortion, a 15-week ban, where are you on something even earlier than that. and you know, it's still a question on every republicans' mind but at the same time, these poll numbers for joe biden are not ideal and that is what republicans are betting on in the races going forward. >> a year to go so there's plenty of time for biden and the democrats to get their act together. i want to play a clip because it's clear now that the biden campaign is going to try to make abortion rights for women a key issue going forward given the success that this issue has had for democrats in several elections since roe v. wade. i want to play a clip. this is the vice president earlier today. >> ir think voters have been clear. regardless of whether they're in a so-called red or blue state, that one does not have to abandon their faith or believes to agree that the government shouldn't be telling a woman what to do with her body, so it was a good night. the president and i have a lot of work to do to earn our re-election, but i'm confident we are going to win. >> is this issue, abortion rights for women, important enough politically for the president to get his numbers back up? >> a lot of people thought it would not work again last night after it did after dobbs and it did. anyone who says it won't work projecting forward. calm down and take the elections as they come. it has worked for the democrats in every election so far since dobbs. does that carry over to a year from now? i don't know. they're going to stick with it until proven otherwise. just that though, i think the most important thing with that, seeing the vice president of the united states doing something she never does. walking out to the cameras at the white house. black voters want to see her. republicans say she's a liability. they're going to run against her. the only way to counter that is to prove you're not a liability. seeing her outside the white house is interesting. black voters, the president has an enthusiasm problem. among his black base, they would like to see the president out in america. >> younger voters, too. there's a problem he is. every stand by. we have a lot more to discuss. we're going to dig deeper into the warning signs for president biden despite those big wins for democrats last night and later, what ivanka trump said under oath about the fraud allegations about her father and the family's business. the defense thousnow getting reo present its case. stand by. we're back with our political experts. despite the dismal poll numbers, you're the expert, jon king. his numbers aren't very good but he's really gone down in important categories. with independents, black voters, young voters. they're now worse than they were in 2020. >> and they're key pieces of the democratic coalition. has more pieces to it if you will. just go into loudon county, virginia. it's 53% white. so president biden won it hugely last time. a lot of asian voters now. asian of every persuasion. some are open to trump or republican messages on small business, lower taxes and the crime issue is playing in the suburb. the latino vote has been drifting. back men have been drifting away. the complication for the president, he doesn't just have one problem to fix. again, he has a year to do it and doesn't have another opponent right now, but the de depth of it from traveling, this is my tenth presidential election. i remember george h.w. bush, 90% after the first gulf war. had a mild recession. the american people just didn't believe he was the guy they wanted to fix the economy. if people want that threshold opinion, it's hard to get them to change their mind. right now, the country's thinking maybe we should have something new. change the psychology that we want something new. >> young, kate, biden can win the election with this drop in voters among young voters, minorities? he needs them for that democratic coalition. >> no question but look at how people voted yesterday. people literally went to the polls yesterday and voted for democratic candidates who were touting biden positions. i don't dispute there are element of the poll that are concerning and if they track with the average of polls, then as a campaign, the biden campaign has to take it seriously. i know they do. but to look at one poll a year out and compare it to voters who actually went to the polls 24 hours ago and overwhelmingly embraced the democratic agenda, i don't think, i think the president has a very clear pathway here. he's got to do the work but it is clear that those issues motivate voters and again, i would go back to we have not even begun the true head to head contest between the president and presumably donald trump, who also in that poll, has enormous vulnerability and has enormously high unfavorable ratings. so there's plenty of room for biden to define himself. but let's look at what happened yesterday when voters embraced this agenda. >> what do you make of this? >> so i think the problem is less that there are going to be a ton of young voters voting for donald trump and more that there will be a lot of young voters who either say i cannot believe these are the choices in front of me and stay home. or they choose to vote for a third party candidate. i'm normally pretty skeptical of the impact of third party candidates because we're so polarized, people ultimately will fall into one camp or the other, but there have been poll after poll showing whether it's robert f. kennedy junior, a variety of whole constellation options that garner about one in four voters. in young voters, that's particularly high. so this dissatisfaction, i don't think we're likely to see the trump generation as generation z, but i do think younger voters are frustrated with the options they have available to them and they sit out the election, that is devastating for democrats. >> how concerned should the biden white house and campaign be about the drop in support for biden among these groups? >> it's not ideal especially because they have gotten this bidenomics the same way the obama administration got obama care going. elections are about contrast and this white house does not have a clear contrast and the other thing is biden has been counted out before. this is not his first presidential campaign and look, i saw kate and her team after they won south carolina and they were buoyant. there were more than a few of kate's deputies telling me i told you so. why did you doubt us? they knew. we've got a whole year to go. >> the president usually has a lot of advantages going into a re-election campaign. we shall see. guys, thank you very much. watch cnn's post debate analysis with anderson cooper and dana bash tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern. coming up, ivanka trump testifies in new york's civil fraud trial against her father. what she revealed on the stand under oath and what comes next after the state rested its case. we'll be right back. the power goes out and we still have wifi to do our homework. and that's a good thing? 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>> she was on the stand all day here today and she was questioned about her involvement in two specific loans that the trump organization was involved in. a loan for the doral golf course in florida and the old post office building in washington, d.c. she testified that she had set up a relationship with deutsche bank through one of these bankers and she said she was involved in the loans at a high level but she said she didn't recall much of that including a lot of detail about what was required under the personal guarantee her father agreed to in order to get these loans. they focused on the old post office building and pulled up an e vail that indicated the gsa which was involved in this deal, that they had identified trump's financial statements had not complied with all accounting rules. she was asked if that came up during a meeting she attended with her father. she said she didn't recall the financial statements coming up in that meeting, distancing herself from it. the key allegation in this case is that loans were decided based on these allegedly fraudulent financial statements. she said she didn't remember that coming up and that the discussions then were about her vision for the project. now she was also asked about a penthouse apartment she has here in new york on park avenue. she has an option to buy that apartment for $8.5 million on trump's financial statements for that same year, it was listed at two and a half times that amount. more than $20 million. ivanka trump was asked about that. she said she didn't know what went into the statements. she didn't prepare them, approve them. so distancing herself like her brothers did when they testified last week. after court today, the new york attorney general spoke about the testimony. here's what she said. >> at the end of the day, this case is about fraudulent statements of financial condition. that she benefitted from. she was enriched and clearly, you cannot distance yourself from that fact. the documents do not lie. the numbers do not lie. >> now, the new york attorney general's office rested their case today in the sixth week of this trial. trump's team will begin their defense on monday. >> thank you. i want to bring in our legal and political experts for some serious analysis right now. and let me start, norm, with you. did ivanka trump's testimony help or hurt her dad? >> her testimony hurt her father. she threw him under the bus. she did not defend these financial statements. she said she didn't prepare them. she didn't review them and approve them. so if he was looking to her for help, he didn't get it. a lot of i don't knows and i don't remembers to protect herself then finally, woclf, there was one perry mason moment because this proceeding has been about dishonesty and new york confronted ivanka with a personal guarantee. her father was supposed to make a personal guarantee. they confronted her with evidence that the father turned around and demanded that his kids guarantee him for the guarantee. so it was neither personal nor guarantee. it was like when he said intent doesn't mean we will do it. it was a perry mason moment. >> interesting. some of our younger viewers might not know perry mason moment, but that's another matter. how significant was it to see ivanka take the stand and testify? >> i think it's always significant when you know, one of the trump children take the stand. certainly she did not want to be here today. we know that. she did everything she could. but to norm's point about whether you know, this was legally significant as he laid out, i would also say it was personally significant. because in t