Talk politics. Your first appearance was in 1984 or 1985 . We are glad to have you back. I want to focus on the senate. Ichael bennett said winning the house is important but winning the senate is imperative. What has to happen . Last year, there was more democratic exposure. This year, it is the other way around. Uphink democrats can pick one or two seats. Up one they could pick or two just having a good night. But to have a net gain of three , democrats have good chances in arizona and colorado and maine. Democrats have a vulnerable incumbent in alabama. They would need a way to get past that point to get over to a tom tillerson or joni ernst in iowa or john cornyn in texas. They would need a way of getting into that area. You had away in 2018. The democrat from michigan is listed as someone who might be vulnerable. Guest that is one we are watching. John james is a good candidate. Disliked. Not he is not welldefined in the state. That is what we are keeping an eye on. Host democrats elect a democratic governor in kentucky, the son of the former governor. People say this means Mitch Mcconnell is vulnerable. Guest kentucky is still a pretty red state. Every republican on the ballot won except governor bevins. He was something of a prickly person. There are things you could interpret out of kentucky where , butrats had a good vote that was a lot about bevans. About readingle too much into the democratic win in louisiana were john bel was unusually strong for a democrat. I would look at the Virginia Legislature and county elections in pennsylvania that suggested something was going on. Always extenuating circumstances. John bel edwards is prolife, pro n. R. A. , so he is a different kind of democrat. Guest he is a little bit of a unicorn. Point, army ranger, prolife, progun, conservative, white, democrat. There is still a little bit of a hangover where bobby jindal was the republican governor for eight years and the state was not in good shape when he left. They do not really have their atwo in louisiana. , the fewerlook messages you want to take out of these cases. Host the thanksgiving meal will include discussions over impeachment and politics. I want to share what he wrote recently. Why dont democrats drop impeachment and just censure trump . It will be a way to publicly censure the president with regard to ukraine. The house could easily pass a censure resolution and might even do so with a bipartisan majority. Right now, House Republicans feel no pressure to vote for impeachment. Agree trumps conduct is not impeachable. By censoring, democrats could easily turn the political calculus against the g. O. P. Will they do it . Probably not. Impeachment will be nothing more than an active censure anyway, why not censure trump and pressure some republicans to vote against the president and leave the decision whether to remove trump from office where it belongs, in the hands of the american people. Guest i think theres a lot of truth in that. You could have said the same thing to republicans with president clinton. I am not a lawyer. It is not my job to find whether this president did anything illegal or not tra. I look at things politically. I think it is problematic whenever a party tries to remove a president without broad support. You are looking at 48 in favor , 45 peaching or removing opposed. That is not broad public support. That is what happens when you have redistricting with heavily democratic and republican districts. They become ideological silos. Republicans had to deal with that in the 1990s against clinton. Democrats have it now against trump. Host if you could speculate today, what do you think Speaker Pelosi will proceed with based on what you said a moment ago . Guest i think Speaker Pelosi has long had a dim view of impeachment. She has said there is a 0 chance of conviction, so why do this and jeopardize some of her freshmen . My guess is she still thinks it is a bad idea. But when the ukraine stories started coming out, there was no stopping congress. At that point, i think she had to go along with them. I dont think she is enthusiastic about this. There is a 0 chance of conviction. The election is only a year away. There is not broad support for this. There are a lot of reasons why. The suggestion of censure would make a lot of sense, but that is not what democrats are going to do. Host six senators are running for president. They would have to be in Senate Chambers for a trial that could last five weeks. It is hard to see how this would be good for eddie money anybody in the senate. They have a lot of suburban voters where the president is not terribly popular. I think you could make a case the democrats have more to lose in the house from impeachment but republicans have more to lose in the senate in terms of where they have vulnerable members. There are 30 or 31 House Democrats in districts donald trump won. Guest 31. There are three republicans in districts Hillary Clinton carried. They picked up a lot of republican seats outside of atlanta, dallas, houston, oklahoma city, richmond. That is where democrats picked up seats last year. They have to be careful. These are not liberal places. Democrats have to be very careful there. Host you are listening on cspan radio. His programs carried live every sunday morning on sirius xm, the Bbc Parliament channel. Bob is next from tennessee. Good morning. Caller yes. Getting back to how we allow our president s to perform foreign policy, when barack obama was president , he did all that money to iran. They asked him after he gave the think that do you money would be used to fight against our soldiers . Said i believe some of it would be used. If that is not treason because you have some technicality where it makes it right . That is why we vote for donald j. Trump. Guest im not here to debate you. Do you know where the money came from . That was not taxpayer money. That was iranian money that had been in reserve here. We had frozen their money. Part of the Iran Nuclear Deal was freeing up their money that we had frozen here. Caller you gave it to them to kill our soldiers he give it to them to kill our soldiers guest it appeared to be working for a while. Now, we got rid of the deal and it is not working. You are looking at this from a very onesided view. On a lot of things, there are two sides. Host you look at the democratic polling with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and joe biden losing support. Guest you can look it every single one of the major Democratic Candidates and make a good case why that person cant win the nomination. Biden, he is too old. He shoots himself in the foot. Pete buttigieg, he is too young. He is the mayor of a small city. Amy klobuchar is not charismatic. Democrats are not looking for a billionaire like Michael Bloomberg. One of these sets of objections is going to be less compelling than the other because one of these people will get the democratic nomination. We could make a good case against every single one. That is what is so perplexing about where we are now. Host has the biden brand been damaged . Guest Vice President biden has more experience than the rest of the field combined and goodwill from being president obamas wing man. 77 years old. He is not as quick as he used to be. He does tend to go on longer than he should, as i do as well. There are drawbacks. I think it was the electability holding it together. While i dont think Vice President biden did anything , it is sort ofe guilt by association. Waiting one more straw down Vice President biden and is thatthe electability he was seen as ideologically electable. The case against his ghertability is building hir and making the race more open. Host the first add the Biden Campaign put out is he is the most electable. Isnt that a danger because then they can go after you and say you are no longer the leader . Have tested my aid, by the way, i am the most electable. I understand expense is not as valued as it used to be because people hate government so much that they have devalued expertise and experience. Audience, youic could make a case experience more than itnow might normally. We will go to henry on the independent line from new york. Good morning. Caller i look at this campaign inconsistencyof and some consistency. Consistency from the Republican Party because they support the president 100 . , weDemocratic Candidates thejust beginning to see issues they want to campaign on. The president has said things not wantexicans, did to do the muslim ban, said derogatory things about women,. Is comments on charlottesville and on twitter all the time. I think it is interesting senator mcconnell would not say anything. I think it is really interesting that despite all of this that nobody in the senate, republican members of the senate, have not stepped back and said the white house is one thing. Us in the senate have to take a step back from this because this is toxic hader from the president of the United States who is not only the buterinchief also also supposed to be a statesman. Host your point . Caller i think it is time for an ready to do what i said. Think about what the president has done and listen to the candidates. If you do go to a Campaign Rally and get the chance to ask questions, ask them questions about that. Host henry, thank you for the call. Guest there is a long history of members of congress of one party not being particularly critical of the president of their party. It was the same with democrats under president obama and president clinton. That comes with the territory. Little tolerance right now within the Republican Party for their elected officials criticizing President Trump. You saw what happened to senator bob corker and senator blake. They got pushed to the point where they could not run for reelection. Mark sanford president criticized the president and lost his primary. Raised the possibility of supporting an inquiry and had to announce his retirement the next day. There is not a lot of tolerance forhe Republican Party members being critical of the president. It is what it is. What do you want them to do . The last edition of profiles encourage has already gone to the printer. Host our viewers are showing their love for charlie cook. We approve that message. This is from the new york times. Mistakes from 2016 could play out in 2020. You are working with the Kaiser Foundation in key battleground states. Bringing out the notebook. Guest i brought the whole thing right here. The Kaiser Family foundation is nonpartisan. They generally focus on health care. We did a project with them where we did polling in four key battleground states, the three that effectively elected President Trump as well as the larger state that was the closest for Hillary Clinton, minnesota, to look at the issues that drive these voters and who are the swing voters. It is a fascinating study. It is all public domain. G or the cookr political report. It was fascinating data. Host what was the Biggest Issue . Anger and frustration with Hillary Clinton . Trade and the economy . Flipdrove these voters to and vote for republicans . A total of 77,000 votes in those three states elected donald trump. Guest i dont think it was any one thing. With secretary clinton, you had 25 years of accumulated baggage. It wasmetoo came along, like president clinton had a teflon coating. Things did not stick to him much. For secretary clinton, it was more like she had velcro and stuff stuck to her. Baggage intoore the race. Mistakes. My guess is the word deplorable cost her a halfmillion votes. I think the campaign did make mistakes along the way. When you have 137 Million People voting and it comes down to fewer than 78,000 in three to. 0 that works out six. 06 . You can find a million things that would have made a difference in a race that close. Gone remarkable we had from 1888 to 2000 without having the electrical Electoral College go one way and the popular vote go the other. Then we have had it happened twice. Believes a guy democrat could win the National Popular vote by his many as 5 million votes, three or four percentage points, i could still lose the Electoral College because the republican vote is more efficiently allocated around the country. Democrats waste a lot of votes in california and illinois. I think the odds are pretty good President Trump will lose the popular vote, but the Electoral College is what matters. We will be watching those. I wont say one thing in a race that close. It was probably a dozen things. Host let me put a hypothetical on the table. Pete buttigieg wins the iowa caucuses. Vice President Biden wins in south carolina. Where would that put the democratic race in late february . Guest we can see this race go really deep in a process without anyone getting anywhere close to a majority of the delegates. Host might there be a contested convention . Guest you will never hear me say brokered convention because there are no brokers in american politics anymore. Contested, that could happen because you could see and you could look at the father left and say one sanders warr en sanders. Anyone who thinks Bernie Sanders and his supporters will go away quickly and quietly, they are really wrong. And bernie has a decent amount of money. It will take Elizabeth Warren a while to consolidate that side. Booker so far not catching on. Pete buttigieg and amy klobuchar. Each one could be winning just enough. I dont think i will live to see a convention go to 100 ballots like they have in history. But this one could get interesting. Remember, super delegates did not kick in until the second ballot. Host we are the only network that will carry gaveltogavel coverage of the convention. That to your phone calls back to your phone calls, from maryland, you are next. Are you with us . Caller good morning. Comments by some mr. Cook. I want to ask about accountability because it seems there is a watering down of what is happening and an attempt to make a comparison to democrats that covered for obama or even president clinton when he was impeached. They are not the same issues. Whenever there was talk about impeachment with bill clinton, it was over something totally different. With this president , you are talking about being a puppet to russia. I want to make sure that is understood. Sure. Not quite caller the kind of explain why he things there is a similarity between what this president is doing and what president s of the past have done on the democratic side and how they were held accountable or not held accountable by folks in congress of the same party. Host thanks for the question. Guest to anybody that comes from a very ideological bent, anybody trying to be in the middle will sound water down. I accept that. What President Trump did were allegedly did and what president clinton did were allegedly did, im not saying theyre the same thing. Im talking about trying to impeach or remove without strong public support. If you dont have more people wanting to impeach and remove, so that when a party tries to do it without broad public support, they are treading on thin political ice. That is all i am saying. Republicans did not have great public support then. Democrats do not have strong public support here. Take a look at the disapproval levels for President Trump, and then look at support for impeach and remove. There is generally about a four to eightpoint gap between disapproval and support for impeachment and removal. There are people who do not like but they dont support impeach and remove a year from the election when the campaign is underway. That is sort of the critical group. It got a little bigger for a while and it has frozen. The president s Approval Rating right now is not any lower than it was when the ukraine story broke. Not sure how much you watched, but in your mind, did the hearings moved the needle . Guest i have not watched 10 consecutive seconds of the hearing. Life is too short. It has not changed a thing. The thing is, normal people dont watch these types of hearings. Normal people meaning registered voters who are not addicted to politics. You have to have an addiction to be glued to the tv set for these things. No, i dont think it has changed. It is like the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. They make the blues bluer and the reds redder. It just pushes partisans more into their corners. They were already pretty much in those corners anyway, so that is what has happened. We are becoming partisan and ideological silos with incredible intensity. Host we have all 31 hours on our websites and you can watch it anytime you want. The hearings are available at cspan. Org. We also have highlights of some of the key moments during two weeks of testimony. Guest this is charlies last appearance on cspan. Host not at all. We have football on thanksgiving, you can watch the hearings. Lets go to mike in houston, texas on the republican line. Caller good morning. Mr. Cook, hi. I will be supporting donald trump next year and im from ohio originally. You mentioned that people out there hate government and hate politicians, i would disagree entirely. I think what we fear is tyranny. We fear a government taking over our health care which is a very personal activity, a personal life experience, and requiring