[inaudible conversations] this event at the Washington Center is about to get underway. All right. Friends, we are reconvening, we have a speaker, its time to get going. Before i introduce our speaker, just a quick reminder, we are going to be on television. When you have a question please go up to the q a mike and say her name, your school and keep your question concise. Thank you. So, it is my distinct pleasure to get to introduce philip rides. He was advisor to Hillary Clinton, secretary of state in 2009. He was promoted to Deputy Assistant secretary of state for strategic communication. He has worked for a number of political campaigns and holds a bachelor of arts degree in Political Science from columbia university, a school in general studies. You can, here we have an example of what you can do with the Political Science bachelors degree. Going to hand over the microphone to him and not take any more of his time when im looking forward to a great presentation. [applause] of mourning. Thank you for having me. Thank you julia and ann and kevin. I didnt know this was on tv anymore than you did. So hello. I just want to say a few things up front quickly, and then get right to hearing from you guys. If theres anything you wanted to add we can take a couple minutes. I want to give you some context of who you are hearing from. I want to give you a few warnings. Up until 8 00 p. M. On Election Night last november 8, i could not fathom the idea of Hillary Clinton not being president of the United States. I was just wrong as anyone. Now come 801s things started, in hindsight, making a little bit of sense. Im going to try to speak from that perspective of having complete 2020 hindsight. To is im going to reference, just by habit, history and pulling and the problem with doing that at this day and age is that people can say well the polling was wrong. Polling was right, pulling was wrong, but i think at this point to just not have any conversation about pulling or seeing now, or more importantly history, yes history was upended last year and it was upended in 2008. It will be upended, doesnt mean that has no bearing. Part of that is i will probably be a little annoying and do the can you imagine if this happened when Hillary Clinton was president or can you imagine if this happened when president obama was president , and i know that and i try to do a lesson must i think is important because to me the greatest threat right now is the normalization of whats happening. There is a term that i read, i dont know who to credit it too. Malignant normalcy. That is a big part of whats happening and that is the scourge that i think needs to be stopped. Obviously the greatest perpetrator of that, in my mind, is donald trump. I will end by saying i think there is no more important thing to do right now then to get donald trump out of office as fast as possible. Thats where im coming from. Please dont hesitate to challenge me, if i dont like it ill snap back at you or something. [laughter] and most importantly, im going to be negative about things when its negative but dont leave your dissuaded or demoralized personally i have worked for Hillary Clinton since july 2002 so its 15 and a half years and she is one of the most beloved, less beloved polarizing people in america. I think people automatically assume that because i work for her and im a democrat that my views are lefty, liberal, and are often not. The point im trying to make is that ive actually never felt as much of a democrat or as much as american since last november and a lot of what i believe has to happen is coming from that perspective of the damage thats being done to our country, not just whats evident in the short term, but was probably going to last for decades. So with that uplifting opening, kevin did you, or should i just open it up. If youd like to start with the comment or question can say who you are and where youre from. Someone said theres harvard extension students here. I did a couple semesters there in my long track to getting my degree. Hello. Im andy goodbar from and jc you located in jersey city new jersey my question is, looking back on the 2016 election, do you think Hillary Clinton did an adequate job at properly campaigning herself and getting herself out to the large majority of americans because there was a lot of criticism on how she faltered or didnt campaign herself enough. The question. I assumed thats often asked in the form of not going to wisconsin to go to blues th the blue states she didnt win. I understand why people say that, but i think a couple things. When people asked me about wisconsin, wisconsin is a package with wisconsin and pennsylvania and while everyone obsesses about wisconsin, if only had she had gone to wisconsin, i hate to say it, not to talk down to the chief state or whatever theyre called, but she lost by more than the margin of wisconsin. Thats not an excuse, but the reason i say to look at it as a three some is you cant make that argument about pennsylvania. The lady practically moved to pennsylvania. No one didnt take pennsylvania seriously, including the other arms of the Democratic Party so if you remember, if you look back to april, may, maybe a little later of 2016, you had priorities usa, they were spending a great deal and working toward electing a democrat, they immediately identified pennsylvania as a key state, a must win. They poured tens of millions of dollars in. Campaign word in tens of millions of dollars. The campaign pulled regularly, outside groups pulled regularly, pennsylvania papers and academic institutions pulled regularly so its hard, i understand the wisconsin. And i dont know, maybe if she had spent as much time in wisconsin and she did pennsylvania she wouldve one wisconsin. Id still be standing here is not having anything to do today because donald trump would be president. I understand the point, but one thing, i know that we will hopefully get to innocently asked me about conspiracy theories, but one of the most ridiculous things is painting Hillary Clinton as anything other than energetic. It is hard keeping up with her and she campaigned her tail off. She won in places like nevada that were not give me his. In hindsight if you dont solve pennsylvania, you dont solve the whole thing. Thank you very much. My name is rachel and im with the harvard extension school. Speaking from you now 2020 hindsight, what would you have done differently in campaigning. Can i give you one piece of advice, dont forget they give four credits. Course and when you transfer some or else make sure they give you four. I dont plan on transferring. I think you have to break it down for the larger strategic question of going back to 2015 when she decided to run and what that would look like and tactical decisions in 2016. This third bucket of external factors. In no particular order, if theres something i could do differently, i would have waited outside jim comays car on jul july 5 before his Infamous Press conference and tackled him until someone was able to say this is very inappropriate which are about to do. Strategically, i dont know. In hindsight there were some very big problems that would have affected any democrat. Im also going to be, let me just say it up front, i dont think any democrat would have beaten donald trump aside from president obama. And i think that because, all come back to that but because if you look at the polling, i think one out of every five voters came out is that they voted for donald trump. They voted for barack obama in 2012 and they continue to approve of the job barack obama was doing last year. Thats pretty interesting. I think its been hard for people to grasp that, but the reason that that is important is, if you had replaced Hillary Clinton with joe biden , joe biden, whom i love and if he runs, best of luck not beating donald trump out, metaphoricall metaphorically. He would have been bogged down by obamacare he wouldve been bogged down by trade, he would have been bogged down by being in washington for decades and those things alone were probably dispositive, and i think the other point is everyone assumes when they say x would have one, they assume ask would have gotten what Hillary Clinton got and added some and i think thats a really silly way to look at it. Other people would not have gotten what she got, either with specific demographics or subgroups silver strategic question is pretty hard to answer. It was just such lunacy. I think if anyone had said if i had a time capsule and went back and met with her Senior Campaign team in her, if we wouldve said youre going to face donald trump. He will be accused of Sexual Assault and harassment and no one cares. He will be showing that he went back to him bankrupt and no one cares. She would be left out of the room. Obviously what she did, she became the first woman candidate on the Major Political party. On the technical side we had some errors and she writes about those in her book which is grea great. Despite what people say we want her to go away although ive never ever seen anyone say that or have the guts to say that in their own voice. She is not going anywhere. People have wanted her voice to leave for decades and thankfully she never listen to them whether i was running for senate in new york, becoming secretary of state in 2009 or running in 2016. She writes that calling a basket of trump voters the parable was not the greatest idea, although i think she was plenty accurate at the time and especially in hindsight. There were comments she made about coworkers that were taken differently than she meant and, when you lose by 70000 votes, you can sit here and list ten things that made the difference. If i could snap my fingers it would be july 5 when james comey went to the podium like this and told the world that she was innocent or he was not pursuing anything, that no reasonable prosecutor would, but added 15 minutes of commentary that makes you think she was al capone. It was inappropriate and out of line, people who hate Hillary Clinton have said that. Ostensibly he was fired by donald trump because of that. Obviously thats not very believable, but we had to live with that and odyssey what he did in october the double down on that. It probably answered some other questions, so thank you. Im not used to having an hour. Its like i go on fox or msnbc and you have two minutes. Hello. Im abby chase from connecticut and you are obviously tasked with portraying donald trump in the mark debate with hillary to practice for the televised debate and in what ways have you seen the change between the candidate donald trump and the president donald trump, and what are the implications of any changes youve seen, if any. I see none. I think the only changes have been the effect. I did play donald trump, there were three general election debates between the candidates and its a big deal. Its one of the few times you see the candidates together. Secretary clinton took them very seriously and someone said i had been training my whole life to be donald trump and i just didnt know what. It was a real window into things. First and foremost it is remarkable to go through life never suffering consequences, never. Never once. Goes out of business declares bankruptcy, more people come along and lend him or no organization has the cleared more bankruptcy more office than trump casinos. He offends literally every group. Theres not a demographic in this room who was offended by donald trump. Now, that worked really well for someone who was lying and not getting called out on it or people were just getting desensitized to it, it worked. Whenever people say how did she lose to him i say remember that 17 republicans lost to him and these were ostensibly providing care for a bunch of him but a lot of them more seasoned politicians who served in Public Office who had a lot of money, who were not idiots and he steamrolled them. The primaries were not close. He barely lost iowa and never looked back. I think a lot of why election day was a shock was because people thought that routine wouldnt work to a broader audience. You could dominate the Republican Party with 50 of whoever these people are but when the rubber the road, but he didnt. There were no consequences to anything he said or do. Now there are still no caps occurrences but he is not succeeding. If you define success simply as did you win the presidency, he was extremely successful. What he did was shocking, its understandable in hindsight but it was remarkable. What he has done since which is basically nothing different has not worked out. It just hasnt. Tax reform was their first and its because its the thing that the Republican Party joined hands about most. So his style is not translating or it is and will find out the hard way, but for someone who wants to be loved, i dont know how he looks at a piece of pape paper, but i file it down and said 32 of america approves of me and 70 thanks they should be investigated for this or 60 can think of a single nice thing to say about me, i would maybe do something a little different. He doesnt have to become a nice guy. He could just dial some stuff down, but he has no plan. He has never had a plan. The analogy that i used once was a pinball machine. Hes not the guy standing here doing this. Im sorry to the macgyver that. He is the ball. Hes just handin hitting random bumpers and the lights and the sounds are going off. He has no plan and if you think hes got a plan and you said out loud, his new plan will support you by doing the opposite. So his biggest problem now is that he hasnt changed but hes not going to change. He is incapable of changing. Why would he change . Things have never gone wrong for him. He is the president of the United States. He is one of 44 people to hold that office. Why would you change anything. Thats my heels and his staff of time about you told me too drop off after access hollywood. You dont know what you talking about. And you know, someone might be standing there ten years from now saying thats how we won ten two terms. I hope not but hes not when a change and its folly for real people who are naive or overly hopeful to always wait for when is the pivot coming, when is he going to stop tweeting like a crazy person, this and that, and i dont know how many time has to go by before you accept the fact that hes not going to change. This is where we are, this is whats going to continue, one thing i learned when i was studying my own prep for debate was he is the most predictable unpredictable person of all time and thats why i dont understand where people are surprised. My name is sienna. Im from the university of massachusetts and i was actually wondering about something you mentioned in your introduction, after the election something inside of me changed. I was wondering what intrinsically moved you to switch things that you believe in or what is something you would do differently now that you didnt before. Again, i think the tax package is wrong, weve never passed tax cuts at the time of Economic Growth in our countrys history, theres usually a reason why you cut taxes so hes running around saying its the best economy ever. Its pretty transparent what hes doing, but im not going to the mat. My head is not exploding because he passed tax cuts. To me the worst moment of this year, well, what changed on 801 was he had made it okay to say whatever he wanted, and with him we knew what he was saying, and most of the time its just flatout dumb. But he was unleashing a hate that was not going to dissipate. I think there is a combo of his basically giving everyone a get out of Political Correctness jail card and his behavior so the most dispiriting moment and angering moment for me was his speech to the boy scouts. It is hard to come in anyway justify that and say its okay. I went back and i looked at residence all the way back, i think at least to nixon, addressing the jamboree and what he said is crazy. Its crazy. I think what he is doing with the constant fake news and the disparaging people is i dont have kids, and there are times i wish i did, right now im that i dont because what he is doing to an entire generation of children is horrific. You hear stories about kids coming home and their parents saying whats with the sea on your report card and they say its a fake report card or bullying, sexual harassment, domestic violence, i think were going to see over time that these numbers have exploded. He could leave office tomorrow and will be dealing with this for generation in terms of that kind of thing and thats what kills me. If you want to wake up everyday and focus on tax cuts or infrastructure, i would disagree with them. I would not be screaming from the rooftops. It is this constant attacking every single part of society and he is testing it, the term bandit until it breaks, he doesnt care about breaking it. I think he is just swamping the system. He has got to be stopped. The morning. I currently attend Miamidade College. Im interested in the progress of the democrat party. Since they lost a huge base with this election and wondering what the party might revisit the message that they were trying to mckay during the 2016 election or will they try other strategies to get the base but they lost. Thats a good question because thats a big debate. I dont know the answer. I can tell you what i see which is i think you have this in two sections, your the 2018 midterms which is shaping up to be the ballgame, if you can flip the house that is really going to make a difference in terms of slowing him down and depending on what the muller investigation finds, actually taking steps, and then the second basket is 2020 and i think you have many people in the party now saying impeach, impeach like tomorrow or the minute we get control, because he is committing high crimes and misdemeanors, he has met the threshold of being impeached, not to mention the 2h amendment which, people who lose their minds should not be president of the United States , and i dont know the answer to that. I do know, and heres a good example of what i was saying up front, history tells us 2018 is pointed ugly for him. It w