Guest i think it puts a lot of very challenging position. Despite all the good economic news, a lot of people are so anxious about their personal economic situation. As much of the as you can look at these national trends, the average person worrying about the future, it is very hard to tell them you should be happy, when they are anxious about their mortgage payment. Host Interest Rates continue to stay at low levels. Would you agree or disagree . Guest we started to look into how people were feeling compared to how things are going in the state what we found was that partisanship in the polls drives a lot of negativity. Republicans are much more likely to say they feel good about their economy. We see this with a good number of questions. It has become it is a standing partisan question. If democrats are in the white house, with republicans think that things are going poorly, and vice versa. Our concern is this partisan mindset is starting to seep into how people think about the economy. Besides exit causing differences in how people are spending, it is tough to tell. That is the fear that we have the partisan mindset will start to become a drag on the economy based on who is in the white house. That could start seeing ill effects on companies, and small businesses. Host i will ask you for a moment to trade places. From the democratic president s, the president said that a lot to get done in the fourth quarter. If you look at what he needs to do, wwhat advice would you give this president in his white house . Guest i would say this is a real opportunity, and he seems to want to take it with executive action. This is an opportunity for him to meet with republicans in the middle, and get things done. If they can come forward with some substantial achievements on budget reform, or Immigration Reform, or other big issues if he can meet republicans halfway. Host also the house of representatives where there is a big contingent of tea party republicans, what advice would you give them . Guest i would say the goal should be maintaining this majority in the senate and the house. The house will not be that difficult, but in this senate there are a lot more seats coming up for republicans. In order for them to wednesday for wisconsin and ohio, they will have to look like they are actually governing. I would say the way that you do that is start governing, working with the present, passing things. Really playing the odds. I think the baynard and mcconnell, stay away from the majority. Host we also want to talk about president ial politics. First to our phone calls with our two guests. Call from chicago. Caller good morning. For the republicans Mitch Mcconnell said that when the president , that they would not work with him. They would do everything they could to aavoid him getting reelected. This past election cycle, once again he said if we win the senate, what well do is pass bills to reverse anything that we think president obama did. Basically, it is an agenda similar to the house. Republicans have no intention of passing anything. They want to come and serve people there anything this president wants is terrible. On the immigration thing if we do anything on immigration, it is amnesty. They cannot do that either. They had built a rim around themselves with no door to get out. Guest i would respectfully disagree. I think senator mcconnell has gotten a lot of things done. There is a big caucus of republicans in the senate who are pragmatic. I think there is a real opportunity with senator mcconnell as majority leader for the senate to get the things done. Brian nienaber is a strategist. Caller good morning. What can we do. For the last six years i am an African American we have been voting for the same party. We are not going anywhere. I think they do not know what the real issues are, they just look at the name, and vote democrats. Theyre not looking at the issues. What can the republicans do to get the blacks to go back to voting republican and look at the issues. Guest im not sure that there is much that voters can do. Like the caller said, about 90 of voters have voted for democratic candidates. Republicans have done a good job alienating democratic guest not something ive looked into for how republicans can do it. I would start with staying away from phrases like self deportation and welfare queens and things like that. If you show voters no respect it is unlikely they are going to vote for you. Host peace inside the New York Times. He makes a reference to the interview peters length conducted with barbara bush who said i love bill clinton as they talk about the relationship between each to be george h. W. Bush and bill clinton. It seems to be a constant source of cable chatter. Guest governor bush is a formidable candidate. He knows what you need to run for president and i think he would not beginning into this if he did not think he could be formidable. One of the blessings we will have as a party is we will have a lot of formidable candidates. While i think he will be a strong candidate, we will have a number of strong candidates. I expect him to be involved in the first debate. Guest i believe he is running. The hurdle for him is going to be who else gets into the race. If him getting in early scares off the chris christies, scott walkers, k sick come out of the race governor kasich out of the race. Jeb bush can win the primaries by doing what rummy did which was end up winning about 35 every state what romney did which was end up winning about 35 every state. If more of the what moderate wing gets in, they will be dividing up that 36 . It will be interesting to see who ends up popping into this race and how many from each faction of the Republican Party is in each run in each one. Host Mike Huckabee announced yesterday that he has stepping down from his program on the fox news channel. He posted the announcement on his website. The story is available at politico. Com as he discusses whether or not he will run. Guest i think like governor bush he has run before. He knows with the challenges are. He begins with a strong base. His show on fox this popular. Im struck we do focus groups with a book of them watch the show. With republicans, how many of them watch the show. He is a hero to that wing of the party. He will begin with a strong base of that fox audience. Social conservatives who see him as an advocate. Host if you runs, is he formidable . Guest i do not excel. He does a very good job on the stump and in debate and in debates. I do not see how he makes it through the primary and i certainly do not see him being a formidable candidate in the general election. In our National Poll in december, we asked voters who they are going to vote for. Governor bush was ahead in the low teens, which is pretty standard. We did a followup question and asked, if your candidate won the primary and ended up running against hillary, to use your candidate and win . Do you think your candidate would win . As we went down the line of what i would consider most likely to least likely, it was an inverse relation the more obscure the candidate, a ben carson for example, the more his supporters were feeling good about his chances of beating hillary. Host Craig Crawford, who has been a frequent guest on this network, former executive editor of the hotline. He is also the author of a book on politics, he is been hired by jim webb as he ponders a president ial bid as a candidate as a democrat. Craig crawford announced as dim indications director. Guest for the democrats, that is pretty much came over and hillary announces. It seems that that is how it is going this year. I do not see anyone out there bank that is going to challenge her in a meaningful way. Host agree or disagree . Guest i think we were having the same conversation in 2007. Im sorry for Craig Crawford to be leaving his current position. I thought he was very insightful. I think there are some candidates who could put a challenge to hillary, especially with the democrats having so many caucus elections, where it is easy to rack up delegates with a limited amount of budget pull it. Host gary is next, independent line. Caller good morning. I used to be a black republican. I noticed the Republican Party has a racist agenda and could not associate with them anymore. I called to say, in terms of the economy, one must acknowledge what is going on, regardless of how much may feel everyone may feel secure, things are much better than they were four years ago. The same words reagan used. The Republican Party, now that they are in charge of the congress, must maintain Economic Prosperity or else there is no way it can be successful in 2016. Listening to what you guys just said, the bottom line is the Republican Party is going to elect someone from the oil industry. Either rick perry or jeb bush. They are going to get a corporate sell out and hillary the Republican Party knows how to handle hillary. The Democratic Party should have a different woman run and win. Host brian nienaber. Guest i think one of the great things try to make the party more open to people of different viewpoints. That is one of the things that has been warming in me to see a party that is more in time with that. What we are going to do is present shall candidates i think jed and governor perry are from Oil Producing states but i would hardly call either of them in the pocket of oilproducing. We will have a governor most likely as a nominee. He will provide a counterexample to someone who can get things done in washington as someone who can get things done in washington. Host story online regarding the populist movement to read he bases it on conversations that took place in des moines, iowa. The question is, to the degree in which the rising populist movement on the left can shape the partys future and whether hillary is that person. You can see from this article, a photograph of elizabeth warren. Guest it is interesting on the democratic side, given what is happening on the democratic on the republican side. With the tea party being born in the way they have affected the direction of the party. I would argue, not in a good way when it comes to winning elections in governing. It seems like a good number of democrats look at that and say that is terrible for republicans, we should do the same thing on our side. We have to understand the math behind it. There is a populist wing of the Democratic Party, not the patient be silenced, but they are a certain percentage of the electorate and they are not big enough to win elections by themselves. The way you win National Elections in statewide elections in states that are not deep blue states is, you need to put together a coalition of voters. That is going to cook that is going to include a lot of people in the center. If we want to have the white house in control of the senate back, that is not going to be going left area that is going to be make people in the center comfortable with who we are. Democrats need to understand we are not tied to republicans when it comes to our job approval. We used to have a 20 point it vantage. A 20 point advantage. That is not how you get people to be back to want you to be back in the majority. The way that you get that a but if the percent is not by going far left. Host brian nienaber, studied at George Washington university and is the Vice President of the tarrance group. A democrat and republican here at the table to get your calls and comments as we look ahead to the politics of 2015. Caller good morning. When you mentioned control of congress, you did not mention they control the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has five republican members and four of them are out and out tea party republicans. That is a strong club that the Republican Party has in their favor. I do not believe w bush i think he spoiled everything for jeb bush. Jed is the best one of the bush family host thank you. As reported in his turn to the courts to aid in their agenda. Your response. Guest there are five that had been appointed by republicans. I would not count david souter as a tea party republican. I think one of the problems with acrimony in washington is courts last session the court had to decide what constitutes a recess because congress and the president could not agree. For good or bad, things have gotten stagnated that we are so stagnated that we are running to the courts. I think the Supreme Court did not rule the way on obamacare. You can look at the leaders of congress and the president and say they are more willing to work this out in a way that they all know the outcome and are not waiting until the spring. Host david souter is no longer on the Supreme Court. Let me ask you if there is a retirement of a conservative member of the Supreme Court of the next two years. What can we expect . Guest it could be a contentious hearing. The District Committee tends to be the committee were most of the partisans on both sides sit. I think it would be in the order of the second term reagan hearings when he had Supreme Court justices. I give will be very contentious and be interested to see how it turns out. Host alan is next, republican line. Caller good morning. It is my number one show to tell you the truth. You need to get a new day job mr. Stephen. I would like to know we are crystal ball is two years out. There is a group or affect, if you did not know about it. To my view, a lot of people talked about gruber in terms of how he feels about america and bringing forth obamacare. I think he comes to his moment with jesus and is starting to tell the truth. He is the first democrat that is telling the truth. If you look at the candidates that could be available for the Democratic Party, they are all over 70 years old. I do not get it. There is no young people in the Democratic Party that would be a possible candidate in 2016. You are still faced with king passed all these lies in scandals that have getting past all these lies in scandals. Im so scared for the people who lost their insurance and went into being tortured by the Democratic Party. Nobody has ever come out and said this. I am saying it. A have been tortured. Host thank you for phoning in. Today is the 20th anniversary of this program, washington journal. Guest the president ial elections are the most predictable elections that we have. There has been a pattern going back to the 1970s that really breaks. Dealing time something goes against the pattern is when you have a ross perot candidate changing the dynamic of things. The caller wants to go on our website, we have a memo on our website that shows a model that we put together that predicts president ial elections going to 2032. Two years from 2012, we were on average, off b by. 8 . We can pretty much tell you, unless there is some drastic shift in dynamic, the democrats are in the driver seat going into 2016 without question. Host another story from Peter Sullivan in which the comments of senator rubio saying that immigration will not be a bonanza for the republicans. He told the New York Times that republicans need to have an Immigration Solution before 2016. Guest i think senator rubio is right. He is put more effort in this than maybe anybody in the senate. This is an issue that poses a variety of threats. It is a National Security threat. There is concern about who they are and what their intentions are. It is a policy failure that we have an immigration system that does not work. We end up in the situation where we have too many people who are here illegally. We need to come up with a solution as a party. Otherwise, we look at what are the other things we can do while governing . We are a lot further along than some of the other thorny issues facing the country. Caller i would like to say, the progressives have done something. They take the tree away from black people who gave it and gave it to illegals. The blacks voted for for 50 years. If dr. King was here today, he would kick black caucuses pass asses. Host we will get a response. Guest this is an example of i think, wide minority minority voters are turned off. Host our next call is donald from ross perot, North Carolina on the democrats line roxboro North Carolina on the democrats line. Caller congratulations on your 20th anniversary on cspan. Host brian lam started it not me. It is not my 20th anniversary. [laughter] caller i want to Say Something to both of your guests. Republican strategist needs to look at the film selma and get a historical view of what is wrong with the Republican Party. They are trying to change the times. I had more Voting Rights in 1968 than i do in 2000 in 2015. To the democratic strategist you people need to get a grip. Ive been a lifelong democrat. This past election, you do not stand for nothing. You do not know how to stand up for yourself. Republicans didnt stand up on lies and get away with all that junk. You guys stand for nothing. You had gas prices going to the lowest thing ive ever seen in a long time. You had people who got health care for the first time in their lives, and you did not stand on that. You ran away from obama. No wonder you lose the election. You might win in 2016, but you guys better get a grip on yourself. Relate a week you are like a week pair of panties laces. Host we will get a response from both of our guests. Guest i know there have been a number of his stories historical challenges on how accurate selma is. Producing a picture id or utili