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New Day

Dems Take Control of House; Election Upsets and Surprises; Midterm Compared to Past Elections. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired November 07, 2018 - 06:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


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[06:34:12] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Democratic Congressman Conor Lamb handily beating three-term Congressman Keith Rothfus in Pennsylvania's newly drawn 17th congressional district. That is a pick-up for the Democrats.

Congressman Lamb, who was himself only elected in March in a special election, joins us now.

Congressman, thank you for being with us and congratulations to you, sir.

REP. CONOR LAMB (D), PENNSYLVANIA: Good morning. Thank you for having me on.

BERMAN: How do you explain what happened last night? The Democrats took the House convincingly and Republicans expanded their control of the Senate. Why?

LAMB: You know, I know that in a lot of these House races we brought new candidates into the fold. A lot of younger people. A lot of veterans. And from what I've picked up being out there was that people are ready for a change. And so, you know, maybe it's the -- in the House we were able to bring a lot of new people into the process.

[06:35:03] BERMAN: Ready for a change. But that leads me logically to another big question, which is what now for the Democratic Party? You have control of Congress and there will be a battle for leadership. You have said you will not vote for Nancy Pelosi. Do you intend to stick by that?

LAMB: Yes, I do.

BERMAN: Then what's the way through this? What do you want to see? Would you support some kind of a transition figure, some kind of power sharing agreement? Do you have an idea of who you might support?

LAMB: I don't have an idea of a specific person. I guess what I have are issues that need to be worked on. And I've heard about these from my constituents, infrastructure, getting more serious about the heroin epidemic, Social Security and Medicare, prescription drug. These are the important issues where I come from. And so what I'll be looking for is someone who can tell us where those stand as a priority and put them at the top of the agenda.

BERMAN: So President Trump last night did call Nancy Pelosi to congratulate her. They both did talk about the idea of working together. Do you generally hold out optimism that there will be areas where the Democrats in the House and the president can work together? And what's the first thing you want to see done be?

LAMB: I really do have optimism about that. I think the president has proven that he's interested in negotiating on a number of issues. He has talked a lot about prescription drugs recently and infrastructure. He's clearly interested. And, you know, there's no Democratic or Republican way to build a bridge or a road. And we've got to get the prescription drug prices down. It doesn't matter so much who does it or how we do it, we've got to get it down.

And so I think both sides seem to be interested in that. There's no reason at all that we shouldn't be able to come to some kind of agreement.

BERMAN: One of the big changes will be, now there will be a check and balance on the executive branch. Now there will be congressional oversight, to an extent, over the executive branch. Nancy Pelosi has said if she is speaker, maybe she won't be, that she doesn't want to see a push toward impeachment. Seventy-seven percent of Democratic voters, though, do. So, to you, what's the right level of oversight here on the Trump administration, and particularly the president?

LAMB: I think the right level of oversight is the amount that it takes to serve the people who sent us there. So, in my case, for example, I'm on the Veterans Committee. Our goal is making sure that veterans get good health care. And so if someone's not doing their job, say, with respect to, you know, medical records or long wait times for an appointment, it doesn't matter whether the Democrats or Republicans are in control. We need to have a hearing and find out who's responsible for that and get somebody new in there. And I think if we just keep that in mind, go to the people that we're supposed to serve and not a partisan agenda, we'll do our job just fine.

BERMAN: Do you want to see the president's tax returns?

LAMB: No, I want to build infrastructure and get prescription drug prices down.

BERMAN: And you don't want to see any kind of impeachment hearings?

LAMB: Well, I haven't seen any evidence yet that would raise that. So it seems like you're skipping a few steps there. But there's a process in place. There's a special counsel who's looking at the whole problem. We need to give him the time and space to do his job. And then, you know, at any time that he finishes and presents us with his conclusions, we'll make a decision at that point.

BERMAN: Does it feel different being in the majority all of a sudden?

LAMB: Not yet. It hasn't really been very long. But I feel very proud of the team that I've worked with and, you know, just honored to have the trust of the people here in Pennsylvania for a full two years.

BERMAN: You won two elections in a very short period of time. Conor Lamb, Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, just re-elected, thank you so much for being with us, sir.

LAMB: Thanks for having me on.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, so what were some of the biggest surprises of the night? We look at those, next.

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[06:43:00] BERMAN: Fascinating midterm results. They are in. Look at that, Democrats take control of the House of Representatives. At least 224 seats. Our forecast has it going up as high as 229 or 230. They are still counting votes in some places.

As for the Senate, look at this, still counting in Montana. John Tester, about 1,400 votes, 1,500 votes behind. The people who know that state say there are enough votes perhaps out there for Tester to pull ahead. We're watching that very, very closely.

Whatever happens there, Republicans have already had a huge night in the Senate. They widened their majority there. So a divergent really message being sent by the voters around the country.

Let's bring in CNN's senior political analyst Ron Brownstein and "The Forecast's" Harry Enten. Harry Enten who did, pretty much, correctly forecast the entire House election.

Ron, though, I want to start with you.

I was talking about John Tester in Montana. You know, President Trump practically went door to door in Montana to campaign for the Republican in that race. Overall, what evidence do we have of the impact of the president?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, look, the long-term trend is that our congressional elections are becoming more quasi parliamentary. I mean they're less about individuals, more about how you feel about the parties, and particularly about the president. But even within that long-term trajectory of a heightened correlation between the way people fell about the president and how they vote for Congress, we reached a new peak in this election yesterday.

According to our exit poll, 88 percent of the voters who approved of President Trump voted Republican for the House, and 90 percent of those who disapprove, which I believe is a modern high, voted Democratic for the House. If you look at the Senate, the Democrats who lost were among the few Democrats left in the 26 states that had voted Republican in at least four of the past seven presidential elections, a majority of the time. Democrats are down to about five senators from those 26 states and Republicans are down to about seven senators from the 24 states that have voted Democratic most of the time since '92 (ph). The whole system is separating and sorting out. [06:45:01] CAMEROTA: Harry, to give you props, as John Berman just

was, we had your forecast every morning on NEW DAY and you seem to have really hit it out of the park. Your polls, your polling and your predictions seem to be right.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: I won't be fired.

CAMEROTA: No, that was close.

BERMAN: You can never be sure.

CAMEROTA: What -- so what surprised you last night?

ENTEN: I think that there were a few things that surprised me. I think in Texas, I think Ted Cruz did a little worse than I thought. Beto O'Rourke, I was very skeptical of his bid, but he did better than any Democrat, and certainly since I've been following this stuff statewide in Texas -- granted I am a young man, or at least that's --

CAMEROTA: You were before this election.

ENTEN: Before I was. But now after being awake for many hours.

I think the other thing that kind of surprised me was the state of Florida, right? This is a state that a lot of us still think of as a swing state. I'm not sure it necessarily is anymore. Andrew Gillum led in the vast majority of the polls in the gubernatorial contest. He lost. Bill Nelson led in the vast majority of the polls in the Senate contest. He lost.

And so I think there was a lot of talk about all these Puerto Ricans moving in, that this state may become more blue. That isn't what happened. In fact, it's the older voters who came out in large numbers, especially on the west coast of that state, and then the panhandle is becoming much more red.

BERMAN: It's fascinating, you know what else aren't swing states, Nevada and Virginia.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. Yes, they were --

BERMAN: They are firmly blue.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BERMAN: But, Ron, explain to us then, in Florida, in particular in Nevada, Virginia's the same thing --

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BERMAN: Why you have that split?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, first of all, in Florida, I think for Democrats, when turnout gets that high, you just run out of people. Same thing I think in Texas at this point. Although there may be a greater opportunity there with untapped Latino voters. Look, what we're seeing is the country sorting out. The results of the

election on Tuesday night were a significant repudiation of the president in the large, diverse, info age, white collar, metro areas, pretty much everywhere. I mean starting in Philadelphia and New Jersey, extending through northern Virginia, into Miami, and going all the way across the country. Chicago, Detroit, Des Moines, Kansas City, Houston, Dallas, even Atlanta, these are places where Democrats have not done well all the way to Orange County.

On the other hand, as you have this separation, those interior states that are preponderantly white, heavily blue collar, mostly Christian, they are becoming tougher and tougher for Democrats to hold on to. And, of course, where this leaves the country is with these two coalitions more sharply delineated than ever and finding common ground between them, a substantial challenge to say the least.

CAMEROTA: Voter turnout was historic, 113 million people. That's the most of any midterm in any recent memory. Correct me if I'm wrong.

ENTEN: No, it most certainly is. And I think, you know, both sides got their turnout to where they wanted to get to and it benefited Democrats in the House and it benefited Republicans in the Senate.

And one thing I'll talk about in the Senate, you know, if we are becoming divided along this urban/rural divide, that is very good news for Republicans going forward in the Senate because each state gets two senators regardless of population. And we saw that last night, you know, where Democrats were able to sweep through in the House but obviously struggled significantly in the Senate.

BERMAN: That's interesting. I mean that's how the framers wrote it. I mean they designed it this way. They wanted a bit of a rural/urban split.

BROWNSTEIN: They did. But the one thing that was different when they did it was there was not a systematic, political difference between the large and small states that we now see with the smaller states because of their demography leaning more toward Republicans than the big diverse (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: Ron Brownstein and Harry Enten, thank you guys so much for being with us.

People are waking up this morning saying, how did this happen? How do you have this split decision? The answer is, there's a perfectly good reason as explained by both of you gentlemen.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BERMAN: So, thanks for that.

CAMEROTA: OK, so how much of a referendum was this election on President Trump? We get a "Reality Check," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:52:28] CAMEROTA: OK, things continue to change here by the minute. The election is not yet over. Votes in some critical places are still being counted and we are bringing you minute by minute updates.

So, how do thus far this year's midterms compare to past elections? CNN's senior political analyst John Avlon is here with a "Reality Check."

Hi, John.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hello.

Yes, so we've got all these numbers and we've got to focus on how they stack up, impose some perspective on this process, people.

So, split happens. But if you're feeling a little dazed and confused this morning, there's how last night compared to the benchmarks. In the past, president's with approval ratings below 50 percent have lost an average of 37 seats. Now we can currently project that Republicans lost at least 26 seats, with 14 still out. That's enough to have Democrats take control of the House, but below the benchmark at this point at least.

Compare that to the 63 seats Barack Obama lost in 2010 and you see the impact of a strong economy and the simple fact that America is still a center right nation. Now, that's a controversial comment to some liberals but there's no denying that Gallup polls for decades have shown almost three quarters of the electorate identify as either moderate or conservative. That's why independent voters are so key to cobbling together a majority. And exit polls show that independent voters swung 14 percent to Democrats in this year's election. That's exactly in line with CNN's projections but that's below the 19 percent swing of independents to Republicans in the Tea Party year of 2010.

The Democrats were defending 10 Senate seats in states that Donald Trump won and Republicans picked off Indiana and Missouri, as well as North Dakota. Montana looks like it's trending Republican at Jon Tester's expense, but that is TBD. And Democratic attempts to flip Texas and Tennessee fell short. Arizona remains too close to call.

So Democrats won governorships, though, in crucial upper west swing states, knocking off Scott Walker's bid for a third term in Wisconsin and Gretchen Whitmer with a 10 point win in Michigan. Both states Trump won in 2016. But the region remains a battleground with Republicans holding onto governorships in Ohio and Iowa. So Democrats also picked off several high-profile Republicans in suburban districts, from Dallas to Oklahoma City, to Kansas City, to beautiful Charleston, South Carolina.

So this split-decision election was a high intensity, high-turnout election, and that's different. The last midterm elections in 2014 had the lowest turnout in 70 years with 36.7 percent of voters casting 84 million votes for the House. This year, there were an estimated 113 million votes casts. So that's pretty extraordinary. That easily surpasses the historical average of 40 percent by almost 10 points. So whatever party you pull for, that's a good sign about the vibrancy of our democracy.

[06:55:07] And that's your "Reality Check."

CAMEROTA: Excellent work. It's always great to have some reality at this hour in the morning.

AVLON: Reality and coffee.

BERMAN: Yes, I need the coffee too.

All right, John, thank you very much.

This just in. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders announced moments ago that the president will hold a news conference this morning at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time. That's in the East Room. This is a very formal news conference. I predict the president will declare victory even though the reality, as still more votes are being counted, is much more complicated than that.

CAMEROTA: How did you come up with that?

BERMAN: Just because -- because I'm breathing air.

All right, we'll be right back.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: Good morning to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY after a long election night.

CAMEROTA: Hard to tell those two apart sometimes.

[06:59:59] BERMAN: Also hard to tell what exactly happened last night because there are mixed messages in the absolute extreme, giving both parties something to cheer.