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A Very Sober and Sad President Obama; Three Senate Races Still Undecided; Colorado Senator Michael Bennet Claims Victory

Aired November 03, 2010 - 14:10   ET

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

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Wolf. Thanks very much. It was a good conversation that you were having there.

One of the things that we saw in the exit polls last night was that Democrats, while nobody is really worrying about their 401(k) right now, as Roland was talking about, Democrats are very, very worried about jobs. Those who identified as Republicans are very, very worried about the deficits.

But the economy continues to be the number one issue, and that drove a lot of the voice of voters in America last night. The voters have clearly spoken.

The president, as you have been discussing, has spoken. The presumptive new House Speaker has spoken. But the most pivotal midterm election in more than 60 years continues to be a developing story.

This is something we are getting used to in the United States. It takes a few days. Three big Senate races yet to be decided.

In Alaska, incumbent Lisa Murkowski has a real shot at keeping her seat as a write-in candidate. Write-in votes are running well ahead of Tea Party-backed candidate Joe Miller in the middle. You'll recall Miller beat Murkowski for the GOP primary, but it's not going to be known for days.

She's substantially ahead with 70 percent of the polls coming in. But it will not be known for days.

You'll notice here we've got Scott McAdams, the Democrat; Joe Miller, the Republican; and then Independent -- we've got write-ins including Lisa Murkowski. There were over 150 names on that ballot in Alaska. We are assuming most of those write-in ballots are for Murkowski, but that's not going to be settled all that soon.

Now, if she wins, ,she will only be the second U.S. senator ever to be elected as a write-in. Strom Thurmond was the first in 1954.

In Colorado, we have got news developing out of there. Incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet is bracing for a possible recount in his bruising race against Tea Party-backed Republican Ken Buck. Now, we're awaiting response from Michael Bennet. We're expecting to hear him talk -- in fact, am I hearing a voice right now? Is that Michael Bennet speaking? Let's listen in to that for a moment.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D), COLORADO: They will go state by state, arguing who deserves blame and what the results mean for the next election. And when they get to Colorado, let me tell you, they're not going to know what happened.

(APPLAUSE)

They're going to scratch their heads and wonder what the heck is going on out here. They will ask what this message sends to the rest of the country. So if you'll let me take this on for a minute, I want to try to make their job just a little easier by cutting to the chase.

(LAUGHTER)

This election and our campaign were never about sending some sort of political message. It was never about the latest poll or attack ad.

This election was about all of you. It was always about rolling up our sleeves and getting to work to rebuild our state and our country.

This election was about the innovators and entrepreneurs and the small business owners looking to build tomorrow's Colorado, the mothers and fathers struggling to make ends meet in this savage economy who are sitting at their kitchen tables trying to figure out how they're going to do more with less. This election was about my three little girls and the 850,000 schoolchildren across Colorado who already believe that we've made them a promise that the zip code they're born into is not going to define the quality of the education they're going to get.

(APPLAUSE)

This election was about the line cooks and waitresses, the firefighters and police officers, teachers, small business owners, nightshift workers, our farmers and our ranchers, our active duty military and reserves, and the 425,000 veterans who proudly call Colorado home. This election was always about the future of our hopeful, strong and beautiful Colorado.

And finally, this election was about fixing Washington and rebuilding our politics so that it's worthy of the aspirations that we all share. It was about and it is about making sure that our generation lives up to the promise of America, that we will leave more, not less, to those who come after us.

That's not a Democratic idea or a Republican idea. That is an American idea.

(APPLAUSE)

That is what this campaign has been about from the beginning and it remains our cause this morning.

You know, Governor Ritter, 22 months ago, made a very surprising choice to try to fill the shoes of our great Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. Let's face it, most people thought he had lost his mind.

(LAUGHTER)

So I want to thank Governor Ritter for believing in me then.

And thank you, Colorado, for believing in me now.

(APPLAUSE)

I am humbled by your support, and I'm inspired by it. And I will not let you down.

I'm not going back to Washington to play politics. I'm going back there to fight for more jobs, for better jobs, for a clean energy economy, and for a 21st century education for every child. I'm going back there to fight so that every American has access to quality health care at a cost that we can afford.

You can cheer for that.

(APPLAUSE)

On too many issues -- on education, on energy, on trade, on spending -- the orthodoxies of both political parties are obsolete. And in this new age, every organization, for-profit, not-for-profit, is having to reexamine its approach, its essential approach to remain relevant to this world.

Could there be a more -- a better backdrop than that?

(APPLAUSE)

The Senate is no exception. It must also change. It just doesn't know it yet.

Well, I'm going back there to deliver that message from my town hall meetings. We have to do this for my daughters and for children all across Colorado, including the ones behind us right now.

This race from the beginning has been about Colorado's families, and so for my wife Susan and me, and for our three girls, Caroline, Haline and Anne, it has been a family project every step of the way. It has not always been easy on them.

And Susan, none of this would have been possible, none of it would have remotely --

(APPLAUSE)

Do you want to read this line?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I do. I do.

BENNET: Let's let Caroline read it.

Can you read this?

We didn't practice this.

Can you read it? All right. Let Caroline read it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I want to.

(LAUGHTER)

BENNET: Let's read it together.

Go ahead, Caroline.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "And now tomorrow, we will start looking for that puppy I promised."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "And now, tomorrow, we will start looking for that puppy I promised."

(APPLAUSE)

BENNET: It's a promise.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "And now, tomorrow, we will start looking for that puppy I promised."

BENNET: I promise.

I tried to suggest to Anne that this was going to be the puppy, and it didn't quite fit the bill.

(LAUGHTER)

I have far too many people to thank than I can possibly recognize today, and that's what I'll be doing the rest of the day and in the week ahead. But I would like to congratulate the most committed, brilliant and hard-working campaign leadership and staff in the entire country.

(APPLAUSE)

And I want to thank from the bottom of my heart the thousands of people who lent us their support, who sent us donations or made telephone calls, or knocked on doors across the state to deliver our message that change is hard, that we can't get it done overnight, but that we can get it done together. This is definitely a race for the record books.

(APPLAUSE)

And this is not my victory. It is yours. And I will never, ever forget that. I also want to say a word about my opponent, Ken Buck, who fought hard in this campaign. I congratulate him on his race, and I honor his commitment to public service.

But because our differences were stark and the race was very close, some will read into this outcome that Coloradoans are deeply divided. I can tell you that that would be a mistake.

What I've heard over and over is that the aspirations we all have for our families and our communities are so much more shared and so much more powerful than the trivial issues and false choices that the politicians and TV talking heads --

VELSHI: OK. We'll continue to listen in to Michael Bennet in a moment.

We're going to go to speak to Mary Snow to get a little bit more on this. But let me just give you some context into this.

Michael Bennet is the incumbent. We have not declared him the winner of this race. He's running against Ken Buck. Michael Bennet took that seat after Ken Salazar became the secretary of the Interior.

Ken Buck is one of the high-profile Senate candidates that was backed by the Tea Party. There have been two who have lost -- Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada.

Ken Buck is running behind Michael Bennet. Take a look at this. Bennet is about 15,500 votes ahead. He's got about 48 percent of the vote versus 47 percent, but only 15,000 and change votes separating them, with 90 percent of the votes in right now.

This sounded like a victory speech by Michael Bennet, but he has not been declared the winner just yet. The counting continues. And that's why he was talking about that hard-fought win, or that hard- fought battle with Ken Buck, the Republican.

We will continue to follow this story. Ken Buck has not conceded in this race.

We'll go to Mary in just a second in Colorado.

In Washington State, there is another contested race under way. Another incumbent Democrat, Patty Murray, is struggling to survive against Republican Dino Rossi.

A closely-watched governors race was decided late this morning. Florida Democrat Alex Sink was defeated. She's the state's chief financial officer. She did the math and she conceded to Republican health care executive Rick Scott.

In remarks that you may have seen here on CNN, Sink took note of votes cast, as well as dollars spent. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ALEX SINK (D), FMR. FLORIDA GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: Well, we have to look at history again. We've never had a candidate in the state of Florida who spent more than $70 million of his own money -- own -- a lot of negative advertising, actually, starting in the Republican primary. But at the end, I believe we had sufficient resources to be competitive. Look how close we came in an environment in which other Democrats were losing by 20 points.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: OK. Let's go back to that Colorado race that we were just talking about, Michael Bennet versus Ken Buck.

Mary Snow has been on this story since yesterday, all night. She's been studying it.

Mary, what do we make of this? This is a hotly-contested race. Ken Buck is a very prominent Republican, backed by the Tea Party. This was an important race for the Democrats to keep.

What do you know?

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ali, as you said, Michael Bennet is claiming victory, but as you said, CNN has not called this race. And there haven't been any other national media outlets that have called this race. "The Denver Post" had declared him the winner earlier today.

And I have been in touch with the Buck campaign within the last half hour. They have not had any updates. And what they were saying this morning is that they're still looking where returns needed, to report it, as well as provisional ballots, before they were going to make any decisions.

And this was a disappointment for Republicans, because we spoke with Ken Buck on Monday, and he said that he felt he had a comfortable lead in this race. And Republicans, waiting for the results last night, had said that they would be surprised if Ken Buck wouldn't win.

Democrats have been saying all along they felt this was going to be very close, and that it could come within a few hundred points. What seems to may have made the difference, Boulder County, when some of those results came in, that is where Michael Bennet had been spending time yesterday. And he had been out up until the last minute when the polls were closing last night to get out the vote because Democrats were very nervous about this race.

You may have heard Senator Mark Udall opening -- he gave some statements here as well, saying what does this race tell us? And he said there are two things that this race tells the nation. That, one, voters really just want the economy back on track, they want to see jobs created. And that, two, lawmakers -- they want to see lawmakers working together.

So as of now, we have Senator Michael Bennet, the incumbent, declaring victory in this race, but kind of an odd situation. It hasn't been declared -- it hasn't been made final in terms of all the results by media outlets like CNN.

VELSHI: Yes. We'll continue to track the story. That's why you're out there, Mary. Thanks very much.

Mary Snow on that story.

We've heard from the president. We've heard from Michael Bennet. We've heard from the new Speaker of the House.

The bottom line is those are very interesting, specific stories. Many of you want to know about the balance of power. You want to know how power has shifted in the House and the Senate.

When we come back, I'm going to break it down for you exactly, so that you know what the House and the Senate are going to look like for the next two years.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. The story of these elections is the country's hard turn to the right. But today the country's happiest politicians -- the happiest politician might be a Democrat.

Harry Reid managed to hold off his Tea Party-backed opponent, Sharron Angle, to keep his Senate seat in Nevada, and probably his lofty post as Senate majority leader. Yes, he still commands a majority, but just barely.

Reid talked about the future on "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MAJORITY LEADER: All of us who are going to be in the Senate have to work together. That's the message from the American people. We must work together.

And I'm looking forward to that. I have a good relationship with Mitch McConnell, my Republican counterpart. I've known John Boehner for many years. And I think this is a time we need to set aside our speeches and start rolling up our sleeves and have a little sweat on our brow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Next door, in California, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer put away the former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, but Boxer and Reid and the other Democrats will have to make room for a Tea Party-backed caucus that has at least five members in the Senate: Marco Rubio of Florida; Rand Paul of Kentucky; Mike Lee of Utah; Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania; and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Tea Party favorites, as I mentioned, Sharron Angle of Nevada and Christine O'Donnell of Delaware did not make the cut. New York Tea Party-backed gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino was easily defeated by Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

So where do we stand?

For the third national election in a row, voters have revolted against one party or the other. I mentioned these were pivotal elections. Republicans picked up at least 60 House seats, the biggest turnover since 1948. The projected party breakdown stands now at 238 Republicans, 185 Democrats.

In the Senate, Democrats will hold at least 51 seats. But keep in mind, it takes at least 60 votes there to do anything. So the Democrats will still retain control of the Senate.

And you've heard this before, but it deserves repeating. More than $3.5 billion were spent on this midterm election, making it the most expensive off-year election in the nation's history. The burning question: would the Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives? Now we know they did in a resounding way. The Democrats retain their control of the Senate but just barely.

Do voters think the country will be better off with the Republicans in control of the House? Let's take a look at this research from the Pew Research Center. It shows that registered voters were evenly divided over the question -- that very question in the final days leading up to the election. About a third said it would be better for the country if Republicans won control of Congress. An identical percentage said it would be better if the Democrats maintained control.

And get this. Thirty percent said it would make no difference. In our own exit polling yesterday, we showed the same degree of disdain for both political parties. More than 50 percent did not like the Democrats and did not like the Republicans. They were upset at everyone.

Forget about how the parties did for a moment. There were lots of other notable gains and losses yesterday. The changing face of American politics from state houses to the Senate when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: A lot of changes on the political landscape. Basically the red versus blue contest, the Democrats versus the Republicans. That's the one that's had most people's attention.

But let's talk about other demographic changes. Gubernatorial gains by women. I want to tell you a little about that. Until now, fewer than half the states have had women governors at any point. Twenty-three -- 27 states have never had a female chief executive. Six women are currently in office. Those are the states in blue and green. Of those, three of them are set to leave.

Now, three new states have just elected their first female governors ever. Republican Mary Fallon in Oklahoma. Republican Susanna Martinez, won in New Mexico making her the first Hispanic governor -- female governor in the United States. And Republican Nikki Haley won in South Carolina. She was a Tea Party-backed candidate backed by Sarah Palin. She is the governor -- first female of Indian ancestry in the United States. As we know, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana is also of Indian descent.

Martinez is the first Latina governor. Haley and Martinez will be the first two women of color to be in charge of a state house.

Governors' mansions got a little more diverse. The U.S. Senate got a little less diverse with departures of Roland Burris who was unelected in Illinois. He was filling out some time until there was a special election for Barack Obama's old seat. With his departure, there are no serving African-American senators. There have only been six in U.S. history, by the way. Four in the modern era and two of them right around Reconstruction.

All right. Shellacking is how President Obama described what happened last night in last night's historic election. We're going live to the White House for "The Stakeout" with Ed Henry. He's going to tell us what the mood is like over there and what changes are in store after the message that the White House got from American voters last night. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Okay. About an hour ago, we were listening to President Obama. His first speech, his first public statement. It was a press conference with reporters after last night's election. Ed Henry was in the room when the president made that speech. Time now to go to him for our daily discussion with him with "The Stakeout."

Ed, what's your sense of it? There was lots of discussion immediately after in this room right here with our analysts, but what's the sense that you had of the president's comments?

ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The sense in the room that I heard and thought on my own but you hear people sort of chatting about it was that it didn't really seem like this was a president ready to make some radical changes. This was not a president who is going to go down the Bill Clinton mold and do a whole lot of soul searching and say, "I made a lot of mistakes and I have to do these five things moving forward."

It seemed very distant in some ways in him saying -- I think Jake Tapper picked up on this when he said the president described it at one point as it can be an humbling experience, something like that. He didn't say, "I was humbled." Later when he was talking about the shellacking, that was sort of the strongest answer at the end in terms of getting personal. The president said, I don't wish a fate like this on future presidents to take a shellacking.

Again, he was inferring and suggesting that he took a shellacking. But he was still doing it in kind of a distant way. When I and Savannah Guthrie and others asked him about sort of what kind of changes he was going to make, he didn't get very specific. That's his right. But my point is I don't see him now coming forward here and deciding to do some radical shakeup. And maybe that's fine. Maybe that's going to work for him. For Bill Clinton, he decided he had to do a lot more things. He ended up making some changes, getting a lot of legislation done and getting reelected in two years. This president may have the same fate by making smaller adjustments. We shall see.

VELSHI: Ed, we had Eric Erikson talking about it. We had David Gergen here. We had a number of people who said the president didn't -- in fact, James Carville was saying he didn't look like a man on his game. He looked like a man defeated. He seemed almost listless at times.

This was not vintage President Obama, so maybe whatever is going to come -- maybe the bigger response will be later. This was a preplanned speech. He knew he had to speak to the reporters. We knew this a couple of days ago. But maybe that shellacking that he said they got last night was so big that this isn't the fullest response. There was really some sense around this table that it was a bit lacking.

HENRY: It was interesting because the president himself noted that when Savannah from NBC asked him what's the deal? Do you get it, are you going to show people that you get it? And she, I think was second and was saying in the first answer you didn't seem like -- you didn't get into a lot of detail. He said, that was only the first answer. I mean, I'm going to get this question five or six times. Which is true because we're all going to follow up. We're all going to press him on that.

But what I was surprised by maybe to your point is after the second, third, fourth answer, he didn't really seem to be adding much more detail or really going down that road. Again, that's his right. He's free to not want to sort of get on the couch and say here's what I'm really thinking. Although I thought he sort of got on the couch a little bit in that tenth answer, the final answer to Reuters where he was saying, you know, it's hard to sort of get outside the bubble and the whole shellacking thing. And he really did seem to kind of warm up, but it seemed like it took a while to get to that point that maybe people were wondering do you get it? Did you take a shellacking? He did it but kind of took a while to get there.

VELSHI: You've been on air for 25 hours now, so what you saw the other night was John Boehner, who is going to be the speaker of the House most likely giving a speech in which he did something he has done before but it's not common. He got very choked up. He had some tears last night. Someone asked the question of President Obama this morning, who's in charge? Who's it going to be, you or John Boehner? They were setting down that line.

Now, most people, Ed, as you know -- most Americans do not know or understand the speaker of the House until that person becomes the speaker of the Jouse. America doesn't really know John Boehner. We got to know Nancy Pelosi and her popularity has been driven down. That was an interesting question to the president. HENRY: It was. I'm glad you mentioned it because I thought it was an interesting answer because the president would not engage when asked who really speaks for the country, who really connects with people? Is it you or John Boehner? Ben Feller, I think, asked that question from AP. And the president dodged that and says I think there's me, there's John Boehner, there's Nanny Pelosi, who some think will be out of the leadership, etc.

Significance there is during the campaign, the president kept making this about him versus Boehner because it suited his interest. And now he doesn't want to be drawn into a one-on-one, and you picked up on that. And I think it's very interesting. He wants to broaden this conversation and not make it like John Boehner is the opposition leader. He doesn't want to go there.

VELSHI: You going to get some sleep at some point?

HENRY: Yes, you know, I'm calling this "The Stakeout to Stakeout." I've gone live from "Stakeout" yesterday to stakeout here. I stayed here until 2:00 a.m. here at the White Hosue. Went back to our bureau. I didn't sleep. I'm not advising you to do this at home, but it was just sort of the way the schedule worked out.

And Ali, I'll be honest with you. This is our thing, so I've got to be here.

VELSHI: You are a man of great fortitude, and we're happy to have you and honored that you stuck around. Get a little bit of rest there. It's going to be a busy two years.

HENRY: My favorite moment at one point I saw you in the background last night in between your many excellent exit polling things, and I saw you having a little slice of pizza sort of in the background. You didn't realize the camera was on you --

VELSHI: Oh, really? You saw that?

HENRY: Did you have pizza last night? Yes, I saw that.

VELSHI: Huh. I didn't really have that discussion with my wife that I had pizza last night. I was talking about the salad and the fruit --

HENRY: I thought I was going to read about it on the Eatocracy blog. I think you should write about it on the Eatocracy blog.

VELSHI: Didn't know anybody had seen that. Ed, good to see you. Ed Henry, our senior White House correspondent at the White House for a very, very long time.

Hey, listen, we've got breaking news right now. We were expecting to hear from the Federal Reserve. They've come out with an announcement that they are going to buy $600 billion worth of treasuries. That means that the Fed buys these bonds that are out there, and in exchange for that, it provides money. Now, where does it get that money? Sometimes it prints it. That puts $600 billion more into the economy and they say there could be another $200 billion or $300 billion after that. Almost a trillion dollars the Federal Reserve is going to put into the economy.

Look at that stock market! Why is the Dow down 30 points after that big announcement? Why is the Dow down 30 after we have gridlock in the House and the Senate, which is exactly what investors like? You know why? Because investors knew all of this was coming. They read polls, too. They read the news. They knew that the Republicans were going to take the House. That was what was expected. They knew the Federal Reserve was going to do this today. That was what was expected.

So they trade ahead of it. They don't wait for the news to happen. They're not sitting there looking at that election result and saying, OK, now let's do something now that the Republicans run the House. What would have been news is if the Republicans didn't win the House or maybe the won the Senate or the Federal Reserve came out with a lot less than the $600 billion or a lot more.

But what has happened is the election results and this Fed decision are spot on to what investors thought they were going to be, which is why you're seeing virtually no reaction in the stock market. Later on, I'll break it down for you. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow because we're going to run out of time today. I'll give you a real breakdown of what this Fed intervention means and whether it will act as another stimulus.

But coming up next, who helped propel the GOP to victory? A look at exit polls from three groups who normally throw their support behind the Democrats. My friend Paul Steinhauser is on his way to the studio to help me out with this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. One of the things that we were doing last night is paying very, very close attention to exit polls. These are more sophisticated than the ballots yes or no. Who did you vote for? Who didn't you? What happens is people come out of these polls, and we ask them along with other networks - we collaborate and ask them a lot of questions that break down who they are and reasons behind voting.

Paul Steinhauser follows these polls very closely. We want to look at why the Democrats took the big losses that they did in terms of people who traditionally support Democrats who don't do that now. Paul Steinhauser joins me now. Paul, one of the things we want to look at is women and how they voted last night versus how they typically vote when it comes to the Democrats.

PAUL STEINHAUSER, CNN DEPUTY POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes. And you're right, Ali, Women typically do quite well. They go for the Democrats. But look at these numbers from last night our national exit polls. Forty-nine percent of women voting for the Democrats, 48 percent for the Republicans. That's a troubling number. Our polling director, Keating Holland, tells me that ties the lowest ever female vote for the Democrats tied in 1992.

And also, we don't have the graphic, but men voted for the highest level ever for Republicans, Ali.

VELSHI: Yes. They were -- 55 percent was the number of men who came out for Republicans. So a real polarization there.

Let's talk about this by age. If you were 65 or older, we know that you were 24 percent of the electorate yesterday. How do they break?

STEINHAUSER: They voted for the highest level ever for Republicans. Forty percent for the Democrats, 58 percent for the Republicans, according to our exit polls, Ali.

VELSHI: And finally by education, if you were blue collar, if you were white without a college education, you broke for Republicans, too?

STEINHAUSER: Oh, yes, you sure did. Sixty-two percent for the Republicans, 35 percent for the Democrats. Another new high in exit polling for the Republicans for blue-collar voters, Ali.

VELSHI: All right. Well, this information all works for parties that won and lost to say where did we -- there was not a lot of fuzziness in this election. Very interesting. Wasn't a lot of navel gazing about who those people are. Everybody divided up very cleanly into categories. So, there's going to be a lot of studying for guys like you and me.

STEINHAUSER: Yes, sir.

VELSHI: All right, Paul. Good to see you. Our deputy political editor, Paul Steinhauser.

Those comfy Levis. Your favorite pajamas or T-shirts. What do they have in common? They're going to cost you more when you go to replace them because cotton prices are going up. Way up. I'll explain why in "Taking the Lead" when I come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Today on "Taking the Lead," let's talk about the value of polyester. It's not everybody's fabric but it's really looking like a bargain. That's because just about anything made of cotton is going to cost you more. In some cases, quite a bit more.

A scramble for raw cotton has been sending prices higher, almost 80 percent higher in the past few months. If you've shopped for a pair of jeans recently, for example, you may have seen the prices jump at the retail level. Some other companies have been holding the line and absorbing those rising cost of cotton, but that won't be the case for too much longer unless something changes.

The makers of everything from Anne Klein to Nine West and North Face say it's all going to get more expensive for consumers. Why? Well, it's nothing more than simple supply and demand. Cotton prices dropped over the last couple of years because of the recession. Cotton providers reduced their inventory. That makes sense. That's smart business sense.

But problems rose when demands picked up as the economy started to improve. And at the same time, cotton crops were hit with bad weather. In Pakistan, you know about that flooding. In China and India. And that brought in speculators who drove the price of cotton up, buying it up so they could resell it to the market when it went up. Those are guys who come in to buy a commodity not to use it for anything, but because they are betting that its price will go up. They want to make a profit, pure and simple. We saw it in oil prices a couple of years ago. And gone up the price of cotton has.

China, by the way, is the world's biggest producer of cotton. The United States, we are third right behind India.

OK. Americans vote by secret ballot, so how do we know what they're really thinking? Exit polls, I was telling you about that a few minutes ago. I've now got some fantastic graphics I want to show you and some more intriguing findings about what last night's polls mean for your future. Stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Midterms are over. You know when the presidential race starts? Last night. Who do Republicans want to see as their standard bearer in 2012? We asked voters in New Hampshire, which is the first state caucus. Let me tell you what they said.

Twenty-one percent say they want Mike Huckabee. Twenty-one percent want Mitt Romney. Eighteen percent want Sarah Palin, and only seven percent want Newt Gingrich.

Let's take a look at South Carolina, which will be the first southern primary. In South Carolina, 25 percent want Sarah Palin, 24 percent want Mike Huckabee, 20 percent want Mitt Romney and again, only 10 percent want Newt Gingrich.

Those are the two we've looked at. Those are going to be early responses. Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, coming up at the top of these lists. That's what we're going to be following. Boy, we're going to be talking about that for the next couple of years.

That's it for me. NEWSROOM continues right after this break with Brooke Baldwin.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)