And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations and I'm joined today by, as I have

been before, by two excellent analysts of American politics, Spence Abraham,

former senator from Michigan, Secretary of Energy, Michigan State Chairman, a

longtime political veteran and Jay Kost contributing editor of The Weekly Standard, author of books and articles galore,

political historian.

So the last conversation we had was at the very beginning of August.

I think it was the Monday right after the both

conventions if I'm not mistaken. And I remember thinking at the time this was a

conversation which both of you gave Donald Trump a better chance of winning than was the conventional

wizard at the time.

I don't know that any of us thought he would win, but I think we both said it would likely

but you said I remember Spencer particularly it would be a very close race you thought. And I remember that a week or two later

Trump had a con attack on the parents of Captain Khan and I thought oh my God this

conversation is going to be preserved and we're going to look ridiculous because

well actually you guys would look ridiculous. I'm just the moderator. But actually it was good, it was an insight

to see that Trump had a real chance so what

did you see that and what are you see looking at the returns each of you

in terms of what surprised you what didn't surprise you well you know one of the

things obviously the presidency was the you know the big race but I thought one of

the interesting kinds of changes in perspective that has come out of this is the

is the following no more than a couple of weeks before the

election I think most pundits were prepared to write off the Republican Party

...