And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today,

Monday, August 1st, by two of my favorite election analysts, political analysts,

Jay Koss, my colleague at the Weekly Standard, author of many important articles on about the

last three or four election cycles you followed very closely in real time and

two fine books on American politics.

And Spencer Abraham, a senator from Michigan, Secretary of Energy, political operative before

all of that, extremely astute observer of politics and

elections. And so these are two of the best. This is the fourth conversation we've

had. We've been wrong basically three times in a row, so let's see if we can do it again

The point isn't being right or wrong it's how you think about it.

Okay, so here we are I think it's it's the Monday after the two conventions

99 days I guess to election day

Trump and Clinton the major party nominees as has been evident for a while Jay

where do we stand basically how would you advise someone to what are the odds? What are the basic structure of the race?

Well, I would say I mean first of all we're in uncharted territory where it's very peculiar to see a

campaign with two major party nominees that a broad spectrum of Americans dislike.

You know, you wouldn't think that given the nature of primaries and caucuses where you have you win by winning votes it's very

surprising to have two now sometimes that's literally true right literally

just haven't had a situation not that both candidates about 50% on favor. Yeah. Now oftentimes what will happen is

you will have you know bruising primaries will damage the reputation of

nominees and then the other thing that will happen is when a nominee settled,

you know, the opposition comes to dislike the other party's

...