North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Trump and the midterm elections — "The Takeout"

President Biden's reelection prospects are better after the midterms, a Trump-led ticket wouldn't win North Carolina again in 2024 and Democrats defied expectations because the party's governors led the way, according to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.

"I expect him to," Cooper said of a Biden bid for re-election, in an appearance on "The Takeout" podcast. "I had a conversation with him just a couple of days ago. I support him. He's been a fantastic president. I've told him that I will try to win North Carolina. If he makes the decision, I'm for him 100%."

Trump won North Carolina in 2016 and 2020, but Cooper, head of the Democratic Governors Association, doesn't see the former president winning his state again in 2024, should he be the GOP nominee.

"No, he will not," Cooper said. "I ran for governor in 2016 and 2020, and I won at the same time that Trump won North Carolina. I know the people here. I do not believe that North Carolina will make that mistake again."

Cooper said Democratic governors defied midterm expectations by campaigning on achievements of the Biden presidency and suggested that's a roadmap for 2024.

"The results that were achieved in Washington helped what happened across America," Cooper said. "I do believe that people are deeply concerned about another Trump being president or someone Trump-like. And that possibility is very, very real. We know the president has a track record of being able to stop Trump in his tracks. He will have a track record of four years of success. One thing I've known about Joe Biden for a long time, you can never, ever count him out. He always finds a way to get where he wants to go."

Cooper described the landslide gubernatorial defeats of Democrats Charlie Crist in Florida and Beto O'Rourke in Texas as "disappointing," reflections of a harsh political climate influenced by inflation, crime and Mr. Biden's low approval ratings.

"This was going to be a year for headwinds for Democratic candidates," Cooper said. "And one of the hardest things to do in politics is to defeat an incumbent governor."

Cooper acknowledged the importance of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' victory in Florida, highlighted by winning the historic Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County as part of a 19-point rout. But he's still hopeful that Democrats can still win the state's 30 electoral votes in 2024.

"I do believe in the right year with the right candidates Florida can still be in play for Democrats," Cooper said. "We certainly do not want to write it off."

Cooper also called DeSantis "divisive."

"It's extreme politics playing on people's fear," Cooper said. "Republicans have always been masterful at being able to do that, playing on people's fears. What we have to do is take those issues head on. Education. The classroom is not a place for culture wars. We need to teach science and history and math and reading, and we don't need to put our children in the middle of that. I think we can take that on."

Cooper said Democrats still stumble when it comes to explaining their priorities and achievements. He didn't disagree with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who told CBS News before the midterms that Democrats were "getting crushed on narrative."

"Democrats are very good at getting things done," Cooper said. "We're not always good at how we talk about them. President Biden would tell you this himself. Working hard on it, fighting with each other on how to do it. That's where the conflict is. (The media) focus on intra-party squabbles about how we're going to get things done. We need to keep working on the way we talk about things."

He also pointed out that Democratic governors had their best midterm elections since 1986 and credited activism linked to voter concern about abortion access.

"We understood that voters were not one-dimensional," Cooper said. "We understood that with this horrible U.S. Supreme Court decision that ripped away women's reproductive freedom that had been in place for five decades, that now the state capitals and the state legislatures were really going to be determining a constitutional right. Your zip code should not affect your constitutional rights, but that is where we are now."

Highlights:

• Democratic loses in races for governor in Florida and Texas: "One of the hardest things to do in politics is to defeat an incumbent governor. Governors do so much work that affect people's everyday lives. And even if you're not such a good governor, it's still hard to root one out. And this just was not the time for Democrats to succeed in Texas and Florida. But they are still on the Democratic maps. We have to go in and look at ways that we can improve the processes there. I don't profess to be an expert on how we do that, but I know that both of those states are too important to our country. Too many people live there. We've got to keep working to make sure that we can make some inroads in both of those states."
• Recipe for successful Democratic governors: "I think Democratic governors this time did a much better job of communicating to people what they were doing to affect the issues that matter. And it was multi-dimensional. We heard a lot of pundits as these swing states came up. The polls would swing one way or the other. The fact of the matter remained that Democratic governors remained steady in what they were doing and what they were messaging as well -- affecting the cost to families, which they cared about, but also reminding people that, hey, democracy is on the on the brink. And we know that people's abortion rights are going to get swept away if we don't elect Democratic governors. The combination of those issues won the day for Democratic governors."
• Democrats gaining seats in state legislature: "We have for decades not paid enough attention to state governors, state races and state legislative races. Republicans for decades have paid attention to it and have gained control in a lot of states where they shouldn't. I think Democrats have been waking up to that, particularly when President Trump came along, the Supreme Court started ripping rights away. We now have more issues that are being decided on the state level. This time I think Democrats paid significantly more attention to state governors and what's happening in state legislatures. And I hope we Democrats learned that this is where we need to maintain investment and attention because of that, that US Supreme Court is going to be there for quite a while. We don't know what's coming down the road. Regarding personal rights and freedoms that may be decided at the state level, who the governor is, who the state legislature is in those states going to matter a lot to everyday people.
• Midterms' effect on Trump and the GOP: "I've given up trying to predict what happens in the Republican Party. You know, I work closely with Republicans in North Carolina. I think people expect us to try and work together on solutions. But since President Trump got elected, a majority of the Republican Party has pretty much told us that they prefer an autocracy as long as their guy is in charge. And President Trump, the candidates he supported, had a bad night, no question about it. The issue is whether that's going to transfer to a bad thing for Trump. As to whether Governor DeSantis will give him a run in the primary, I don't know. I fully expect Trump to run. DeSantis has an uphill fight because it's going to be hard to strip away those people because not enough Republicans have had the courage to stand up to him. They just haven't. We'll see if that changes." 

Executive producer: Arden Farhi

Producers: Jamie Benson, Jacob Rosen, Sara Cook and Eleanor Watson

CBSN Production: Eric Soussanin 
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