Mark Halperin

But if you talk to

a candidate who's engaged in what he or she's doing, if you talk to someone who's a political strategist, a consultant, a campaign manager, they're in the business of campaigns more than they're in the business of politics.

And what is campaigns?

Campaigns is get out the vote, organizing, using technology, hiring professionals and building a team.

That's a campaign.

And in my business, almost nobody covers campaigns or really, and almost anybody in campaigns will tell you this,

don't know much about campaigns to the extent i've had success in my career one reason is i study campaigns as much or more than i study politics but they get away with so much in in uh in doing things in campaigns that are really not kosher necessarily and often they don't get enough credit because the people writing about them in media are really just covering politics now there's also elections that's a third thing that's about the casting and counting of ballots

That's also important to know about.

And after the 2000 recount, which we're going to talk to James Rosen about, people in my business learned a lot more about elections than they knew.

Every state's got its own election law.

Counties have their own.

ways of doing it people vote on machines they vote on paper now in the age of trump we learn more about elections absentee ballot rules and all of that but elections are important to know about and people who run campaigns typically know a lot more about elections casting and counting of ballots than people who cover them but it's campaigns themselves the operation of campaigns

that people just tend not to know about, just as sports reporters seem to not know very much or at least don't talk very much about how teams actually adjust during games to do better and try to come back if they're behind.

You think about reading about politics or campaigns in newspapers and on websites, hearing about it on the news.

What are most of the stories about?

Most of the stories are about –

Republicans are angry at Donald Trump because he's not staying on message.

Or they're about fundraising.

So-and-so raised a million dollars.

And that's part of campaigns.