Syria Things News Today

An outcome in syria, some of the things that michael was talking about here in the future. >> and you get the idea of america not being willing to have that fight. and i want to look a little closer about that because its really striking to me if you take the last ten years and the ten years before, how dramatically public opinion towards the idea of intervention has changed. and well get into that after this. my mother made the best toffee in the world. its delicious. so now weve turned her tof...

Conservatism suddenly change again if republicans got the presidency back? >> i think one thing thats interesting is if you look at state legislatures, right? we havent seen that. so state legislatures are dealing with actually governing their states, and a lot of them are republicans -- republicans still dominate at the state level. you know, what were seeing is folks sticking with the conservative, you know, kind of national agenda. so you know, slashing things, not expanding medicaid, not doi...

Ballot that are so personal for individuals like gun control, like a womans right to choose, that might be the base. >> in a way its sort of a age-old question. if you look at midterm elections, we have lots of parties who have gained 30, 40 seats. its like a miracle when bill clinton and the democrats got five seats in 1998. oh, my god! put him on mt. rushmore. at a certain level, its sort of unfair. its also very tantalizing for democrats to look at the results in 2012, to look at the demograp...

Thwarting the president for the fun of it -- it is fun for them -- but its also about blocking his agenda and making this generation thats coming up in this era very cynical about government. and youre seeing that theres also that recent poll that showed they are -- they are losing hope. they are worried that things cant change. you know, they may not entirely understand why. and they certainly blame the republicans more than they blame obama, but they blame both parties. and so i have a little ...

And the obama agenda has largely been stalled since then. and thats what were living with right now. so the real question for this coalition -- i mean, there are two questions. will it ever show up again? secondly, will it show up in those midterm elections when the legislative branch is chosen? >> probably not. i mean, history shows that they havent shown up. you had women in 2010 pretty much reverse course, and they backed obama greatly in 2008, backed republicans to a greater extent in 2010. ...

Suburban moms. but if you look at whats happened at the legislative agenda so far, you still have a republican house that doesnt care about the obama coalition. they werent elected by these folks. theyre not having to be held accountable in that way. >> i think from 2010 to today, we actually have one big player that is not actually backing a lot of the tea party, and thats the media. the media for more than anything has actually backed away from supporting a lot of these candidates. i think fol...

I dont think its cuomo or omalley, no offense to those governors, but i do think it is about obama and some of the things you just said. all the sort of racially tinged language. republicans misjudged the coalition. they look at the coalition and say, weve got to really peel away latino voters. they are misjudging the fact that the coalition is about african-american voters as well. and that you can reasonably argue that bush doesnt win the presidency in 2004 if he doesnt do well among african-a...

Happened and keep assad from moving up the escalation chain. i think thats what the white house is asking now. how do you not get sucked into a conflict quickly where youre forced to escalate and do something that could make the situation worse and could also hurt the president politically. >> we shouldnt get stuck in a false binary influenced by the israeli air strike, that the choices here are what were doing now versus direct u.s. military, a la no-fly zone. there are options and thats where ...

Is it some? >> i think its clearly all of those things. i mean, its clearly having our first african-american president, clearly having him treated really horribly with so much racially tinged and racist opposition. and i totally think that the voter suppression efforts backfired. voting, once again, became a civil rights movement. and the response of organizations on the ground was unbelievable and excellent. people didnt just whine. they mobilized. they said, these are the problems. these are ...

Not to be drawn into it at almost any cost. >> but its worse because he said we dont know weather and we dont know where. does it matter when and where they were used if theyve been used? theyve been used. and then the last one, by who? the regime -- delivering chemical weapons is not something that you can just, like, youre sprinkling sort of frosting on a cake. its a complicated, delicate process. it requires very high certain type of technology, and only the regime has it. to even ask the que...