Make them squeal. And what impact will younger and more conservative gop lawmakers have on the countriment. Im chuck todd and with me to provide analysis are Eugene Robinson of the washington post, and my colleague Andrea Mitchell and rich lauer editor of the national review. With welcome to meet the press. This is meet the press with chuck todd. One huge story has dominated the this week, a it is the aftermath of that grand jury decision in ferguson, missouri. We learned that Darren Wilson resigned from the Ferguson Police force. He submitted a Resignation Letter that said he wanted to stay on, but the safety of other Police Officers and the community are of paramount importance to me, and there is a lot of healing that needs to be done. And almost three quarters of the way through president Barack Obamas historic presidency, there is a lot of healing that needs to be done. We will be joined by governor patrick patrick, Deval Patrick and a panel to discuss the issue. There is not a Latino America or black america, there is a United States of america. Reporter the president who cast the vision of hope saw it splinter this week by a splint screen reality. We are a nation built on the rule of law, and so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jurys to make. On one side the images of tear gas and protests, and on the other, the cautious commander in chief who is running out of time in office. The president es resonance aft the verdict of the grand jury in the kill iing of mike brown he d this to say if i had a son, he would have lo looked like Trayvon Martin and if u u with were younger i could have been Trayvon Martin and there are very few africanamerican men who have not had the experience of being followed while slopping, ahoppi that includes me. Reporter six years ago, then candidate obama gave what was a risky speech about his experience as a black man in america, and his hand force ed by the controversy of jeremiah wright. I cannot disown him as i can my white grandmother, and a woman who loves more than anything, and a woman who confesses her fear of black men who passes her by on the speech. Reporter and after that, controversy after he criticized the Police Officer who a arre arrested henry gates in harvard. The Police Officer acted stupidly, and there is a long history of africanamericans and latinos being stopped by Law Enforcement disproportionately, and that is a fact. Reporter Police Union Officials in cambridge called for the apology, and the president backed away from the criticism, and defused the controversy with a photoop a beer summit. And now, some criticized how some viewed his presidency. There is a dark veined intolerance. Colin powell incited the party last year. And hesitant to criticize, the president said that though there is problems, there is enormous progress in race are relations, but some disagree. Fegson signifies the end of obama, and it is a sad end. The Household Income for africanamericans is 35,000 a year, and that is 20,000 less for whites and no bet ter when the president took office, and white unemployment was 4. 8 last month, and black unemployment was 10. 9 , and black men are six times more likely as white men to be incarcerated and black men between the 15 and 19 are 21 more times as likely to be killed bay Police Officer. Im joined by the outgoing governor of massachusetts Deval Patrick, and welcome back. Thank you, chuck, for having me. Before you made it into e elective politics, you worked in the Clinton Justice department, and in fact nsh, in the civil rs division, and the grand jurys decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson, and walk us through the process of what they are investigating and what they would be looking at . Well, it is a higher bar as we we were talking about off camera that the d. O. J. Has to consider, whether there is a consideration of violation of civil or Constitutional Rights which is different than what a grand jury in a state prosecution has to consider. And it is going to be a tough case to prove, and i say that without or that is to bring, and i say that without knowing all of the puts and takes of the case and what the the facts are, and it is very difficult. It is very important that doj is investigating it, and i know that attorney general holder is urging that investigation, and he will drive it through to conclusion. Did you want to see the indictment . Look, without knowing all of the facts, of course, i wanted to see the indictment, mostly, because the trial and the transparency of the trial would be good for the community, and look, because so many of us have the supposition that Police Officers are not going to be held accountable, and not going to have to answer for the shooting of unarmed young black teenagers, but the facts and the process as the the president sa does have to be respected which is separate and apart of the anxieties that young blacks have with encounters of Law Enforcement, and the anxieties that young Law Enforcement have about the anxieties of encounters with young black people, and the the stark contrast of the two. And you were asked how you would have handled the situation if you were in president obamas shoes, and you simply said, i am glad that dont have to. Yes. And what would you want president obama to do . Anything more on ferguson . Do you think that he should go . I think that he wants to go, by the way, and i think that it is not that because i know that, but i sense that knowing the man, because i think that he would like to be there to comfort the family of Michael Brown who are having to relive this tragedy all over again, and to e re reassure the community at large. And why isnt he going . Well, my sense is, and you asked me what i would do, and the reason it is a quandary is because the federal government is investigating right now sh, you dont want to appear to influence the investigation. Well, eric holder went . Well, you dont want to appear to influence the investigation, and also, i think that the president is in a really, really the tough place, trying to be and having been elected to serve as president of the whole country, and being, and having Higher Expectations on issues related to the race. I have experienced that at home. I was going to say, how did you deal with issues like that the and did you feel that you were worried about looking like you were playing favorites . Yes, i did. I remember a relatively early experience and it all feels early almost eight years in, when we had a terrible loss of a teenaged boy, a black boy in the roxbury neighborhood of boston. It was, it appeared to have been a gangrelated killing of a marvelous kid from a marvelous family, and the mother in her anguish called out, called me out in the media and said, where is the governor . And now, the the governors are not normally expected to come to the street crime scene cans. She had not called out the mayor, and we had run a very Grass Roots Campaign and we had engaged a lot of people, and the expectations of me by virtue of being a black official were different, and i had to learn, that and ultimately i did go out. I want to shift gears to the future of the Democratic Party, and i want to play for you a bite from senator Chuck Schumer who indicts the president s first year in office by saying that health care is a mistake. The democrats blew the opportunity a that the American People gave them. And we we took their mandate and put all of the focus on the wrong problem, health care reform. But it wasnt the change that we with were with hired to make. Americans with were crying out for the end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs, and not changes in health care. You agree with him . Well, i are respect senator schumer, but, no, i dont agree with that. Americans understand the interconnectedness with the whole host that the government should help solve, and americans should help themselves, but if you ask someone who is trying to be insured while sick and if they are buried in debt while sick, they will tell you that it does make a difference. And is this soul searching time for the party . Well, it ought to be, because election day was a great day for the republicans and Citizens United and a bad day for the democrats who dont stand for anything. And when the democrats do stand for something or as i have said in the past, grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe, we win. Because what we believe is what the American People are wanting. And you think that the democrats ran away from running a w away are from the president obama . Yes, a huge mistake. This is the president who has are presided over explosive stock market growth, and coming back strong over the worst economic economy collapse in a generation or two, and the universal health care, and bin ladens removal, and the ended of two wars and on and on and on and one problem that the president has is that he does not tell that story very well or very regularly, and the the importance of the repetition is something that i had to lerp, and had to learn, and not that we have reached the promised land, but it is certainly that we are better off. And hillary clinton, and you have praised her and admired her from afar, but you are concerned about the air of inevitability, and it is hard for the party. Well, secretary clinton has been an extraordinary public servant, and would be a terrific candidate for president , but i think that the narrative that it is inevitable is offputting to regular voters. And you mean, as far as challengers in the democratic p party . Well, not a critic of hers, but they read it as entitlement, a and the American People want, and they ought to want the candidates to sweat for the job, and make a case por wfor why the the right person for the right ti time. And you ended up winning the Democratic Party and you might be a 1 or 2 person if you made a run, and would you think about running it . I have thought about it, but i cant be ready for 2016. This is the running for governor, twoterm running for nationally education, and health care, and veteran efficiency and i did not run for this job to get another job but to do this job. Why didnt another democrat replace or just a republican, and did you feel that it was a rejection of your two years . I was not on the ballot, and i ran against the governor elect four years ago and we had a different outcome, and we had a good candidate who got better as she came closer to election day. And of course, she was outspent 9 or 10 to 1. And you dont feel responsibility for that . Looshgsk, im sorry, but the outcome of the elections depend on the candidate and not the folks on the sideline. Thank you, outgoing governor of massachusetts Deval Patrick. I want to go back to ferguson and the handling of it by president obama, and governor patrick said that he felt the pressure put on president obama and the white house feels it. I feel that as you said in the set hup piece, he is handling this differently than the Trayvon Martin case. And he is identifying with the Michael Brown family, but because it is a case involving Law Enforcement, the white house is a little bit more restrained in their ability to step ointo the the middle of this, even though there is a lot of outreach, and Valerie Jarrett reach i reaching out to talk to people in the community, the presence of the president of the United States in a situation that volatile involving the Law Enforcement community are where facts are, as they say disputed, would be potentially a very, very difficult plolitically. And eugene, too red saz reso . Well, he is the most difficult situation, and he is the most difficult black man in america, because if he loses, he will lose part of the white constituency, so he is damned if he goes, and damned if he stays and damned if he says anything substantive and damned if he is pontificates. And you have been critical of the whole Michael Brown story this in general, and im curious what you think of the president s public statements, and what you think of them . Well, i would have tweaked some things that he said last week, and basically, he was right on and i felt that the sincere of the random and the pointless destruction in ferguson, and i appreciated it, and he made a good point that poor communities need policing because the drug dealing, and the gangs, and the other people can buy their way out, and poor people cant, and they need the police to help them to be protected. And hl lean, watching what the doj does, is that going to be opening up more wounds or raising too much expectations in the africanamerican community, and what is going to be the end result of the justice department, particularly, if they decide that there is not enough . I mean, you heard governor patrick say it is a high bar. I think that the doj investigation has the potential to make it worse. It would be nice to move on are from this, but the fundamental issue is still there, and what, at the same time that you see what is at issue, and you say fundamental issue, and what is it . It ist not Michael Brown, but it is that it is keep happening to black men, and the whole issue of the driving while black, and my friend gary fields wrote a fantastic article of what is it like to be 250 black guy under suspicion for walking down the street for absolutely nothing, and as long as black people continue the feel that you cannot walk down the street without coming under suspicion, this anger is going to be continuing. And it is a story we have heard for one thing, and poor commu communities want policing and they need the policing, and you will find the most law oriented people that you will find in low income communities with a crime problem, because they want the policing done with the community, and to the community, and that is one of the issues. And they want the policing not with the majority white police force on the majority black community, rich. And rich, what is interesting when you look at the whites, whites that live in the urban communities are much more believe that we have a still race problem in the country, and the whites living in the rural or the whiter communities they dont see the race issue, do you believe that is part of the divide that maybe rural whites dont see this issue the way that folks that live in urban america . Perhaps. But you look at ferg sop specifically, and this is an area where the governmental structures have not caught up to the demographic change in the last decade, and that is what you do to take care of by organize ing organizing in the voting, and what i object to is that you can discuss all of the problems, but dont pretend that this particular incident was something that it wasnt. If you look at the most credible evidence, the lessons are are basic, dont rob a Convenient Store and dont try to take a policemans gun and when he yells at you stop, just stop, an none of this would have happened. Well, well, well no, no, no. And in is a relitigation no, no, conflicting testimony. And Michael Brown is not Trayvon Martin. No, he is not Trayvon Martin and neither is Darren WilsonGeorge Zimmerman and so there are clear differences, and you know, we are not in the relitigation business so we wont go into the whole thing, but will is conflicting evidence and witnesses who were not believed who said otherwise and those who were believed who said that is what happened. And the evidence backed up officer wilsons version, and that is why the grand jury dismissed it. And cities in baltimore are doing things like diversity of Police Forces which has nothing to do with the elected and white officials can diversify the Police Forces. We will pause for a moment, and the summit of Race Relations in america will go more in depth a after this break. A aft[ male announcer ] are you so stuffed up, you feel like youre underwater . Try zyrtecd® to powerfully clear your blocked nose and relieve your other allergy symptoms. So you can breathe easier all day. Zyrtecd®. Find it at the pharmacy counter. [ female announcer ] aveeno® daily moisturizing lotion has active naturals® oat with five vital nutrients. [ aniston ] because Beautiful Skin goes with everything. Aveeno®. Naturally beautiful results™. Aveeno®. Im just looking over the company bills. Up . Is that what we pay for internet . Yup. Dsl is about 90 bucks a month. Thats funny, for that price with comcast business, i think you get like 50 megabits. Wow thats fast. Personally, i prefer a slow internet. There is something about the sweet meditative glow of a loading website. Dont listen to the naysayer. Switch to comcast Business Today and get 50 megabits per second for 89. 95. Comcast business. Built for business. Welcome back. Let me show you the cover of this w