Transcripts For MSNBCW Up W Chris Hayes 20121027

are going to happen. right now i am joined by richard kim, my colleague at "the nation magazine." anna marie cox. the u.s. version of the guardian. george pack ner, staff writer for "the new yorker" and author of a fascinating story in next week's issue about a former lobbyist who has become disillusioned. a we are ten days away from the presidential election. president obama seems to be steadily regaining a narrow lead, a lead he held over mitt romney before the presidential debates began earlier this month. the latest polling averages according to nate silver of "the new york times" give president obama 50.3 with mitt romney 48.6. president obama has a 74% chance of winning the election based on his strong performance in several swing states. the president is hoping to capitalize on the momentum to encourage voters to go to the polls as soon as possible by taking advantage of early voting. as of this morning, more than 10.5 million people have already cast their ballots including the president himself. president obama flew back to chicago on thursday to take advantage of early voting in illinois becoming the first sitting president in history to cast a ballot early. mitt romney's campaign, meanwhile, has been buffeted by a series of things that happened to put him on defensive. richard mourdock, who romney has endorsed, became the latest gop candidate to make con throw versal comments about rape. john sununu suggested that former secretary of state colin powell had crossed party lines to endorse president obama because of the president's race. i think what we're seeing in the race is essentially the race regressing to the mean. it's basically the race going to what its stable equilibrium is. if you go back and you look at the nate silver model, the role that nate silver's model plays in the psychology of liberals is a topic we could do a whole show on. people are wearing out their mouse button by clicking refresh. basically the race is where it was in june. i mean, so everything that was, you know, before everyone started campaigning, right, mitt romney gets the nomination, you basically have the race and then you have brrrrrr the race and now we're back to where we are essentially. what's been fascinating is this meta battle over momentum. i am fascinated by the amount of energy and labor being put in by both campaigns trying to spin it that they are winning when people are going to vote. like i really honestly don't get it. >> especially when you think about the fact that momentum is a construct that has no application in polling. it's a physical thing. there is no such thing as having momentum in a poll. things change all the time. >> right. >> i do think it's endearing that people put so much faith in nate silver's model. i think he finds it so upsetting. people put him in a place where his whole model is this is not that much faith. >> first of all, there's been like a nate silver backlash. >> yes. >> go through this thing of the way that basically the campaign -- there's not new news being made on the campaign for the most part. the candidates are talking about we're in the home stretch. people have been putting all that energy into poll reading and poll spinning and so there's this entire right wing world of people who are doing nate silver sitcoms. >> the nate silver truism. >> exactly. >> i disagree. i think momentum is critical if you're the romney campaign. it's perception. it might not be real as you pointed out as a construct, but the romney campaign has really created a narrative. >> they've been trying hard to, yes. >> we are on the a sen den si. we have won the debates. we showed that we are capable of running the country, being commander in chief. i think that these rallies that they have where you get pictures of ginormous -- >> they photo shopped yesterday. >> i heard that. my point is i think momentum is something the romney campaign definitely sees inevitability and the obama campaign -- >> but the big question, is there a causal relationship? this to me remains the undetermined thing. we'll talk to a political scientist who studies undecided voters in a little bit. it's a question, is there actually causal relationship between this perception and momentum and pushing people off the fence? >> momentum is all generated from national polls. you look at the washington national poll, gallup poll, none of that matters. it's down to six swing states, i think three or four that are really, really in play. in those as nate said, it's been even steadier. to freak out about romney getting 50%, even the white vote sort of going away from obama to romney, four states, four or five states, that's really where, you know, all of this matters. it's a little like cable news pundants after debates talking about how people out there in the country are going to see this debate. they have no idea. >> how dare they? >> they're looking at their blackberry which is getting text and e-mails from, who? other consultants from the campaign. it's a weird closed loop that pretends to have a relation to the electorate. >> you said something in the greenroom which hopefully you didn't say to me in confidence. >> if so i'll never be on the show again. >> you said to me in the greenroom, there is a feedback loop. that you as a political reporter, i have had this skpeerps too, showing up to talk to voters. just knocking on the doors. the things you get back from them are them saying what they heard on the news. >> here's the point. we've had the same political story in this country for 12 years. we are an evenly divided country. the obama election in 2008 was a little bit of an exception because of the disaster in the bush years. you said we've gone back to the default or steady state. we've gone back to where we were in 2000. there's a story in the new york post how there might be a split. what does that remind you of? how many different ways can journalists and others talk about that story after 12 years. >> one thing on the momentum story, when they do that, they're playing against each other. they're leaving voters out of the equation. they're trying to convince each other they have momentum. in 2000 bush made a big deal of making a play in california. literally, that was playing to the gore team to get them to devote resources to places they didn't need to devote resources. nothing about voters. >> that's the strategic aim. there's a finite set of resources and you are deploying that in a strategic party in terms of do you put the marginal dollar in ohio, nevada, colorado. psyching them out has some actual value. >> he raises a very important point and i think it's true. the 2000 election model is probably where we are. i've been saying this for weeks. people have been laughing at me. romney might win that popular vote and obama makes us win the electoral college. >> we're going to be critical. >> i would be happy to have that discussion. >> we at the nation magazine have been calling for the abolition of the electoral college. if that's what happens, we should rethink that. >> convenience. >> i do think there's a remote chance that that's the scenario, left/right coalition. they'll have the tea party really freaked out. they already questioned the legitimacy of the 2008 election which is indisputable. they have a point there. they have a kernel of truth about the populus will being denied and it happened in 2000, it could happen in 2012. >> on tomorrow's show we're going to have your colleague, rick hurtsberg, we're going to talk about the electoral college, why it's there. >> how we can't get rid of it. >> we're stuck. >> there's an incredibly clever way around that that akila martin has come up with. >> you're talking like a republican. >> no, not with an amendment. state law. here's another thing that happened this week. we all know about the mourdock quote about rape. i'll play that in a second. we'll talk about that later. there's a lena dunham ad. she's a young writer and filmmaker who's got an hbo series. i think she's phenomenally talented. the campaign manager for the obama campaign tweeted out this link to a video she cut. we'll play a little bit of it. it's a remarkable video politically in a lot of ways. take a look. >> your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. you want to do it with a great guy. it should be with a guy who is beautiful, someone who really cares about and understands women. a guy who cares whether you get health insurance, whether you get birth control. the consequences are huge. you want to do it with a guy who brought the troops out of iraq. you don't want to do it with a guy who says he's at the library or who says gay people shouldn't have beautiful, complicated weddings. it's a fun game, who are you voting for, i'm not going to tell you. they say, guess. think about how you want to spend those years. in college age times, that's 160 years. super uncool to be out and about. no, i wasn't ready. my first time voting was amazing. it was this line in the sand. before i was a girl, now i was a woman. i went to the polling station and pulled back the curtain. i voted for barack obama. >> all right. so there is an obvious metaphor. i think the best adjective to describe that would be cheeky. it precipitated like a combination of total fake outrage and genuine outrage i think on the right. i want to talk about this ad not because it's in the news cycle and people are getting mad. to me it says something profound about the political calculation where we are. i want you to think for a second. would john kerry have cut that ad in 2004? no fricken way. they would not have touched that ad in 2004 with a million foot poll. i want to ask you guys why that is right after we take this break. ♪ with a low national plan premium... ♪ ...and copays as low as one dollar... ♪ ...saving on your medicare prescriptions is easy. ♪ so you're free to focus on the things that really matter. call humana at 1-800-808-4003. or go to walmart.com for details. this reduced sodium soup says it may help lower cholesterol, how does it work? you just have to eat it as part of your heart healthy diet. step 1. eat the soup. all those veggies and beans, that's what may help lower your cholesterol and -- well that's easy [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup. now we just played the lena dunham add that has the embedded metaphor about the first time and equating voting and sex. >> i want to see the kid rock ad. sorry. >> george, you have done political reporting and you did it in 2004. >> no, 8. >> i'm sorry, in 2008. it seems to me that the country has changed. the democrat's conception has changed insofar as they're willing to do that ad. >> right. i grew up in the '70s and the '80s when social issues were all for the republicans and democrats tried to avoid them. it seems things have turned. now democrats whenever the subject of women comes up they just assume that it's going to work in their favor and it often seems to. there's a gender gap and abortion rights are a huge issue so i think lena dunham is their main line to women in their early 20s who they're maybe worried aren't going to come out and vote and this is how to get them revved up. it's a slightly insulting view of the voting of young women. what do i know about them? i'm over 50. >> i agree with george wholeheartedly. i think that the challenge for me with this ad is that it says that the economic issue doesn't matter as much as the social issue. if you look at the trends and if you look at romney -- wait, let me finish. the republicans have been a nightmare on abortion, rape, everything else. the gender gap should be huge. the issue isn't that you see romney neck in neck in an election where women should be concerned. it says to me that economics is stirl driving this. that's what i think. >> two points i want to make. one is in the town hall debate when obama said for the first time i remember him clearly saying, reproductive rights is not a social issue. it's not a women's issue. it's an economic issue. women understand that. there's a gallup poll that came out last week that polled swing state voters and women's reproductive rights as a women's number one issue. >> also let me also say if you name check lily ledbetter and the iraq war which are not social issues. >> sorry. >> i was going to say that the ad makes me uncomfortable who's a not so young woman. maybe i've just gotten prudish in my old age. i think that it's not insulting to young women. i mean, the people who are going to vote for obama or who are thinking about voting for obama are not going to be offended by that ad. that's what you're pointing at. this current incensebility that's changed for democrats. obama has been aible to lead partially, let's face it, on the basis of his personality and his charisma. >> and also this forward leaning position which is so fascinating. who is the instigator in the quote unquote culture war? that's one of the dominant themes of this campaign that's been fascinating watching particularly covering the 2004 race which the right was the instigator. karl rove put the gay marriage stuff in the states. they wanted to fight about this stuff and there was this entire left literature that got produced. tom frank, what's the matter with kansas and a whole bunch of lefter versions of that argument about the ways in which social issues were used as a wedge to manipulate voters to vote against economic issues. it seems like we're on the other side of this. >> i look at it in part. the video is not about the social issues. it's made almost entirely in the register about the emotional. it's a feeling. that's what's unnerving not the sex, she would liken the feelings of obama, unshakeable love for him as if he were the guy she lost her virginity to. that sort of thing has -- that capacity for obama to elicit that extra rational, hyper emotional response has infuriated his critics on left and right. it was paul krugman during the 2008 primary. it's what the tea party goes crazy about. so do glen greenwald's followers. that's an interesting question of whether or not that sort of hyper emotional response for obama is endearing. is that going to reflect itself in the 2012 polls? and if he wins, is there a capacity to use that to effect a realignment. >> i think it dies sometime around the summer of 2009. to me, this ad reminded me of that horrible, yes, we can video where all those celebrities did their little piece of that song. >> i'm not familiar with that video. i don't know what you're talking about. >> and -- >> were you involved in that? >> no, no, no, no, no. >> and lena dunham doesn't know it's 2012 and president obama is a reasonably popular president. >> that's a great point. you say that. the fact of the matter is this is something i think the national media has missed a little bit. there's a "times" article about the ground game. the lead was like last time it was this passionate fervent undertaking and now it's this joyless grind. literally, that was the lead. >> losing your virginity versus the 30th year of marriage. >> let's not -- let's do this and not extend this metaphor for the duration of two hours of the show. but i actually think that that is definitely the story and there's absolutely a core truth to that because there is a difference, but what is missing is that there are literally millions of people in this country who do feel as fervently, who still feel that way about the president. i know this because this is a full disclosure thing too. my brother is a state director in nevada for the obama campaign. i know what he's doing and he's spending his whole life talking to volunteers and things like that. there remains a tremendous amount of this kind of intense, powerful, passionate personal thought to the president. >> does it translate into votes? >> i think it might. i mean, i think it is starting to. early voting and stuff. and i think also this is sort of the tradeoff that people only pay attention to politics every four years, right? the people who really were excited about obama in in 2008 went off and said he's doing his same thing. and now they've come back. the obama we saw in the last two debates and currently we're seeing on tv is the same guy people voted for in 2008. he's got that charisma and god i hate the word swagger did you i'm going to use the word swagger. he's doing things that are different. if you closed your eyes and didn't just not pay attention to his economic stuff but didn't pay attention to how joyless of a grind the presidency has been, it would be understandable to think that you were being involved in that same kind of passion you were involved in. >> hold that thought. i want to defend that rationality right after we take this break. we were enjoying our empty nest. and now it's just a nest full of laundry. lucky underwear. we were going through so much of that bargain detergent... and the clothes didn't look as good. but since we switched to tide, we use much less. their clothes are looking much more...uh... what's the word? 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>> you know, chris, the thing that troubled me about it, it's not the topic, it's the appeal. it's that, you know, anyone who was liberal in the '80s felt that the republicans were all about this appealing to irrational emotions using symbols that they had mastered. that was what the culture war was and that was what ronald regan did. he became a personality cult figure. it a nears republicans have come at economic issues with five-point plans and democrats appeal to vague feelings of times are changing and the republicans are no longer with it. >> this plan is symbolic. >> of course. >> i must say, where do you pretend tells a lot about what you think the country is. >> i want to argue with that. i promised i would argue and make a case for hyper irrationality. i think the liberal version of this argument, which is the god, guns and gays argument, these people, these other folks have been tricked into not having their own self-interest. my feeling is that -- >> that's wrong, by the way. >> that's wrong. my feeling about that both with conservative voters and liberal voters, again, i think there's a ton of substance to what lena dunham is saying. when you're talking at the level of cultural signifier, voting is an expression of a human being in all their manifest self contratrikt try craziness. that's what human beings are. they care about different things and they care about cultural identification and who recognizes them and who sees them. >> they cannot have it both ways. >> it depends on what the costs are. i think what happens when we go on a new slogan for the option of god, guns and gays, if you do this cultural social issue and run on personality, the danger is if things get worse, all of that turns on its head the same way it has. >> my challenge with this ad is likening a vote for barack obama, the president of the united states, to your first sexual experience as a virgin. doesn't make us a prude. is that appropriate? >> it's going to be disappointing for sure. >> i'm not touching that. bottom line is i think that's really the issue. i think we all agreed to what she said. you're right, chris, people can feel how they want to feel but is it appropriate? >> i think this connects to what happened with john sununu this week. it connects to the arguments the romney campaign has been making is basically the obama machine is trying to hood wink people into not thinking about his record and the economy. when former you know secretary of state and chair of the joint chiefs of staff colin powell comes up and endorses barack obama in 2008, that was a huge deal. people in the mccain campaign told us it pushed obama over the edge. he does it again, here's john sununu on another cable network talking about why that was the case. >> colin powell decided to opt for president obama again despite apparently being a republican. is it time he left the party, do you think? >> well, i'm not sure how important that is. i do like the fact that colin powell's boss, george herbert walker bush has endorsed mitt romney all along and, frankly, when you take a look at colin powell, you have to wonder whether that's an endorsement based on issues or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring president obama. >> what reason would that be? >> well, i think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the united states, i applaud collin for standing with zblim this is why i'm not a republican anymore. this is a perfect example of -- and i say this on national tv. when john sununu's the gop poster boy and spokesman and he says stuff like that, that is why colin powell and people like myself and others, we're still -- you know, we may lean that way but we don't want to own it because of people like that. they're completely out of touch. talk about out of touch. you're supporting the president of the united states because he's black? maybe in 2008 i will admit when i voted for president obama, first democrat i ever voted for in my life, president obama, part of it was that he was african-american, i won't lie. it was history. i think all of us would own a piece of that, but the second time around he has a record now and to suggest that is just offensive. >> romney has a record. there's a degree to which the amount of con did he senion in sununu's attitude is so extraordinary. >> can i say this, every time people talk about black voters running for black candidates, the history is black people having to vote for white people. no one votes for people of a different race more, more reliably and historically than african-americans who have been voting for white people for years and years and years and years. you know who votes for white people? white people vote for white people. >> that explains all of the write in votes for bill cosby. >> the truth about voters who say they're undecided. that's next. so now i can be in the scene. advair is clinically proven to help significantly improve lung function. unlike most copd medications, advair contains both an anti-inflammatory and a long-acting bronchodilator working together to help improve your lung function all day. advair won't replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than twice a day. people with copd taking advair may have a higher chance of pneumonia. advair may increase your risk of osteoporosis and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking advair. if you're still having difficulty breathing, ask your doctor if including advair could help improve your lung function. get your first full prescription free and save on refills at advaircopd.com. why they have a raise your rate cd. tonight our guest, thomas sargent. nobel laureate in economics, and one of the most cited economists in the world. professor sargent, can you tell me what cd rates will be in two years? no. if he can't, no one can. that's why ally has a raise your rate cd. ally bank. your money needs an ally. ♪ ♪ ♪ every four years the nation turns its lonely eyes to an extremely small, extremely hard to understand group of the electorate, the mythic undecided voter. this group, which according to polls makes up anywhere from roughly 2 to 8% of the electorate. it's lavished on in the waning days of the campaign. president obama spoke on a conference call to 9,000 voters who say they have not yet made up their mind. a last-ditch effort to persuade those seemingly immune to being swayed. because the undecided voter is so hard to categorize every cycle political strategists come up with a catchy label to try to explain who exactly these people are. >> all three boys happen to play soccer so that makes you in the eyes of political strategists a soccer mom. >> out of touch is a phrase soccer moms often use to describe this. >> soccer moms. >> we have security moms. >> security moms. >> waitress moms, whatever they are. >> people called waitress. >> walmart moms. they are the demographic that is all coveted this year. >> i've worked on the walmart moms research project. >> joining me now is lynn babrick, author of "the gamble." great to have you at the table. >> good to be here. >> you've been doing research on voters who are undecided and tracking them. quite a bit database of them over the course of the election. what do we get right and wrong about who these voters are? >> well, we have about 1600 of them in our panel so we can take a pretty close look at them and one of the things i think that is a myth about undecided voters is that they're low information voters. and i think it's true that they have less political knowledge but i really like to engage in the conversation about the other 95% of the electorate whose presence is unstable a year from the election until today. >> right. >> so is that a more informed vote, the whole campaign goes by and those people never move. so that information, i'm not sure that we're fair to say they're low information. they pay less attention to news. they're less interested in politics. all of those things are true. >> okay. hash out that distinction. you said all the things you just said there conformed with the stereotypes we have, more disengaged. >> yes. >> watch the news less. i've seen data that showed in undecided voters, four out of ten couldn't tell you which party had a majority in the house and another two out of ten thought the democrats were a majority in the house. >> they absolutely know less than the people who make up their minds early and they have positions on issues that tend to be more moderate. they don't have a past position at all. they'll say, i'm just not sure, on simple things. do you approve or disapprove of barack obama's handling of the economy and more undecided voters will say, gee, i'm just not sure. >> i have a question. is it that they don't care? what's their motivation? why are they like this? i'm curious. >> you know, i stared at these numbers a long time trying to tease out exactly what's going on with these people, and two sort of analogies that i like is they're just a little bit of a faded image of an early deciding voter. everything is a little less vibrant for them. >> low conviction voters. low passion voters. >> they're not interested in politics. it's not a hobby for them. they are not watching us right now. they're doing something else. >> right. >> and their political dictionary doesn't work very well. it's like it's a foreign language and they can't interpret it. >> this to me is really a profound insight. i am -- in 2004 before i was a full time, full time journalist. i took two months off and i can advanced in dane county, in madison, wisconsin. a lot of swing voters there. we were doing a persuasion campaign. knock on the door. are they undecided. if they're undecided you engage them in conversation. i did this for two months. the biggest thing that jumped out at me, when we talked about issues, we think issues are a coherent conceptual category that cleves the world at its joints. if i hired any of you, you would know what things to put in the heading about the economy, fiscal health care, energy, whatever. but those are constructed by a constant conversation that we're having politically. if you're not engaged in that, it doesn't necessarily make sense that those issues cohere in the way that they do to all of us transparently. >> this is a great conversation. it goes back to what you talked about in the last conversation about symbols. for us and people who have a hobby, the symbols make sense. they've been infused with meaning by people like you and they know what they mean. these less engaged, undecided voters, those symbols don't mean anything. >> but between us and them is what, 95% of america. i mean, it's not as though you're either a pundant on tv or you're an undecided voter. there must be something that -- >> that's a very good point. >> -- keeps you from joining the voters. >> let's imagine you're put in ohio for the last two months. you see these presidential debates that exude so many issues that need to be fact checked and are deeply confusing. you see these ads. it's a really compelling case to say that they're not in this political system because the political system really sucks. >> the other thing i would say -- my argument would be that partisanship, when you look at the other people who are designing the it year round, we talk smack about partisanship. america's so partisan, more polariz polarized, partisanship is terrible. that's a rational, clean and efficient way of reducing the cognitive load for people that have busy lives and are doing a lot of things, right? it actually makes a lot of sense. in fact, the fact that there is this correlation between higher information voters and partisan ship should tell you something. i want to hear you respond to that after we take this break. 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[ male announcer ] ...forbusiness.com. ♪ ha ha! ♪ if we want to improve our schools... ... what should we invest in? maybe new buildings? what about updated equipment? they can help, but recent research shows... ... nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation. let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. together with a focus group of uncommitted voters in orlando over at the university of central florida. soledad, how did it go? >> if you're watching on tv, you saw the squiggly lines. that was our roster. you got to see what they were thinking. home was very important to the folks in the focus group. we could see it. we were watching the squiggles. >> in the vote for obama. >> i'm teetering right there. >> this is serious. of course it has something to do. it has something to do with integrity. honesty. it has something to do with they lied about it. >> hold on! we are on live television and i have lost control. how many of you have now made up your mind and have a choice, have a candidate? raise your hand. anybody. anybody. okay. >> that was a great undecided voter panel. we've been treated to over this election season. i do think people have to start to feel resentment. why do these people get all of the attention when they are the less engaged. the argument i made before we went to the break was partisanship is a very efficient means of roughly calculating which political coalition you're part of. isn't that true? shouldn't we have everyone -- >> it is absolutely the truth that party identification is a great shortcut and most voters use short cuts. this idea that there are voters out there who go out and research the issues, gather the information, think about their own preferences and figure out who -- people are using party as a cue. 95% of self-subscribed democrats are going to vote for barack obama and similarly among republicans and mitt romney and they knew that in december of 2011 and they haven't moved. so the number of people who are shifting in and out of undecide and the number of people who are actually bleeding to the other candidate is small. >> isn't it also true of independents? they say they're independents? they're closet democrats? >> you can push them and they'll lean one direction. there are fewer independents. >> we have a little bit of data on this. it possibly comes from you, lynn. that most undecided voters actually identify with a party. >> yeah, about half. >> half of them identify with a party. we can see that there. that the largest party is the independents. lean republican and lean democrat strong and weak. >> is it a myth that the undecided voter, the independent voter, is that a myth? what's interesting about this is that party as a cue for these undecided voters, it doesn't work as well. so that number i said for early dividers was 95% will vote their party. among the undecided voters who will come to decisions, we're following them over the whole year. as we make up their minds we know who they're voting for. only 65% of those self-described partisans are voting for their party. again, this is what i mean. the dictionary doesn't work as well. >> once you get down to that. you say of the people who have some party preference, still 65% are going to vote for the parties they prefer? >> yes. >> kick those people off the table. then a certain part of them won't vote. >> yes. >> when you call people up, you're calling them three weeks before the election in polling and they say, i'm undecided. there's a pretty high chance they won't motivate themselves to go vote. >> i have a question. in your study is there a cohort of undecided voters that have a high amount of information? they know a lot, they don't feel that either party speaks for them and that's why they're undecided? >> yeah. there's a small set of people. >> tiny. >> it is really not -- those are sort of not the majority. >> most interesting conversation i had when i was canvassing in 2004 was a couple that was very pro life environmentalists. this was the rare mythic like issue cross pressured very high information swing voter. >> one of the questions i have, i would be curious in your analysis, 2008 was an historic election year. we had an african-american that won the major party nomination. one in five republicans, 25% voted for president obama, then candidate obama. now that it's not an historic election do we come back to our natural inclinations? we were having this conversation. >> resetting to the natural -- >> right. well, i was thinking about this as i was listening to you guys. i did a little bit of crunching. and i thought, you know, because i wondered, i hadn't looked who did the undecided voters vote for in '08 and it turns out that a majority -- well, 50%, half of them voted for barack obama. about 30% voted for john mccain in '08. >> right. >> 10% said other, voted for someone else. so the question i think is do we think that history is a guide and they will fall back on habit and vote for him again or is it -- >> break for the challenger. >> they can't do it so that's why they're -- >> i want to ask you about increasing partisanship and why that's happening. why are there fewer people who belaf like this as we go through time right after we take take a break. my understanding is everyone talks about the country getting more partisan, which means there are fewer of these folks. you're telling me that's not the case? >> well, in 2008 we also ran a big study like this, a panel over the course of the election, and we had about the same level of undecided voters in 2008 that we're seeing now. >> that's interesting because all the reporting has not been that. all the reporting says, you read this every political report says fewer undecided, more deadlocked, more partisan election. >> yeah. you know, all i can tell you is that -- >> your data. >> big panel over the course of the election year in '08 and 2012 looks pretty similar. >> so the folks, the political dictionary is different, they're deciding differently. what is making up their mind? the reason this is important is because in political science there's something called the median voting theory which has been dogma in that world for a long time. it's losing some of it. yeah, thank god. losing some lock on the academy. basically the idea is the natural tendency of a democracy is that the competition between the two parties will lead each party towards the, quote, median voter, the voter exactly in the middle. that's the voter that will give them the marginal vote that will have them win the election. they chase the median voter. the interesting thing is that if the median voter is someone whose political dictionary doesn't work, what does that produce in the political system? >> well, okay. this is a great conversation and i just taught this in my seminar last week at ucla. we could talk about this for a long time, but one of the things that, you know, what you need in order to get the median voter argument to work is a distribution of voters that is centered on the median obviously. >> right. right. right. >> so if we really think the country is moving away from the middle, that's going to change the behavior of parties and candidates. okay. i'm not sure that we're there yet, but to answer your question, if the people who are at the meed i can't remember are a little less sophisticated politically, what is that going to do? you know, i think another thing we know from coding a bunch of ads over the years, candidates make big statements in their advertising. >> yes. >> they tend not to be specific. we call those valance ads. the reason they do that, so that they can be all things to all people. they're like sort of the hero in a big budget film. they need to be every man. >> mitt romney, of course, has taken a very specific strategy in this campaign to not come out with specifics. in fact, he's been criticized by the political press with not coming out with specifics but it's clearly been an explicit political strategy for precisely that reason. >> romney is doing that, he's moderate mitt. he had to come out to the center. he had a longs, drawn out, conservative primary which caused him to go way to the right of who mitt romney is. >> we don't know who mitt romney is. >> his campaign -- he says -- >> the language. >> he says, for example, that i support abortion now in the case of the health of the mother and then his campaign has to do that. >> let me say this. >> we don't know who he is. >> this gets back to why partisanship is a fairly efficient and i think overall useful metric for people to use because it doesn't matter what mitt romney thinks. mitt romney is going to be the head of a republican party and that republican party has an institutional basis, institutional commitments, interest groups that determine its behavior, a world view that is stitched together by the media and the people within it and the people recruited into it. all of those things are far, far, far more determinative of how the republican party will act, what that looks like than mitt romney's personal feelings. >> but the fact that he has had to tone it way down and that he's actually changed positions in the last few weeks tells you two things. one, that unlike 2004, this is not a, you know, divide the country into two and hope that you have 50 plus one election. that was karl rove's strategy and it worked. i don't think that's what republicans are trying to do now. they're trying to grab the middle. the other thing it tells you, republicans don't feel that their true positions have the country. george bush didn't have to conceal his positions in 2004 and he won. they have to conceal them to win. that tells you the country has moved. >> ejd did a piece in the washington post said the right is who will win the election. >> hold that thought. blow our minds after the break. ♪ [ male announcer ] you've reached the age where you don't back down from a challenge. this is the age of knowing how to make things happen. so, why let erectile dysfunction get in your way? talk to your doctor about viagra. 20 million men already have. ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain; it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to your doctor. >> good morning from new york, i'm chris hayes. richard kim, lynn, george pack ner from "the new yorker" magazine and sylvia. we were talking as we have ten days until the election there's still some room for some movement in the polls i think there's still some room to move for people who are undecided. we're talking about that tiny cohort, small sliver of the electorate who are undecided. we're talking about when we left what effect that has on our politics. this is something i think about a lot as someone who is quite ideological, quite committed to a very specific world view who thinks a lot about politics. my vote is taken for granted and the vote that politicians are catering towards, particularly down the stretch, are these folks. when they don't seem to have a kind of coherent, fixed conception of what they even want, how does that play itself out in what actual policies we get? >> right. we were talking about ideology and romney moving to the middle and i was teasing a little bit and saying i have this result that was going to blow your mind. we've been tracking these people over the whole year. we asked them to place ideologi. when we looked to see which candidate is closer when we were talking about the median voter theory, people think on average that mitt romney is closer to them ideologically than they think barack obama is. >> fascinating. >> the thing that blew my mind about this is that distance is constant since january 1st. when he was in the primaries people did not see him as farther away. >> that's hilarious. that means that none of this matters. that means that everything that -- what you just said is that one day he's getting up and beating the crap -- can i say that on air, beating the crap out of rick perry and then the next day he's talking about how he's going to bring immigration reform and people say, yeah, he basically shares my views. >> we've been talking about party. it is the lens through which all political information is fill theered. when 95% of the electorate has made up its mind, you'll see reduced cognitive dissidence. >> you're the only person sitting at the table who -- i don't know your position. >> the deal is, we were talking about this. i like the president on social issues and things like that, but then governor romney's appealing to me on economic and the strength of the national security, kind of the flag waiving stuff. not that the president has been bad on anything. he's done a great job. when you're someone like me, you're going i like things about both of them so what do i do? >> i say you should vote for romney. not because i want him to win but because i think what matters once you're in office is almost always issues like taxes and spending. >> i disagree. >> the others are great campaign issues. the supreme court certainly matters a lot. >> it matters. >> i agree. >> if you weigh one supreme court appointment against the day in, day out battle on capital hill. >> i think the supreme court appointment wins on that. >> you do? economic matters also matter. >> there's a duration effect. i always think about it this way. bill clinton, all right, we all love bill clinton now in retrospect even though at the time a lot of us were very from us freightstraighted with him. everything he did vanished as soon as he was gone. everything that was not awesome, which is the defense of marriage act, which is the efficient death penalty act which is an immigration bill. >> chris, you know something, 30 years of inequality has anything to do with how people have governed in washington? >> oh, i absolutely do. i think it's the fundamental thing that drives people. >> then you just confirmed my point that you should vote for romney. it's economic issues. to me inbe equality is the number one issue. >> that i agree with. >> what do you like about romney on economics? i'm curious. >> i like that there's a more definitive plan. again, there are others who would say that's bogus. >> there's no plan. i'm sorry. i'm sorry. there is no plan. >> i like the website. there is a plan. >> there's a plan because -- >> when you say plan, the plan that mccain had and every republican has had since 1988. >> look, i think a lot of people get caught up into this. there's the newness of a new guy. again, i like the old guy too so i'm stuck. >> you are edging perilously close to that territory. >> this is the challenge i think for republicans in this election and going forward, women, undecided voters, women make up 60% of the undecided voters right now this week. >> wow. that's huge. >> as women have been undecided in making up their mind throughout the year, they are braking heavily for the president. >> that's been revealed in your data? >> why. why, why? >> i wish i could tell you. because again there's this sort of muted image of a voter, everything matters. >> do you think it's the social issues? like the abortion? >> the other thing that comes out of our data that you can see very clearly is in terms of people who initially support obama and romney and flipping to the other sides, the most switching is for women who initially supported romney and have now slipped to support obama. >> emotional? >> i think you're right. this is going to be a big challenge if they allow the party identity to become tied to this message. >> this gets us to the so-called waitress moms which is the coined phrase. it's not totally ungrounded. there's some data that suggests that basically women without college he had deducation and w working has the demographically richest group of undecided voters. i was reading coverage of folks who are in that demographic who have not made up their mind. it's a granular brutal story about the american economy. these are folks who are in tough shape. it's super hard to get by. that's taking up 110% of all the attention we have. this is something i encountered with swing voters. there's a fundamental skepticism, i think this goes to the story of inequality. whoever is in office, like you're working for $9 an hour 50 days a week and trying to find day care for your kid and that's going to be the case in february no matter who is elected. >> chris, this gets to if i can put in a plug for "the new yorker" this week, it's a story of a lobbyist and then made a lot of money lobbying for a bipartisan lobbying firm before going back into the senate. his basic life story tells you that the red/blue divide, the war between the colors in a way matters less in washington than what i think of as the war of organized money which is not a war of attrition evenly matched, a few inches of ground gained a year as the war between the colors. it's a route. every day it's a route because organized money defeats the public interest every day on capital hill. it doesn't get much attention. it's not talked about much in the campaign. it's not the thing that gets out the undecided voters. that to me is the deeper story behind every election of our lifetime. >> i disagree with you on the idea of these waitress moms who in washington it doesn't matter. >> i'm not saying that substanley. i'm saying that's their belief. >> look at the affordable care act. this matters essentially to working class women who have families that are trying to hold down jobs. that is what will be eviscerated should romney win. >> now we're getting into a demographic of i'm a high educated voter, right, as are you? we're sitting around this table. we're having a high end intellectual discussion. >> i wouldn't go that far. continue. >> i'm saying that if you think of the waitress mom, she's not watching us. like you said, she's working and making a living for her kids. you've got the suburban mom, the soccer mom is different than the waitress mom. you've got the professional woman that's married, single, gen x. all of this matters. >> the health care act is the greatest domestic policy achievement. most of that hasn't kicked in yet. i think if it had earlier we would be looking at a different mean. >> i was just about to make exactly this case which is that this is the single greatest achievement of the obama administration. it remains not tangible for the majority of people that it will one day benefit. there's concrete benefits up front. there's already things that have kicked in, etc., but the vast majority of people who will benefit have not benefitted yet. a lot of those are folks who i think are on the margins of our political conversation who if it was different from one day to the next, having health care, not having health care would know they have a stake in it. >> this is the challenge of messaging i think in any campaign but in particular this campaign. i think if we were writing the retrospective on this election, it's the counter factual stupid election because romney is out there saying things could have been so much better than they are. >> think about the counter factual. you're saying the obama campaign should be saying, you're going to be so much better off than you are. think about that. and that's a really tough campaign to run. >> that's because the status quo is mired in this frustrating kind of low-level fever. it's not that the country is, you know, in crisis. we're not priests. we're not about to pitch over the abyss. >> right. that's why this election has been passionless and why it's being fought out over little things like what john sununu said. >> that sort of always happens. a lot of cable air. >> it does, but i think this feels different. it feels like we're in the mud, we're in world war i. >> lynn, professor of political science and george, great to have you here. >> the tea party movement could keep democrats in control of the senate again. that's next. your ford dealer. who has 11 major brands to choose from? 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[ male announcer ] one pill each morning. 24 hours. zero heartburn. satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. all right. the basic story of the presidential election for the past month has been romney's polling gains after the denver debate that seemed to bring things to a tie following things settling back to a narrow but consistent lead for the president in the electoral college. this back and forth has had almost a shocking trend in the senate race. two months ago, just two months ago nate silver's 538 blog gave republicans a 61.5% chance of gaining a majority in the senate. chance for democratic majority sat at 38.5%. now 538 puts the likelihood of republican senate majority at a minuscule 13.7%. that's different than the screen. democratic chances for majority are almost at 90%. this turn of fortune for the democrats could be the result of the attention that the senate races have given. senator todd akin, perhaps you've heard about him. after his legitimate rape comment. then tuesday after an indiana senate dae debate. >> republican candidate richard mourdock said this. >> i believe that life begins at conception. the only exception i have for -- to have an abortion is in that case with the life of the mother. i just -- i struggled with it myself for a long time but i came to realize life is that gift from god and i think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that god incompetent tended to happen. >> mourdock and akin are considered tea party candidates. republicans who came from the party's conservative grassroots. mourdock won a surprising victory over dick luger. these kinds of primary challenges have been part of the central part of the political party's political and electoral strategy. for a second election cycle they have seemed to have caused part of the republican majority. two years ago they caused republicans to lose three seats. while the movement has been successful in pushing the party ideologically, it failed in getting a republican majority in the senate. even the ideological victories of the tea party have been short lived as the electorate moves back to the senate. if conservatism would be winning, does anyone doubt that romney would be running as a conservative? the right is going along because its partisans know romney has no other option. this, too, is an acknowledgment of defeat, a recognition that the grand ideological experiment heralded by the rise of the tea party has no legs. brendan dougherty is with us. it is always great to have you here. i want to play this. i think this is fascinating because i think the tea party dominated all discussions of american politics for a while and then just seemed to kind of disappear from the discussion. and part of that has to do with the fact that they took over the house so the tea period became the house caucus. it was channelled into that. part of that has to do with the fact that what once was a good part, it has become a terrible brand. you see this reflected in democratic candidates stopping at nothing to invote the tea party against the candidates. take a look at their candidate. >> do you think richard mourdock will work with both parties to get things done? hardly. voters are deciding between linda mcmahon and myself. they're deciding whether the tea party should be part of the united states senate. >> the affordable health care act comes up when you're deciding. >> he is part of the gridlock. where is the farm bill? where is the postal bill? where are the bills that the tea party is trying to shut down? >> you're not going to get it done by somebody who is basically satisfying every single requirement of the tea party. >> so michael brendan dougherty, has the tea party succeeded or failed? >> it's not so much the tea party. i would say the conservative movement by which the tea party is kind of a subset is shrinking and dying and in a way, you know, i think of electoral majorities like enduring presidential electoral majorities. the new majority of nixon that created two 49 state landslides has been disintegrating for a long time. it was built on the idea that the left represents a small radical counter culture that's against you. increasingly, the tea party is representing a counter cultural force that the minority force in politics. i'm part of that. >> you're probably part of the counter cultural minority. >> yeah, the moral minority. so that alien it's voters. they feel that they're out of the mainstream. it's very weird that the party that used to represent an unbelievably large coalition in american politics is now controlled by like a very small subset of voters within that coalition. part of it's because the conservative movement trains them and then they become the candidate and part of it's just the demographic shift of america, but i think you've just seen the inversion of the nixon majority. >> i think that decline is way exaggerated. i think that's exaggerated because if you look at the senate or the presidential race it appears that the party is going to cost them control of the senate. the further down ballot you go, particularly if you go to statehouses, the tea party is absolutely in charge of places like new hampshire, you know, wisconsin. there they have passed a shocking number of laws clamping down on voting rights, on trans vaginal ultrasound, any number of things. i don't think that is going away. i haven't looked lately at the sort of state legislatures, but i think that is a force there to stay. >> because i think the republican party might start having to police it. those down ballot races and the state legislatures are starting to give the national party a bad name. >> i'm not sure they can police it. >> like michael said, they have a much firmer farm team. >> this is my point, that there's a difference between national politics and state and local which we know. we're seeing it play out in the republican party i think in a very interesting way. these senate races where they're talking about rape, these guys look like knee andre thols. they're white, they're male. you're trying to tell women that rape is an awful thing but even the child that's the by-product of that rape is god's will that that child has been born and it's just -- you know, that kind of thing makes people squeamish. like the professor talked about, chris, you don't want to eat phi with a republican party. >> it makes people squeamish because as you said, michael, it is a radical minor taryn position. >> listen. >> you believe it. obama's position on abortion, it should be legal in all circumstances for any reason is a minority position. >> i agree. >> most americans are for only the good abortions. it's only partisaned or ideological people like us that have a coherent view. the other thing is when we're talking about the personnel, who's actually running where martha cokely was a terrible candidate, they supported scott brown and won. there's a way the tea party can be bloody minded and practical. they knew scott brown was a squish but they said we have to get this one more vote in the senate to kill obama care and it didn't work. >> right. >> you have christine o'donnell, richard mourdock and akin, these are not exactly like your a team best people. >> and i think one of the things i think that's been really interesting about this is the role that abortion has played in all of this partly because i think of a kind of bait and switch that was pulled off during the rise of the tea party movement. i want to talk about what that bait and switch was right after this break. take a deep breath for me. describe the smell. it's very pleasant. fresh. some kind of flower maybe? 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[ laughs ] wow, that's incredible. when you take a closer look... ...at the best schools in the world... ...you see they all have something very interesting in common. they have teachers... ...with a deeper knowledge of their subjects. as a result, their students achieve at a higher level. let's develop more stars in education. let's invest in our teachers... ...so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. this fall i'm supporting richard mourdock for senate. as state treasurer he worked with governor daniels to balance the budget and make government more accountable. as senator richard will be the 51st vote to repeal and replace government-run health care. richard will help stop the liberal reed pelosi agenda. >> i'm richard mourdock and i approve this message. >> that's mitt romney who cut an ad for richard mourdock who's been in the news this week after talking about rape and pregnancy resulting from rape as being a product of god's will. what i think is fascinating about that ad and the way it relates to the tea party is a sustained bait and switch. there was a political strategy that dick army and karl rove and a bunch of other strategists pursued during the kind of tea party uprising which was to take a conservative base which was the same conservative base in 2004, it was those same people and channelled the anger against barack obama and make the headline issue the stuff that mitt romney talked about in the deficit obama care, etc. not talk about abortion. not talk about those issues. then all of a sudden low and behold it turns out these people have super radical ideas on abortion and it's blowing up in their faces. you're seeing exactly the consequence of taking that political takt with the tea party and it's coming back. >> you know what the saddest part of that race is that richard mourdock's opponent, joe donely, also is apposed to abortion. his stance on abortion is exactly the same as mitt romney's which would outlaw 93% of abortions performed in this country. there's a bait and switch going on on the democratic side. it was sending out massive fundraising appeals to raise money around this. they have not committed, right, to only supporting pro choice candidates. i think if you're getting one of those e-mails, don't give money, give the money to emily's list. >> people have made this point. they will give those checks to people that are not good on -- >> essentially mitt romney on this issue. that is joe donely. >> right. the national party has some control of the political races. they won't exert that control as long as people are winning. you have to lose really badly and something go really wrong before the national party steps in. >> this goes back to our earlier discussion where is politics. these guys are running indiana, right? they are running in their state for united states senate, but it reflects the culture of the state they're in as a very conservative state. >> indiana is a conservative place. >> i have a position as the republican. that's where this gets mercy about state and local to federal. >> democrats had success in 2006 recruiting candidates that were pro life and culturally more in tune with their district. >> to get the house majority. >> to even pennsylvania. so it doesn't clean necessarily along those lines. you said this the first hour, the election is about the economy, pocketbooks, jobs. we like talking about the cultural issues. both sides like talking about what this country is, what it's about, who's it for, what does freedom even mean. freedom to do what? >> of course this has support. none of those cultural issues are just cultural or social issues. when you think about that, who should pay for what, you start to get into social and cultural. >> can you control your reproductive health is an i shall issue. can you leave them your inheritance. that's interesting as well. what's interesting is we tend to overreact in american political journalism to the latest, you know, whatever happened recently. george w. bush's fairly narrow victory in 2004 if you look at it, particularly for an incumbent, was a sign that the left was dead forever. permanent republican majority and then 2006 and 2008 was, oh, man, the republicans are going to be a permanent minority party. 2010 we write these pieces. the long-term demographic trends are not great for the represent tan party. >> people of color. we talked about this. the republican party's greatest challenge, i've been saying this for 20 years, you can't just continue on with white voters. if mitt romney wins the election he'll win with white voters. we've seen that polling data. the challenges as a governing president, do you want to just win elections with just white voters? women don't really like you, african-americans, latinos. that's the -- >> the gender gap is nowhere near where the racial gap is. >> it's huge for the race. >> we are now headed -- there's a headline yesterday for editors, the most racially polarized election since 1988. that was the famous election of willy horton. that's the direction in which this is headed. >> wow. >> it's a question about whether those political coalitions are that way. >> right. i think the democratic coalition is growing. you can see texas is trending democratic. that is an enormous state. although they have something written into their constitution where they can divide into five states, i don't think they can g jerry manned der every voter. >> they might just try. >> let me remind you that they can't. i actually was with the texas delegation for much of the democratic convention. my family is from texas. i knew some people there. they are inses tent. >> my brother worked there for a while. wisconsin senate candidate tammy baldwin is going to join us right after this. add up to 100 calories? 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[ chef ] ma'am you're not just looking for a by house. eyes you're looking for a place for your life to happen. for a professional cleansing device? join the counter revolution and switch to olay pro-x. get cleansing results as effective as a $200 system. guaranteed or your money back. olay pro-x. introducing the new droid razr maxx hd by motorola. now more than ever droid does. we're bringing in wisconsin democratic congresswoman an any baldwin. she's running against tommy thomps thompson. congresswoman, you were behind in this race a few months ago. polls are showing you consistently in the lead right now. i want to get from your perspective, what has changed up there. what are you hearing from voters? what are you seeing in your numbers? >> i have to say after the republican primary tommy thompson got a bounce, but just about the time that both partisan conventions had come to a close people in wisconsin really began to study this race. it comes down to the simple question, whose side are you on? i've been fighting throughout my public service career for hard working middle class families. people are beginning to figure out what tommy thompson has done with his life since he left wisconsin to join the bush administration in 2001 and then became a partner at a large powerful lobbying firm in washington, d.c., and realized that he's really taken the side of big, powerful interests and he's not for us anymore. that's really when we saw the polls beginning to change, the momentum beginning to change. it comes down to the wire, it's a tight race. it's a competitive race. but that's what we're seeing. people are saying, you know, whose side are these candidates on. >> i've been in a few different states that have competitive senate races and seen the television advertisements. it seems national. it's been a lot about the ryan budget and medicare. has that been the case in your campaign as well? have the big budget issues and economic issues particularly dominated or as we've been talking about today, have things like birth control, marriage equality been a big part of the conversation as well? >> you know, the majority of this campaign has really focused in on jobs and the economy, the difference between our tax plans, the difference between our deficit reduction plans. certainly a lot about health care and medicare especially given the fact that my opponent is a former bush cabinet secretary where we have a real record to contrast with regard to health care and medicare. and in each of those questions there's also been a local element to it. what have i been doing throughout my public service career and not so much what tommy thompson did as governor, but what has he been doing joining the bush administration and joining a large lobbying firm. i think that's where people are looking at this old expression, you work hard, play by the rules, you're supposed to get ahead. too many families in wisconsin are just getting by. they know it's not their work ethics that's changed, it's the rules. whoever can hire the most powerful lobbyists get their way and in wisconsin's proud progressive position, the people want a voice. so that's what we're seeing as a sort of local nuance on this otherwise pretty nationally focused race. >> it sounds to me like tommy thompson's years in washington, he was quite a popular governor and won statewide election before. also at a certain point in time i remember reading a lot of profiles of tommy thompson as a national figure and he has republican social policies. i want to play a little bit of sound. he was caught on tape talking about medicare. to me it says a lot about the kinds of promises that these republican candidates have had to make in their base and how that comes back to bite them. we'll take a quick break and i'll show you that after this. they can help, but recent research shows... ... nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation. let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. all right. congresswoman baldwin, i want to play this. it's your owe poeb neopponent g caught on tape talking about his plans for medicare and medicaid. >> medicare and medicaid, like welfare, who better than me. that's tommy thompson talking to an audience. do you want to do away with medicare and medicaid? what kind of effect does that have in the race? >> well, certainly people were shocked when they saw that video and tommy thompson's trying to do a fast dance around this whole tape. he's claimed that it was taken out of context even though you've played it in its entirety. he has in the last night's debate we had our final debate last night. he said, i never supported a voucher program for medicare. he has his own plan. the bottom line is that he supports the elimination of traditional medicare in much the same way that paul ryan has proposed. they offer plans that would shift costs to seniors and they would be tremendously burdened with out-of-pocket expenses if their voucher didn't keep up with run away health care costs. i was raised by my grandparents so i had a chance as a young person to understand the value of medicare. i don't believe it's just a program, it's a promise. and in my campaign it's a promise that i vow to keep should i become wisconsin's next u.s. senator. >> congresswoman, the polls are showing the presidential race closer than i think people had anticipat anticipated. john kerry won wisconsin 2004. it's a little surprising it's being considered a swing state. paul ryan on the ticket is part of it. part of it is the economy. it seems like the wisconsin economy is underperforming. how do you talk to voters about president obama's record when that's the case? >> well, we all see signs of recovery, but i think across the nation and certainly in wisconsin a little frustrated with the pace. nevertheless, i think wiscons wisconsinites are clear how we got in this mess. it was decisions made in the bush administration supported by my opponent when he was a cabinet member in the bush administration. we know it's going to take some time to work out of it. i focused so strongly on rebuilding wisconsin's manufacturing economy. between indiana and wisconsin, we tweet with each other for the number one spot of having the largest manufacturing economy as a percent of our population and yet we've taken it on the chin in recent years. that's why i worked on a bipartisan basis to pass legislation that reins in china's unfair trade practices whereby they're subsidizing their industry. particularly paper. we're the number one producer of paper. the president and myself have a plan. frankly, we haven't seen anything from romney or tomorrow thompson in that regard. >> thank you for joining us. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> what do we know now that we didn't know last week? my answers after this. okay, that looks great. were you profitable last month? how much money is in your checking account? have the browns paid you for their addition yet? your finances are scattered all over the place. mm-hmm. what are your monthly expenses? you keep your receipts in plastic baggies? seriously? 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[ yawning sound ] in just a moment, what we now know that we didn't know last week. first a quick update on a story we've been following. we told you about e-mails we obtained pressuring his employees to support mitt romney. since then several more e-mails have surfaced from ceos threatening their employees jobs if romney doesn't win. >> according to the milwaukee journal sent nal, a chairman and a major manufacturer of industrial equipment in milwaukee, he told his employees that they should understand the consequences if president obama is re-elected. white said neither he nor the company wanted to, quote, prejudice any employee for their political views and totally respect your right to vote as you choose. i am trying to protect the business you have built. please think carefully about your vote on november 6th. as the "huffington post" reported, jack dewitt slammed president obama in this month's employee newsletter writing, quote, the past four years with president obama trying to lead and represent us has been a complete failure. what can we do? what am i going to do? i am going to vote on november 6th for new hope and change by voting for mitt romney and senate candidate pete heoekstra. both of those candidates received federal grants from the federal recovery grants. on a show monday stephan colbert captured the irony of this perfectly. >> some of america's top ceos are assuring a romney victory by doing the unthinkable, talking . >> this is an e-mail from arthur allen president of. will the u.s. presidential election directly impact your future jobs at asg. i the tell you if he's reelected, our chances of staying independent are zero to none. i don't want to hear any complaints regarding the fallout that will most likely come. >> if these ceos or their companies have their taxes raised, you employees would lose your jobs which would be terrible because you couldn't work at that great place where your boss threatens you. >> we'll post links after the show. what do we know now? thanks to a three-part investigative series from "the washington post," we know new facts about the obama administration's ever expanded policy of targeted killing. we know the kill list is being transformed into a spreadsheet of targets. they're calling this new and improved database a, quote, disposition matrix. we know while the administration institutionalizing targeted killing, it has yet to account on the record for the death of 16-year-old american citizen abdul al awlaki who was killed after his father, was also killed by a drone strike. we know according to an unnamed official in "the washington post" story, the 16-year-old was not the target of the strike that killed him. if you're going to talk about the death of a 16-year-old american boy by our hands, far better to call it an outrageous mistake, as that official did, rather than try to justify it by suggesting that america can kill children for the sins of their fathers as obama campaign senior adviser robert gibbs did when recently asked about it. >> an american citizen being targeted without due process of law, and he's under age. >> i would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they're truly concerned about the well-being of their children, i don't think becoming an al qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business. >> we know that justifying the death of a 16-year-old boy by reference to his father's alleged sins is the moral object of collective punishment that has historically been used to justify out right atrocitieatro. we know it's always difficult to speak in the moment on a difficult conflict. we fully expect mr. gibbs to retract and apologize for what he said. we know one effect of this exchange about the auto bailout during monday's debate. >> i said these companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy and in that process they can get government help and government guarantees. they need to go through bankruptcy to get rid of excess cost and the debt burden they had built up. >> governor romney, that's not what you said. >> you can take a look -- >> governor romney, you did not say you would provide governor help. >> you're wrong. >> i am not wrong. >> people will look it up. >> people will look it up. >> people did loong it up. mitt romney's "new york times" opinion ed titled "let detroit go bankrupt" was most viewed on the times website. we know his spin was to let the companies go into a free fall bankruptcy financed by the private market rather than the bankruptcy funded by credit lines from the u.s. government. we also know that headline presumably chosen by the opinion ed editor may be the most consequential op ed headline in history. we don't know the name pictured at the voting location in chicago on thursday. we do know he had the most surreal voting experience of anyone in the country since he happened to be next to this other guy who was casting his own vote. don't mind me, no pressure. vote for whoever you want. i want to find out what my guests know they didn't know at the beginning of the week. richard kim. >> i'm going after a same sex wedding. kelly is marrying anja who is my former intern. i want to congratulate them. we know mitt romney would support a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. he also thinks hospital visitation rights should not be allowed to gay couples. >> that's a great thing to know. anna marie cox. >> this week we marked the tenth anniversary of wellstone's death. the great tradition of affirmative aggressivism is alive and well in minnesota. obama is going to win. it might be one of the first states to fully reject a gay marriage amendment. >> the paul wellstone death was so devastating when it happened. he remains a testament to conviction politics and to organizing and everything that i think is great about politics and can be great about politics was represented by paul wellstone. >> michael brennan doherty? >> i didn't know about an incident that happened in 1995 where norwegian scientists wanted to study the aurora bore alice. they warned the kremlin they would lawn launch a rocket into speights to do this. still it looked like a u.s. trident missile sent in the direction of muss sill as an emp. boris yeltsin was awakened in the middle of the night and discussed whether to launch hundreds of icms at the united states. i would like to bring this up to bring up a retro issue which is the abolition of nuclear weapons which is something that even ronald reagan imposed -- >> and president obama is in support of abolition of nuclear weapons. >> this for me was the mourdock issue regarding that god intended the pregnancy. this caused me to go back into my undecided vortex of what am i going to do in this election? >> you'll have to let us know how that works out. thank you for joining us today. join us tomorrow morning at 8:00 we'll have jane mayer. up next, melissa harris-perry on to difficult's mhp with campaigns on pace to pass the $2 billion mark, she asks, are our votes for sale? there is a plan to fight back. find out what it is on "melissa harris-perry" next. we'll see you right here tomorrow at 8:00. thanks forgetting. a business you'd like to start. or protect your family with a will or living trust. legalzoom makes it easy with step-by-step help when completing your personalized document -- or you can even access an attorney to guide you along. with an "a" rating from the better business bureau legalzoom helps you get personalized and affordable legal protection. in most states, a legal plan attorney is available with every personalized document to answer any questions. get started at legalzoom.com today. and now you're protected. and his new boss told him two things -- cook what you love, and save your money. joe doesn't know it yet, but he'll work his way up from busser to waiter to chef before opening a restaurant specializing in fish and game from the great northwest. he'll start investing early, he'll find some good people to help guide him, and he'll set money aside from his first day of work to his last, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade.

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