d daddy s a hero. daddy, can we play ponies? right after we do foldies. tide boost is my tide. what s yours? so if ydead battery,t tire, need a tow or lock your keys in the car, geico s emergency roadside assistance is there 24/7. oh dear, i got a flat tire. hmmm. uh. yeah, can you find a take where it s a bit more dramatic on that last line, yeah? yeah i got it right here. someone help me!!! i have a flat tire!!! well it s good. good for me. what do you think? geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. i m s.e. cupp. the president looking to a new nis fiscal fight. the rest of hasandy aid bill up for a vote. xlees with tax breaks for rum distillers? i need a drunk. i m kry is tal ball. are we turning our kids in to narcissists? a dope. lance armstrong comes clean to the queen of talk but who needed the interview more, lance or oprah? i m shooting straight coming to guns. ready, aim? the cycle is on fire. the house is back and getting serious about the constitution. members spent 1:05 reciting the entire u.s. constitution. it s the basis of our government, of course, but this is only the second time ever the entire document was read aloud in the house. we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union no person except a natural-born citizen shall be eligible to the office of president. the powers to all cases of law and equity. full faith and credit given in each state to the public acts. congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the united states. the validity of the public debt of the united states authorized by law shall not be questioned. the right of citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. the right of the citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied on account of sex. the 18th article of the amendment to the constitution of the amendment is hereby repealed. ah, the constitution from those opening lines we the people to the 21st amendment, wahoo! glorious document. i think i heard a clap or two in there about the debt and the nation paying bills and closer and closer to running out of cash to do it. remember, raising the debt ceiling isn t additional spending but allows the government to pay the bills it s already racked up on money it s already spent. today, fitch ratings which sets credit ratings for countries around the world warned the u.s. could lose the aaa rating, the highest there is, if there s not a quote median-term deficit reduction plan put in place. what will it take to get a deal? we start with dan gross. his latest piece is titled obama brinksmanship puts gop in tough spot on debt ceiling. so dan, you write that while you fall off a cliff, you only bump your head in to a ceiling but economically the ceiling has the capacity to deliver far more damage. you are talking like my friend steve kornacki here. what is failing to raise the debt ceiling? why is that going to be catastrophic? well, you know, first of all the stock and bond markets will really go haywire in a way they didn t when we were about to go over the fiscal cliff because government bonds are held by everybody. chinese central bank, japanese central bank, every single bank financial institution out there. so if there s any question over the value of those and they start to decline, these institutions have a great amount of leverage and interconnected with everything else and sort of see what happened in 2008. it s also this issue of, you know, who gets paid? if you start to have to say maybe soldiers get paid but not paying for the fuel or these doctors will get paid, you know, government is a huge force in our economy. like it or not. and the number of companies that would really be affected from walmart to every defense contractor to giant health care companies, if their ability to collect money that is owed to them is then put in doubt, that triggers a whole, you know, range of activities of other people wanting to collect debts from them. sounds really scary. do me a favor, though, and crawl in to president obama s head for me and tell me why you think in 2006 he voted not to raise the debt ceiling and said the fact we re here today to debate raising the debt limit is a sign of leadership failure, the sign the u.s. government can t pay his own bills. what was he thinking there? voting against an increase of the debt kreeling is what you do in the opposition party. oh, okay. in congress. this is going back for the last many years. yeah. all the republicans in the senate voted for increases when bush was in office. they vote against it when obama is in office. and vice versa. the problem or challenges now is the house where republicans don t want to vote for it and we need them, you know, it is sort of a luxury you have when the opposition controls the house. you can vote against it and have
engaging in this behavior so bad for the country. there s, you know, a long piece in politico where they were talking about, you know, what boehner s doing and manages this, and there s a line there when someone said we may have to let them do a partial government shutdown just to let them get this out of their system before they go on to approve what needs to be done and i think, you know, the challenge of leadership is to tell the people who you are leading that what they want is not realistic or that it doesn t make sense. i think boehner s modus operandi is to do some sort of last-minute deal. i think that s part of the psychology here. that you let these people, you know, they don t want to approve a debt ceiling, didn t come here to approve it and before they ll do it, they have to do something that lets them get that energy out of their system. and unfortunately, that might be the best strategy that he actually has, but you know, overall in terms of the president s and democrats approach, i think the president did a wonderful job and the democrats got a good deal in the fiscal cliff deal and the president s negotiating strategy of not negotiating on the debt ceiling has really put republicans in the corner where they re sort of backing away and saying maybe we can go in another direction but one thing i m concerned about is when i look back at 2010 and the big losses that democrats sustained there, part of the reason was because we ceded the debate to the republicans and allowed them to frame the conversation around the debt and the deficit and if you look at gallup polling, you can see that the debt and the deficit and government dissatisfaction with government which is another strong place for republicans to fight on are rising, are increasing in importance for voters in terms of what they re concerned about so i m concerned and wonder if you think this is right, that democrats may be setting themselves up to be on weak terrain sort to speak in terms of 2014 congressional elections by allowing this debate to be focused on the debt and deficit. people never stop and always in campaign mode and i think with obama the issue is, he has a campaign and wants to get in governing mode and that s why you see the changing of the discussion of the framing and why i think they suffered the losses in 2010 when it wasn t just a matter of issues, they weren t getting their voters out to the polls and i think it s more we saw it last fall when there was a big debate between obama and romney and the sort of democratic and gop view of what we should do with the budget deficit and what we should do with taxes and talked about in great detail and relentlessly. although, if i could we saw how that turned out. that was more about the future of the middle class and traditionally a stronger place for democrats to be. this is still a question about priorities or at least if i m doing the messaging and strategy on this, do you want we have a limited number of resources. we have a fair amount of debt. assume we all want to reduce our deficits and reduce the amount of debt. do we want to do that by cutting social security and medicare and taking these entitlements and the safety net and fundamentally changing it or do we want more cash from individuals and from companies and whether you do that through higher rates or tax reform or getting rid of deductions, you know, that s a debate worth having and i think one that democrats can be in a pretty decent position to win if they talk about it in the right way. dan gross, thanks for coming. thank you. next, developing news this afternoon on the latest sandy aid bill before congress. a house vote is expected tonight but there s plenty of opposition and maybe for good reason. we re spinning as the cycle rolls on for tuesday, january 15th. hey sis, it s so great to see you. you, too! oh, cloudy glasses. you didn t have to come over! actually, honey, i think i did. oh? you did? whoa, ladies, easy. hi. cascade kitchen counselor. we can help avoid this with cascade complete pacs. see, over time, cascade complete pacs fight film buildup two times better than finish quantum. to help leave glasses sparkling shiny! too bad it doesn t work on windows. okay, i m outta here. cascade. the clear choice. some brokerage firms are. but way too many aren t. some of the ones that push mutual funds with their names on them aren t. why? because selling their funds makes them more money. which makes you wonder isn t that a conflict? am i in the best fund for me, or them? search proprietary mutual funds . yikes, it s best for them. then go to e-trade. we ve got over 8,000 mutual funds
speed was 137 knots. and the question was whether or not we had the lowest speed that the crew achieved. i will tell you that the speed was significantly below 137 knots and we are not talking about a few knots. we still have to corroborate some information. this was a preliminary read. the 137 knots came from the crew conversation about their approach speed. we need to take a closer look at the raw data on the flight data recorder as well as corroborate that with radar and air traffic information to make sure that we have a very precise speed. again, we are not talking about a few knots here or there. we are talking about a significant amount of speed below 137. if i could ask you to raise your hand to be acknowledged and identify yourself and your outlet that would make this a lot easier. yes, sir. [ inaudible ]. the question is, could we provide additional explanation about the stick shaker activation and the go around. what i shared with you was prior to impact there was a stick shaker that activated. this is both an oral and physical cue to the crew that they are approaching a stall. it s called a stick shaker but there is a yoke that the pilots are holding and that yoke vibrates or shakes and it is telling them that a stall is approaching. that activated four seconds prior to impact. there was a call out for a go around from one of the crew at 1.5 seconds prior to impact. and the call out is communication between the crew that they want to go around. that means they want to not land but apply power and go around and try to land again. that call came 1.5 seconds before impact. yes, ma am. so based on those recordings that you just explained, are you finding preliminary findings pointed to pilot error. are we finding pilot error? what i will tell you is that the ntsb conducts very thorough investigations. we will not reach a determination of probable cause in the first few days that we are on an accident scene. we want to make sure that we gatherer all of the perishable evidence and the facts. we have just been here for a few hours, not even a full day yet. we have preliminary information but we have a lot more work to do. we need to interview the crews and the first responders. we need to validate the raw data on the flight data recorder as well as on air traffic tapes. we ll be working to do that. steve gregory. can you tell us and characterize again at what point did something seem to go wrong? did it seem to go wrong from the data recorderer or from the voice recorder? where did the discrepancy enter first? from the information that we have on the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder where did things begin to go wrong and which one occurred first? what we need to do is corroborate the information on both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder to overlay that with the crew s position, their spatial position as they are approaching the run way. there is a lot more work that needs to be done. some of the things we are seeing on the flight data recorder are mirroring some of the things that are going on on the cockpit voice recorder. the command for increased throttles or increased power from the engines, we also are seeing a go around request about the same time. yes, ma am. [ inaudible ]. the question was about the two fatalities.
the question was about a previous event that occurred where there was another haul loss involving a 777 at heathrow a few years ago and whether or not we evaluated that event and identified similarities with this event. in that event there were specific issues identified. those issues had to do with frozen fuel. this aircraft is equipped with pratt and whitney engines. [ inaudible ] we have not identified any specific similarities with that cause of the heathrow event but it is very early in our investigation. seems like you are hedging against mechanical. the question is, it seems as
from all the entities we are working with. in the back. the first question is we identified the nationality of the victims. with would like to mention that that is not something that the ntsb did. that was provided by other entities. the ntsb does not identify victims. we leave that to the experts in the area, the coroner in this case of the county or the medical examiner in other jurisdictions. the ntsb does not do victim i.d. and we did not do it in this case. i expect we will be on scene for at least a week conducting evidence gathering, interviews and creating factual information. if need be we will be here longer. we tell people it takes 12 to 18 months to complete an investigation. however if we identify any safety issues that we think need immediate attention we have the ability to issue safety recommendations at any time. yes, sir. are there cameras on the run ways and are they always recording? have you seen that footage? i will defer to the airport officials. we have requests any footage recorded on the airport that would record the accident sequence or the after math of the accident. we found in past investigations that the video footage whether it is surveillance or security video or whether it is video provided by the public can be very helpful. and along those lines we do have an opportunity for if anybody has any photos or video that
their landing speed and they failed to engage the auto throttles but they believe they had done it and the power didn t come up, they were monitoring and having an expectation that the auto throttles would put power in to maintain speed. when it didn t happen they had to realize something is wrong. i now have to take manual control and do something. then, again, that is the problem where they didn t perceive any kind of problem until the problem manifested itself about seven seconds out. by the time they took corrective action gravity took over and it was really too late for them to recover. so, are you suggesting that it is possible that the pilots did not realize they were going too slow. they thought they were at one speed but they were actually at a different one? is that what you are suggesting? there is a multitude of probability. that is why the safety board will dissect the cvr to see how the airplane was configured and see if the automation was being used by the crew. typically the pilots will set the airplane up with an auto throttle and in anticipation of the speed the automated system tries to maintain it. the crew didn t monitor and notice it until the last minute. that puts them behind the power curve. by the time they try to take the corrective action and push the power to full power for the go around by the time the engines started to spool up the airplane was settling to the ground. another question here that i think was raised. we learned today or at the end of the day yesterday that the guide path technology was not operational at sfo. the folks from sfo seem to suggest that that in no way shape or form should have played a role in what happened. mention about required systems. based on what you heard from the ntsb is there any suggestion that those systems could have helped prevent this if they would have been functional? i don t get the impression that the glide slope was the problem. it was a visual approach and pilots are trained to dot that without reference to the glide path. but i am concerned about the power being at idle whether thet auto throttles were engaged because the pilot is supposed to keep hands on the throttles for that reason and he is watching the speed decrease. as the speed decreases he starts to push the throttles forward whether the auto throttles do it or not. what does that tell you? i don t like to look back and quarterback what a captain has done or the co pilot. i can tell you that that is very unprofessional to not be in a position to control that aircraft regardless of what the auto pilot is doing. if the plane is not doing what the pilot wants he clicks all of that off and he hand flies that aircraft. does that suggest a question to you, then, why that would not have happened? . possibly inattentiveness. perhaps they were very tired from a ten hour flight and got distracted. maybe something else went on. thank you for your time today. msnbc will continue to follow this story and bring you the latest developments out of san francisco. for now, join the ed show already in progress at the essence festival in new orleans. you see the special psyllium fiber in metamucil actually gels to trap and remove some waste. and that gelling also helps to lower some cholesterol. it even traps some carbs to help maintain healthy blood sugar levels as part of your diet. now that s one super hard working fiber. metamucil. 3 amazing benefits in 1 super fiber. [ whirring ] [ dog barks ]
fight between two powerful republicans going strong. rand paul is here and like mark levin, is ready to react to this. i have nothing personal against senator paul. if we disagree on certain issues we disagree. his response seems to be he has something personal against me. that s okay, can he just get in line on that front. and here we go, welcome everybody, i m neil cavuto and this is your world a controversial world. mark levin speaks as the top two low pressures raise a stink. we hope to get on chris christie soon, we ve had him on a number of times in the past so hope springs eternal. we have kentucky senator rand paul. do you think it s gone too far? i think it s time to dial it down. we have enough democrats to attack maybe republicans can quit attacking republicans.
york related republicans, including those who were pushing for sandy aid, the same aid that you had referred to as part of the gimme gimme mentality are angry at you. wait, you know some of this, neil, comes from people who aren t fully discussing the issue. i actually did support sandy funding. i supported doing it one year at a time and paying for it by taking money from money that we re sending overseas in foreign aid. i was objecting to spending four years worth all at once without sufficient oversight, without offsetting the cost by cutting so i was never against the funding. i was just against doing the funding without offsetting it with spending cuts. you know, senator, rifts come in both parties but this one seems to be particularly pronounced and one may be preceded by john mccain and your run-ins with him in the past and he told the new republic when asked whether he would support you if you were the party s nominee in 2016 over hillary clinton he said it s going to be a tough choice. what do you make of that? i think there was a chuckle that supposedly went along with that interview, and you know, john mccain and i are friends. we don t always agree on everything. we had a dust-up today on the floor over foreign aid because i think it doesn t help our country to send money to egypt particularly when we have cities like detroit and chicago decaying in our country that i don t think we have money to be sending overseas and so i offered to try to obey the law that says when a military coup happens you have to stop funding, then that money could be used for some bridge projects in our country and to help infrastructure when we desperately need it. so we have a disagreement on that. that doesn t mean i don t respect john mccain as a war hero and i try to keep things on a less personal way, less personal kind of a battle and i think with governor christie it s gotten a little too personal, so we re ready to kiss and make up. all right, it doesn t look at
home because we were $1 trillion short. governor christie can t point to any votes that i ve ever voted to bring pork barrel projects to any state. i do work to try to bring money home from overseas and use it here at home but really it s just not accurate. i would probably say i m the most fiscally conservative or not one of the most fiscally conservative members of congress so it really kind of doesn t stick or make any sense. he s referring to the general sense of the states, sir, that new jersey spends roughly 38.3 billion in taxes that go to washington, and gets not nearly any of that back. in the case of kentucky, it s 26.5 billion and you get more than that back. none of that has anything to do with me. those formulas are based on poverty and i m one of the leading proponents of saying to folks who are getting entitlements that i think if you re working and able-bodied, you shouldn t be on the dole, and if you are, cannot help yourself, then we ll find some way to help you but poverty formulas have nothing to do with me. i didn t create these programs so it s kind of a stupid point to blame me for poverty you tried to clarify that kentucky gets a lot of this because you have two big military bases. it is and it does have to do with military spending. they could say new jersey they have ft. dix, the weapons station, mcguire dix and air force base. the bottom line is what this is about is we re trying to figure out those of us who are conservative and who believe in a strong national defense how do you have enough funding? i m willing to cut entire departments. in my five-year balanced budget i cut entire departments but i actually bring in military spending above the sequester level. void the sequester for the military because that cuts so much spending. my problem with some of the more liberal members of the republican parties, they re not willing to cut spending other
cuts and i think, frankly, if the american people could vote on whether or not we send the money to egypt or to new jersey and new york, i m all with them. what if that takes a long time, senator? the frustration governor christie showed at the time was that this was taking really, really long and the folks in new jersey were really, really hurting and they needed it. my amendment was the same day that they passed the appropriation. if they would have passed my amendment they would have gotten their money but gotten one year s worth and it would have been offset with spending cuts. gotcha. and the spending cuts occur over time but the bill would have happened at exactly the same speed of time. it s really about whether or not you want to have responsible government or whether or not you want unlimited spending without offset cutting. do you like chris christie? i don t really know him but i think the party s big enough for both of us. you re off to a bad start it would seem, the two of you. excuse me? you re off to a bad start, it would seem, the two of you. yes, but i think i m an easy going guy to tell you the truth. i ve had many dust-ups with the more eager for war faction of our party and we still get along, we sit next to each other at lunch and as far as i m concerned we re still personal friends even if we disagree on some issues. i m sorry, sir, if he were the nominee for 2016 for president will you support him? i will support whoever the republican nominee is? chris christie included? whoever wins and that includes chris christie. there had been thought the two of you would make a nice ticket, that had been bounced around. we re going to have to would you be interested in that? bell vae we ll have to patch up. i m inviting him for a beer any time he d like to sit down at the pub around the corner from the senate and have a beer. have you heard anything on that invite? it hasn t been formalized, i just thought of it. just now? we ll formalize it and put it in writing, i think we could sit down, have a beer and mend things and at times people have said chris christie has some libertarian leanings so it s ironic that we see him criticizing libertarians in the party or libertarian influences because some libertarians had high hopes he had libertarian leanings. i don t really know. do you think he drew the line maybe because of the 9/11 experience and so many lost in his state that he drew the line when it compromised our national security? i don t know. that it put many peoples lives in danger and we to deal with a lot of victims of those disasters. i don t know. i think it really has to do with a bigger, broader issue about whether or not we re going to be the party that protects the fourth amendment and privacy. i think we need to be the party that protects privacy and internet freedom. i think that s the least of it, senator. you re closer to the fire than i am but that seems like a very big philosophical battle being waged right now within the party. do you agree? we ll see. like i say, the offer to have a beer with chris christie stands. if he wants to break bread and see if we can find common ground i think it will help the party to not have us feuding. when you say break bread or have a beer you re open it to it being in trenton as much as d.c.. we could always negotiate a middle ground like philadelphia. real quickly, sir, while i ve got you here, you re very concerned about pouring good money after bad in egypt and you say the president pushed and already broken what is a recognized standard of giving money to countries when there s a military coup or an overthrow, whether justified or not, that the money stops. where does that stand now? well, we had a vote on my amendment today and i informed both republicans and democrats that if they voted against my amendment they were voting against the rule of law. the law is very explicit. it says if there is a military coup all aid must end but i also think the aid is actually counter-productive. i think it s dangerous to israel because i think these tanks and weapons and planes could potentially be used by crazy strong man that could arise in egypt and used against egypt. i don t think they do any good for the people. they re not buying any bread. they re buying tanks that may well be rolling over protesters, they re buying tear gas made in pennsylvania that they spray the protesters with. we now have a military in charge that s disappearing people. we rightly criticized the soviet union for disappearing, torturing and putting people to death that are in criminal custody. they re not even announcing what s happened to the muslim brotherhood and i m not a fan of the muslim brotherhood but at the same time i m into the a fan of disappearing people without charges or trial either. senator rand paul, maybe governor chris christie is watching and we ll broker an agreement to get the two of you to chat.
what their struggle was to get used to what you have everyday. reporter: multiple generations of families to a positive event. it s been a week long full of protests and rallies in new york city and times square as well as los angeles and california where rallies were a little more violent blocking the interstate. the verdict has passed but time to move forward to other major issues, stand-your-ground laws and other race issues like racial profiling. jamie: great report. thank you very much. kelly: politicians of all parties have been dealing with race issues since the founding of this country. let s take you back through history how one prominent democrat robert f. kennedy handled a crucial moment back on april 4th, 1968. that was the day that martin luther king was assassinated. what we need is not division, what we need in united states is not hatred. what we need in united states is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another feeling of justice of those that still suffer within our country whether they be white or whether they be black. [ applause ] kelly: he said that time was not to divide the country but bring the country to unity. he was urged not to announce mlk s death but he went ahead anyway but two days later he was also shot to death in los angeles. and it s royal baby fever in great britain. it s sky high has everyone awaits for baby to arrive. all eyes on the london hospital where the duchess is likely to give birth. future king or queen of england so the we. amy kellogg is there and letting us know if anything has happened. it s not any minute but hopefully soon and relieved by the reports that the duchess has left her parents home and has come back to london because the longer she stayed out there, the more likely it was a contingency plan would have to be activated in an emergency for to her give birth out there. the any not any by the press has gone past full term was broken briefly by some imposters who at that lovely evening hour, pulled up to the ward, with drivers and ear pieces and hurried in like a married couple only as the cameras moved after them like a school of fish. they revealed themselves as a publicity stunt. people seem certain that kate will make a great mother begin the interests she has shown in children so far and particularly vulnerable children. she has been known in the past couple of years, very personal attention to some of the sick children. he has said he wants to be the delivery room with his wife. prince philip playing squash when charles was born however the story goes that he quickly high tailed it over to see the queen and presented with flowers and champagne. she wasn t a queen at that
but in later years, her career was marred by controversy. she resigned from the hearst newspapers after sparking an uproar with comments on jews living in israel. the president releasing a statement today, what made helen thomas the dean of the white house press corps was not just the length of her ten ui but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account. she died at her home in washington. she was 92. jamie: growing concerns this week about the implementation of president obama s healthcare law. falling care act. we have seen lots of changes to it. from the delay of the employer mandate and pushing back to other key parts to the critical supported of unions. does president obama need a new strategy what is rolling out to be his signature plan? let s bring in washington
been much more difficult for him had a lot of these unpopular parts took effect before. now people on the hill that are concerned, he is facing reelection next year and if the employer mandate and other unpopular positions take effect, they are going to have be the ones defend it. so what we re seeing is a real crumbling of support among his own party. the truth about the law in my opinion is starting to come out. jamie: what about the employee mandate. are you hearing or finding that unions are also concerned that one the mandate is in place, employers will perhaps have an incentive to hire lower hour workers, not 40 hour workweek workers. do they have something to lose here? absolutely. i think you put your finger right on it. the big signal that a lot of changes was about to happen, you have seen more and more unions step out and publicly condemn the law and demand changes be made. any time you are talking about democrats, when you get the unions involved and they started pushing democrats around, you know that democrats are in real trouble. you know they are very scared because without the union support, democrats are going to have a real hard time in the election. that is exactly what has happened here. the problem is when president obama delayed the implementation of the penalty for employers who fail to provide insurance, he didn t provide the same delay for individuals. so it s one of these situations where you have basically help coming in president obama and democrats are willing to help big companies but not give it to individuals? it raises questions about the influence of corporate influence and influence of lobbyists in this town. i think it puts president obama in an unfavorable light and puts democrats in a real bind when they are out on the campaign o campaign trail. jamie: appreciate your help today. kelly: we re just getting started. secretary of state john kerry shuttle diplomacy takes off as israel and palestinians agree to new peace talks but the devil is in the details. jamie: plus heartbreaking new information on the plane crash in san francisco. what investigators have found and released. kelly: motor city running on empty and serving as a warning to other cities teetering on the edge. how the bankruptcy is being felt nationwide. if anybody is think 40-year-old trees going
polled today say they opposed the tea party. if you look at all the big issues that animated the political debates over the last couple months whether it was cultural wars like abortion or the government shutdown, we see a very strong reaction to this electorate against the conservative side on those issues. one out of five voters, i think this was a high number, said they thought abortion was their top issue in this election. and of those people and the evidence is that they re pro-choice. 61-40 percent. we have to keep reminding ourselves that virginia is so important because it is exactly the bellwether state for the union. just about exactly what the nation is. i would say virginia has become the new ohio in many ways. richard nixon used to say it s all about ohio. it s all about virginia now. and the fact that women turned out in overwhelming numbers apparently in support of terry mcauliffe is big. let s look at that number. the nbc news exit poll shows women in virginia breaking for terry mcauliffe in a big way while men are split. women give mcauliffe is 16-point edge. that is something. david corn. it goes back to what i was just saying. the issue of abortion which often doesn t motivate voters, doesn t turn elections. we know that. we ve been studying this for decades now. seems to be a key fight. and that s, of course, cuccinelli, he was the conservative poster boy on all these cultural issues. abortions being top amongst them. here we ve had this argument in washington. ted cruz and others saying the republican party has to go to the right, has to get out the traditionalist voters. that s not working for cuccinelli who otherwise was an attractive candidate. in many ways he was unsuited to go after the career women, the professional women, the working women of northern virginia who are part of the orbit of metropolitan washington and aren t going to stand for what joe biden in the last day of the campaign called sinking from another era. think about that for a second. we re all three white guys here by coincidence, but it s a fact. and i m looking at these numbers. it tells you that the white men in this country are not calling the shots. look at these numbers. cuccinelli in the exit poll, he sweeps him by 26 points. yet it looks like mcauliffe is going to win comfortably. yet the white men say we re going for cuccinelli who s gotten some of the worst press, he s made one bad day after another. now look at this. white women. we ve been saying around this table that the white women all women i should say. across the state of virginia are very pro-choice and inclined to give a big number to mcauliffe. 48 to 43 white women went. it s so different than the way white men vote in their own households. i would divide it, chris, between northern virginia which as i said is part of metropolitan washington at this point. from richmond north, it s a mixed swing state. and rural southern virginia which is where i think it s fair to say the split by gender is still much more. if you look at the numbers of, say, black men and women. black women, 95 to 5 for mcauliffe over cuccinelli. obviously if you re a minority in this country we know you have other issues besides gender driving your vote. exactly. but after the last election, the gop did an internal autopsy and said, listen, we can t win national elections. and this kind of looks like a national election. if we keep losing all latinos, all african-americans. that s the point i made a minute ago. we can t close the gap. the point i m making here is white men are not a leading indicator of anything. the other thing the other dividing point, chris, is often between married with children, church going. married with children church going whites tend to be conservative and there s a lot of them in virginia. let s look at the latest we have. there s a lot of exit polling information to give you. cuccinelli s positions on social issues worked against him. six in ten virginia voters support legal abortion in all or most cases. i think that s a particularly high percentage. it s usually in the low 50s. if you look at the turnout, you ll see the democrats 39%, republicans 30%, a big gap there. i think when it comes to women who care about abortion, which happen to be democrats, they were motivated to go to the polls. but the turnout was from ken cuccinelli. he drove them to the polls. that was terry mcauliffe s strategy from the beginning to hammer on women s issues especially on abortion and health. and even on divorce. especially in northern virginia in the washington media market. he hammered cuccinelli who as david said was ill suited to defend. because of his record. let me point out something that s fascinating. i don t want to generalize. if you went to college, you got more liberal. look at the percentage of voters turning out today. 63% of the voters today finished college. not just started. full four year college. that s a very educated electorate. the other part is if you look at who supported, the poorest people and the least educated supported terry mcauliffe, but also the wealthiest and most educated supported terry mcauliffe. and that fed into terry mcauliffe s argument that ken cuccinelli was anti-science. that ken cuccinelli sued the university of virginia s attorney general for its research on climate change. now, that may sound like an obtuse issue. but that was an appeal that really stuck. and i also think we re looking now i don t know whether president clinton or the former secretary state hillary clinton will show up tonight, but clearly they are identified very much with this victory if he wins. the exit poll also asked voters throughout virginia how they feel about the tea party. this is fascinating. 30% of voters in virginia say they support the tea party. 43% say they are opposed. david, this is interesting. let s take another point here. the poll also asked voters who they think is more to blame nfo the federal shutdown. 49% blame republicans in congress. joining me now right across the potomac is nbc political director chuck todd. we were looking at movies of the clintons joining mcauliffe in what looked like a victory performance. obviously that hasn t happened yet. we re getting good numbers from our nbc experts. your thoughts. well, here s the best way to look at who voted today. this looks a lot more like 2012 than 2009 here in virginia. remember, 2009 was a more conservative electorate. it was an electorate that did not look very democratic and we had the republican bob macdonald landslide. you put up those numbers on abortion at 61% essentially the pro-choice position. in 2012 in virginia, it was 63%. so within margin of error. so you re seeing the national, the type of voter that came out in 2013 looks a lot more like 2012 which would be good news for terry mcauliffe which is why we re comfortable characterizing it as a mcauliffe lead right now. the other thing that strikes me right now is given the president we have exit polled virginia now every time we talked about the president s job approval rating. as virginia goes, so goes the nation. this is the lowest approval rating we ve recorded on election day in virginia since he s been in office. he had a 48% approval rating in 2009. down to 46% tonight. when the health care law has a higher approval rating in virginia than the president himself, the folks in the white house got a realize here in virginia, if they got a problem here they got a problem nationally. isn t it interesting and i ve watched it on this program every night. although the president is down, there s no doubt the morale of his people is down right now because of the relentless assault on his program, health care, and the other issues that have bugged him like syria and the rest of it. there hasn t been a happy cloud scene in months now. his enemies are much less popular than him. in fact, they re growing in the unpopularity. that s what s so fascinating. what i find is what people are reacting to on the moderate side is not so much their enthusiasm for the president right now as much as their antipathy towards attackers. and not only that, chris, this is a huge if you re the national republicans and you re looking at this exit poll, you should potentially be in full panic mode if it turns out that this is what the electorate looks like and mcauliffe does win. because the president s at a 46% approval rating. normally you would say that s bad news for the democrats. but mcauliffe still was able to win. it shows what you just said is absolutely right. it s where the republicans position themselves here. outside of where virginia believes the republican party should be. so this is if you re a republican party strategist, this is a very scary moment for you because the president s not does not have a good approval rating here in virginia tonight. and guess what. it still looks like it s potentially good news for democrats. that is a nightmare scenario in 2014. here s another factor, chris. even though the public in virginia was split on whom to blame for the shutdown, if you were affected by the shutdown and according to this exit poll one out of three families was affected in virginia by the federal government shutdown, you voted almost two to one for terry mcauliffe. you rejected the strategy of shutdown that the republicans put forth. so even though you were divided in terms of theoretically who you blamed, if it affected you, you voted for mcauliffe. that becomes a voting issue for the people who are working for the government and got screwed around and played with and mocked a lot of that time. all this goes to the larger point that this election is not about barack obama. it s not even about health care. he s lucky it s not. if you look at the exit poll he s lucky it s not, but he s not running for anything. his enemies are on trial. the republicans are unlucky because it s about issues they ve been pressing that the public has turned on. and so it s about the shape of the electorate. later tonight we re going to get to the other look at this country from the northeastern look where a relatively moderate republican, non-tea party conservative is up for re-election. looks like he might well win it. yet here we re getting early in the evening a look. chuck, last word. chuck? yeah, go ahead, chris. i just wanted you to throw a little thought here about new jersey so we don t get understa unbalanced here. we re getting a hard look at virginia here. what will we get to maybe back that up in new jersey where they say, you know, we like this more moderate republican. and that s going to be the contrast tonight, right? to me this election day has been about not cuccinelli versus mcauliffe or obama care and all that. to me it s about the republican party and cuccinelli versus christie. christie went one way with his campaign. i was on the trail with him yesterday and everything was talking about the bipartisan way that he governs. he called himself a conservative, in fact he says it a lot. i ve noticed, by the way, the more someone calls themselves a progressive or conservative, it means people question whether they re really a progressive or conservative. he would say that. he would talk about governing in a bipartisan way. the messaging here among republicans is look at the last days of cuccinelli. send a message to the president. this is about health care. he s with rubio, with rand paul. so it s two different campaigns. and i tell you, one looks like it s headed to a landslide in favor of the republicans. and one could be responsible for what in virginia could be an historic defeat. remember, if mcauliffe does win, first time in 40 years that virginia will vote the same will not elect a governor opposite of the party in the white house, but elect a governor of the same party in the white house. chuck, great reporting. we ll be back to you again and again tonight. thank you howard fineman, expertise at the table and david corn. couldn t think of better guys to have here. coming up, terry mcauliffe keyed in on women s issues to win votes. it s a strategy they will try to use against republicans. the gender gap, a big plus for democrats. we ll see if it pays off tonight. the virginia governors race, too early to call by the experts. but msnbc mcauliffe with the lead. this is hardball, the place for politics. when we made our commitment to the gulf, bp had two big goals: help the gulf recover and learn from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i can tell you - safety is at the heart of everything we do. we ve added cutting-edge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a state-of-the-art monitoring center, where experts watch over all drilling activity twenty-four-seven. and we re sharing what we ve learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. our commitment has never been stronger. we continue to watch the numbers come in down in virginia where nbc news is characterizing the governors race there as too early to call. but democrat terry mcauliffe is leading. back with more results in a minute. customer erin swenson ordered shoes from us online