idate needs can be found in california, new york, texas and florida and they also happen to be the states with the country's largest hispanic population. we see why this week's gop fight

for the latino vote in the sunshine state has become critical. former florida governor jeb bush made clear wyoming voting block is so important to the future of his republican party. >> the growing populations in all of the swing states are hispanic volares. i don't think a party can aspire to be the majority party if it's the old white guy party. >> statistics back him up. the population in florida alone grew by 57% in the last years. across the country nearly a quarter children are latino. the big worry got gop during the 2008 presidential election, nominee john mccain won just 31% of the hispanic vote. understood beginning attempted to court those voters to allow puerto rico decide the question on statehood. he made a special appeal to cuban americans in florida. >> i would like a cuban spring

in 2013 to help the people of cuba liberate themselves. >> then about an hour later mitt romney took the stage and focused on that same theme liberating cuba. >> there is a time coming soon where cuba will be free. that's going to happen, but we're going to have to get organized for it, recognize that the people there want freedom as people do all over the world and america can't sit back. >> the battle for the hispanic vote was evident during the debate. gingrich was asked about a spanish ad his campaign aired and pulled calling romney the most anti immigrant candidate. >> is he still the most anti-immigrant candidate. >> my father was born in mexico. that idea is repulsive. >> director of communications

for latino decisions and a fellow at the center are politics and governance at the l.b.j. school of public affairs at the university of austin, dr. soto thanks for coming in this morning. i ran a few voting drives for latino community in california. do they slant mostly to democratic or republican? >> the latino population is approximately at 16% however given the age of the population, it's a very young population and the fact that about half of the population is undocumented, that takes that number and surprises it down to about 8%. however, many latinos are concentrated in key swing states so even though nationally they are only 8%, california, texas, nevada, and swing states like new mexico and

colorado, they have a substantive part of the electorate. >> do they vote? >> it depends. many latino voters don't have the resources aren't mobballized to vote. that's where the campaigns come in. the obama campaign did a fabulous job in 2008. >> are there certain issues that prompt them or propel them to vote in some elections rather than others? >> the conventional wisdom is that it's immigration is the top concern, but what we've seen over the course of the last couple months is that it's the economy. latinos care just as much about the economy and unemployment at non-latinos. sure they care about immigration, but it's not as over looming as the media and candidates make it seem. it's for more complex.

>> in some key states and the ones we talked about texas california florida particularly, new york is the latino vote, that 8% enough to swing an election. >> not in the the super blue states or super red states, but in and a half and a half it is and in new mexico and california. we saw that in 2010 with senator reed. he survived because of the latino vote. that percentage that put him over the top was because of latinos and he knew they were going to be his life raft and aggressively courted them. very important also in congressional elections. your senate elections congressional elections and even state elections. >> as we said in the intro this has become a particularly important focus for the republicans in florida and we know why. the republicans blocked

immigration reform, blocked the dream act which president obama wanted so can they really appeal to the latino vote when they're acting and voting against them? >> they can't. they can on the issue of immigration. president obama made a promise of immigration reform and he failed. >> he gets blamed for republicans blocking the vote in the senate? >> he's given a pass, but he can't come back to that issue and woo them like he did in 2008. republicans for right now are going forward their rhetoric was too harsh. >> i have to ask you this. for years and years under democratic presidents and republican presidents, the cuban american population in miami has controlled policy. are they still as strong or was it ever really a threat in the united states? >> it's still as strong, because those folks who came over in

1959 and early 1960's, many are still there and they tend to be older folks who vote all the time. they vote before and still keep voting and fidelis still there. the fact that it is a personal issue. >> how about the younger members? do they feel as strongly as their grandfathers. >> we don't see that cuba centered growth with the younger populations. we saw young cuban republicans cross over and vote for the president, so we do see a loosening of those ties, but those initial immigrants, still as strong as ever. >> great to see you today. >> thank you. >> president obama appears to embrace

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>> president obama's taken on a populist tone, but is it just talk or is he ready to walk the walk? >> first the sanity break. 1832 charles dodd son was born. a mathematician by trade he also dabbled in writing first writing a poem at which time he took the pen name with my carrol. he would go on to write alices adventures in wonderland and through the looking glass. we will go on until we come to the end then stop, because that's what you do when you get to the end. time marches on! >> we begin with the adorable clip of the day. don't you hate it when somebody leaves the t.v. on and nobody's watching or is somebody watching?

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>> something tells me he doesn't get around too often. of course, our apologies to brian wilson. time marches on! >> on the road this week, president obama's populist message garnered a lot of positive attention. will he now deliver a real

>> we bring you "countdown" live each night at 8:00 east he were, replays at 11:00 a.m. and

2:00 a.m. eastern. in 2008, obama said he would bring change we could believe in. change is not really something he can run on this time. in our third story it seems president obama has found his new identity, the populist pot. throughout the president's 65 minute state of the union he hammered home a need for economic fairness and a sharing of the financial burden. >> and i will not go back to the days when wall street was allowed to play by its own set of rules. if you make more than a million dollars a year, you should not pay less than 30% in taxes. if you make under $250,000 a year like 98% of american families, your taxes shouldn't go up. now, you can call this class warfare all you want, but asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes

most americans would call that common sense. warren buffets secretary there in the gallery. responding to an enthusiastic audience he took his message even further. >> i don't want to be in a country where we only are looking at success for a small group of people. we want a country where everybody has to chance. i want this to be a big bold generous country where everybody gets a fair shot, everybody's doing their fair share everybody's playing by the same set of rules, that's the america i know, that's the america i want to keep, that's the future within our reach. >> what's going on? let's bring in rolling stone contributing editor matt tiebe. >> your latest article "is

obama's populist message real? >> when it comes to the wall street stuff i cover there's a lot of enenthusiasm no the last 10 minutes before the show happened. there's news about this long anticipated foreclosure settlement that it looks like it's a much, much better deal than anybody ever anticipated. >> for consumers. >> for consumers and not for banks. the expectation from people like me for a long time was that this would actually be the equivalent of a giant tarp sized bailout allow these banks to escape perhaps a trillion dollars in liabilities, but they've narrowed the focus so it only covers a small amount of liability and still leaves these banks incredibly exposed to all kinds of criminal investigations. that's an enormous victory. >> in this article your skepticism is dripping about

what obama might do, so he sort of surprised you about that. >> everybody yeah. >> he recently created this task force on mortgage originallization. >> originallation, yes. >> headed by the new york attorney general. is he the right guy to lead it? >> absolutely. shneeder man and the california attorney general are probably the people who are responsible for getting that good foreclosure deal. they held out refused to sign on to a bad deal and that's probably why we got a good deal on the foreclosure thing. now, what schneiderman is going offafter, the foreclosure deal covered a small portion of the fraud that went on during the mortgage years. there is a much bigger galaxy of misdeeds that went on in the creation and pooling of sub prime mortgages and all these banks are guilty of these

offenses. schneiderman is looking right at that fraud. he's definitely the right guy to look at it. >> might we see some of these guys go to jail? >> absolutely. if they do this for real, like a real enron style investigation you could have half the luminaries on wall street doing prison time and i'm not even kidding. really, every single one of the major banks was involved in this sort of activity. they all made enormous profits from selling over evaluated mortgages to unsuspecting investors. >> sure, knowingly. >> and knowingly overriding their own due diligence people who said they're going to default. they covered up that information, dressed it up and sole them at triple a rated securities and made hundreds of billions of dollars and need to pay people back. >> back to the gist of your

question. president obama promised that he -- campaigned on the public plan option and then he depend dropped it. he said we're never going to renew those tax cuts for the wealthiest americans and he did for another two years. has he turned a corner here and do you believe genuinely turned the corner and said now i'm going to fight for the 99? >> i believe he said it. i believe that they have gotten the political message that that is what people want. the question is will they really follow through will it be a cosmetic investigation or will it be a real cleaning up which the markets and -- but i think that they might there's a slight possibility they might have gotten the message. they haven't done it yet. they haven't put anybody done any investigations yet and that's a glaring oversight. >> i'm also speaking about the legislative agenda. the fight over the payroll tax

cut deduction. >> righted, right. >> he held tight he held tough on that. >> uh-huh. >> and he brought painter to his knees. they only got two months, but certainly the republicans had to cave in on that issue. >> sure and why wouldn't he hold fast again? it looks like the republican party's in chaos right now with everything going on in the presidential elections right now. the republicans are weak right now and president obama, i think the situation with the influence of the state of the union address, the influence with the foreclosure settlement, he should feel confident in the payroll debate that's going to happen in the next three weeks or whenever it is, he should stand tall right now. >> yeah, and who would have thought that income and equality would be an issue in this campaign. good to see you. >> good to see you. >> thanks for coming in very much. the governor of arizona welcomes the president of the united states to the

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legalizing same-sex marriage is set to pass. how is chris christy going to get out of this? don't worry, he's got a plan.

>> a democratic president is greeted by a finger wagging governor in arizona. big mistake. >> the message of occupy is still strong even ifffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff (vo)the young turks are here. >>win! >>cenk uygur and his team take the headlines head on. >>i accuse you because i have the numbers. >> now my commentary for this friday night. just because it's a clue chai doesn't mean it's not true. sometimes haste makes waste a rolling stone gathers no moss and a picture is worth a thousand words.

the picture that flashed around the world the dutyup in the desert. there she is, january brewer, welcoming president obama to phoenix by wagging her finger in his face. she looks like an angry mother scolding her kids for not eating his peas. she certainly doesn't look like the governor of a great state welcoming the president of the united states. you think she'd dare greet president bush the same way. president obama ever the gentlemen keeps his hands at his side. he told diane sawyer: >> there's a picture out there of you with governor jan brewer. she said you were tense. >> what i've discovered is that i think it's also good publicity for a republican if they're in an argument with me, but this

was really not a big deal. >> how about governor brewer? has she apologized? no way. she not only refuses to apologize, she blames president obama for overreacting to what she wrote in her book: there's only one reason he could disagree with that, that's what she said: >> the bottom line is the book is true. i want our borders secured. i want our nation protected. he wants and we're never going to agree on that, and we agree to disagree on that subject. i don't know why he was surprised by my book but he evidently is and he's very thin skinned in rewards to it. >> thin skinned? that's what she said? we all know that's not necessarily what she meant. so many americans seeing a white

woman wagging her finger in a black man's face, she was making a different point about obama's skin, not how thick or thin it is, but what color it is. in the short term, that may gain her political points but in the long material, president obama could end up the big win are because among latino voters, nobody in arizona's more unpopular than jan brewer who championed legislation forcing them to carry papers or get deported. anybody she's against they are automatically for anybody she insults, they support. in arizona as go the latino voters, so goes the state. the end of the dust up in the dessert could be president obama carries arizona in november, 2012. and all because jan

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>> so the drum circles have been quieted and the tents taken down for occupy wall street, it's impossible to evictim an idea. our number one story from the state of the union to latest republican debate in jacksonville, florida last night. politicians are talking about those 99%. >> i do want to address the subject about taxing the rich. that is not a solution, but i understand and really empathize

with the people who talk the 99 and the one, because there is a characteristic about what happens when you destroy a currency. there is a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy. this has been going on for 40 years. >> talk focused on debt and deficits, but occupy changed that. people are talking about income and equality and corporate responsibility. that's one of the reasons why three years after the financial crisis that plunged this country into the deepest recession since the great depression, time magazine named the protestor its person of the year and occupy as the 1% versus the 99% chant that become part of the national lexicon. the occupy effect reaches far beyond questions of inequality as iraq veteran writes:

>> he joins us tonight, derrek mcgee, iraq veteran occupier and author of iraq's journey from wall street. i spent time with the occupy movement in washington d.c. and i must say, you are the most unlikely occupier if i can put it that way. i mean, you've been a marine, served in iraq, you've been a banker on wall street with merrill lynch. what attracted you of all people to the occupy movement? >> well, i think what got the first time was simply because of having an understanding of what went wrong in the financial crisis, knowing that there was the steps that had been promised, the regulation that was supposed to

come in so it never happened again never took place. the account bite i thought should have been there wasn't there. i went down for the purpose of arguing just that one point. i didn't believe in a lot of the other things that i saw on signs and didn't have a lot in common with a lot of the people down there but when i went down there, i started hearing and seeing other things and researching, finding that there was a lot wrong and these people had a real serious point. >> when you were working at merrill lynch or i don't want to single them out or on wall street, why not but when you were working on wall street, did you see some of the abuses that occupy is talking about? >> i mean, i didn't see i wouldn't say i saw anything illegal. i saw what i would consider very everything was crumbling around us, our own corporate was telling us everything's fine, buy the stock, everything was great. we knew that was lies. i became sort of disillusioned

with the whole corporate structure and this system that allows an entity to act without ethics and no one has to be held accountable and no one has to feel guilty. >> i was struck by your first visit to lower manhattan battery park was in december, 2001 when you were a marine helping protect with the national guard. >> we were living intents in battery park. >> and then you come back as a protestor, part of the occupy where the new york police are there basically corralling you. what did it feel to be on the other side of the law enforcement or authority line? >> well, it was absolutely polar opposite, as you can imagine. in the one case we were being applauded for being there were upholding freedoms and that sort of thing and then the second time, which i thought we were almost doing the same thing down there, trying to defend freedoms and uphold what we thought was

right. we were then being absolutely castigated for it, and i would say oppressed by the police. >> were troubled that sometimes the occupy movement was not able to get a real fix like criticism, you don't have a real agenda, they didn't have a list of 10 demands. you seem to be a very organized focused person. >> one of the great parts about that was you had everyone in the country asking us what we wanted which doesn't happen very often. i think that that, it's missing the point. i think what it was was not so much about any particular issue. it's everyone is starting to feel there is a disconnect between their vote and then sort of of political involvement, and that is what brought everyone together. so it doesn't really matter what their issues were, they felt like no one's listening to us. >> i just saw in washington

d.c. today, one of the last cities to get rid of the tents the tents are gone from macpherson square. if the tents are gone and drum circles quiet is the occupy movement over? >> absolutely not. i think the occupy movement did a brilliant job of what it was out to accomplish, which is to get publicity. at thanksgiving time, almost every table in the country was talking about the 99 versus the 1%, which in terms of getting publicity for a movement, it's just unbelievable. it was brilliant and it was absolutely effective. >> what do you think the lasting impact is going to be? >> i think that everyone feels that they're not alone. it used to be i think before the occupy movement, everyone felt that we were resolved angry about issues and there was nothing we could do about it really and that's just the way it was. people realize now that everyone is feeling sort of left out of the democratic process and that

we're not going to go back to just accepting it. i'm not sure exactly what form it will take, but when hit does, people are ready to get involved. >> i think certainly one of the building words, one of the most powerful kind of son septembers at all that's been implanted in the american people are 99% versus 1% and that's going to she a theme through this campaign. i think president obama keeps trying to make the point that he is fighting for the 99% and pointing out that mitt romney looks a lot like the 1%, doesn't he? >> yes, he does. >> and that income and equality are going to be a big issue. >> well, yeah, that issue has got to go. >> thank you for coming in tonight. veteran and occupier and author of an iraq's journey from wall treat to