russian spy acting was not all that far off in general. these guys were pretty obvious, getting video on firmation of that from the fbi on save me the junior mints. the last word with lawrence o'donnell starts right now. >> got to hand it to herman cain, he has brilliantly diverted attention away from his huge campaign finance scandal. >> i told you this bull's eye on my back has gotten bigger. >> can you now confirm that these allegations were with made? >> i would be delighted to clear the air. >> have you ever been accused of sexual harassment? >> i was accused of sexual harassment, falsely i might add. >> they complained of verbal and physical activity toward them. >> cain today said the

accusation was false. >> i have never sexually harassed anyone. >> herman cain has never sexual harassed anybody. >> anonymous sources claim it is sexual harassment. >> they have ten days to respond to the story. >> waiting ten, 11 days. >> we are not going to chase anonymous sources. >> not until today did he finally admit that yes, he was accused. >> i'm unaware of any sort of settlement. i'm not personally aware of any cash settlement. i'm not aware of a settlement. >> nbc has confirmed one woman received a settlement. >> i hope it wasn't for much because i didn't do anything. >> mr. cain himself has just contradicted his own statement. >> he has done a complete reversal. >> there's nothing else there to dig up. there's not nothing to shoot down. >> was there any behavior on your part that you think might have been inappropriate? >> in my opinion, no. the only one that i could recall --

>> he has to try to get his story straight. >> once i referenced this lady's height. obviously she thought that was too close for comfort. >> this guy is not equipped let alone to be president of the united states to run for president. it turns out there's only one thick herman cain has been trying to hide more than the fact that he used to be a washington lobbyist and that is the fact that he was accused of sexual harassment while he was a washington lobbyist. and at least one of the complaints against him had to be confidently settled for money. when the story was breaking all around him today, cain's first impulse was, of course, like so many other politicians before him to simply lie. >> as far as a settlement, i am unaware of any sort of

settlement. i hope it wasn't for much because i didn't do anything. >> we all knew that was a lie as soon as we heard it. soon after that, mr. cain changed his settlement story to this. my general counsel said this started out where she and her lawyer were with demanding a huge financial settlement. i don't remember a number, but then he said because there was no basis for this we ended up settling for what would have been a termination settlement, maybe three month's salary. i don't remember it might have been two months. according to politico, which broke the story of two complaints of sexual harassment against herman cain while he was the head of the national restaurant association, the lobbying representatives of the restaurant industry, these incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature. a second source said the woman revealed at the time she had suffered what the source described as an unwanted sexual advance from cain at a hotel where an event involving the group was taking place. cain addressed the alleged hotel

incident in an interview with pbs today without specifically denying it. >> that i absolutely do not recall. i have no recollection of that. >> i don't recall is, of course, the favorite answer of everyone in trouble who might have to change their answers as the facts unfold. cain's memory seems to sharpen as the day goes on. he began the day saying he did not remember any specifics of the charges leveled against him. by the end of the day, he told judy woodruff this. >> one incident with the one who made the formal charge, the only one that i could recall after a day of trying to remember specifics, was with once i referenced this lady's height,

and i was standing near her and i did this, saying you are the same height as my wife. because my wife is 5'0" tall and she came up to my chin. so she came up to my chin. so i think obviously she felt it was too close for comfort. >> according to politico, they were provided each five figure payouts to leave the association and barred them from discussing their pa departures. as of this hour, nbc news has independently confirmed that two female employees complained about cain and at least one received a cash settlement. cain has not completely shut the door on the possibility of more allegations emerging. >> so, have there ever been any other charges leveled against you that you are aware of? >> none, ever that i am aware with of. >> joining me now john harris, the editor in chief of politico

that broke the cain story. thank you for joining us. >> sure thing, john. >> how long has politico been working on the story? >> about three weeks. it seems to me this first came to our attention. we did some reporting. then we brought what we with had learned, our early findings to the cain campaign. didn't get a response for several days and then did get a response. we did a lot more reporting after this and this went through a careful editing process. so all told we have been at this two, almost three weeks. >> john did this story come to "politico" from anyone associated with another republican presidential campaign? >> lawrence, as you can appreciate on a story this sensitive, one this carefully reported and edited, i'm going to stick at what was in the story and we do not say where this story came from. in our original "politico" story. i will say what came to us was a tip. it is not what i would call

concrete evidence. the concrete evidence was amassed through reporting a lot of hard reporting by the key people on our team, johnathon capeheart, ken vogel, anna palmer worked hard to take this tip and see if we could turn it in to something more concrete. >> has anyone at politico heard anything from the cain campaign or from mr. cain himself today that makes you want to amend anything in your original story? >> no, sir, lawrence. not to my knowledge. >> and where does the story go from here? >> you know, i don't know that. i don't have a crystal ball. i know that i've got questions in my mind. there's questions about more detail about precisely what was

alleged and precisely what happened, what the series of events was with. what the chronology was that led to these settlements. settlements that you note in our intro mr. cain has now acknowledged. so there's always more questions. as an editor i'm always pushing reporters to get more answers and that usually means hard work. going back to sources, finding new sources and reporting and putting the reporting through an editing process. >> i want you to listen to what herman cain said to judy woodruff on her program tonight about the possibility that he conducted himself inappropriately. i want you to listen to his denial about that. >> was there any behavior on your part that you think might have been inappropriate? >> in my opinion, no. but as you would imagine, it's in the eye of the person who thinks that maybe i crossed the line. i worked for the department of

the navy, the coca-cola company, pill s bury, burger king, godfather's pizza. years and years of working in a business environment, working around men, women, all types of people, never, never accused of any sort of sexual harassment. i've never sexually harassed anyone. so this false allegation to now come up, this is kind of baffling. >> john, as an editor how much of your decision to go forward with this story was based on your evaluation of the credibility of the accusations themselves? >> lawrence, i would say that our decision to go ahead and -- this involved a lot of serious deliberations among a group of editors at "politico" was based on the totality of the evidence. not from any particular source but a multitude of sources that made us confident of the key facts that were in that story.

one, that there were allegation of sexual harassment. there were two that we know of. and those have been acknowledged and there were in fact settlements. settlements are different than something that is rumored. it is different than something that is in the he said, she said category. it's something concrete. it's something that happened. >> john harris, editor in chief of politico. thank you for joining us tonight. >> sure thing. joining me now is msnbc contributor johnathon capehart. thank you for joining me tonight. >> good to see you. >> the story was with breaking all day, the cain campaign answers were with changing all day. how has the candidate and the campaign staff handled this so far? >> poorly. there's no other way to describe it, lawrence. last night when the story broke via "politico" i read it before going to bed and first thing i noticed was a couple of things, one it was long and two it was well sourced and a lot of

sources, a lot of detail and the initial response from the cain campaign was this is a smear. this is what happens when you take on the establishment. notice what happened today temperature you can tell the news cycle by how many times herman cain's story changed as the day went on. he spoke at the american enterprise institute. he went on fox news at 11:20. he spoke at the national press club. he spoke to judy woodruff of pbs. he is speaking with greta van sustern and more information is coming out as the day has gone on. this does not bode well for herman cain or his campaign because, as we have seen on really substantive issues, abortion, immigration, gay rights, there's one other that i can't think of right now at the moment, but he says one thing and has to backtrack or change what he said. when it comes to allegations of sexual harassment, either you remember or you don't and we are seeing, with our own eyes as the

day has gone on that he didn't remember and keeps remembering one nugget of information after another as the day goes on. >> it certainly was a brilliant strategy for diverting all media attention from the campaign scandal of campaign finance which has been uncovered in wisconsin by the paper there. finding that all sorts of illicit funding, contributions, financial support has gone to the cain campaign. what reads to be in clear violation of federal election law, and this campaign would have spent the day dealing with that scandal. i think actually probably had more trouble managing the details of response to that scandal, than this sex story, if they had just had only that to deal with today. >> yeah, this story, the campaign finance story you are talking about out of wisconsin is really interesting.

what it boils down to is a group called prosperity usa which was founded by mark block, the famous smoker from the ad, it is a nonprofit organization. and under federal law and election law, nonprofits are not allowed, they are forbidden from giving money to capitol hill campaigns and what ended up happening is prosperity usa spent almost $40,000 on charter, airplane charter, ipads and other expenses for the friends of herman cain. and that money was disclosed by prosperity usa by not by cain or his campaign. >> there could be some koch brothers funding in the prosperity operation.

a lot of dirt in there. >> there's a lot there. >> i don't see on the face of it what the real answers could be. there's no legitimate answers on the face of those accusations as to how the money was flowing in to the campaign. we will follow up with more on the that later. jonathan capehart, thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. >> coming up, surviving a sex scandal on the campaign trail. the only model to follow is bill clinton in 1992. "time"s joe kleine and chris matthews were there and they will show us a way to map ahead the campaign if this is one. and we will have a perspectives on the charge against herman cain. that's ahead. ♪ ♪ ♪ when your chain of supply ♪ goes from here to shanghai, that's logistics. ♪

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new hampshire primary in 1992 again for jennifer flowers held a press conference in new york city when she told the world about her 12 year affair with arkansas governor bill clinton. >> i was bill clinton's lover for 12 years. and for the past two years i have lied to the press about our relationship to protect him. the truth is i loved him. now he tells me to deny it. >> and she had the telephone tapes to prove it. >> hello. >> gennifer. >> yeah.

>> bill and hillary clinton fought back with a joint interview on cbs 60 minutes. in that interview which followed the super bowl and was watched by 25 million people. bill clinton floated lies like this. >> she was an acquaintance, i would say a friendly acquaintance, it is only when money came out, when the tabloid went out they were offering people money to say they had been involved with me that she changed the story. there's a recession and times are tough and i think you can expect more of these stories as long as they are down there handing out money. >> it didn't matter to voters what bill clinton had to say. she was obviously guilty as charged. the evening belonged to hillary clinton.

voters wanted to know how she felt about the violation of their marital vows. she was in voters' eyes of the victim of the story. only she could dispense forgiveness and if she did why shouldn't everyone else. >> i'm not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like tammy wynette. i'm here because i love him, respect him and honor what he's been through and what we have been through together and if that is not enough for people then heck, don't vote for him. >> less than three weeks later, bill clinton came in second in the new hampshire primary which under the circumstances was considered a huge victory by clinton and the media. he then went on to make history by becoming the first presidential candidate to lose the new hampshire primary and win the presidency. he also went on to prove he learned nothing from the gennifer flowers experience by managing to get himself

impeached and waste years of his presidency trying to survive a sex scandal with a white house intern. bill clinton proved that surviving a campaign sex scandal is possible. but herman cain is no bill clinton. joining me now are "time" magazine columnist joe klein who has a piece on the latest issue in the stands right now and melissa harris-perry a professor at tulane university and msnbc contributor. thank you both for joining me tonight. >> absolutely. >> joe klein, how much deja vu are you feeling here between the clinton and cain situation? >> absolutely none. although i'm feeling a bit nostalgic. as herman cain may say it is apples and freight trains. it is, in the clinton case, it was an act, several many, multiple acts of consensual sex. it was always consensual. in herman cain's case they had to pay two women to shut up.

you know, it was a form of sexual harassment. now i think all of these things are overblown. i think this, given all of herman cain's other sins and almost near total ignorance is a drop in the bucket, but i think that in the end -- by the way, the real story of the gennifer flowers thing was that it with wasn't hurting clinton in the polls at all. what happened within i think eight days to two weeks, his letter to the arkansas national guard commander came out where he clear ly got himself back out of national guard service when the coast was clear. and that was something that voters in new hampshire really found obnoxious and at that point, and only at that point did clinton's numbers start to fall. in fact it was always my theory that gennifer flowers scandal helped him with white, working-class men.

between dating lounge singer and hanging out in mcdonald's the guy was living the dream. >> melissa, can you imagine something like this helping herman cain with white middle-class men? >> potentially. actually, yes. so, look, i think the flowers one is an interesting moment, but part of what's going on here is we have to remember, as you pointed out in the introduction to that, the issue of whether or not a sex scandal or so-called sex scandal ends up hurting a candidate depends on a couple of things. whether or not it is a scandal that goes to the core of who they are in a demonstration of hypocrisy, right? the second is whether or not the wife or partner, the victim, right, also takes a stance against the candidate. and the third is whether or not we think that those people who with are making the allegations are profoundly credible. the issue with cain is he's got

a bunch of interesting things that might actually make this helpful rather than harmful for his campaign. it is broken by politico. because of our kind of space where we are in media some may see it as a liberal attack on the candidate. high-tech lynching has risen to the top of the search engines because some are comparing it not to the bill clinton moment but clarence thomas moment. the other thing to remember is we, as a public, tend to be very suspicious of women who make sex scandal allegations and then take any kind of financial payoff, even if it is completely appropriate, for example and this may be a completely appropriate response in the context of an employee-employer relationship but american public opinion generally goes against women who make claims whether they be claims of rape or sexual assault or harassment and then

become payees financially. this may not hurt cain as much as we think that it might. >> let's listen to what cain said on fox news about the possibility of more accusations coming out. >> if more allegations come, i assure you people will simply make them up. i was aware of the false accusation that took place at the restaurant association. and then when we were asked for me to comment they wanted if for it to be from two anonymous sources. we weren't going to chase anonymous sources. >> joe, you certainly get the feeling more is going to come out here? >> yeah. this is a guy who has, part of his personality is saying outrageous things. he said it about immigration. as jonathan capeheart said, he said it about black people and the president. he does it as a matter of course. i wouldn't be surprised if he said outrageous things to women in his employ. it wouldn't be a big surprise. i don't think it is that important.

i agree with the other panelist who said that it might help him. i was listening to rush limbaugh today and rush was in his very high tenor whiny mode and he was just excoriating the liberal press for taking this good man down, the racist liberal press, another strong conservative man like clarence thomas being taken down by the liberal press. >> yep. >> anne coulter has been striking some of the same notes. melissa, one of the things that did come out later in bill clinton's files on these matters were nonconsensual accusations by paula jones and others that ended up on this route that got him in to eventually the impeachment proceedings. so, the nonconsensual nature of these accusations, do you find that's a factor one way or the other in how they are perceived? >> it certainly could be.

here's the deal. democrats have a harder time surviving that, i think than republicans. for this reason. gender politics right now in the republican party could hardly be described as progressive. so, you know, at the moment there are basically republican state houses that are suggesting that women should not even have the right to choose to terminate pregnancies in the context of rape and incest, which are clearly nonconsensual acts. on the one hand we should think that consent should be the core but in this context it in fact may not be. >> joe klein of "time" and melissa harris-perry of msnbc and tulane, thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. coming up, the guy who's seen it all. chris matthews will help us put the herman cain scandal in perspective and don't be surprised if he uses an example from his new back, jack kennedy, the elusive hero. and who's more ridiculous, the kardashians or the royal

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heads up herman cain staffers both of you. pay attention. chris matthews is going to join me to give you free advice on how to handle the sex scandal and the campaign finance scandal. and later, the racial politics of the republican presidential

primary just keep getting stranger. from the name of rick perry's ranch to what he calls "the fun of doubting the president's birth certificate" to today's revelations about herman cain, he will put it all together for us. >> our blacks are so much better than their blacks. ♪ [ gasp ] [ mom ] my husband -- he thinks it's a 3-sheeter. i say 1-sheeter. bounty can clean the mess with less. [ female announcer ] in this lab demo, 1 sheet of bounty leaves this surface as clean as 2 sheets of the bargain brand. ♪

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if your car's totaled, we give you the money for a car one model year newer. to learn more, visit us today. responsibility. what's your policy? the dean of the msnbc delegation and the author of the fascinating and deeply personal new book "jack kennedy, elusive hero," my friend and colleague, chris matthews. chris, thank you for staying up late and joining me tonight. >> you are on the west coast and here i am in new york. >> exactly. sorry i am going to miss your book party tomorrow in new york. chris, this herman cain situation, we did a little retrospect on how bill clinton handled it. is the wife the key? do we have to see mrs. cain in

the management of this going forward. >> that can be a sign of trouble in and of itself. i think the story is not at the word scandal yet. my old rule and i'm sure you know it, it is a familiar one, that is if it is better than it looks they will tell you. so if it is better than it looks to us right now watching it as observers, picking up the disclosure that comes out the will tell us. if the stories go beyond what they are so far. there's not a big world of difference between what is reported and what he action has acknowledged. there were complaints made. he said he didn't know anything about the settlements if you will. maybe they weren't called settlements to him. it is a matter of nomenclature to a point but this is a buzz word fearing it will be far worse. everyone will keep the story to themselves until after midnight and blow something i'm tonight i assume.

>> he's been getting away with a lot of rookie mistakes because his electorate is letting him get away with that. is this how they will play this one? >> i think he benefits from the fact. he is running in the western division of the republican party and competing with arch conservatives. he's not competing with mitt romney. he is trying to be the one to challenge mitt romney in the showdown next january. i think, look at the chris christie remark saying it is none of your business to the young woman who asked about the schooling of the kids, the smoking in the ad that cain had on a couple of days ago. this is a lot of this rubbing it in the face of the establishment. if he is able to portray it as part of the effort to dump on him as an outsider he might be able to get a bit of freedom on it. eventually he will have to respond to the hard charges. in the short run, i think he will benefit from a reasonable

doubt for a couple of days and at some point he will have to address this. >> chris, give us the historical perspective on this and mindful of your back jack kennedy a guy who we now know had more to his life than his picture of the happy married couple indicated. to go from that period of time where politicians could get away with virtually anything in this category to where we are today. >> it is a hell of a spectrum you are talking about, harass and love affairs. i think jack kennedy probably benefitted from the james bond era. one of his heroes james bond. the mad men we are watching on television these days a lot of us are. pan am. the early '60s are embracing but to a large extent as you are implying sexist and men were with running the show and obviously some men misbehaved. jack kennedy's behavior was very much romantic rather than harassing, i think that's fair

to say. but i can get in to it if you want to. what do you want me to do? i have spent years trying to figure out who this guy was, what was he like, his favorite question about biography was what was he like, what was he like in person, the navy, in congress, and i went back and talked to everybody i could and looked at every oral history i and got tremendous archival access beyond anything that has been written about how this young rich kid developed this to the guy that got us through the cuban missile crisis. >> it is a deeply personal book. i want to go to a passage that includes two friend of mine, daniel patrick moynihan who is no longer with us, and you and you are discussing the assassination and the after effects of the assassination of president kennedy, the 1963 assassination. daniel patrick moynihan who served as assistant secretary of labor said there is no point

being irish if you don't know the world will someday break your heart. he carried on jack's plan to make pennsylvania avenue the national inaugural route a corridor of grandeur. make it like paris, he said. pat once remarked to me in a personal way his feeling about the events of november 1963. we've never gotten over it. then looking at me with generous appreciation, he added, you've never gotten over it. i saw it as a kind of benediction and acceptance in to something warm and irish and splendid, a knighthood of the soul. >> you work for pat all of those years. i worked for tip. i was overwhelmed by that. as if it were this morning when jack was killed and he went to harvard and i went to holy cross at the time. we got the word at 1:00 in the afternoon. i was a freshman checking my mail and i was going to history class than they let us out that day if we wanted.

and this guy was a hero. he was a hero in the war and in the '60s and every bit as good as we thought he was and that's the profound discovery of jack kennedy, elusive hero. >> chris, we all remember where we were on that day in 1963. i was an elementary student in boston. and it is a moment none of us will forget and a moment we will never get over. the book is called "jack kennedy, elusive hero" chris matthews thank you very much. >> thank you, lawrence o'donnell. still ahead the kardashians and the british royal family love extravagant weddings and now the british royal family is changing the rules about who they can marry. the kardashians, of course, have no rules. that's in the "rewrite." [ indistinct talking on radio ] [ tires screech ]

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but first virginia democrats are condemning a republican party e-mail depicting a dead president obama with a bullet hole in his forehead. in the message, the louden county republicans wrote "we are going to vanquish the zombies with clear thinking, conservative principles and a truck load of republican candy. it is fun and a great way to represent our candidates to a ton of voter and their kids just before the election. after pressure from their own party, the louden county chairman released a statement saying it represented a lighthearted attempt to inject satire and humor in to the halloween holiday. some individuals have apparently interpreted an image of barack obama as intending to portray a the president as a victim of a violent crime. i am joined later with a look at race in republican politics. >> our blacks are so much better than their blacks. [ male announcer ] you never know when a moment might turn into something more.

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i thought we'd be on location for 3 days, it's been 3 weeks. so, i used my citi simplicity card to pick up a few things. and i don't have to worry about a late fee. which is good... no! bigger! bigger! [ monica ] ...because i don't think we're going anywhere for a while. [ male announcer ] write your story with the new citi simplicity card. no late fees. no penalty rate. no worries. get started at citisimplicity.com. in tonight's "rewrite" what left of the terrible idea that was the british empire, the 16 countries that continue to suffer the embarrassment of having the queen of england as their head of state have decided to rewrite the rules of succession to the british throne. what kind of monarchy allows its subjects to rewrite the rules of the monarchy through its democratically elected representatives? the joke that is now something less than one step away from

becoming a kardashian like reality show, the powerless and pointless british monarchy, the big new rule is that the first born son or daughter of the british monarch will succeed to the throne. what's the big change in that? the rule has simply been the first born son of the monarch will succeed to the throne and a daughter could succeed to the throne only if there were no sons at all. the other royalty rule change is that the king or queen can now marry a catholic. no rule change was necessary to allow the king or queen to marry a jew or muslim. catholic was the only religion the monarch was forbidden from walking down the aisle with. catholic hatred has been a royal tradition. they did not let them to vote, inherit land, to serve in the army, to hold public office or join a profession like doctor or lawyer.

so catholics will now have the same opportunities everyone else does to disappoint their parents and marry a king or queen of england. but it is still, of course, against the rules for a catholic to actually become king or queen. the "new york times" greeted the rules change on succession for first born daughters to be quote, a historic blow for women's rights. speaking for the sane subjects of the british crown, graham smith, the head of a group called "republic" that wants elected head of state said nothing of substance had changed the monarchy discriminates against every man, woman and child who isn't born in to the windsor family. to suggest that has anything to do with equally is utterly absurd. it fails the equality test both in practice and principal. in principal all children in britain should have an equal

opportunity to stand for the head of state. anything short of that is an affront to the principals of equality. it is extraordinary that we hear serious politicians proclaiming this change as a blow for equal rights. do they ever stop and ask why the eldest should be favored over the youngest? or why the windsor family should be favored over all others? it is crass to suggest that any tinkering with the monarchy is an issue of equality. it makes a laughing stock of britain and the other countries seeking to make these changes. the monarchy is founded on discrimination and elitism. it has no place that debate over equality of opportunity. graham smith for king. i mean graham smith for prime minister. i mean prime minister who really is the head of state. [ male announcer ] you are a business pro.

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racial politics republican style. what have we learned about the republican party's take on race relation unless america in this year's presidential campaign? from herman cain's cain december denunciation of brainwashed african-american voters who vote for democrats to the name of rick perry's ranch, to rick perry's confession that it is just fun to question the president's birth certificate and today's sexual harassment allegations against herman cain. some white wingers saw today's revelations about herman cain as some kind of left-wing conspiracy. >> high-tech lynches. >> yep. it absolutely is it is coming from the same people who used to do lynching with ropes and now

with a word processor. >> the democratic party? >> yes. we had to have national federal civil rights laws to protect blacks from democrats. >> what's next, folks? a cartoon on msnbc showing herman cain with huge lips eating a watermelon? what are they going to do next? the racial stereotypes these people are using to go after herman cain, what's the one thing it tells us? it tells us who the real racists are. but it tells us that herman cain is somebody. you see, we cannot have a black republican running for the office of president. we can't have one elected. we can't have an hispanic, the left owns those two groups. anything good that happens to any black or hispanic in american politics can only happen via the democratic party. if it happens elsewhere we will destroy those people ala clarence thomas.

>> joining me is the time.com contributor and post whose afraid of blackness and what it means to be black now. thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you for having me. >> i want to refresh the member of some of our younger members or introduce them to it the first time. where the phrase high-tech lynching entered republican politics. let's listen to clarence thomas at his senate confirmation hearing. >> this is high-tech lynching. i can shot shake off these ak same sexes because they play to the worst stereotypes we have about black men in this country. >> toure', there's this blender of republican racial politics that's gotten mixed up together. i can't make any sense of it. guide us through this. >> one thing i see, saw rush limbaugh talking about, we see who the real racists are. and clarence thomas is using the

same sort of bazooka to fire back is that when we point out moments of racism or minute central in herman cain's campaign they fire back and say that is racist. you are racist. it becomes this negating tool that we will just say racism wherever we see any racial politics taking place. we will say the race card is played anytime points out a moment of racism and that sort of muddles the conversation to where a lot of people are like i don't want to be part of this at all. it seems two people are fight and i don't understand what is going on. i think that cain, interestingly, does not exist without obama preceding him. he rights the ship in a lot of people's minds or rights the scales. because obama is alpha. he is brilliant. he's a man you had to take seriously. he's a constitutional law professor that you had to take seriously when he spoke. cain sort of reasserts the

scales the way people want it to be. he's charismatic and his ideas are not serious or well thought out. there is this constant minstrelsy aspect. he is the one who says he wants the secret service to call him corn bread. he says things like oh, shucky ducky. this is deep black slang he is using that we have not seen on a national public stage before and in the yellow flower ad that you brought out on your show a few days ago, isn't he the one that gets punched in his own ad? what sort of man who presents himself as alpha and wanting to be the leader of the free world would get punched in his own campaign ad? it doesn't make any sense. and yet cain allows the gop to have this sort of force we're not racist we are supporting this black man.

even at the same time he admits this myth of black civility and self about negation and you don't have to take us seriously sort of thing. that obama threw it out of whack because you had to take him dead seriously. >> he seems to present himself more as an entertainer. today he actually, at the end of his are speech to the national press club he sang. he turned to song. he is more of an entertainer in many ways than he is a candidate, isn't he. >> the way that colin powell, jesse jackson, barack obama, the blacks who are running for president have presented themselves as serious intellectuals. we are not entertainers. we may have a little fun now and then but we are not here to entertain you. we are here to lead you and here's herman cain, reasserting the scales, i am an entertainer. yes, i'm here to entertain you. >> toure, thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you. >> you can have the last word