show in north dakota called "what's on your mind" after going through the coverage last night listening to the republicans i thought i would change the name of my show to "what's left of your mind". >> i will say i was a little fried at the end of the night. even if it had just been us there for an hour that would have been enough to have my eyes rolled back in my head but seven hours. >> thank you, rachel. >> thanks for staying with us for the next hour. for super wednesday. it's super wednesday! ♪ >> stop it. ixnay on the music. stop it. it's not super wednesday. i'm not allowed to play the music. just the day after super tuesday. and feels very super in part because super tuesday went on for so long, so it sort of just feels like it's still happening. it feels like it's 30:00 on tuesday.

at one point in the seventh straight hour of coverage last night, and before my order of salami and eggs arrived from the deli, i was a little loopy and low blood sugar, at one point in anchoring to update you the you a -- audience, i christened one race otio, it was accidentally apt, that was the huge story of super tuesday, that it was not until 12:30 a.m. eastern time that nbc was able to call ohio for mitt romney. even that call was just mitt romney as the apparent winner. because for five hours after poll closing it had been so close that it was impossible to say who had won the state. in fact right now mitt romney is the apparent winner of ohio because his margin of victory is only 1% and the entire vote isn't in yet. otio has been called for mitt

romney but this was really, really close. still though as steve schmidt argued very well last night even when it's really, really close there is no prize for second place. even when it is that close a race. even a one-point race or zero-point race you would rather be the guy who won even if it's by a little than the guy who did not win. so ohio goes down not as a tie, not as otio but a win, in the mitt romney column and that matters. a win that is frankly as important to mr. romney's presidential prospects as his win was in michigan a week ago. in both those big important bell-weathery states, rick santorum gave mitt romney a run for his money. but ohio and michigan also show really clearly i think the two most important dynamics, the two biggest stories in the republican partiests to pick their presidential nominee this year. look at the two races. look how close. this was the result in ohio, and

this was the result in michigan. so close, right? in a race that close you start thinking about all the little things that could have made a difference. if you picked up a point in this group or turnout two points higher when it's this close, my marginal change in any one group of reasonable size can make all the difference. you can parse results this close, you can parse them to high heaven. you know what is not subtle about the results, when you don't need to do the math to understand the importance of? it's this guy. ding. to the extent that republican primary voters are being asked do you want mitt romney as your nominee or not, the "or not" vote between rick santorum and newt gingrich, really easily beats mitt romney in both those places. if newt gingrich dropped out of the race his voters would only marginally go more for rick santorum than mitt romney, even only a little shading in the preference there, still, knot

newt gingrich being out of the race means rick santorum probably would have won. we would not be talking about mitt romney as the likely republican nominee this year. inevitable, shminevitable. mr. gingrich keeps saying that he might win, but newt gingrich is not winning. newt gingrich is losing really badly to rick santorum and he is the reason that rick santorum is losing to mitt romney. he is the reason that no, non-mitt romney candidate can win. newt gingrich is one of the huge stories in politics. we're getting this crazy outsized focus on him, on what this third place guy with no chance is doing. today news he's skipping kansas, who cares? nobody would otherwise care about that except for the fact that mr. gingrich staying in the race is effectively handing the

race to mitt romney. just numerically who is not voting for mitt romney, that split in the not romney vote, that is one of the two big stories in this election this year. but the other big story in the race right now? is not who is voting against mitt romney in the republican primaries, but who is voting for mitt romney. how is mitt romney winning the states that he is win something i'm glad you asked because it's fascinating and i can't believe it's not getting more coverage. look at ohio, if you break ohio voters down, when it comes to voters making under $30,000 a year, mitt romney tied rick santorum in that group. they both got the same percentage of the vote. voters making between 30-50,000 dollars, mitt romney loses to santorum. 50,000 to 100,000, mitt romney lose sz to santorum. how do you tie at best or lose every single income bracket in the state and still win the

state? mitt romney clean rick santorum clock aohio voters making more than $100,000 a year. mitt romney tied or lost every other income group in ohio, but when it came to the wealthiest sliver of the electorate, he won big and that is how he won. in michigan, same thing, voters making under $30,000 a year, mitt romney loses. 30-50,000 a year, mitt romney loses. 50-100,000, mitt romney loses. how do you win a state when you loose every single income bracket in the state? oh, again, mitt romney wins among the wealthiest sliver of the electorate. that is the only group that mitt romney won that is the only group of voters mitt romney won in michigan or in ohio. he lost the primary or at best

tied with voters in every single income bracket in both states, except for the wealthiest sliver of the electorate. how do you win a state when you were only winning the wealthiest sliver and losing everything else? ah-ha. mitt romney is not just appealing to the rich people in these states. he is inspiring the rich people in these states. turns out mitt romney's candidacy is driving up voter participation by the richest people in the country. this is amazing. in 2008 in the republican primary in ohio, the proportion of voters in that primary that year that were making over $100,000, 21%. that was 2008. 21%. this year, 30%. of the electorate is making over $100,000. those are mitt romney's people. in michigan, same deal, in 2008, in the republican primary in michigan, voters making over $100,000 were 22% of the electorate. this year? 33%. mitt romney is turning out 33% of the electorate among his core voters who are people making

over $100,000. there are more rich people voting. now, the fact there are so many more rich people voting in michigan and ohio primaries may be that is great news about michigan and ohio, right, maybe because ohio and michigan are a lot richer as states than they used to be? maybe? not really. this is the change since the last primary in terms of person income, ohio and michigan residences have stayed relatively the same over the past few years. even in a bad economy or static economy, you do have some rich people and what rich people there are in these states are motivated. they have found their candidate. mitt romney is inspiring a tiny minority of americans to stand up for their rights and their guy. rich people are moved to come out and vote for one of their own. what is most incredible, though, is that this is not just an ohio and michigan phenomenon. this holds true as an iron-clad rule for the entire primary

process. for the entire election. for all states. 23 states have voted in the republican primaries, there is poll data in 14 states. that is the states in which we know the income level of the people turning out. 14 states. of those 14 states, mitt romney won 9 of them. but in every single one of those 14 states, even the ones that he lost, mitt romney has won the wealthiest sliver of the electorate. every single time, so in ohio as i mentioned mitt romney wins the state and he win the wealthiest by a huge margin. in michigan, mitt romney wins the state and wins the wealthiest by a huge margin. in tennessee, mitt romney loses to rick santorum but look he still wins the wealthiest voters. massachusetts, he wins. and the wealthiest. the same in vermont. mitt romney loses to newt gingrich in georgia but again he

wins the wealthiest voters even while losing the state. in virginia mitt romney wins and wins the wealthiest. in arizona mitt romney wins and the wealthiest in, oklahoma mitt romney loses to rick santorum, but even as he is losing the state, look how he cleans up with rich people in oklahoma. in nevada, mitt romney wins and he wins the wealthiest. in south carolina, mitt romney loses, to newt gingrich but look at that. look at the margin by which he wins the wealthiest people there even as he loses the whole state. in florida mitt romney wins and the wealthiest. in iowa, mitt romney loses to rick santorum but look at that margin. look at the margin by which he wins the wealthiest people who are voting that day. finally in new hampshire, mitt romney wins the state and of course look at that, he really wins the wealthiest. there has not been a single state in which republicans have vote wrd we have exit poll data in which mitt romney did not win the wealthiest sliver of the electorate. there is always some exception

that proves the rule in, this case it's the rule. it's the rule, that's it. like a rule of physics. and in the states where it counts, where he really needs these rich people to turn out for them, not only does mitt romney win the wealthiest but drives up voter participation of the wealthiest people. this is one of those clarifying moments where looking at the numbers, looking at the math makes all the words we have been expending on this campaign seem kind of worthless in comparison. all that hand wringing, myself included, all this worrying whether or not mitt romney seems out of touch. it's not out of touch generically. there is a common theme where he hats seemed out of touch. >> i'll tell you what, 10,000 bucks. $10,000 bet? >> i'm not in the betting business. >> i like being able to fire people who provide services to me. >> i'm not concerned about the very poor. >> corporations are people, my friend.

>> i drive a mustang and a pick up truck, ann drives a couple cadillacs. >> when he's out of town it's just out of touch with the people who are not voting for him. with the fact the people who are voting for the other guy. with the people he is losing. if it seems like mitt romney is not a man of the people, he is not a man of the people. and the important thing here is who cares whether he seems like a man of the people? he doesn't need the people. he is winning the most important states in the country by only winning the richest people voting in those states and by losing everybody else. he wins the richest sliver of the population, he doesn't need anybody else's vote. that is not me accusing him of having a bad world view, that is the math. there has been this hand wringing and con steer nation over the new plan he just released, he released a plan last month and a new one this month. do we have the steve graph we

had on the blog the impact of mitt romney's economic plan. do we have that? >> yes. there is all this consternation that mitt romney's economic plan looks like this. makes the poorest people in the country the lowest pay more and gives a big benefit to rich people, the richer you get the more you get from mitt romney. all this consternation over this. if all you need it rich people, this is perfect. as long as voter participation is low enough and rich people are inspired enough by their champion to turn out in great droves and vote 100% of the time for mitt romney, you might even be able to win the general election with the strategy like this. you might need a voter id variation where the only way to get the ballot if you flash the pole worker your top hat and tails. joining us is john harwood, chief washington correspondent

for cnbc, nice to have you here. >> hey, rachel. >> how far can you go winning only voters at the top of the income chart and losing everybody else? it worked in ohio, and in michigan. can it work other places? >> well, it can't work nearly as well in the general election as it can in primaries, which as you mentioned are low participation exercises, in the 2008 general election people making over $100,000 a year were a quarter of the electorate. three quarts below that. so mitt romney does have the ability in primary states to maximize his appeal to that group and really make it count, and you explained it earlier in your a moment ago, rachel, the one of us issue. you have business, economic-oriented republicans who look at mitt romney, identify with him, see him as somebody like them with similar values, just as the way we all identify when we vote, whether it's by ethnicity or geography or personal background, and he's also taking a little bit of

advantage of the split in the republican party between the tea party, evangelical, social conservatives who rick santorum is appealing to and other people who don't share their values, and they want to vindicate the candidate they believe will pursue their interests as president. >> do you think that explains -- the thing i found most striking today and the reason i wanted to do this segment about the data is because i was so struck by the information that not just wealthier voters are preferring mr. romney, but their participation is rising, we're seeing more wealthier voters turn out. is the same dynamic driving people to vote for mr. romney that is driving them to actually turn out to vote when they wouldn't otherwise? >> it's hard to tell, rachel, whether some of that is also a backlash against what they are hearing from rick santorum. before the michigan results and the electorate was skewed from 2008 the primary ee lk tore rat, higher participation at the top of the income scales, some may

be in response to some of the things santorum was saying. i talked about value, people at the higher end of the income scale don't share the same value, they are not as religious more secular, don't share rick santorum's views on the contraception issue which is something that mitt romney has not echoed the same rhetoric and by the way, it's one of the reasons why president obama's advisors have been -- many of the high income voters much more secular, much more liberal on the social issues and vote democrat. remember who won the voters over 200,000 in 2008, it was not john mccain it was barack obama. >> john, does the romney campaign have a southern strategy for these upcoming races in alabama and mississippi and beyond or do you think they are okay just letting gingrich and santorum fight the out, doesn't matter if they win southern states?

>> they are hoping the southern states because the delegates are awarded proportionately even if they lose them, they will continue marching toward 1144. it's difficult to refute because in the process, when you do proportional representation, or proportional delegate selection, difficult for somebody in second place to make up all at once. utah, new jersey are favorable to mitt romney he is the one likely to extend his lead. >> john harwood, cnbc chief correspondent, i like talk toug because you have brought data from the reporting world in these discussions and makes you more valuable than your average bear to talk to appreciate it. >> my pleasure. >> now that the sandra fluke thing has not worked out so well for mr. limbaugh, the interview

tonight on this show is the next young american woman who rush limbaugh has decided to come after. it is becoming a badge of honor, that is coming up. tiful makeup out there. but one is so clever that your skin looks better even after you take it off. neutrogena® healthy skin liquid makeup. 98% saw improved skin. does your makeup do that? neutrogena® cosmetics.

turns out rick santorum can't be googled problem is getting worse, not better. neat. that is coming up.

the history of this election year will be annoying. because in the future when people go to compare 2012 to other years, to look at like delegates and trends and who won what races and what order and who was still in the race when,the stuff we're doing now, this year about previous years in order to make sense of this year, when people do that about 2012 it will be super annoying

to calculate this year in any broader understanding of what happens overtime in presidential politics. and that is because 2012 has to have this giant asterisks on the state of virginia. virginia was part of super tuesday, yesterday, but virginia republicans set rules this year so that only mitt romney and ron paul could be on the ballot. virginia's election did count all of the 46 delegatesare being allocated on the basis of that race in virginia, but nobody considers virginia last night to have been a real race because there was only those two guys on the ballot. that is the kind of nuance that will be lost in translation in future years. therefore, the modern history of presidential politics will most list be a little off because virginia be misunderstood. you can see it from here. you can see it coming, but there is almost no way to stop it from happening. the asterisk will get edited out when people compile the date over multi year sets. still though, if we refuse tonight to start making that

inevitable error already, an lonest map of who has won what this year looks like this. that is mitt romney states in green, rick santorum states in yellow, newt gingrich's states in red. for the purpose of really understanding this, can we combine santorum and gingrich? so instead of yellow and red they are all orange. states won by mitt romney in green, states won by candidates other than mitt romney in orange. we are excludeing virginia because as i said it was a hot mess. if you are mitt romney or a republican that wants mitt romney will be the republican nominee, what is wrong with this map? aside from florida, which is its own thing and not part of the south, there is no south in this. none. you may be could put virginia in there but virginia was a mess. mitt romney has not won in the south and it's impossible to remember a nominee who didn't have support in the south.

this what's maps look like. look at the quadrant, redness, they win in the south. as the returns were coming in last night with romney losing georgia and tennessee and oklahoma, there was this glaring problem how does he compensate for being unable to win in the south? a republican has to be able to win in the south. i asked essentially that question of chuck todd last night. >> i think it may mean more pressure on romney to have to have a running mate that is of the south, a son of the south in some form or another. the perfect person, bob mcdonnell, a catholic evangelical catholic, if you will, would play well with -- this goes -- this has been chris' theory for some time, a perception romney has a southern problem with some evangelicals that he has to have somebody who will speak to them.

who will speak to them directly and say no, don't worry about mitt romney i got him. >> this is how people think about ticket balancing, right, and the vice presidential selection. mitt romney hey have things going for him but can't seem to win in the south so he needs a guy from the south on the ticket why not bob mcdonnell, he made clear he wants the job. today, how did bob mcdonnell make clear he wants the vice presidential job? he signed the ultrasound bill today. governor ultrasound made it official today. after weeks of protests, after dozens of arrests, after tons of national attention, after denying this was ever part of his agenda in the first place, after sitting on it for days after the legislature passed it raising the prospect he might not sign it, virginia governor bob "ultrasound" mcdonnell decided to keep the nickname. virginia women will be forced by the state to undergo and to pay for a procedure that is not medically necessary, that is mandated by mr. mcdonnell's

state government, that your doctor has no choice about and you have to undergo against your will. the governor justified the government-mandated medical procedure by saying it's necessary to determine the gestational age of the fetus before an abortion is allowed. in most case you have to do an ultrasound to make that determination. but for the majority of abortions, the jelly on the belly abdominal ultrasound mandated by the bill will not help determine gestational age. the only kind is this kind, the internal trans vaginal probe kind, made the vp next to his name stand not so much for vice president anymore as vaginal probe. earlier version of the bill supported by the governor would have mandated a vaginal probe ultrasound. the amended version of the bill he signed mandates the other kind of ultrasound but it says if that ultrasound doesn't help determine the gestational age, than in most cases it won't, the woman has to be offered the

internal vaginal probe ultrasound. if she says no to the vaginal probe one, is she still allowed to have an abortion in virginia? unclear. we asked the governor's office if the state government isn't still effectively mandating vaginal ultrasounds by playing doctor, by forcing the medically unnecessary procedures to determine information that can only be obtained up and through your genitals. by order of the state. we have had no answer from the governor's office on that yet. but the governor has signed the bill in law as of today saying in a statement he released on the matter the whole reason he's doing this is to "help the mother." what do you think american women? this is the kind of help you would like? it would seem that governor ultrasound has insured he is not going to be the republican party's vice presidential pick no matter how much help mitt romney might need in the south. but you know, then again who knows. there seems to be two trains of thought in republican politics.

the bob mcdonnells of the world who are fall steam ahead on forced ultrasounds, government mandated medical procedures, even as they want to be seen as small government guys, rick santorum brought up his opposition to expanded contraception coverage last night during the victory speech, nobody asked him about it, he brought it up on his own. there is a bob mcdonnell-rick santorum issue of thinking about it. maybe that is what republicans want to hear. on the other hand, the anti-contraception amendment in the senate, remember the blunt-rubio amendment, after senators lost the vote last week the republicans said they would press on, they would bring it up in the house, keep at it in the senate. this week they are caving on that. roy blunt, the sponsor of the blunt-rubio amendment, vowed when he lost the first anti-contraception vote that "this fight is not over" he would work "in both chambers of congress on continuing to fight for the anti-contraception bill"

that was his stance last week. this week he's telling talking points memo i think we have as many votes as there were to get on that. now he's defending the republicans are shelving the bill when she said they would keep fighting for it. in the house where john boehner said he would keep on fighting for it. he would keep up the fight on the anti-contraception bill that failed in the senate and house, where he said they would bring it up, they are not bringing it up. they are not bringing it up in the house any time soon, jeff flake who is running for senate telling politico "we have a lot else on our plate." >> lisa murkowsky is repudiating her vote. she cast it last week, she wouldn't do it again after talking to women who told her what they thought. linda lingle is running for senate in hawaii, she did a fund-raiser with roy blunt personally, but now telling no,

are you kidding, don't mistake me. most of the republican party is in full retreat on the anti-contraception by guys like rick santorum and governor ultrasound think it's the way forward.

rick santorum began this campaign season as the candidate whose name you could not google

on family television. but, rick santorum has almost man aned to outlast his reputation as senator man on dog. for a new generation of voters, he's better known as senator contraception is not okay. also senator pass the flashlight i have no campaign staff including advance teams before i talk. his original problem of being ungoogleable that is change, not necessarily not better but change, we have an update on that coming up.

here is an on screen graphic you may have seen a lot of lately. you've seen it on msnbc, cnn, online. maybe even on fox, i don't know. but this is the graphic that has been all over the place and the shorthand version of telling the story of this month's rush limbaugh scandal. these are all the companies that have said they are dropping their advertisements from rush limbaugh's conservative radio talk show since the start of this latest rush limbaugh outrageous controversy. the latest controversy was over the republicans anti-contraception legislation and mr. limbaugh's decision to support that legislation by

attacking a georgetown law student as a slut and prostitute and one who ought to post sex videos online because of advocating coverage for contra -- contraception. now, these companies are getting probably 98% positive national attention for rejecting their sponsorship of mr. limbaugh's program in the wake of his comments that horrified just about everyone, even if you agreed with his underlying political position. now this is a lot of advertisers, look at them one by one. a lot of advertisers to lose. mr. limbaugh has lost a couple of radio stations already that carried his program. so, i do think this scandal has hurt mr. limbaugh's bottom line a little bit.

mostly though he has a big bottom line. mostly i think he doesn't mind the scandal all that much. publicity school of thought we'll have to see as it develops. possible he might have pulled a don imus, glenn beck, might be done but also possible that this is one of those periodic be outraged by me that pops up every now and then but have the effect of making him more famous. could we put up some of the sponsors, list, thank you. feast your eyes on that. for these companies, their role in this scandal has turned out to be positive, right? they are famous for a positive reason now. perhaps more importantly, because of mr. limbaugh's singular role in republican party politics, even if the scandal does not hurt him or the radio show, it can hurt republican politicians who can't bring themselves to criticize mr. limbaugh, because they are afraid he'll criticize them back. so because of their fear of his power over republican base voters, some republican

politicians end up not condemning if not endorsing his comments and that can hurt them very much. >> ms. fluke and the rest of you feninazies, if we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. and i'll tell you what it is. we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch. >> it's not the language i would have used. >> my campaign is about jobs and the economy and scaling back the size of government, and i'm not going to weigh in on that particular controversy. >> i don't want to talk about it. after those coments from mitt romney, david axelrod held a conference call with reporters in which he asked mitt romney if he couldn't stand up to "the most strie dent voices in your party, how can he stand up to ahmadinejad, how will you stand up to the challenges of the

presidency these are test. presidential campaigns are tests. you're tested every day in different ways, the limbaugh thing was a test of leadership you have them all the time, mitt romney failed those tests in the campaign." in an overall sense the scandal is disgusting, right? but in terms of the short-term effects, it is a blessing from on high for any democrat lucky enough to be running a campaign against a republican too chicken to criticize rush limbaugh even for comments like these that have horrified the nation. it is also priceless free advertising for those sponsors, can we put up the graphic, for those sponsors who took a brave stand against mr. limbaugh's horrific comments, this is great for them. today the ongoing moral catastrophe of rush limbaugh had one more unintended positive consequence came by mr. limbaugh attacking another young smart american woman and dragging her name for the mud for something she didn't do wrong.

sometimes having a universally reviled enemy is more valuable than having the most powerful allies. the latest woman to be attacked by rush limbaugh joins us for the interview tonight. that is next.

every time i find evidence of a massive forthcoming event to take away little bit of our freedom here and there, under the guise of improving our health or safety, i'll warn you about it. the ultimate end game is to take away your freedom. now we have a book by the tracie mcmillan, has as the premise that only the fancy and snobs get good food. what is it with all these young single white women over educated, doesn't mean intelligent.

>> joining us now is tracie mcmillan for her first interview after being attacked by rush limbaugh for doing nothing wrong, the author of the new book "american way of eating, under cover of walmart, apple bees, farmfields and dinner table" thank you for joining us tonight, nice to have you here. >> thanks for having me. >> in the wake of the sandra fluke controversy, i imagine you had no clue that he would spend today on his show going after you for hours. >> i had no clue and i almost missed it i'm on deadline for a reported piece and so yesterday, i was about to shut off the internet for the day to get work done, and then a few e-mails and tweets sort of came in and i said i need to look at this, and it was an hour before we figured out he spent i think it was half an hour, 45 minutes talking about my book, and reading the new york times interview on air.

it was very interesting surprise. >> it is an interesting detail about this, mr. limbaugh does not seem to be angry about the book, when he did this on his show yesterday, he seemed to be angry about a positive "new york times" article about your book and article that came out two weeks ago, is that right? >> yes, so the book came out two weeks ago, the times review came out the same day as it was published, february 21st, i think rush said in his broadcast i have been holding on this a couple weeks. so i guess he thought it was really important he warn everybody that somebody was talking to working americans about food. >> the way that he works, part of his schtick he's going after you personally attacking you for being overeducate and single and white. >> right. >> but he's doing that, he doesn't know you from adam, he's doing that as a way of undermining the cause of what you represent and what the book represents.

what do you think it about your reporting on the food industry and american way of eating that he finds so appalling and from -- the way he was attacking you, anti-conservative or anti-freedom? >> right, yeah, there is a couple ways to respond. one is to be flip and be i write about food and it's important to rush, maybe that is part of his concern. if i'm going to engage more directly with that, it's a little bit weird, right? mostly what i did i did my job and i worked as a farm worker in california, worked at a walmart outside detroit in the grocery section and worked at applebees in new york and what food is like for people in those jobs and did what reporters do, i went and talked to people and gathered information and tried to explain what is going on. and i think probably what's most confusing for somebody like rush is that i'm from a working class background, i am from the

midwest, from a rural area, and i'm part of the working class as much as anybody else is, and i think it's really confusing to all of a sudden have somebody who is from that part of society and can't be dismissed on the charges of an elitist problem and i come back and say well, i think maybe the private sector isn't meeting all our needs right now. and i think that is something that like conservatives don't necessarily have a good framework for dealing with. >> i know that the book, the american way of eating is a reference to one of my favorite works of nonfiction, the american way of death. thinking about that, i was also at the john steinbeck center at san jose state university this past weekend. talking about the way that steinbeck's. he was writing novels, writing exposes of the way that

americans were living in his time and things that americans didn't want to read about our own country. reading about -- reading exposes, reading journalism, reading accounts things that are wrong in the country makes people mad. and when people get angry about hearing that things aren't great in the country, do you think that that -- do you have any empathy from where that comes from? do you think people don't want to hear bad things about the country because they love the country so much? why does it make people angry to hear bad news about the country? >> i think some of it is just that it's really hard to have people criticize a place that you love and identify with, right? so i think all of us grew up with this story all this great opportunity in america, and to see it not being offered to everyone equally, on a basic level, that's upsetting to anybody, right? and at the same time, i think that if you're struggling really hard in your work and your job, it can just be really depressing

and draining to hear how much worse it is for someone else, because it might make you feel like -- well, it could be a lot worse than what i have. that makes it hard to engage with those kinds of stories. so i've always felt that there's a special kind of anger that you find from a lot of folks -- often, at least in my experience, a lot of the men i grew up with in the working class in michigan, a lot of white men grow up being told they have every opportunity, and yet life is still really really hard. and i think it can be very difficult to sort of deal with how hard all that is without feeling like why is everybody telling me this is supposed to be so easy, because it's not. >> it's about making anger constructive, which is a biblical pursuit as much as a national pursuit in some ways. congratulations on "the american way of eating."

the book is going to in fact get a lot more attention because you've been bizarrely singled out for being who you are, and doing this work journalism. that is a blessing. i hope it gives you even further luck with the book. thanks so much. >> thank you. >> one candidate who did very, very, very well in ohio last night is barack obama. lawrence has the explanation coming up. and rick santorum's google problem and rick santorum's new google problem. both are equally problematic, that's straight ahead. i get congested. but now, with zyrtec-d®, i have the proven allergy relief of zyrtec®, plus a powerful decongestant. zyrtec-d® lets me breath freer, so i can love the air. [ male announcer ] zyrtec-d®. behind the pharmacy counter. no prescription needed.

we have an update for you, on the rick santorum google problem. you know what the rick santorum google problem is, right? i may have mepgsed it a couple times on this show. it is the problem he has, and then you have when you google him. if you do not know what i mean, you can google santorum, do not do it at work, do not do it in front your mom. if you put santorum in the google search engine, you get information, but you don't get what you were looking for about rick santorum. >> i'm not going to ask you about rick santorum and campaigning against msnbc and what he can or cannot google. >> there's no way to find out about rick santorum. you can't just type that into the internet.

>> i can research it at home, but i can't research it at work. you can google it, it's safe. it's not like rick santorum. until recently when you typed the word santorum into the google search box. the first result even more prominent than rick santorum's campaign website is a site called spreading santorum, it was a site started in 2003 for retaliating against rick santorum, that's why everyone calls him the man on dog guy. that's what he said it was like to be gay, man on dog. the website spreadingsantorum.com turned his name into a euphemism i will not say on television. so many people linked to spreadingsantorum.com it became the most prominent search on google for years.

this with a first noticed by a twitter user, who asked, did google derank spreading santorum? first or second result for seven years and suddenly busted off the main page. and you know what? it's true, as the blog search engine land pointed out with screen caps that they posted, the first result used to be the site spreading santorum. last week, the first result change to his official campaign website and spreading santorum got bumped down to the bottom of the first search page. so far down it wouldn't appear on your screen unless you scrolled. then all of a sudden, spreading santorum started moving back up the search results page. so, of course, figuring this out, the rachel maddow show

staff has been googling santorum madly ever since, despite my strict instructions not to do so at work. interestingly, not all of us are getting the same results. the definition of santorum courtesy of urbandiction.com. we have to redact a lot of it, it's a more graphic description than what was up at spreadingsantorum. it's, in fact, stunningly graphic. why the search results page is constantly changing is at this point unclear. google released a statement wednesday saying, we make more than 500 changes to our algorithms in a typical year. with each of those changes, sites will shuffle the different positions in our search results, we have not manually taken action to change the ranking of the site. so with this added dose of unpredictability in terms of what your results are going to be, i think rick santorum's google problem if it didn't get worse, got a lot more interesting. now there's more of a reason to keep typing the word santorum into s