serenade to a mad man. now stay tuned for last word with lawrence o'donnell. president obama has a huge lead tonight according to the new electoral college map released by nbc news. >> the president -- >> team obama has made it official. >> on the campuses of ohio state and virginia commonwealth. >> how important are these two states? ohio and virginia are on there. >> this race is going to come down to a handful of states. >> california, nevada. north carolina, ohio, pennsylvania. >> mitt romney has very few paths. >> these guys don't get it, if you do well, the economy does well. >> it sure sounds like a

campaign, vice president joe biden slamming mitt romney on issues of national security. >> we can't go back to the future. >> biden accuses mitt romney of running on a nonexistent foreign policy. >> russia without question, our number one geo political foe. >> a profound misunderstanding. >> mitt romney has very few paths. >> mitt romney doesn't actually have false beliefs. >> he was accused throughout the primary as being a massachusetts moderate. >> you moved through debates to win the primary. >> romney won all five of the primaries. apparently when you buy four primaries, you get the fifth for free. >> mitt romney. >> mitt romney, a massachusetts moderate. >> if you don't run, chris christie, romney will be the nominee and we will lose. president obama took an oath

to govern for all 50 states but he might only have to campaign in seven of them to take that presidential oath of office a second time. the new nbc news battleground map shows only seven states scoreded as toss ups tonight according to polling information. they are florida, north carolina, virginia, pennsylvania, ohio, colorado and nevada. and the bad news for mitt romney is that president obama won all seven of those toss up states in 2008. the first two obama campaign rallies are now scheduled for saturday, may 5 in, where else? ohio and virginia. if you don't live in one of the battleground states, you will be watching all of the campaign rallies this year on tv. rush limbaugh took one look at the new battleground map today and of course, saw it through rush colored glasses.

>> i think obama's going to lose in a landslide. there's not one positive thing that's happened in this country since he took office that he can cite. >> joining me now are crystal ball, a democratic strategist and ari melder, a correspondent for the nation and msnbc contributor. we have the big map, the big map should be on the wall there. that's the wallpaper of the show for the rest of the year. because we can never repeat this enough, ignore those polls of the whole country, where they show them tied or they show obama ahead by a couple of points, it all comes down to this map, the toss up states, there's nothing toels think about. >> and we spend a lot of time in the republican primary talking about the fact that the national polls don't matter, you have to look state by state. it's the same by general election, you have to look at these battle ground states. one thing i would point out,

there's a tightening in these states recently. what you see if you look there, is both mccain and obama got a little bit of a nice bump after they secured their party nomination. i think it's going to be expected that things would be a little bit tighter right now after all of mitt romney's former enemies have suddenly decided that he's at least already and sort of tepidly embraced him given the fact that this should be a strong time for mitt romney since he's just clinched the nomination, i think it's quite good for the president that he's looking as strong as he is in these swing states. >> ari, this is an example of how much damage getting the republican nomination to the republican nominee if this is where he is at this stage. >> if this is mitt romney on a roll, then i feel bad for team romney because i don't want to know what it looks like in a rougher stretch. i was traveling around with obama on the campaign train and we would make these stops in north carolina and indiana which

bush had taken previously by over 15 points and there were people on the plane, going huh, bar we doing indiana sn, as youe with the close matchup states is one that he has already won. he is positioned better just on the electoral map. >> we have more colors up there that might make sense to the audience. the battleground states when i saw them on the computer screen, it's a yellow-brown, but there's different shades of blue, we see massachusetts as a dark blue that means it's definitely in the obama line, but they have california in light blue and other states in light blue because they are leaning democratic. anyone who thinks that california isn't going to go democratic is someone who's maybe going to advise a republican to waste a lot of money there. >> one thing to point out, the sort of salmon color on the map right now is arizona.

>> leaning republican, that's the lighter red. >> and that's one the president actually feels could be in play, democrats feel could be in play there's a 30% latino population there, and given the fur around the s.b. 10 arizona immigration law. there's a sense that maybe, possibly, we could win arizona. there's some polling that shows that being very tight. >> and there was a call last night that they were talking about the trips that are coming up and then the only other thing they said was borderline newsworthy was they were bullish on arizona. they don't need to get in front of too many states. what they didn't say is the backlash to a lot of the republican policies and obviously the case before the supreme court could also be down to a high arizona turnout. >> and bill clinton won it in 1996. >> he did, i think he was the first president since truman to

win it, so it has been a pretty red state. i would sound in florida and ohio is that a lot of these states, swing states in particular have passed alec backed voter id and voter suppression laws. in florida, it's been so bad that there's actually 80,000 newer new voter registrations this time than there were in 2008. so this has had a real impact. and groups like legal women voters have actually stopped registering voters because of how owner house the new registration laws are in florida. >> so you don't feel confident about a state that has these kind of laws in ita has a significant lead, a 1%, 2% lead would make you nervous? >> and arz as has been ahead of the curve in pushing those voter id laws, they passed one of these bills back in 2004 and latino voters and voters in phoenix, one out of three, found

their voter registration application denied in 2005. they have been very aggressive about kicking people off the roles and denying people in arizona. >> this moment for mitt romney is supposed to be the great moment of triumph. do you want to take the call? you can take the call. let's listen. >> ari wants to phone a friend. >> for obama to lose in a landslide, that means a lot of people are going to have to vote for romney and there are people who don't see any enthusiasm for romney. i can't deny that, hardcore republican operatives, the consultants and so forth, i do think they're like everybody else in the beltway, they live in a bubble. i think too many of them are counting on people like me to gin up enthusiasm for them. they're counting on obama to gin

up enthusiasm for them. rather than doing it themselves. >> ari, the republicans are counting on rush to gin up the enthusiasm and he doesn't sound ready. >> he sounds like he wants to get out from under the role he's played. and he made a big mistake. >> i was going to say i welcome him to get out of that role. >> it's surprising to hear him talking this way at this stage? >> i think the entire statement he made about sandra fluke, but i think it stuck with him and he's sort of aware of the way he's playing out. the other piece with the voter id problem is organizationization. i'll give one example from last time, they had a video of jay z in michigan, giving a state specific voter turn out method saying to people, you don't need your id, if you have heard you need it, you don't. this time they're going to have

some different outreach in daipt places where you do need your id so. i do think you've got a campaign that's got an extra hurdle there but they have been good about localized, organized. >> let's hear biden talking about mitt romney. >> what would governor romney do? the truth is, we don't know for certain. we know governor romney reflectively criticizes the president's policy and doesn't offer any specific alternative. we know that when the governor goes, does venture a position, it's a safe bet that he previously took or is about to take in exactly opposite position. >> now crystal, there he is trying to drill that message into the voters' heads so everything you hear mitt romney say in the future, you'll process through that system of, oh, he's just saying -- >> because he has to be opposed

to president obama. and unfortunately, the republicans have done a lot of the laying of the grouped work for exactly that message. because in fact they have from the very beginning sought to oppose the president even on things they traditionally supported like tax cuts. and romney, as the head of the party, he's following that same script. and it was shocking to hear him come out and agree with the president on student loan interest rates because that's such a terrible issue to be on the wrong side. >> but the president has to beat one of these arguments to get them to say, okay, we'll go ahead and do zblachthat. >> crystal ball and ari melder thank you for being with us tonight. coming up, karl rove finally admits he was wrong about dick cheney. and in the rewrite, one of the republican presidential candidates rewrites the stupidest answer he gave in the

presidential debates and now he tells us exactly what was going through his mind during that moment that he now regrets. and pulitzer prize winner author and analyst joins me with her take on the gender politics of this campaign season. ♪ i'm michael bazinet, president of creative digital imaging of bangor, maine. we have customers all over the united states. we rely on the postal service for everything that we do. the eastern maine processing facility is vital to our operation and our success. if we lose this processing facility we could lose clientele because of increased mailing times. we would have to consider layoffs as a result of that. closure of this plant will affect all of us. ♪ and it hasn't been going exactly as planned.

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now he tells us, now, today, karl rove finally admitted, his words, i was wrong about dick cheney. that's coming up. and in the rewrite, all of the republican presidential candidates should be embarrassed about most of what they have to say in the republican presidential debates but only one of them is now willing to admit how much he regrets something he did in one of those debates. that's in the rewrite.

and today john mccain said there is no political war on women. i'll ask pulitzer prize winner and author anna quinlan what she thinks. [ female announcer ] women move the world. and caltrate moves us. helping strengthen our bones. caltrate delivers 1200 milligrams of calcium and 800 iu of vitamin d plus minerals. women need caltrate. caltrate helps women keep moving because women move the world. caltrate helps women keep moving if you made a list of countries from around the world... ...with the best math scores.

...the united states would be on that list. in 25th place. let's raise academic standards across the nation. let's get back to the head of the class. let's solve this. thanks to president obama, bin laden is dead and motors alive. you have to ask yourself, had governor romney been president, could he have used the same slogan in reverse? >> as we approach the one-year anniversary of president obama's decision to get osama bin laden,

vice president joe biden chose to take on mitt romney today in a speech at new york university on foreign policy. >> in every instance in our view, he takes us back to the failed policy that has gotten us into the mess that president obama has dug us out of. governor romney is counting on collective amnesia of the american people. >> the vice president got into several specifics today, but the line that got the most attention was the one about president obama's big stick. >> now is the time to heed the timeless advice from teddy roosevelt, speak softly and carry a big stick, end of quote, i promise you, the president has a big stick. i promise you. >> joining me now, joe kline, a columnist for "time" magazine and megan hayward, senior writer

for politico. who wants to address the president's big stick? i'll throw it out there. >> and we can do kind of a toss. i'm going to toss to you. >> i love joe biden. >> that was written. he was reading that. when i read it, i thought, well, he must have just made that up, as he went along. >> the pity of it is that it trampled on a very good line which was the, you know, the compare son of gm being alive and-osama being dead and romney might have gone the opposite route. foreign policy the area where romney has the weakest case. he has an absolutely terrible case and he's making it worse by trotting out neo conservatives to speak for him. john bolton is a well known neo conservative lunatic and, you

know, in the areas where the rubber really meets the roads, like iran right now and afghanistan, romney isn't willing to say what he would do differently because there isn't anything he would do differently. >> he tries to make it sound differently like he's somehow tougher on iran. he has some tough ideas. >> this is an area where obama is for a variety try of reasons generally seen not by republicans, but is general lly seen objectively as very strong. it's going to be hard for romney to say that he's week, this is the president's push back. romney has been writing very hard in his language, he's been surrounded by neo conservatives, the republicans are saying he's going to re-enact the bush policy. this is the prom that mitt romney has had throughout the primary is very few specifics.

he is not going to be able to do that, he is going to have start rolling out specifics. >> you got the neocons who want to go to war everywhere, you have the libertarians who want to go to war nowhere and then you have the realists in the legacy of george h.w bush who has probably had the strongest foreign policy in years. >> let's not try to rub the russians' nose in it. >> how big is this ron paul subject of foreign policy, the increasingly pacifist, isolationist segment? >> it's growing because the wars haven't been very popular. we escaped iraq, finally, afghanistan, you know, what is it 35% of the american people support that war at this point? we have now committed to

long-term support of the afghanistan government and, you know, we're probably leaving too many troops in there too long. so what is romney going to say? >> i think we're going to be hearing more from joe biden about osama bin laden as this campaign goes on. i want to play a piece of his speech today. he point outs that in the last presidential campaign that mitt romney wasn't all that excited about going to get osama bin laden. let's listen to that. >> he then went on to say, quote, it's not worth movie ing heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars, just to catch one person. here's how candidate obama answered that question. he said, quote, if i had bin laden in our sites, i will take him out. i will kill bin laden, we will crush al qaeda. this has to be our biggest

national security priority. i was a little bit more direct. i said we follow the s.o.b. to the gates of hell if we have to. >> megan s the best romney strategy, the best foreign policy strategy for them to talk about the economy? just not talk about foreign policy? >> they are trying very consciously, number one, yes, and number two they are trying very hard at team romney to sort of elevate him on the world stage. they talked about his relationship with netanyahu. that doesn't say anything about what a mitt romney foreign policy would look like. >> i think that that's a big problem for him. romney has pretty much said that he would turn over our middle east policy to b.b. netanyahu.

i think the most outrageous thing that romney has done during his campaign in foreign policy is that he does not tell the truth about the president's position on israel. the president's position is that he wants a return to 1967 borders which mutually agreed upon swaps which has been the position of every american president since nixon what. romney does, is he just says he wants to return to '67 borders and doesn't add the crucial part with mutually agreed upon swaps. that's kind of cheesy. >> a lot of the news mada did that, they left out half of the sentence, which you say every president has been saying for as long as we can remember. >> it's the '67 borders piece that's what we got stuck on. >> it was inaccurate and it was fed by apec as the jujs position. >> joe, is there any -- is there

any future to the romney campaign on on policy? is there going to be a tutor, is there going to be a team offe a advisors who are going to be straightening him out on foreign policy? >> if there is a future for him here, it's to link it to the economy. that's what bill clinton did in the '90s. he said foreign policy is an economic policy. he was a governor who didn't know much about foreign policy either, and that was the way he finessed it. he said it's a real concern out there in america, people talk about it all the time. romney started out the campaign as raising china as a domestic threat. it's an area where he may find some profit in foreign policy. but going to war all the time, i think people are kind of sick of that. >> thank you very much for joining me tonight. coming up, mitt romney is

getting a lot of advice on who to pick and not pick for hiss running mate. why joe scarborough says romney needs to stay away from marco rubio. and one of the republican candidates wants to rewrite one of his most memorable answers in the debate. it was the single stupidest thing that this individual did in the entire campaign, that's coming up. hey, dad, you think i could drive? i'll tell you what -- when we stop to fill it up. ♪ ♪ [ son ] you realize, it's gotta run out sometime. [ male announcer ] jetta tdi clean diesel. the turbo that gets 42 miles per gallon. that's the power of german engineering. ♪ that's the power of german engineering. 11 years playing the outfield, and i got no plans to retire. [ female announcer ] aging may slow a dog down,

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karl rove tried to save us from dick cheney. in a confessional, rove admitted he was wrong about cheney. but not in the way that you might think. that's coming up. and in the rewrite tonight, what was the single stupidest moment in the republican presidential debates? come on. okay, here's a hint. it was a moment in which none of the candidates actually said anything. and tonight, one of those candidates wishes he had said something and we have the video of how he would like to rewrite that moment. that's coming up. and later, rush limbaugh attacked secretary of state hillary clinton today for being a secretary. something he still hasn't attacked thomas jefferson for. that's coming up. makeup artists have everything to make my skin look its best.

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now karl rove tells us he tried to save us from dick cheney. did everything he could. he fought against the selection

of dick cheney for the republican vice presidential nomination in 2000. in today's "wall street journal," rove tells the story of how he made the case against george w. bush's desir he knew i was opposed and invited me to make the case against his idea. i came to our meeting armed with eight political objections. mr. bush heard me out, but with a twist. i explained my objections with mr. cheney sitting mute and expressionless next to the governor. the next day, mr. bush called to say i was right. there would be real political problems if he chose mr. cheney, so solve them, he said. politics was my responsibility, his job was different to select his best partner in the white house and a person the country would have confidence in if something terrible happened to him.

rove adds, quote, there's a lesson there for mr. romney, choose the best person for the job. well, that would be the lesson if bush had actually chosen the best person for the job, but he chose dick cheney. there's a lot of free advice flying around these days on who mitt romney should choose or he should not choose as vice president including some this morning from our own joe scarborough. >> i'm just going to say it and i -- why not, this is why people watch this show. let me set myself on fire politically, he's not ready to be vice president . just like barack obama wasn't ready to be president. just like sarah palin wasn't ready to be on the ticket in 2008. marco rubio has a great story, and what a great demographic he will speak to someday, but he is not ready to be on a national ticket in 2012. >> joining us now an msnbc

political analyst john heilman, thank you for joining us. i will argue with joe about just how ready obama was to be president, i think he was as ready as anyone who's take than oath of office. but what do you make of how this has become such a wide open flow of advice and you have rove now and "the wall street journal" giving his advice, you have joe, you have all sorts of people throwing this around. is there something romney should do to try to get control of this conversation? >> no, look, i think lawrence, there's always a lot of discussion around the selection of vice president. people feel as though the stakes are really high there,'s been a lot of attention for various reasons to the choice john mccain made, that goes back to 2008 and all the way through to now in terms of sarah palin. you have a lot of advice flyingaround. a lot of pundits, a lot of time between now and the conventions

at the end of august. people are going to fill their time somehow. i think we should probably give our advice ourselves. >> many senior republican politicos including some who were burned by the palin backlash are now urging mitt romney to consider inside the belt way experience as a plus rather than a minus, as rediscusses veep pick. fiery rising stars are out. >> it's a direct fallout from the palin selection, it was something john mccain did and did not meet the fundment test. are you ready to be president from day one? and i think it's important, obviously substantially for the country, they have's the case, but politically, it's incredibly important. i think most people do not vote for the bottom of the ticket. i think the notions of regional balance, can they carry a state.

most of that stuff doesn't matter. to voters, they look at this as a window on the judgment of the nominee. the nominee has one paramount objective which is to show he's picked someone who is both ready and appears to be ready from day one to step into that job if the worst should befall him as president. >> given your understanding of the romney campaign now, on the list of possible choices, who do you think the front-runners are, or the short list at this stage? >> i think for exactly the reasons i just said, i think that wisdom is accepted in the romney campaign. i don't think they're going to try to throw a hail mary pass, because they are learned that lesson from the post palin era. a guy who was a head of the omb, he was ustr. he was trade representative. he was a congressman, he's

someone everyone in washington really respects in terms of knowledge. if you're looking for a reason -- for a reason that someone will help you carry a state. rob portman might be that person. i know a favorite of yours is someone you thought would be the republican presidential nominee. he's going goat a serious look too. he did not run a great presidential campaign. there's no question marco rubio is going to get a look. joe scarborough in fact is right, i think that marco rubio would have a hard time passing the smell test of someone who would be president. he's not too young, and i'm not sure he does some things that people might think. mexican-american immigrants and hispanics in western states are not quite sure of that as much. >> let me go with what you've done so far, i completely agree

with both you and joe scarborough on marco rubio. tim pawlenty, he's already been vetted for it. one thing about all these candidates is usually there's a negative. and pawlenty to me has the fewest possible negatives on this list. and portman, i think a lot of democrats are hoping for portman, the thing you mentioned about ohio is the scariest part of them. if rob portman is on the ticket, biden gets to spend all of these time talking about the bush economics and he was in there running the budget office and running up these massive deficits for president bush and you get to go right back to that old, you know, speech about the bush deficits. >> it's true, that's a down side, there's no question. i believe it's true that rob portman was head of the omb for one year, maybe a year and a half in 2007. certainly joe biden will make

that case. you can't hang the bush tax cuts around his neck, that will be one mitigating factor. the big advantage of pawlenty and portman, both of them are quite boring and they make mitt romney look scintillating by comparison. >> thank you for joining us tonight. coming up, karl rove would like to rewrite what he told george w. bush about dick cheney and one of the presidential candidates would like to rewrite his stupidest moment of his campaign. and if you're a "new york times" reader, back when anna -- what does anna think about this war on women and the new political debate over a subject that we thought was settled a long time ago, contraception. ana quinlan joins me. [ laughs ] whoo! oh! you're up! oh!

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the campaign and he will get that chance next in our rewrite. and today john mccain said there is no war on women. tonight we'll get the take of pulitzer prize winner anna quinlan coming up next. nd out m. [ duck ] aflac! [ male announcer ] ...forbusiness.com. ♪ ha ha! why you fell in love with her in the first place. and why you still feel the same. but your erectile dysfunction -- that could be a question of blood flow. cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment's right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medications, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sexual activity. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess with cialis. side effects may include headache, upset stomach,

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spending tax cuts which means for every three dollars in federal tax cuts there would be one dollar increase in taxation to reduce the federal agent lags. >> 57 congressional republican leadership rejected the three to one ratio of spending cuts to tax increases, brenda bayer asked the republican candidate this is question. >> say you had a deal, a real spending cuts deal. ten to one, as byron said, spending cuts to tax increases. speaker you're already shaking your head. but who on this stage would walk away from that deal? would l you raise your hand if you feel so strongly about now not raising taxes you would walk

away on a ten to one deal. >> john henson clearly the most reasonable candidate on that stage told his audience recently says he wishes he could do more than just raise his hand. >> okay, you've got 30 seconds to tell what your world view is, which i thought it was a total disservice to the american people, at a critical time in our history when you need to know what's in people's hands. you not only get to explain by your words, but by a show of hands on a tax policy. so you've got 3 1/2 seconds in which to make the calculation, and what went through my head was if i veer at all from my pledge north to rise taxes, i didn't sinai pledges, it was kind of my personal history. then i'm going to have to do a

lot of explaining. do i raise my hand or do i just want to get through this? and that always bothered me. >> and that is one of the many reasons john huntsman never got traction in the presidential campaign, playing the childish game on taxation always bothered me, end quote. let's just face the reality of where we are economically, and that is that everyone's going to have to give something. it's going to have to be a shared sacrifice. >> he could lose the nomination for president by not saying what he really thought and raising his hands when everybody else had to raise their hands. or he could have told the truth, that there's going to have to be shared sacrifices, which means there's going to have to be

shared resources. he would have had to drop out of the race even sooner. >> it's going to have be a shared sacrifice. >> the concept of shared sacrifice should prevail. >> there is going to have to sa >> the concept of shared sacrifice should prevail. if you made a list of countries from around the world... ...with the best math scores. ...the united states would be on that list. in 25th place. let's raise academic standards across the nation. let's get back to the head of the class. let's solve this.

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she's the secretary of defense. whatever, by still a secretary. the left has the strangest definitions of success. >> and rush has the strangest definition of secretary. secretary of state, the position originally held by thomas jefferson and now by hillary clinton has always been the most coveted cabinet position. the secretary of state sits beside the president and is in effect the highest ranking cabinet members. anna quinnland writes my

daughter asked me if a man could be secretary of state, a job i grew up believing would only be held by men, but during her youth, the position had only been held by women. joining me now the anna quinlan, pulitzer prize winning author. you broke a lot of hearts when you left the new york tiles, because when we have a newspaper in our -- there's a junky quality to it. there's a once a week, twice a week thing, and when it's gone, we're kind of lost, and we have to take a while. we're all sitting here wondering for months in my world, what does anna think of this war on women, what does anna think about the qualities of

contraception in 2012, something that we thought was done with in the '60s? >> it is done with. >> somebody should tell washington that. >> at this moment, the political arena reminds me a lot of the catholic church. because there's this huge disconnect between what goes on with the hierarchy and what's really happening with the people in the pughs. now let me tell you what's really happening in contraception, we're all using it. that's the bottom line. and nothing that rush limbaugh says or john boehner says, or any other politician says is going to change that, if we need to, we'll get it from canada through the internet. >> they're never going to push it. >> even mitt romney admitted that one evening that, oh, you know, of course we're not taking away contraception.

>> when i went to work in washington, i noticed that the catholics were very good at this and i think it had a lot to do with the fact that as catholic children, they are dealing in a certain kind of way with a giant institution, which is political, the first political lesson i ever got was from my none in the first grade was to pray for whatever i wanted because christ could not refuse his mother. a political strategy in praying. >> i think a lot of catholic politicians have gotten into the head of thinking if you say it in a firm act of contrition, all your sins are wipeded out and you can start clean this next morning. >> that's true. >> this crazy thing that's developed this year, the gender politics of this year was somethinga i don't think anybody saw coming, no one predicted,

hey, it's going to be a big year for this kind of politics that will ultimately be labeled the war on women. is there something you can see that makes sense to how we got here? >> i can. the republican party has now become the official party of the good old day, and throughout history, and i just got an e-mail from a college president who's a class cyst who said that this happened during the roman empire. throughout history when things start to change really quickly and society really seems to be in flux, one of the first things they do is try to keep the women down. and i really feel there's this right wing of the republican party who would like -- the problem is, that the greatest body of the republican party has gotten co-opted by them. one of the saddest days in this election cycle had nothing to do with the presidency, the day

that olympia snow said that she wasn't running for re-election, here's was a woman who was basically saying i can't take it anymore. >> you graduated from college in 1974, which felt at the time like the height of feminism and women's equality and things like that. and here are you are in your latest book about your marriage, we're part of a mixed marriage, he's male, i'm female. so it turns out there are some real differences here. >> yes. about which you write exfennively. >> there are some differences. there was always this strain of equality feminism, versus different feminism, the one that said we're all the same, and the one that said we're gimpbtd but that's no reason to marginalize us. there's a middle where some of both arguments could be made. >> i read favorite lines, like

for example, i'm just a israelis, yisraeli israelisiisraelirealist. in any marriage i have ever known in which two hearts beats as one, the one is his. >> absolutely true. >> so that part doesn't change very much over time. if there's going to be the focus on one individual in america, it's much more likely to be the male. >> i think we went from fighting the fight in the public arena to having to fight it at home. there's been so much data about the fact that with two people working at co-equal jobs, the woman comes home and does much more, especially of child care, and i think really, my kids generation are going to be fighting for that kind of equality in the kitchen instead of the courtroom. >> you also talk about, i love the way you take certain concepts that people think of are ideal and start to maybe pick them apart. like soul mate, for example.

you say it suggests two people who have everything in common, but our gender with all the differences it implies divides us, so there is still a division in gender that we should appreciate, is that what you're saying? >> i think that's absolutely true, i mean one of the most interesting pieces of reporting i got out of this is the difference in friendships between men and women, that there's a really interesting study that shows that women consider friendship talking to one another and men consider friendship doing stuff together. when we're moms and we have little kids we all parallel play, and it means a real difference in the way the two interact with each other. someone once fold me the most fearsome words a woman can say to a man is, we need to talk. >> we could talk more, but