good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes. tropical storm isaac has strengthened, as it dumps heavy rain on haiti. officials issued a hurricane warning for south florida and the keys. and in a conference call with southern baptists on friday,

former governor mike huckabee lashed out at leader to try to force todd akin out of the missouri senate race. i'm joined by michelle goldberg, author of "the means of reproduction, sex, power, the future of the world." and w.kamaau bell. thursday night on f x. and katha pollitt. and ester armah. great to have all of you here. the presidential campaign turned to the subject of abortion this week, not because of the candidates, but because of this exchange during a local tv interview with missouri senate candidate republican todd akin. >> if an abortion could be considered in the case of a

tubal pregnancy, something like that, what about in the case of rape? what do you think? >> people want to make that as one of those things, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. it seems to me, first of all, from what i understand from doctors, that's really rare. if it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down. let's assume that didn't work or something, i think there should be some punishment, but the punishment should be in the rapist and not attacking the child. >> akin would haste ill apologize, but it's worth establishing for the record that he was wrong about the rarity of pregnancy resulting from rape. in just a one-year period from 2004 to 2005, over 3,000 pregnancies resulted from rape according to estimates of rape and incest national network. but rape cannot be labeled as such is not merely a bizarre misunderstanding of human biology, it's an insidious myth,

and it's linage can be linked back to women, sexuality, and reproduction. is in the second century ad, the reproductive systems of men and women were virtually identical. jen tenial outward, for men, and inward for the women's, and the reasoning went as follow. since males must be aroused, the same must be true of women. hence, a woman cannot be insem natured against her will. that theory building presented for centuries, and the relationship between pregnancy and sexual assault. a 13th century legal text contains this. if the woman should have conceived at the time of the alleged the appeal, it abates, for without a woman's consent, she cannot conceive. the heart of the theory, women

must experience sexual arousal for the woman to occur if the woman became pregnant, she must have consented. these believes about reproduction and, alley cannoted into the 19th century, when it was wrote "for without an excitation of lust or the enjoyment of pleasure in the venereal act, no concept could take place. so if an absolute rape could be perpetrated, it's unlikely she could become pregnant. this has been disproved countless times, but nonetheless, persists to this day in certain far right circles. 1999, dr. john wilky, former president of the national right to life committee wrote assault rape pregnancies are extremely rare. there's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape and can radically upset her possibility of ovulation and pregnancy. wilke, so prominent in the anti-abortion movement, in 2007,

mitt romcy said in a statement, i am prud to have the support of a man who meant so much in the pro life movement. that was romney in 2007. and romney will formally accept the presidential nomination for a party whose platform explicit calls to outlaw abortions entirely. making no exception for the mother's ahealth, incest, or rape. so i was sort of amazed to learn that this akin moment had this very long intellectual pedigree, and what strikes me about his statement. first of all, the clause from doctors is a great thing to append to anything, any seshg assertion you want to make, when you talk about the rape exception, the problem is that people who advocate the position that toddagin does, paul ryan does is that we have inpopular

position. people's feelings about abortion are conflicted. the polling on this, tremendously based on how you ask the question. but when you get to the polls on the scale of policy, you find massive unpopularity to both ends, when you say full abortion -- right to abortion up until late into the third trimester, a very unpopular position, weather right or not. and you say illegal under any circumstances, that's very unpopular. 20% position. the republicans and conservatives are in a position to defend that. there is this kind of way in which this idea of rape, pregnancy, being impossible is a way of reverse engineering away this very difficult repudiation, this kind of signal world revulsion we feel as a thought

of a woman has been raped. >> in the best face you can put on this, is that maybe he cannot quite come to terms with the cruel implications of his position. you know, he kind of does not want to face what it is that he's kind of forcing on rape victims. that to me -- because in a way, if you do accept it, if you do accept the booiiology, that you accept that women regularly become pregnant because of rape, how do you explain to those women that you are going to force them, against their will, to carry that pregnancy to term? >> right, i'lly it you. here is paul ryan asked about that on thursday. and he has co-signed legislation with todd akin, believes that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. here he is. >> i'm very proud of my pro life record, and the method of concept doesn't change the definition of life.

but let's remember, i'm the romney/ryan ticket, and the president makes policy. and the future president, mitt romney has exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother and a vast improvement of where we are right now. >> the methods of concept this is the moral reasoning and heart. >> they said the method of cob concept. >> that at least gets the biology right. an improvement over todd akin. that to me is the argument for no exception. that is the argument of the republicans right now, right? >> i've had arguments with anti abortion activists before, where one of the things that strikes me, not just about paul ryan here, but everything paul ryan ever written about abortion, the extent to which the woman is completely absent from the discussion. he writes these essays and doesn't mention the word woman once. so these republicans, tend to believe that taxation is theft, they tend to believe -- they

tend to be against emminent to mant. you can't force people to quarter soldiers in your home against their will. >> nice third amendment shoutout only eight minutes into the show. >> right. they believe women should be forced, whether or not the meta physical question about the beginning of life is not completely ger maine to whether that life has the right to reside in you against your will. >> isn't this like a soldier being quartered in your home? >> so what people have argued when i said this, well, by putting yourself in that situation you have implicitly opened yourself up. >> my feeling about this, i can understand occasi-- i understan view of -- what i think is useful about this moment in american politics in terms of what todd achin said and the platform that paul ryan's nomination, todd akin's comment and the platform coming out, which we'll talk about in

greater depth tomorrow are clarifying in terms of where the republican party is in this issue, the most maximalist extreme issue on one side and that's clarifying. i would even say this. i understand that view, and i understand the pro choice view, which i myself hold very dearly, better than i understand the middle view, which says it's -- it should be illegal, but if it's rape, it should be illegal why? i don't understand. if you grant it's a life in the beginning, then have you this method of concept argument. >> i would like to say on behalf of all men, i think we need to shut up. i really feel like i've seen more men on tv talking about when women should and shouldn't conceive and it's like just shut up, dudes. it really points to the patriarchal system of this country that men feel such a right to talk about things that have nothing to do about them. as a black women, i am happy we

quit saying where black people should or shouldn't go in this country. and i think we should do the same with women. since the 13th century. >> the view that says you can have an abortion if you have been raped, but not for any other circumstance, is related to the older idea of abortion, which we now -- which the pro lifers have -- the anti choicers have pretty much dropped, which it's a sexual sin, follows from wrong sex, that sex is a contract to have a baby. which would come as a huge surprise to most people. the two anti choice ideas have gotten conflated. one, the earlier idea which is the idea of st. augustine and st. thomas aquinas, which abortion is wrong, because you aren't supposed to be having sex, and the only reason to have sex is to create a baby and any

other time you have sex you are already committing a sin. >> and the arguments against legal abortion, initially were all about that it was going to encourage promiscuity, not that it would encourage murder. >> hold that thought for one second, and then i want to bring in someone who does believe abortion should be illegal, but wants to make the exception, so we can sort of zero in on where this argument is right now. right after this break. why should saturday night have all the fun? get two times the points on dining in restaurants, with chase sapphire preferred.

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talking during the break about one of the most remarkable things about the akin comment, it just showed what the kind of bubble he exists in. you never seen a politician more genuine in an interview than todd akin, working his way through that question, marshaling these little known facts, and he probably walked

off and thought he totally nailed it. >> yeah, that was great. i looked good on tv. wait until i call my family. >> cakatha, two things, this argument about encouraging sexual promise you couldity, the eve illness of abortion emanates from evilness of sex, and a more current argument, one we hear more often in politics. >> yeah, it actually -- the catholic church -- the pope decided that abortion was murder in 1869. this was a by-product of the doctrine of the immaculate concept of the virgin mary, declared official doctrine then. along with papal infallibility, and the first thing that said was infallible is i'm infallible. so that's -- that's all clear. >> bootstrapping. >> then abortion became like

murder, a different kind of thing. in america, i don't think you would get very far with that earlier idea. >> with the sexual -- because of sexual practices of america. >> because we don't live like that, people have never lived like that. but that aura still persists. and that's why, for example, along with the idea that the woman is the man's property, has been her father, the idea that there has to be -- you have to resist to the utmost which is -- was legal doctrine for a very long time in many states, and a horrible miscarriage of justice done according to that. >> the legal definition of rape? >> you could not -- you could not be a -- a bona fide victim of rape unless you resisted to the utmost. the best victim was a dead victim, because she really resisted, anything short of that was -- >> suspect. >> -- suspect. >> i want to bring in kristen

day, which advocates changing the party's platform to reduce the number of abortions. democrats for life. my understanding of the position, abortion should be outlawed, but there should be exceptions. walk me through the moral reasoning of how you get there, as i was saying before, i can understand the moral reasoning of paul ryan who says it's a life. and that life is independent of the method of concept. i cannan the pro choice argument. walk me through the moral reasoning that gets to you the exception policy. >> the exceptions were first brought into light in 1978 when henry hyde and congressman jim overstar first introduced the hyde language, said federal funding for abortion would be allowed in rape, incest and life of the mother, those are the most difficult circumstances when you are asking a woman to carry a child to term when it's an unplanned pregnancy. you know, you have to provide the support behind it. and the reason that we support those exceptions is because we

want to address the other 95% of abortions that when a woman has ab unplanned pregnancy, how do we ask her to carry that pregnancy to term? what do we do after that? and democrats for life is different from that aspect. yes, we are opposed to abortion, but we consider ourselves whole life and we want to look at the aspects once the baby is born. is there affordable child care? is there health care? is there -- how can we make sure she has the ability to care for that child after the baby is born? >> and i hear you right, that that supporting these exceptions, these three exceptions, rape, incest, life of the mother is fundamentally a political calculation about the fact that those -- no exceptions for those are so politically toxic, it's not worth pursuing that? >> for us, the reason is hard, because those cases are so difficult, and, you know, a woman who is a victim of rape

has gone through a very traumatic situation. and we should -- we should have compassion for those women who go through those -- the victims, and to -- and to find out she's pregnant on top of that, no one can even begin to understand how difficult that would be, and even when have you a planned pregnancy, you can sometimes have times of panic, how are you going to provide for this child, and to not have compassion for a woman who is a victim of rape is just the wrong stance to take, until we can address the other 95% of abortions, where women feel like they don't have the support, they don't have the financial capability, they don't want to drop out of school. so i think we really need on, and democrats for life, we need to address the root reason that women choose abortion and really address those concerns too. and if a woman is raped and she becomes pregnant and, you know, she does want to carry the child to term, again we have to make

sure that all of the structures are in place to make sure she has the ability to do that. >> i want to take a moment just to read so people know that the actual language as we have it now, this is not final. it will be ratified on monday on the gop platform or abortion, and i know you want to ask kristen some questions. republican platform on abortion. we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fund mental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. we support human life amendment to the constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th amendment apply to unworn children. we oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organization which perform abortions coverage. i know have you questions. we'll ask that right after this break. so you brushed with colgate total and you didn't.

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for life. your advocacy of the exceptions in cases of which the republican platform, paul ryan specifically would not make exceptions. the position is the same position roughly that mitt romney has advocated, who has advocated for exceptions. talking about this, of course, because of the comments of todd akin this week and the underlying belief system underneath the incredibly wrong headed offensive biology in that statement. but you had a question for kristen, katha. >> i have a couple of questions. the language of forcible rape in the no taxpayer funding for abortion, bill, that many, many people in congress voted for, including members of democrats for life, kathy dalmeyer, for example, voted for the original ryan and akin sponsored bill,

that narrowed rape to forcible rape. that excludes statutory rape, excludes rape by threat or coercion. that doesn't involve, you know, real physical force. it is really behind where the law -- the law has advanced beyond that, so i'd like to have your thoughts on why this compassion for some of your member members did not extend to the full range of rape victims, but only the akin promoted and paul ryan promoted division. >> the original language did not include that definition. i think it was a political calculation by national right to life to gin up the base and get pro lifers more to talk about this issue and raise funds, so -- and, you know, so the

kathy dalkemper and others, really worried about diminishing the violence that occurs against women when a rape occurs. >> can we talk about the definition. the majority -- again, public opinion is messy. but a lot of people in this country think that you shouldn't be able to have abortions, except for big laundry list of par then these. you know, someone you know needs one. >> rape, incest, or need. >> that's the joke. rape, incest, or need. but there is suspicion on the part of people who are advocates that want to outlie abortion that if you create exceptions, then they will be used in this disingenuous way. examples of this. here is idaho state senator chuck winder, republican sponsored mandatory ultrasound

bill, talking about how fi physicians should go about ascertaining the rape is real, because you don't want the rape exception being used willy-nilly. >> i would hope that when a woman goes into a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage? >> ester. >> what is extraordinary to me is a few things here. one is the exercise of this extraordinary white male privilege and the protection of men against women making claims about bringing them down. the idea you would put legitimate or forcible in front of rape, sort of implies rape by itself is not an act of force, not about violence. the reality is so many rapes,

it's not the man with the knife at gunpoint. that's just not the reality. the statistics bear out again, again, again, and again. i think there is also a very comfortable thing that we're doing, and it would be great to put akin, a six-term congressman, kind of throw him into the bus. >> it is unclear that he is not going to be a senator right now. >> and tea party backed and very easy to throw him under the bus, but the reality, the rape culture in this society, this is a massive consensus opinion that reflects what he thinks, that rape is this kind of turn that women will use, and about dealing, emasculating men in soe way. >> what akin said about this category of a thing called legitimate rape, is an idea

that's in the back of a lot of people's heads in this country. kristen day, thank you for joining us. i hope to have you back. >> thank you so much. >> i want to get into that issue right after we take this break. [ female announcer ] what's a powerful way to cut through everyday greasy messes? [ male announcer ] sponges, take your mark! ♪ [ female announcer ] one drop of ultra dawn has twice the everyday grease-cleaning ingredients of one drop of the leading non-concentrated brand... ♪ [ crowd cheering ] ...giving you the strength of two in every bottle. [ sponge ] gimme some suds! [ female announcer ] p&g -- proud sponsor of moms.

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receive up to a $300 beautyrest visa prepaid card when you buy select beautyrest mattress sets. all right. esther, before we went to break, you sort of raised, when we drilled down through this last week, it's kinds of remarkable in american politics, using this guy who won this contested primary, no one on the republican side wanted him to win, because he has extreme records, extreme views, in the house for six terms. on the science committee we should note. >> science committee. >> claire mccaskill, of course, the democratic incumbent, who has faced up until this week, an uphill battle for re-election. wanted -- clearly wanted him to be the nominee for this reason. >> spent money.

>> ran these hilarious ads. can we show that ad? this is the genius bit of trolling from mccaskill, ostensibly running ads against akin that wink, wink, he is your man. >> the most conservative man in missouri as our senator? akin would completely eliminate the departments of education and energy. and privatize social security. todd's pro-family agenda would outlaw many forms of contraception, and akin alone says president obama is a complete menace to our civilization. todd akin, missouri's true conservative is too conservative. >> that is so brilliant. >> i think i want to vote for akin. >> pro family is the smartest part of that. what is happening, this amazing moment, the mccaskill people knew exactly what they were getting this guy is a nut.

but you raise this point. the thick he said when he modifies rape with legitimate rape, the subtext of that, a belief about what rape looks like, cultural imagination in which there are a lot of illegitimate rapes, false sackizations of rape, rape that was consensual sex, but the woman decides she didn't want to have con sexual sex, and as extreme as the views are, that embedded assumption is not at all rare. >> not only is it not rare, but i think what his comments did, allow this kind of comfort zone, but there is a real consensus, the shaming of women, the nightmare that is the pursuit of justice for rape victims, the idea that the only trauma that comes from rape is the possibility of getting pregnant, the actual rape itself is not trauma, and you add legitimate or force nibl front of them, you are consistently going back to the history that really legislation is about protection

of the man from women. there is a second point. with the republican party, this issue represents ideology versus issues, and in a really specific moment -- >> what do you mean by that? >> the issue of women and trauma and rape can be absolutely sacrificed to the ideology that pro family, pro life, is everything, and that the establishment republicans who would dare to want to get akin out of the party will then be backed by people like -- there was a piece in the christian science monitor and one quote from lisa payne negha, from the missouri grassroots coalition. when i heard the quote, i was appalled, this is offensive to religion. but when the establishment tried to get him out, she thought how dare they. and then she donated to his campaign. there is no guarantee that he is

out. >> he is staying in, raised $200,000, and mike huckabee is leading the walk lash against the backlash. >> i mean -- >> his big sin, not what he said, but that he said it out loud. i think a lot of the republicans agree with him, but we just say that in secret readings. >> they say it out loud, just not in front of cameras. >> one thing important to clarify about the forcible or legitimate rape language is so offensive, i don't think progressists or critics of todd akin should pretend that statutory rape is as horrific as brutal rape. statutory rape laws are preposterous and people put on sexual registries. >> and the reason that this language is offensive, not because it's trying to operate out statutory rape from other

forms of rape. it's because like you said it comes out of a whole line of thought that women will often falsely claim rape. you mentioned john wilky, the latest -- in 1999 wrote this piece how real rape doesn't result in concept, wrote that when pro lifers talk about rape, they should always talk about assault rape or forcible rape. >> right. >> and he made two distinctions between statutory rape and between the many cases in which women will also in the many cases in which women claim rape when they are pregnant and don't want to be. >> a really powerful, amazing piece, people should read it, about her own rape and the details and facts of that, which it was clearly rape, but not a stranger, knife, alley in this way. and, you know, if i'm not mistaken, the cdc says only 15%

roughly of rapes are rapes of that kind that we would call "forcible rape." the vast majority are through coercion, intimidation, pinning the victim, the victim is asleep, all of these things, that whole universe. 85,000 legal allegations of rape and underreported by a factor of 15 if you read the statistics. the overwhelming majority don't purport to this cultural page. we'll get your thoughts, right after a break. get points you can easily redeem for your vacations, with chase sapphire preferred.

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if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to your doctor. get two times the points on dining in restaurants with chase sapphire preferred. talking about -- well, i didn't think we would be talking about this we're talking about rape and the cultural expectations and definitions of it, and the taboo -- not taboo. the -- the broad misconceptions that are widely shared among people about rape, that are pointed to by the comment for which todd akin has taken so much heat. katha. >> i have many thoughts. we must not forget to mention that marital rape is still very

controversial. very hard to get a conviction. millions of reasons why a woman bring charges. >> and todd akin has questioned marital rape. >> yes, he did. >> and we should say, he voted for the bill in the state legislature in missouri, a bill that would make marital rape a crime. >> and philosophically said, come on. this is ridiculous. the whole focus on rape it seems in-to-me in terms of the abortion debate. i don't want to say it's a distraction, but it does do the thing of, okay, if you just -- you're some virgin and you've been beaten up and it's truly horrible, then we'll let you have one of our prized abortions. >> you won! >> but if you've got ten children and this 11th child, you know, is going to, you know, rip your uterus in five pieces, sorry, because there is no health exception in all of these laws. >> right. >> and ryan has said the health

exception is so vague, you could drive a mack truck through it. >> let's listen. paul ryan making the case. >> let me just say this to all of my colleagues about to vote on this issue, on the notion recommit, the health exception is a loophole wide enough to drive a mack truck through it. the health exception would render this ban virtually meaningless. >> and this -- this is a suspicion of these exceptions, and folks who want to ban all abortions that any exception if you give an inch, that these -- these nefarious women who are trying to scam their way into an abortion will take a mountain. >> again, men, shut up. dude, this has nothing to do with you and your body. stop talking about it. and i feel like there's an underlying assumption with democrats for life, that somehow that there is -- there are abortions that are easy, abortions that are hard, and from what i understand, i think they are all hard choices, and i

feel like -- by putting words in front of rape. i you think rape is bad. >> a bold statement. >> that's why we have it here. >> can we just agree that rape is bad? a few words that don't need modifiers. >> and talking about legislating the shaming of women when it comes to making health choices. that health is not a choice that is up to them. it's something that can be imposed externally by men. >> and the president said that this week. >> he said rape is rape. >> but he also said, you know, these are kind of legislators that are mostly men making health decisions for women. >> including him, even though he at least was on the right side of the issue. and the other thing important to me, ryan talked about this interfering with religious freedom, and i thought that republicans in terms of their ideology are worshipping at the altar of winning at any means necessary. those are the politics and the politics of winning are making

this ideology that are alert for the rights of women, that are about women's bodies and women's health. you think they sacrifice votes in order to support the ideology. >> they are playing a double game. which they have often done, but it's being thrown to relief by the akin thing. one message for the base, and they have another message for everyone else. they hope people will listen to another. president bush incredible al dent at speaking in code. he was opposed of the dred scott decision, he understand it was an analogy for roe vs. wade, and everybody else thought it was about dred scott. >> thank you for being here this morning. michelle, we'll see you later in the program. we want to talk about the

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my story of the week today, the problem of the color rhine. last week during a brief tangent in our discussion of medicare that got at the nature of the republican base, i was defending the gop against blanket generalizations and then concluded with this statement. >> it is undeniably the case that racist americans are almost entirely in one political coalition and not the other. the problem with that statement is that it's not true. i was just wrong about what the data say about the way explicit avowed racists are distributed between the two parties. economist alex tabarac say equally white republicans and democrats fave laws against

interracial statement and believe with the statement that blacks shouldn't be pushy. overwhelmingly, he says that those who would vote for a black president and says "it's undeniable that some americans are racists, but it splits evenly among parties." no party has a monopoly. we fleshed out the picture, using data from 2008 national election study, he shows people who express explicitly racist views, such as black people are lazy or black people unintelligent, more likely to be rubpy ln kazz than democrats. identification with democrats tends to decline and tends to increase as attitudes towards blacks become less favorable. when you look at the general social survey data through the prison ideology, this tendency is even clearer. and twice as many white conservatives as white liberals would strongly oppose a close relatively marrying a black person. the good news, the numbers in both cases are low only 20% of

white conservatives and 10% of white liberals, so i was wrong when i said that "it is undeniably the case that racist americans are almost entirely in one political coalition and not the other." that is simply not borne out by the data, it was a moment, frankly when my own biases led me to say something that wasn't true. my bad for saying it. thank you, internet, for correcting me. my deeper focus is counting racists as people with an essential core nature that can be analyzed and chartered rather than on focusing how it reverberates and the vast racial disparities and the effects of the policies favored by each coalition. this is a seductive error that the great jay smooth warned us about in his classic how-to video about how to talk about race and racism. >> remember the difference between what they did conversation and what they are conversation. the what they did conversation focuses strictly on the person's words and actions and explaining why what they did and what they said was unacceptable.

the what they are conversation on the other hand takes things one step further and uses what they did and what they said to draw conclusions about what kind of person they are i don't care what he is, but i need to hold him accountable for what he did. and that's how we need to approach those conversations about race. >> instead of focusing on what cob conservatives are, we need to keep the conversation focused on what they are doing. this realm, very obvious racial asymmetries, the first and most obvious one, an issue we are covering here. new restrictions on voting, whether through voter i.d. laws or curtailment on early voting that will disproportionately disenfranchise people of color. one republican said he opposed additional voting hours, we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban -- read african-american

voter turnout machine." this is a core truth about american politics. we have a multiracial society with two political coalitions. one, democrats, contains almost all of the african-americans, a majority of latinos and asians and a minority of white people this is what the other political coalition looks like. if the obvious racial disparity you see at the political rallies inflected in the institutional makeup of the parties this is the breakdown of the u.s. according to 29010 census. this is the break down of the delegates of the dnc in 2008 and the breakdown to the rnc in 2008. it is, therefore, not too surprising in tuesday's nbc/wall street journal poll, romney managed to get 0% from black voters and keep in mind this is a country that is only growing less white. this is what america's racial composition will look like in 2050, according to the census bureau. just 50% white.

into a nation already realing from a total crisis of authority, a cascade of institutional failure and a stalking, corrosive decline, they managed to get elected, the first black man to run the country in the nation's history, one of the chief paradoxes of his time in office, despite the fact that the economic misery produced by the crisis and resolution, has fallen disproportionately on people of color, they are more optimistic than the future than white people are. barack obama was elect on a promise to soothe the gaping wounds of slavery, rape, listening, discrimination, that have marked our body of politic from its birth. today, it's a wound if no longer festering quite so openly is scarred over in such a way it cannot be scrubbed away or excised or covered. part whof we are. the turn at the 20th century, w.b. dubois preticketed that the problem of the on 0th century is

the problem of the color line. 12 years into the 21st century, on the eve of a nominating convention on the party that destroyed slavery and enshrined the right to vote, and the hard fought re-election of the first black president, that line is uniraceable as ever from our politics.

good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes here with the one and only melissa harris-per harris-perry, host "melissa harris peary." ta-nehisi coates, and w.kamau bell, and jay smooth, founder of

ill koch strickdoctrine.com. and so here -- an amazing thing happened this week, you wrote this incredible essay, very beautifully written as everything you write is, and complex and searching and sophisticated analysis of the kind of paradoxes of understanding of race in the obama era, how what has changed, what has not, the exceptions of the first black president across the racial divide for white americans, black americans, et cetera, and then into the new cycle came mitt romney speaking at a rally. >> he planned it. >> exactly. he apparently has a contract with the atlantic publicity bureau. this is -- this is a joke that he told in michigan on the stump yesterday. >> no one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. they know this is the place i was born and raised. >> all right. so here's what i think is interesting about that comment.

when we see that comment, we see the birther phenomenon, right? there are all sorts of things in american politics in the age of obama that have an acute racial subtext, but no necessary racial text. right? he's not saying anything imputably racist, right? and the way that we understand opposition of barack obama is colored we race in a way that can be the source of a lot of confusion, frustration and anger in the body politic. i don't like the guy, we have a $16 trillion debt. the whatever the issue is. my first question. what do you think when you see mitt romney make that comment? >> i think when i see him make that comment particularly in michigan, it's really interesting to me, the subtext of birtherism is a skepticism of

citizenship, a long tra difgs skepticism of african-american citizenship, cynicism that stretches back literally to the birth of the country. mitt romney is from michigan. i happen to be some reporting in michigan a year or two ago, and frankly, your neighborhood where mitt romney was born on the outskirts of detroit. moved to bloomfield hymns, he was born in 1947 where broad swaths of detroit were white setasides, housing wise. affirmative action for white people in the worst kind of way. not to help any sort of inequality, to preserve inequality. >> and extend privilege. >> right, right. right. everyone wants to see the president's grades. everyone skeptical of what affirmative action did for him. we don't believe him, is he a citizen? no one skeptical of mitt romney,

given the fact that no one thinks how he was born, how that housing helped him. the whole time in which he comes from may have aided his rise. i'm not saying anybody should, but the skepticism toward obama is not one reflected across the screen. very particular skeptic. >> racism not just hatred, but trust toward some group of people and skepticism toward others. >> that one of the lines in the text that distresses me. when you read that line, a gorgeous writer so seductive. it's true i read the line and it says racism is in part defined by a preferential option for one group and skepticism toward another. but if it is that solely or primarily, than black folks are the biggest racists i know, a deep skepticism, i think we have to make sure we're layering on top of the emotives and

socialistic preferences, the question of power and you point out now the policy, and to have restricted covenants, real quick, i want to complicate the birtherism just a bit. we do a bit of a disservice to birthism when we take this to a jim crow or slavery moment. i this operates for president obama because he's insufficient negro, and by negro, i mean specifically african-american as opposed to what he is. which most of the russ rest of us can't do. who can tell us exactly who his african people are, what the people whom he comes from africa speaks. no one asks what michelle obama's citizenship is. not because she has a birth certificate, because she is from a discernible racial history and his is not. >> the first thing, just to go back to the initial criticism.

to be clear, the line is not just, i would not confine racism just to that. i think obama -- god, i hate using this word, exon the sim ee it easier to go at it that way. however if he was just black, i wouldn't be shocked if there was some other way to question his citizenship. >> and if he was just black, which i feel weird saying. he wouldn't be the president. i think his exoticism. i don't have to feel guilty about him, is he from africa. we didn't own him. >> we did just through his white people. so it's complex. >> two things at play. the way in which -- the way in which opposition to the

birtherism or the new welfare. the new welfare ad that mitt romney is running? here are ads that mitt romney is running, i would say completely without a factual basis, just to set up the policy thing here, governors have been asking for waivers to experiment with the method by which they implement taniff, a welfare reform bill and barack obama hhs department granted waivers to experiment, and the romney campaign seized upon that as an example of undoing welfare reform. these are examples of the ads he is running. >> my mother didn't learn to read or write, didn't have real skills to fall back on, so ended up on the welfare system. that's how i grew up. president obama stripping work out of welfare some of many success stories of the welfare reform of the '90s, where families otherwise might have

stayed stuck in the cycle of dependency. >> what is so fascinating about this and gets to this conundrum, with redealing on terrain that is race neutral, that is a white person in the ad. yet the history of arguments about the evil of redistributing your tax there's to some other lazy person who won't work, is bound up. this 1866 cartoon, from a political campaign happening in pennsylvania. it's an attack advocating the election -- hiser climber on attacking the friedmann's bureau. twice vetoed by the president and in the back, the pillars of friedmann's bureau. apathy, white sugar, fishballs, clams, stews and pies, so you have to -- and what happens

is -- >> i would like to improve racism has been here for a while. >> just established. it's very excite thing. this -- this gets to this problem. when we have this conversation about this, one side says why are you accusing of us making a racial appeal? we're talking about welfare, we have a white guy in the ad and then we're in the terrain in the video that we just shouted out, the what you are conversation, the what you did conversation can't be explicated with what's on the television screen. >> it perfectly shows the conundr conundrum. i cringe a little bit when the video i made was couched as a literal how-to video. no way to construct race effectively. it's painful and awkward and we see in situations like this where things have shifted no covert racism, being the dominant form instead of overt,

and you want to call out something, because they are clear implications, if you call it out, are you falling into the trap of getting trolled and letting them play the role of being the scrimp and saying, look at those liberals playing the race card. a lose/lose situation that the president is struggling with. >> that is exactly what the essay is about. how he has navigated that. the president is constantly being trolled to "play the race card." another phrase i des piece. we'll invoke ironically here. >> i was at war with myself writing this piece, and some level, i would like your president of the united states talk more about your race. look at what happened with the henry lewis gates thing. it's good to look at this. i'm moderating and the people on the phone way to the left of me,

i consider myself pretty far left. they were all african-american and to a man and woman, he shouldn't have said anything. that's not his job. yes. totally stunned by that. you know, at the time i was of the mind he should have said more, so to be honest, i've been back and forth on it. >> what i was surprised about in your piece in terms of the way you take on the president as -- in terms of his race talk or -- >> or lack thereof, i guess two things. one, whether or not in the role of president, we expect the president to address race. the answer is yes. i want bill clinton to stand up. part of what is irritating to me about this whole completely false welfare line, nah policy, the one that president obama now has to defend in order to -- is itself a racially disparate

policy when bill clinton signed the welfare to work act what he did, he made poor mothers have to go to work, reason to care for their children, at the same time the conservatives are claiming motherhood is more important than work. so bill clinton is let off having to do that, so there is a way when we call for president obama to speak specifically on race, we allow mitt romney off of it, we allow paul ryan off. the question, should a president who is going to bet president a diverse nation have to speak about it? and real quick, i guess i am so surprised that you don't see him doing it. you are such a beautiful reader of textual analysis and i feel like he's performing race talk regularly, in ways not just dog whistled, but the sort of code switching that allows him in his body to be doing race at all times. >> i do say it, i wrote about that in the piece. that was a significant subtext. talk about explicitly, policy,

that sort of thicng. the thing to keep in mind, president obama said himself that we couldn't ignore race, it should be explicitly talking about. i don't think that lets mitt romney or the republican party off the hook at all. i spent a considerable portion of the episode -- i'm sorry, of the essay, keeping them on the hook. trying to put them on the hook. >> i want to point to my favorite example of the president's physical code switching, shaking hands, have you seen this, with the u.s. dream team. this is him, how are you, sir, good to see you. that's it right there. talk more about it after the break. [ male announcer ] this is rudy. his morning starts with arthritis pain. and two pills.

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so there is a quote recent until black enterprise magazine that epitomizes the line the president has taken, are you, barack obama, first black president, doing enough for black america? are you explicitly targeting policies sufficiently to the black community? and he says i want all americans to have opportunity. i'm not the president of the mark america, i'm president of the united states america. but the programs that we have put in place are least able to get financing, and had is the line, et cetera, et cetera. and i thought you had a funny riff on your show about basically like you are president of black america. i know you are president of black america is and i know that you know. and i know you know you can't say that. that's me doing the w.kamau bell show, even though are you right here. >> that's the frustration i feel sometimes. he is the president of black america.

dude, you know that you are, and you know that's why we elected you. we wanted to see one of us in office. and we're -- we are at the very -- we're the base of barack obama, we're his base, and i think -- you would see george w. bush talk directly to his base sometime in clear tones in way barack does through code switching but doesn't talk districtly to his base. sometimes as a black person that is frustrating. >> what other american president, when he tells the story of american greatness. they all do here is why america is great. what other american president has made the contributions, the life stories of black americans and black women in particular, the core of how he tells that story? on the night he's elected, he stands there in grant park in chicago and tells the story through the eyes of anna mai cooper. i hear you, okay, maybe he doesn't. for real like who else ever in the history of american politics, and they were just having a talk, made us the

center of it? i'm not sure i buy the story that he doesn't talk about race. who else in the middle of their campaign, let's just klatt about race? >> i think he does talk about race, both in the winks and nods that you laid out in your show and you describe, and he explicitly talked about the importance of race and the positive examples you cite and shows his existence is an example of the american exceptionalism that people say he doesn't acknowledge. but i wish he would discuss the impact of racial inequities on people, especially since he sometimes speaks to black audiences, he delivers these pull your pants up cosbyisms, encouraging us to do for ourselves, but if you don't give the context of the external obstac obstacles, it thursday a bit. >> he does have a crafted political policy message toward black people, involving stops

playing video games, better parenting, things we can all endors. >> you do like video games, let's be clear. >> i'm a little upset about the video games. but he tends to shy away from the systemic critique that really -- >> okay, but let me say, i found the henry louis gates moment instructive and you wrote about that, but it affected the way they comported themselves afterward. the gaes moment was -- the moment i was in the room during the press conference, reaction was so honest, right? it came from such a -- a pure, just honest place, it wasn't at all particularly radical. a mundane thing, you shouldn't be pulled out of your house and the craziness that ensued. all right, enough of this. >> isn't it possible as word smiths, as journalists, writers, professors, we are overly interested in what the president is say iing as a set of tools?

to suggest he doesn't have a systemic critique at the same time is he making sure that the pigford settlement finally goes through to get money to black farmers, finally reducing settlement disparity, passing lilly ledbetter, a disproportionate impact on black families, that he's passing health care reform bill. >> right. >> i don't know how much i care about what he talks about, as long as he's using systemic tools. goes back to what i said versus what i do? >> that's perfectly defensible. but i don't think any of russ saying he hasn't done nug for blacks. i would never argue that he has done nothing for african-americans. >> i feel sorry for barack obama, i feel like black people sat around for 40 years imagining the black president. >> as a cosmic joke. >> we thought we would be like save me, black president. save me! and he would fly in and save me.

he's not that guy. i'm not saying -- >> that's what you think? i actually think we thought exactly this. we figured, in fact so much so, initially in the primaries, we were like i'm not sure if i can vote for him, i'm afraid they'll assassinate him. i think we expected exactly this. that we figured we would elect an nin african-american president and there would be massive resistance and the reason we figured that, that's what happened with reconstruction. >> exactly. but there are two things here, i want to get back to something you just said. there is a theory on the right. when you said -- you said something very clearly, like we voted for him, we, african-americans and right now support for him is 100% according to the most recent poll, because of -- of very obvious affinity. a very deep, profound symbolic -- >> and a really bad opponent. >> and there's a theory, really the theory of mitt romney and theory of conservatives, barack obama's election of the product

of deep african-americans feeling a connection and white liberal guilt, wanted to make this moment happen and the fact there was a crisis, and all of the symbolism, put to a person isn't up to the task, not that good of a president this is the critique that the right gives, this symbolic politics, wasn't actually substantive. and i want to hear you respond to that, that is -- that is the argument that sort of integrates historical nature of the presidency and uses it against him. with scottrader streaming quotes, any way you want. fully customize it for your trading process -- from thought to trade, on every screen. and all in real time. which makes it just like having your own trading floor, right at your fingertips. [ rodger ] at scottrade, seven dollar trades are just the start. try our easy-to-use scottrader streaming quotes. it's another reason more investors are saying... [ all ] i'm with scottrade.

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conservatives, essentially obama as a kind of affirmative action figure, essentially he was the beneficiary of a lot of white guilt and put him in over his head and now you, white america, you expyiated your guilt by voting for him the first time. you voted for him the first time because you ed a black president. see he's over his knead, now time to get sirs. >> on totally serious, we wrote a spoof commercial. it was white people, saying we gave it a shot. and then we saw the commercial as not a fake commercial. oh, i guess we need to try harder. we were going to make a spoke about it. >> you know, i think the -- my one angst when we suggest that the pushback against president obama is primarily about race, my concern about that is to me, the logical extension of that argument, for progressives is, therefore, we can only elect white progressives.

a block body will drive white people so fricking nuts -- i said fricking. we will never get health care, any of these things passed, so don't put any more black bodies -- >> that's a subtext. >> yeah. and the real concern, just the elm pyrrhics of it. they impeached bill clinton. >> i am glad you brought that up. that brings to mind, this aurmgt, how much is it racial an i muss, when we talk about the tea party backlash? i have experienced a president that america felt like they owed them something, that he there was because of their good grace or something, and, you know, when you compare the backlash to barack obama it looks remarkably similar to the backlash of bill clinton. >> the most important thing

about that is i tried to make this point in the piece. barack obama, just person phis, brings it to the floor. even more so. barack obama, he would have ran out of office. immediately -- don't you do that, black women are violent. come on. >> metaphorically. i mean would you hold him accountable. >> but see, even there, even there, the idea that black women hold accountable their partners in a way that white women don't is elm pairably false. black women are more likely to be victimized by domestic violence. we will literally die, as women are more likely to have hiv infection. the idea you can't attack us, we

can't be bothered, so why isn't president obama bucking up, because that's what black people do, we fight, angry, we just talk. that's how we do it. no. >> and it's really frustrating, this kind of stereotyping on white liberals, statements, michael moore, we thought we were voting for the black guy, this bill maher, the essential blackness, that liberals -- >> which is racist. >> that he's gangsta. the core of blackness. being confrontational. >> when you said that evidence shows equal racism in both parties, yeah. >> very funny. you know what? i'm glad you said it. when i said that, and i was wrong, an offhanded comment. the reason i spent a lot of time correcting it. i was wrong. the people that went nuts on me on twitter were white conservatives and black people. i have shown up at dinner parties, gone over to meet the parents, more than one liberal household. let me tell you.

>> the thing i want to turn attention to here and to me the part of the essay i thought was the most bracing, is a discussion of the way you talk about shirley sherrod, and everybody remembers the shirley sherrod incident. forget about what the president has to navigate. how black citizens navigate their relationships with the first black president and their relationship of criticism or support or frustration, and the story you tell about shirley sherrod, the last line of the piece, not to ruin the ending, spoiler alert. basically she talks to you, but i don't want to hurt the president. she got screwed over. we can agree. she got screwed over in the whole thing, the president's fault or the whole administration, but her conclusion from the whole episode, whatever happens, i don't want to be used as a political codule. >> shirley sherrod is working in

albany, georgia. she is in it. i mean, really, really, really in it, and one of the things she said to me was there was this constant experience after it happened, where people -- before did not like her, would come up to her, oh, i'm so sympathetic, oh, i'm so sorry he did that to you. i'm so sorry. with an obvious anti obama bias and so there is a way in which she could be used within that specific community. not even nationally, within a specific community to help her, despite legitimate anger she has toward the white house. >> fodder for the critics, we'll take a quick break and we'll be back. this is the plan that revolves around you.

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political enemies and have vowed to destroy him. there is a certain amount of self-censorship that promotes. >> i think i would go back to our conversation what's happening diversively in terms of actual pushback against the administration. i think this gets -- what happens, we tell the story that african-americans are unwilling to critique the president because african-americans are his key supporters, but as a matter of evidence, take sherrod, for example, the big critique not of the had mind station, the naacp. sitz that ben jealous tweets she should be ashamed of herself. maybe -- >> enough anger for -- >> check it out. maybe not your average viewer doesn't know who shirley sherrod is, but you hear sherrod and the state of georgia, you should connect it like ding, ding, ding, like i found the prize, 101. their failure to catch that connection for me is far more insidious, but the whole point,

sherrod and other local activists like her, my husband spent some part of the early part oeft becama administration actual until a lawsuit that had begun in the bush administration, but continued to the obama administration against hud for a set of housing policies. there are people doing work all over the country who became making pushbacks, trying to do work, organizing, that's not the same thing as sitting on television and saying i think the president is fundamentally -- >> why not? >> u.s. a thing you do. if your job is to go on television -- >> that's not how conservatives won the movement. what they do, they have the fight, get the push, they don't -- even as bush -- even as bush complete failed to overturn roe vs. wade, you didn't hear the conservative white wing of the party attack him. they took state by state. >> that factual correction i have to make. shirley sherrod does critique

the president. >> in the piece she does. >> she's not like rolling over. i think her point was -- and she said this in a very early initial e-mail and followup after that. i have to be conscious about what i'm saying, how i'm saying it, who i'm saying it to. very clear with the critique. >> good point. >> what about the ammunition point? >> i mean, it's definitely a tightrope walk. that's something that would be the case as far as who you are rooting for in your party in general. other layers for sure. there was a dichotomy for me. i had tremendous hopes for the symbolic importance that obama would have in terms of getting i elected. pragmatic, cynical hopes, terms of what he would be able to accomplish, what he would be able to do in the administration, but there is a desire to preserve that symbolic impact he would have that makes him at times to be reticent to talk about things like drones, so on, which is -- i think there

is tightrope walk and speaking in his defense against things he is facing in terms of massive resistance, reticent to talk about that as well. >> and particularly you feel so many critiques are unfair. that's part of the problem, and i said this offair, let me say this on air. i covered the labor movement. there are a lot of unions that are completely dysfunctional entities. there is a desire to not write a story if you are on the left and say, man this union, what a total mess, because the union movement is massively important, the soul of the american left for years, and there is a determined effort to extinguish it, destroy it white it out of existence, so you think that goes through your mind as are you modulating and you talk about -- the thing i want to respond about the fox news thing. we see this argument. and i see it on my twitter feed all the time. the international argument about

barack obama, sellout, pragmatic, all this stuff, right? when you point to the conservative's example, i think about the iraq war and say to myself, i wish conservatives who oppose the iraq war hasn't gotten behind the president. i wish they had taken to the air waves and killed that thing before it happened. and there is a danger to falling in line. >> i guess my point, we're not falling. to suggest the absence of an all-day 5 five-point critique to the president's agenda is falling in line is my concern. i want to point out for me one of the great professor cornell west might say, one of the great gifts of black in america is the ability to maintain an incredibly and uniquely american optimism about the project that is the american story and to operate with suspicion about how we're actually living out the american story. so we love the declaration of independence and have a lot of

criticism of the constitution which was meant to bring that thing into existence. >> for most of american history, our political history was on two conflicting fax. one an off the stated love of democracy, and african-americans have been historically restricted to the realm of protest and agation. when president obama wanted to get to the bottom of what happened, he was not protesting or astating, he was not appealing to federal power. he was employing it. the power was black, and in certain quarters, was received as such. back after the break. why should saturday night have all the fun? get two times the points on dining in restaurants, with chase sapphire preferred. wanted to provide better employee benefits while balancing the company's bottom line, their very first word was... [ to the tune of "lullaby and good night" ] ♪ af-lac

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why not get buried inh you. something other than work? get two times the points on travel, with chase sapphire preferred. all right. to kind of punch home this conversation. there is something you wanted to say about shirley sherrod. >> me lisa the point about naacp, which is so, so true, they should have known. and ben did apologize. >> he did apologize. the thing that always impressed

me about barack obama, he's not just an african-american president. he knows, he's smart, intellectual, shouldn't he have known? shouldn't somebody close to him have known? are thaw really got me. not to let the naacp off the hook. >> i have no idea president obama in and of himself knew or not. what i know impair,ly, the naacp, whether it is ben jealous or something close to ben jealous. i'm not surprised that tom vilsack didn't know. did you see tom vilsack? i'm not surprised about that. >> i want to -- there is a passage which i think we should end with the president's words, he is such an incredible writer, where he is talking -- he's talking about a lesson he learned about how black politicians talk about race. his book rihn in 2006. i remember once sitting with one my democratic colleagues in the

illinois state senate as we listened to another fallow senator, an african-american who represented a largely inner city district. launch sboi a lengthy tirade about how it was acase of racism. you know what the problem is? whenever i hear him, he makes me feel more white. i said it's not easy for black politicians to gain the right tone to take when discussing the enormous hardship facing his or her constituents, still my white colleague's comment was instructive. it's about learning a lesson as a black politician who is in a world on the south side of chicago, where if that was all he was going to be, he wouldn't have to negotiate the sort of cross racial appeals as much. continue to represent hyde park for a long time. >> he did. and -- >> he got it handed to him. >> he was insufficiently black. >> and the reporting from that

campaign is amazing. one of my colleagues, ted cleveland wrote a piece about that. that portion is omitted from the abridged version of the audio book. interesting. nice find, todd cole, melissa harris-per harris-perry, are you going to take off to get ready for your own show, which support next. >> what do we know now that we didn't know last week? my answer, after this. gomery an abigail higgins had... ...a tree that bore the most rare and magical fruit.

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all right. what do we know now that we didn't know last week? we know how bad the recovery has been for the middle class. according to research firm kren sure llc, median household income fell 2.6% in real terms in the 18 months that make up the official term of the great recession. median incomes have fallen an additional 4.8% since june 2009.

the official start of the so-called recovery. we know despite the fact that unemployment remains at 8%, the campaign focused shockingly little on job as enda and full employment. mitt romney uses poor obama's r. but we can predict with a great deal of certainty that the agenda he and the republican house caucus will further bring on the prospects for the middle class. we know middle class americans are more generous in charitable applications than ever. we knew from the variety of social logical studies that those tend to be less empathetic but we know how it plays out in dollars and krentds. according to a new study, household that is earn between $50,000 and $75,000 annually give an average 7.6% to charity while those with an average of 4.2% of over $100,000 give to

charity. when people making more than $200,000 a year account for more than 40% of the taxpayers in the zip code, wealthy residents give an average of 2.8% of discretionary income to charity compared with an average of 4.2% for all item earners earning $200,000 or more. end quote. finally, we now know not one but two local tv stations were asked by romney staffers not to ask questions about todd akin or abortion before granting interviews with mitt romney. we know for both candidates the terms of their campaigns have shifted. they get their news directly rather than in the media. the pew research center found that account personalities account for half of the assertions of the candidate's biography as they did 12 years ago. the same time the campaigns, surrogates and ale lies account for half the themes. 48% up from 37% in 2000.

we also know the reporters competing for access and scoops on the increasingly overpopulated national political beat face a fundamental collection problem when individually bargaining over the terms of access to campaigns we know a bit of genuine journalistic solidarity for reporters collectively refuse certain conditions would solve the problem. but we also know collective action and solidarity are dirty words. michelle goldberg from "newsweek" is back at the table. i want to find out what my guests now know when the week began. michelle, we begin with you. >> we know no one asked to see mitt romney's birth certificate and more significantly we know he's willing to go there very much unlike john mccain four years ago. >> yeah, i have been pondering, thinking, discussing this moment. i was on rachel's show last night and we talked about it. it just seemed so bizarre to me. rachel's theory is essentially it's trolling, it's a way of trying to provoke accusations of racism because of the politics

of people accusing a white person of being racist down to their benefit even if the explicit birtherness doesn't. >> some people said it must have been a slip-up and mitt romney does tend to say ridiculous offensive things when speaking, but at the same time it was, you know, it obviously delighted the crowd. and that's actually -- he's defending it on the grounds, the crowd loved it. which says quite a bit about the crowd. >> tom nozzi. >> we know that -- let me back up a little bit. in 2008 there was a hope there would be a reform of the republican party, that it would moderate, we know that's not going to happen. we know the party is moving further right and if there's reform it's a long, long ways off. i think the birther comment, the whole forcible miss in relation to abortion really is that. >> we'll talk tomorrow. we'll talk about the republican convention and the republican

platform, which nbc news has gotten its draft on that platform. don't worry about the platform, nothing to see here. but that's the expression of the -- >> that's the platform you're running on. >> as the party grows more disciplined than we have seen the republican party that conducts itself with tremendous discipline, more party-line votes, particularly governors from the house, instead of looking at the details mitt romney won't give, look at the platform for what they are plighting themselves to. we'll do that tomorrow. >> i learned that the republican party is not a logic-base system. and that if you're going to talk about forcible rape and legitimate rape and bring up the birtherism comment, i really feel like i don't trust you to operate heavy machinery on the outside without adult supervision. >> i should say, just as a factual stipulation, that the comment was condemned widely across the republican circles, basically every republican starting from -- working its way

up to mitt romney took 36 hours condemned the comment. we should be clear on that. >> i would argue they condemn him again saying it out loud on camera. that the thing in there is actually, i believe that's what they need. >> i think as he said, even though the dog whistle may have been accidental, he was cleaning his dog whistle and it just went off, i think they have, afterwards, it had the intended effect of a dog whistle and they played it as if it was intentional. i think the republicans are going to cast their lot with playing up fear and pandering and sort of meta trolling pandering as far as they can, which makes me as a republican, i would feel the way that i felt as a knicks fan, that you're sort of instead of building something to make you a viable party for the future, we are sort of training for that 38-year-old player with two broken knees and seeing if he has one more chance. i mean, -- they're casting their lot with going for a shrinking pool of people that you can

pander to that way that in the long term doesn't bode well. >> when you talk about the demographic projections, if you look at the immigration part of this platform is extremely radical. i mean -- >> and would defund texas universitys. >> yes, de-fund texas universities because there's a dream act. we'll talk more about that. thank you to michelle goldberg, ta-nehisi coates, and jay smooth. thank you for getting "up." thank you for joining us today for "up." joining us tomorrow, michael steele live from tampa to preview the republican convention along with joan walsh, whose news book is called "what's the matter with white people"? coming up next is melissa harris-perry. on mhp today, she looks at paul ryan's workout routine and examines where he and his new boss are fit for office. plus a trip home to new orleans to tour the new

harris-perry home. we'll see you tomorrow at 8:00. thank you for getting up. it's time to live wider awake. only the beautyrest recharge sleep system combines the comfort of aircool memory foam layered on top of beautyrest pocketed coils to promote proper sleeping posture all night long. the revolutionary recharge sleep system... from beautyrest. it's you, fully charged.