dirt ball. let's play "hardball." ♪ good even. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start with this. can you smell it? it's the ugliness of this campaign. heading into the last week, the romney campaign against president obama carries the scent of hell. john sununu, the top romney surrogate, barks at that lazy one in the white house who doesn't know how to be an american, who sarah palin mocks for shucking and jiving, and donald trump accuses again and again and again of being from kenya and playing monkey business with the country's economic numbers. you know, the same fellow romney says cheats on the welfare checks to feed his political base. the guy gingrich calls the food stamp president. listen to sununu last night yelling at former governor bill richardson to shut up saying general colin powell's political judgment is based on racial bias. trump offering a big bet the president won't show his student transcripts all to diminish the president's academic rise to

editor of the harvard law review. yes, it's all directed at drumming up the blue collar white vote for the republican ticket and, yes, it smells. david corn is author of "the 47 percent" and joy reid is managing editor of the grio. both are msnbc political analysts. if the romney campaign is really winning, you have to ask then you wouldn't think they'd be acting like this. take a look at romney campaign co-chair and former new hampshire governor john sununu last night on cnn and fox. >> when you take a look at colin powell, you have to wonder whether that's an endorsement based on issues or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring president obama. >> what reason would that be? >> well, i think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the united states, i applaud colin for standing with him. he supported a bankruptcy and eventual support from the federal government after the bankruptcy. but the important thing is that's the past.

>> that's the moving target that colin powell talks about. that's his last position, john. you can't -- you shouldn't have brought that up, john. that was a bad thing to bring up. >> hey, bill, why don't you shut up for a minute and let me tell you facts. >> this president wants to bring the country together. he wants to bring the country together. >> by saying that mitt romney's a bser? >> he's created more racial division than any administration in history. >> oh, come on. come on. >> oh, come on. let me go to joy on this thing. i know i pushed this point, but every day it becomes truer. every day you see the thread collected, the language used, the way they talk about the president, not as a democrat, not as a liberal, not as someone they disagree with, but someone about whom the very person is wrong for the office somehow. what do you think they're talking about? endlessly. >> exactly.

and this is about over and over again tweaking the archie bunker crowd. this is about that angry guy, we all known him in the neighborhood, because, look, if this was just about barack obama or his policies, colin powell wouldn't magically get sucked into it, too. we wouldn't be hearing sarah palin talking about shucking and jiving. how much more obvious do they have to be? this is about trying to run up romney's numbers among low information blue collar white voters, particularly older white voters who are already uncomfortable with the idea of this guy being in the white house. not a democrat being in the white house, this democrat. this president. the person of barack obama is what is offensive to old cranks like john sununu who, by the way, hasn't had an intelligent thought since the reagan administration. why is he the top surrogate for mitt romney? because he speaks to that guy, archie bunker. >> you know, i have to think that all this stuff, i grew up with watching it, from the south mainly, but some were from rizzo and philadelphia, ben tillman and george wallace and, you know, all those characters down there used to do it, but now it's the sophisticated guys,

governors of big states. rich guy in new york, trump. all over the place they keep doing this. >> what we see is a continuum. it goes all the way from the birtherism as we talked about a way to define barack obama because he either has the wrong ideas or because he's black, whatever it might be, to the idea he doesn't understand america. you know, mitt romney has said again and again he doesn't get america, probably will play sununu saying earlier, a few months ago, listen, i wish this guy would learn how to be an american. all the way, it's all about saying he's not one of us, and people can read that all sorts of different ways. if you want to see it racially because you're an archie bunker type like joy just said, then you get that message that way. if you want to read it because you think he's a socialist and you don't like socialists and it has nothing to do with race, you can see it that way, too. it's really sophisticated. not a dog whistle, sort of an orchestra that plays to a wide audience with different instruments. >> chris, i'm sorry, i kind of disagree, this isn't sophisticated. these people can't define

socialist. they don't know what it means. i think it's very much ethnic, and i don't think these people are sophisticated at all. this is a blunt, loud dog whistle. >> we had a woman waiting on the rope line, and she was yelling communist. i kept asking, what do you mean by that? she didn't have any notion what it meant. it meant she didn't like the look of that guy, whatever. at midnight the romney campaign released a statement from sununu. isn't it interesting how they do this, and talk about orchestration. colin powell is a friend. i like the way they say this in washington. a friend of whose? i respect the endorsement decision he made, and i do not doubt it was based on anything but his support of the president's policies. piers morgan's question was whether colin powell should leave the party, and i don't think he should. let me get back to this. this is orchestrated. listen to some of the stuff he

said in the past. sununu had some inflammatory things throughout the campaign. listen to a press conference call back in july. >> the president clearly demonstrated that he has absolutely no idea how the american economy functions. the men and women all over america who have worked hard to build these businesses, their businesses from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. it is the american way, and i wish this president would learn how to be an american. >> i wish he'd learn how to be an american. they always kick that as the kicker, you're right, joy. isn't good enough to disagree with his policies. he ain't an american. here is sununu, one more bit of this stuff. here is an interview with andrea mitchell, who i know was taken aback when she heard these

words. >> what people saw last night i think was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are. he's lazy and disengaged. >> lazy. i don't know how many more dog whistles or trumpets you need to play. it's lazy, the food stamp guy. you know what? this isn't sophisticated because it does play on ideology only in the sense that ideology words are bad words. >> these are the same guys that opposed busing in boston. these are the same guys that call african-americans in general lazy. there's just something wrong with them. it's the same dog whistle you hear over and over, and it's a particularly rich dog whistle to be blown by john sununu who himself is a naturalized american, born in havana, neither of his parents are american. barack obama has more roots in the united states of america than john sununu does. >> by the way, one of the great ironies of our lives living in america, this country means so much to me, our history is so rich and ironic. african-americans were here for 250 years working for nothing. >> long before some of us came. >> i'm not asking for

reparations necessarily, but i have to tell you something, they're there, they were here long before most of us. let me go to this point here about the people speak for romney when he doesn't want to do it. they used to say mickey cohen, the gangster, said if you have a dog, you don't have to bark. look at all these dogs he has out there. trumpy, amazingly successful guy, downtown business developer in a batman movie. he's an incredibly big shot, so a lot of little guys out there, this makes i think joy's point. a lot of little guys out there, that big shot says he's from kenya, must be something there. really. and then he goes after him and says the unemployment number which helped the president a week or so ago -- may not help him this week. sarah palin headlines her column, "obama's shuck and jive ends with benghazi lives." trump offered money if the president would turn over college records. let's catch his wording though. >> do you think they changed the numbers? >> i do. i do. and i think that they did -- there was a lot of monkey business. >> sucking up to him is really sickening.

he's sucking up to him. don't ask the political news. sure, talk to him about housing development, talk to him about downtown development. he's a genius. don't ask him his political views because he gets back into monkey business and he's from kenya. >> my overarching point is these guys, not saying they're sophisticated, i think this is crass, but what they managed to do is take these racial arguments and attacks but also make them into something that he's not just -- not just that he's black but he's foreign. that he's european, he's socialistic, he's not one of us, he doesn't understand. when things go wrong in benghazi, he's apologizing -- >> if he was homegrown all the way, what would you think if his name was joe brown, a regular name? would they be treating him any better? maybe go at him a different way. >> just a different way. >> they went after bill clinton in a different way. it was particular to his character and his life story, and they said he was a hippie, said he was manchurian candidate.

>> a murderer. they called him a murderer. >> but this guy -- >> he's not an american. keep coming back to he's not an american. >> let's go back to the candidate on the other side. there's two candidates running for president. thank good trump isn't one. thank good sununu is not one. romney and obama. romney has had adequate opportunity throughout this campaign to come out and say, i will not put up with this. nobody who speaks for me shall talk like this anymore. i don't want trump on my side. remember that genuflection out in vegas? sununu is designated as his co-chair. we just saw when he did his correction, it came out of the romney headquarters. this is orchestrated. >> exactly. >> i keep waiting, it's way too late -- >> you're not going to see it. >> sister souljah moment or anything like that -- >> it will never happen. >> like the great john mccain on this point, when he pushed back and said, no, that's not true.

>> i have been waiting this whole campaign, we've talked about this earlier, for mitt romney to show one inch of spine -- >> how about shame? >> shame or spine, whatever. there's not a single courageous statement or move he's made as a politician that i can discern, unlike his dad. he's the opposite of his dad who took gutsy positions, even at political cost, again and again and again. >> let me ask you, here is an election night scene. romney with sununu, his co-chair, donald trump, all up there on the platform together thanking everybody for a generous support, ignoring all the dog whistles, the horrible smell of this campaign as if it never happened. >> as if it never happened. but this is a guy who didn't even have the courage to stand up to the racism in his own church. when he was not just a member, he was a bishop. mitt romney has never shown moral courage. if you look at his history in his career when he was confronted with the lack of

minorities and women at bain capital where he was the boss, he said, oh, minorities and women don't want to work in private equity, they just don't like it. the idea that -- >> i think we separate there. we separate there. i don't want to get into anybody's religion. >> but i mean the point is not his religion. it's not his religion. it's him not standing up to it. it's him not standing up to it. he was a bishop. he's not stood up to it. so the point being -- >> listen, you were moved by the great civil rights movement. i wasn't quite old enough to be but -- >> but i want to correct myself. george romney cared about civil rights. a lot of mormons care about civil rights despite whatever the theology was. >> mitt romney never seemed to be engaged by that while being a member of a church that practiced racism. that's just a known fact. >> let me thank you all tonight. different versions of the dream here at "hardball." thank you, david corn, and thank you, joy ann reid. coming up, one candidate is playing the role of incumbent avoiding interviews and contact with the media. the other is acting like the underdog criss-crossing the country doing a blitz of television. here is the surprise, the roles are in reverse. governor romney is acting like an incumbent, like dick nixon, and obama is acting like the

challenger. what's behind both strategies. while everyone was paying attention to the presidential race, the democrats have significantly improved their chances of holding control of the u.s. senate when the democrats were supposed to be on the defensive. see if you can recognize these voices from nbc's 1980 election coverage. >> now solid blue practically all the way from the mississippi river westward leaving only oregon, washington, and arkansas, as you can see. >> beginning to look like a suburban swimming pool over there. >> a suburban swimming pool, that was tom brokaw and then david brinkley announcing ronald reagan's landslide election when we called republicans blue. there's a new ebook coming out with video going back to 1940. we'll have that on tonight. let me finish with this campaign that's really starting to smell. this is "hardball," the place for politics.

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let's check the hardball scoreboard. president obama is leading mitt romney up by 2, 46/44. also in ohio, a cnn poll has obama at 50 and romney at 46. in colorado, obama is leading by 1. what does that mean? 47/46. next to virginia. the race is dead even at 47 all. and finally in new hampshire, which will matter, a new england college poll shows the president up by 3. watch new hampshire election night. 49/46. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] this is joe woods' first day of work.

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welcome back to "hardball." in the closing days of the campaign, the two candidates for president are pursuing very different strategies. on the one hand president obama has gone on a virtual media blitz speaking to various radio

shows, "rolling stone" magazine, as well as tv interviews with seven affiliates just today and sit-downs with jay leno, brian williams, and mtv. in contrast, the romney campaign says the candidate has no plans for additional interviews before the election. he will apparently stick to giving speeches like he did today. in fact, billed as a major policy speech, romney offered no new policies nor did he give any explanation for how he will implement some of his more mathematically challenged promises like capping federal spending at 20% of the gdp. paul krugman wrote, romney's plan is a sham. it's a list of things he claims will happen with no description of the policies he would follow to make those things happen. if you refuse to let the media ask you questions, you never have to worry about giving them answers. joan walsh is author of "what's the matter with white people," and douglas brinkley is editor of "rolling stone." douglas, this whole idea of a president, it clicks with me as sort of the dewey campaign of 1948 where the guy basically -- as manchester wrote in "the

glory and the dream," he had every means of communication to say anything he wanted, and he had nothing to say. also the nixon campaign of '68 where he hunkered down with his big lead and said absolutely nothing, including no interviews. >> i was thinking of '68 today. look, you remember when brian williams did that interview during the london olympics of mitt romney, and it was a disaster. he almost got thrown out of the uk, and at that time charles krauthammer wrote a recommendation to mitt romney which was zip it, be quiet, you can only do damage to yourself in these interviews. it's not the art form that mitt romney is good at. barack obama is facile and quick-witted, can be funny and can get into policy in depth. mitt romney is quite shallow in some ways, and he's better off probably running the ads he's doing than going on the talk show circuit.

>> joan, you have to interview people all the time. it seems to me he doesn't think he has to do it because it's below him to answer questions and i think as a business guy, a tycoon really, he can talk to anybody he wants to or not talk to anybody. that's the difference between the political press and the business press. >> yeah. he's not used to it. it's like he's running a rose garden strategy, but he doesn't live in the rose garden yet and no one has told him, chris. doug is absolutely right. he's not good on his feet. his last few interviews have been disasters. he was terrible with david gregory. when paul ryan sat down with chris wallace, he was hammered on the absence of details in their plans. romney couldn't even handle bret baier from fox. they can't even go to fox -- when they go on fox -- nobody blows fox who is a republican except these two guys. so i think it's the prevent defense except he's not sitting on a lead. but he's behind in most of the

swing states. he's behind in ohio, wisconsin, iowa, nevada. you know, i'm not sure this is so safe, but it's probably the safest course for him. >> well, i think bret baier is pretty good in that interview. one reason romney might steer clear of sit-down interviews, he's been barraged with questions about senate candidate richard mourdock. take a look. >> governor, do you wish mourdock would pull that ad? >> which way are we going? >> governor, do you disavow mourdock's comments on the rape? >> thank you. >> governor, do you disavow murdoch's comments on the rape? >> what do you make of that, doug? it seems to me that he has that wonderful immutability to just say i'm turning on the mute

button, i'm not saying nothing, live with it. >> he's been taking a lot of pages from ronald reagan. remember when reagan would walk in and he couldn't hear, would have to cup his ear and wouldn't answer questions. in the third debate we saw a lot of reagan in mitt romney in the sense of talking about peace and being genial. this is a candidate now who realizes if he gets loose on a talk show, they're going to ask him about his taxes, they're going to ask him about bain capital, and those issues have somehow died. you don't hear the press talking about it much. so i think they see it's just a sea filled with land mines if romney gets out there and tries to freelance q&as. >> isn't this an assault -- an implicit critique of our democracy? i do think we americans don't think long term. we're great at crises, not good at long-term thinking about the debt and immigration, having serious policies for way down the road, but it also says something about the electorate. they don't seem to say this guy has a tax question, why is he hiding the tax returns? or this guy doesn't have numbers that add up. look at that $5 trillion in cuts he's going to give us but doesn't say how he's going to pay for it with eliminating deductions and how will he pay for the extra $2 trillion for defense? where is this money coming from?

this is two weeks, and people don't remember two weeks ago. how do they remember american history and what kind of president they're picking? just a thought. >> it's a problem, you're right, but people are busy, and part of it is our job, and i don't know that our colleagues are doing the best job. obviously if we can't get to him, it's hard to ask him about his taxes, but people could be talking more about taxes. it's kind of like he stonewalled, us and i guess i'm going to say i was wrong when i said months ago, he's going to have to tell us, he's going to have to tell us. he hasn't had to tell us. i don't know that he will have to tell us in the next 11 days. some of it is the media gets distracted by he does a decent job of handling us. we spent the days after this awful last debate where he lied, you don't like it when i use that word but you let me anyway, when he dissembled and he said he was just like president obama on issues of war and peace when he's not. the media -- everybody praised him. they were like, it was very savvy for him to move to the center and emulate president obama because the public is very tired of war. wait, savvy?

we're impressed by savvy? we're not going out and saying, wow, that was a remarkable display of dissembling. what does this man really believe? it's all about the horse race. >> as the extremely literary like to say, to wit, today in his policy speech, romney made some dubious statements about medicare and health care. let's watch him in action. this is how you do it, joan. this is how this guy does it. >> we'll save medicare and social security both for current and near retirees and for the generation to come. we'll reform health care to tame its growth and the cost that's been going skyrocketing to provide for those with pre-existing conditions as well and to assure that every american has access to health care. >> we'll tame its growth, douglas. tough love for obama care. we're not going to eliminate it or starve it to death, we're going to give it tough love, we're going to tame it and keep the good features like pre-existing condition coverage. he can get away with murder if nobody is interviewing him. who is to stop him?

>> that's the absolute strategy. he's able to claim everything. i had mentioned he's like a chameleon on plaid. i can be whatever he wants to with whatever crowd he's in. there's nobody to call him out. i think the short attention span is a problem. i thought when osama bin laden was killed it was such a defining moment for our country, but that was in the spring and you don't feel it resonating in this election. people questioning libya because it was much more recent. it's very hard for a sitting president to get his kudos from things he did in the last couple years when people are just on last week's news cycle and mitt romney's not feeding the beast. he's refusing to feed the media beast in his mind any bit of raw meat. >> as you wrote in your "rolling stone" piece, doug, president obama used some rather saucy language to talk about romney. he said, quote, you know, kids have instincts. they look at the other guy and they say, well, that's a bser, i can tell. we don't use the word here of course, this is television. did he say that in passing? >> it was after we left the oval

office in passing, just doing a little bit of small talk. i found it just part of the rhythm of what we were doing. it was laughing a little bit. i didn't take it very seriously. you know -- >> he doesn't like romney too much, does he? >> doesn't care for romney. but that bs word is used by every single -- 99% of america uses it, and i think it came from the heart. he was telling a little bit of a joke. >> i think it must be amazing to sit there like he's had to in these debates and listen to the other guy go 180 on everything he's been saying to get the nomination like he went 180 on everything to get to be governor of massachusetts. everything's the past. thank you, doug and joan. how long would it take you to watch all of the ads the obama and romney campaigns have run? just in ohio alone? this is "hardball," the place for politics. i take insulin,

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back to "hardball." now to the "sideshow." nancy pelosi was on "the daily show" last night with her own spin on romnesia. pelosi brought up the failed personhood amendment in mississippi. >> governor romney had endorsed personhood amendment in mississippi. governor romney had endorsed personhood amendment in mississippi. >> no, i remember that. >> even the people of mississippi rejected that position. >> well, romney also rejected that position as well. >> well, the president calls it romnesia. i have my own what i call mittology. >> anyway, also taking on the late night comedy scene, first lady michelle obama. she and jimmy kimmel put together an ad to get you out of bed on election day. >> election day, election day! up and adam. up and adam!

it's election day. come on, let's go. get your shoes on. up, up, up! >> all right. okay. >> time to vote. you can do it. >> okay. i'm voting. >> out the door, out the door! and eat some carrots. >> i'm barack obama, and i approve this message. >> also ms. obama has been encouraging people to take advantage of early voting just in case, her words here, your toilet overflows on election day and you can't get to the polls. and the lead writer in the series "girls" steps up with a new ad encouraging young people to vote. >> your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. you want to do it with a great guy. you don't want a guy who says, oh, hey, i'm at the library studying when he's really out not signing the lilly ledbetter act or who thinks gay people shouldn't have beautiful complicated weddings. super uncool to be out and about and somebody says, did you vote? no, i wasn't ready. my first time voting was

amazing. i voted for barack obama. >> well, the ad is facing backlash in conservative circles for being too risque, but they're not the target audience. finally, it's no secret that both campaigns are putting a lot of time and resources into the state of ohio. it could be the make-or-break state. anyone living in ohio knows it, too, thanks to the onslaught of campaign ads dominating their tv screens. recently actually. how many days would it take to watch all the presidential ads that have aired in ohio the last month? according to bloomberg news and cantor media, that would be 80 days straight, 24/7. we're talking nonstop 80 days presidential ads have aired over 58,000 times in ohio over the past month. how do they stand it? up next, democrats are well-positioned to keep control of the u.s. senate. we'll look at how they're doing it. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. mike rowe here at a ford dealer with a little q&a for fiona. tell me fiona, who's having a big tire event?

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senator harry read was taken to the hospital because of a car crash. he's been cleared for released. ahead of hurricane sandy's arrival, the entire east coast is on alert for flooding, high wind and possibly snow in some areas as the storm moves north. and a meningitis outbreak continues to worsen. 25 people are now dead. back to "hardball ".

♪ welcome back to "hardball." nearly as important as the race for president are the races that will determine control of the senate. democrats control the senate effectively, 53-47. jennifer duffy of the cook political report puts the chances of republicans gaining the seats they need to take control at 40% to 45%, a number that's diminished over the year. let's take a look at the maps. these are democratic seats that could go republican. montana, north dakota, nebraska which is a near certain gop pickup, wisconsin, virginia, and connecticut. and these are the republican seats that could go democratic, nevada, arizona, indiana, and massachusetts. and then there's maine where independent candidate angus king is expected to win and become effectively a democrat in the senate. we'll zero in on three of those states tonight, and they're crucial. with me is former south dakota senator larry pressler, a republican now supporting president obama in this race, and los angeles mayor antonio

villaraigosa, who is the obama 2012 national co-chair. gentlemen, thank you. massachusetts, the marquee senate race where all the money is going. elizabeth warren is actually leading the very -- well, once popular senator scott brown up about 3.5 points according to "the huffington post." this is a hard fought race with both candidates appealing to the women's vote. let's look at parts of their recent ads. first, from elizabeth warren. >> all you have to do is look at his voting record. >> he had one chance to confirm a supreme court justice to uphold roe versus wade. he voted no. >> i'm very disappointed. >> the brown campaign hit back with an ad featuring his wife. >> i'm gail huff. i want to talk to you about those untrue ads attacking my husband, scott brown. it's sad that elizabeth warren and her supporters are avoiding the issues like jobs and the

economy. i want to set the record straight. scott brown is pro-choice. >> the question is, does he vote for pro-choice judges who decide this thing. >> that's the question. you notice she didn't speak to that in that commercial. >> what's moving up there, the mayor? >> the mayor has a great get out the vote operation, and he's got a lot of credibility in boston, and he's certainly working hard on her behalf, and it's going to be a very close election, but i expect that she's going to win, elizabeth warren is going to prevail. >> senator, it's interesting. you tend to be a moderate, middle of the roader. scott brown may be the last of the middle of the roaders left of necessity. >> i'm sort of cheering for him because i like moderates in the senate. i know in the days you were a staffer we had a lot of moderates -- >> like you. >> yes. >> see what happened to you though. >> that's right. we kind of disappeared, but i hope there's a resurgence of moderate republicanism, but at a distance i hope we elect moderate democrats and republicans more. >> let's take a look -- >> we certainly need bipartisanship in the senate and in the house. >> let's take a look at virginia right across the river here.

a critical state in the presidential race. right now democrat tim kaine, the former governor, leads george allen by a slim margin. this ad from the allen campaign attempts to tie kaine to president obama. >> well, i'm doing what the president wants me to do. >> so tim kaine became president obama's national party chairman, putting the president's harmful agenda first. >> and this tim kaine ad focuses on the women's vote. >> this is virginia. george allen would restrict her choices. he'd take away her constitutional rights by reversing roe v. wade. >> there you have it again. you're going to campaign down there. >> it's hard for me to make a judgment on this. if virginia could have nominated a moderate republican, that's what virginia wants to vote for, but it seems both parties have nominated somebody far to the left and far to the right is the way it looks to me at a distance, and i can't call it. >> you think tim kaine is on the far right? >> tim kaine is a moderate, and that's he's up two or three

points and he's going to stay up. he was a moderate as a governor, and i think he'll be a moderate as a senator as well, and i do agree that that's what virginia is looking for. >> i do give credit for george allen just as a person coming back after his big mistake making that ethnic slur he should have never made. he paid for it, he lost his career it looked like, and then he came back. wisconsin, another key state in both the presidential race and the senate power struggle. right now democrat tammy baldwin leads the former very popular governor tommy thompson by nearly four points. the ad wars in the race have been called some of the nastiest in this cycle. first up, part of a thompson ad. let's listen to this. >> i'm tommy thompson, and i approve this message. >> tammy baldwin had the opportunity to vote to honor the victims of 9/11, and she voted

against it. >> baldwin did vote against the bill, but as her campaign noted, that's because it paid tribute to the patriot act which was something she was against. the baldwin campaign hit back with an ad of their own. let's listen. >> i'm tammy baldwin, and i approve this message. >> tommy thompson's ad is a disgrace. the truth, time and again tammy baldwin has supported honoring victims of 9/11. >> you know -- >> does anybody really believe that any candidate is against the victims of september 11th? that's why that ad doesn't work. >> you think that doesn't pass the smell test. >> it doesn't pass anybody's smell test. >> upper midwest elects more liberal democrats because -- but they elect republicans as governors in their state legislatures because they look to the federal government as a source of wealth, and liberal democrats have an edge in like north dakota, montana, and wisconsin as they have. my colleague, senator mcgovern, who has just passed away, my

other colleague, senator daschle, but throughout the upper midwest that's where the leadership -- when there's a tight race in the upper midwest, they will usually at the end of the day go with the liberal democrat because it's the only source of new wealth that they can draw into the state. but with their own money in the state legislature and with their governor they elect republican legislatures and governors. >> is that the old northern european social democratic thing that kicks in there, too, the swedes and the norwegians? >> north dakota it will kick in. >> no one thought tommy thompson was going to lose that race. tammy baldwin is up. i'm going to be there this weekend. i can tell you that she's got a great shot to be elected -- >> she's openly gay. i never knew that. that's a part of the race i guess. what do you think of that? >> it's great. >> it's astounding. >> i think a big reason why the

democrats are going to keep the senate. >> i think that's an amazing race just to see how people are open to tolerance and diversity. i think the senate races are amazing. if the republicans pick up three seats and they win the presidency, they got the power to do reconciliation, which is a clean sweep of anything they want to do. that's something democrats and republicans ought to think about. if they get in, just three more votes in the senate they get reconciliation because they can use the vice president's tie-breaking vote and do basically anything they want on cutting taxes, cutting spending, killing obama care. thank you, senator pressler, and thank you, mayor antonio villaraigosa, my friend. there's a new ebook on tv's coverage of presidential elections through the years with video going back to 1948. this is going to be great for political people to see how elections were called or miscalled, including one miscall by our own team here. this is "hardball," the place for politics. with the spark cash card from capital one, olaf's pizza palace gets the most rewards of any small business credit card! pizza!!!!! [ garth ] olaf's small business earns 2% cash back on every purchase, every day! helium delivery. put it on my spark card! [ pop! ] [ garth ] why settle for less? great businesses deserve the most rewards!

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devised. >> wow, we're back, of course. that was a clip of nbc's coverage of the election night back in 1952, 60 years ago. just four years after the election was ever televised on tv. of course, americans still huddle around their tv sets on the first tuesday after the first monday in november and though the technology has changed, the story has stayed the same. watching ruflts coming in, waiting for the anchor to say who the winner is. a television history, 1948 to 2012, enhanced division are you can watch the election night coverage from the year's past. this is the best reason ever to have an book. i'm finally justifying one of these high-tech books and you get to watch it on tv, right?

>> you can really immerse yourself in every presidential election cycle. you can see all of the important moments that led up to those nights. you need a nook or an ibook from apple in order to experience the video but you can also read about it and see the pictures that we've dug the victory desk has just

given california to kennedy and that gives him the election. that's putting up the v. >> there they are. in fact, they were right overall, but wrong about the state. >> msnbc called the election for kennedy hours before anyone else. and kennedy had him running way ahead in the electoral vote count all night. what happened was it was 7:00 and managers at nbc, somebody wanted to get "the today show" on the air so they could get the commercials. so california was very close. about 100,000-vote difference. but when the absentee ballots came in, nixon won that state. it didn't affect the outcome of the election, but it was the wrong call for the state. >> nixon carried it by 33,000. florida, tim russert made it

famous with tom brokaw in the year 2000 navigating a murky election night. let's watch. >> 565 votes. >> there are still some votes that have not been counted. >> and there's still votes cob counted. we're at 98%. palm beach is uncounted. what if it goes the other way. >> it's only 3:17. we're here. cameras are hot. >> that's entirely possible. tim gets his board out. >> isn't it funny at the time of night you have to be acute and you think you get a little punchy. 3:00 in the morning, these guys have been broadcasting for about nine hours at this point.

>> they just didn't know what was going on. all the networks share. they pull the information that's gathered across the country. so they are getting the same data. they hire their own people to make a judgment whether there's a call. they all got the same bad information. there was a lot of confusion on the ground. i should point out from that point forward, the networks had been extremely cautious about calling the races. four years later, once george bush got up to 269 electoral votes after he was awarded ohio by a couple network, they stopped. they didn't call the race because there was a possibility that john kerry might challenge it. >> let's look at the red states and the blue states back when nbc create d it. tom brokaw using it when ronald reagan sweep covered most of the country physically.

the blue was dominant. let's listen. >> we'll call another state for ronald reagan. it's a big one. it's his home state of california. 45 electoral votes. ronald reagan picks up his home state of california. he's never lost a race there. we fill in that big chunk of the map with blue. now solid blue practically all the way from the mississippi river westward leaving only oregon and washington. >> it looks like an urban swimming pool over there. >> why did democrats get stuck with blue? blue is a pretty good color. i wouldn't want it to be the red state if you were a democrat. >> that could have been one reason why it changed. the electoral map was created at nbc in 1976 by john chancellor. they wanted to do something to liven up the coverage and make it more visual and not just about the numbers.

when they picked the colors, they wanted it to go by the colors of the british parties. they went red for the democrats make i making it sim k up. when the other networks basically imitated the maps, they changed it. so you were seeing an inconsistency across the networks. it was finally made consistent in 1996. red for republicans and blue for democrats. >> okay. got to go. great book. "election night." i don't think you cannot buy this. we'll be right back. two years ago, the people of bp made a commitment to the gulf. bp has paid over twenty-three billion dollars

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let me finish tonight with this. this campaign is starting to smell. you have to wonder why republicans are out dropping the stink bombs. why is sununu out pushing this garbage about the president? why is trump offering his big bet to see the student records? the rest isn't working enough to get people to vote along racial lines. romney did this himself when he said his opponent was going after the welfare vote. real american of you. that's "hardball" for now. thanks