that's "the ed show." "politicsnation" with reverend al sharpton starts right now. good evening, rev. >> thanks to you too. thank you, ed. thanks to you for tuning in. tonight's lead, republicans refusing to accept the legitimacy of president obama. they now want to declare the 2012 election a, quote, mistrial. that comment comes from this man. former senator jim demint. he's the tea partier who tried to use obama care to, quote, break the president. and who was a driving force behind the government shutdown. and now in a new wall street journal op-ed out today, he says, quote, obama care was not the central fight in 2012. the best thing is to declare last year's election a mistrial on obama care.

declare the election a mistrial? obama care was not the central fight of 2012? was he watching the same campaign i was? >> we passed obama care. and it was the right thing to do. >> when we're elected, we're going to get rid of obama care and return health care to the people. >> repeal obama care. and that's exactly what we're going to do. >> get rid of obama care and replace it with real -- >> here is how you repeal obama care. >> i said we'd pass health care reform. we passed it. >> oh, you're right, mr. demint. health care wasn't an issue at all in 2012. let's just declare it a mistrial. but he's not the only one. his buddy ted cruz, the senator who just shut down the government over health care, is now saying this. >> so you would do it again? >> i would do anything and i will continue to do anything i

can to stop the train wreck that is obama care. >> they'll do anything to stop this president. that's the gop's game plan going forward. don't like a policy? declare a mistrial. don't like a president? try and declare mistrial on him too. we're learning that just this week, gop congressman steve stockman sent a book on impeaching president obama to all 435 members of the house. a sitting member of congress peddling impeachment. these republicans just can't accept this president as legitimate. they're acting like the election meant nothing. declare a mistrial? 60 million americans delivered a verdict for president obama and against the gop. joining me now is congressman jim mcdermott, democrat from washington.

and melissa harris-perry, host of "the melissa harris-perry show." thank you both for coming on the show. congressman, i want to put that demint comment up again. quote, the best thing is to declare last year's election as a mill tristrial on obama care. how do you respond to that? >> you know, rev, it's kind of sad. they've run the let's run the country over the cliff strategy, and that didn't work. and so now back at the second one of the republican strategies. that is let's impeach the president. that's exactly what they did to clinton. and they are going to fail at this. they simply believe that it's an impeachable offense if they don't agree with it. the supreme court has looked at

it and declared it to be constitutional. yet they keep coming back. as you may know, they've already started filing lawsuits all over the country. there have been 20-some lawsuits filed in different states about different aspects of the affordable care act. they're going to use every bit of mud they can throw to get something to stick. and the president just keeps shaking it off and keeps moving forward. >> but this is what they've taken out of this week, melissa. they're trying to just in any way possible just act as though this is not a legitimate president. and i think we're seeing that it's now become just naked and raw to the american public. they just don't want to accept this president as president. >> well, i think because what they recognize, the effectiveness of what they are doing is they can, in fact, declare his second term a

mistrial in the sense of moving us to governing by crisis. crisis to crisis every three or four months. then the president never will have an opportunity to actually enact a second policy agenda. so what we want to remember is sort of what were those first -- that first term if we divide it into those first two years when the president had a democratic house and a democratic senate. and we look at the policy activism of those two years. and that president with that speaker of the house nancy pelosi, had had the most effective, efficient, and important probably in post world war ii history congressional session. that 2010 midterm happens and ever since, we have gone to governing by crisis with the goal of whether they actually impeach the president or not, effectively impeaching him by making it impossible for him to do anything more than keeping the lights on in washington. >> and that's the point, congressman. all that we keep hearing as melissa just pointed out about impeachment, blocks us from

getting to the legislation and the policies this president had wanted to pursue in his second term. watch this. 4 we want all tools available including impeachment. >> people may be starting to use the "i" word before too long. >> meaning impeachments. >> yeah. >> i said tell me how i can impeach the president of the united states. >> to successfully impeach a president, you need the votes in the u.s. senate and with harry reid controlling the senate you can't. >> you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president. and that's called impeachment. >> now, these are senators and your colleagues in the house of representatives, congressman. with this continual talking about impeachment, it does in

many ways obstruct moving forward on an agenda that the president wanted to lay out in his second term. >> there's no question about it, rev. they simply want to keep the circus going and keep -- it's like a magician who snaps his fingers in one place so you won't see what he's doing with his other hand. they are basically trying to keep the president from doing anything on jobs or on immigration or on climate change or any other issue that the american people are facing or pensions or anything. as long as they can keep this impeachment circus going, nobody will pay any attention. and what is happening right underneath them is that obama care is being put in place. >> melissa, you know, what makes this even more striking is that former senator jim demint used

to actually love obama care. but it was back when it was called romney care. listen to this. >> one thing that the former governor did up in massachusetts, senator, is he was able to without raising taxes make sure that everybody in the commonwealth of massachusetts wound up with health insurance. >> well, that's something that i think we should do for the whole country. probably over 20 states now are trying to copy what he did. and that's a good sign that people think he's on the right track. >> so here we are this week ending a crisis of a government shutdown over the president passing exactly what demint said we should do all over the country. because obama care and romney care are basically the same principles and the same kind of policies. demint now helps to encourage the shutdown of the government, 16 days, billions of dollars,

threatens the government in terms of debt limit over what they believed in. this is all about obama. >> and i think where you came to at the end is really the point. if this were about policy, if this were about a fundamental core belief that there was a set of policies that would deeply impact and harm our country, as much as i disagree with this strategy, i might be able to have some respect for it. you know, it's not the set of policies i would have anger about, but i can imagine in the sort of possibility of governing that something could be so awful that you would say you know what? we just -- we can't even move forward as a country. but that is not what this is. and we have evidence of that from the close relationship between romney care and obama care. and the fact that so many of these people now screaming impeachment, screaming touchdown were supporters of romney care. >> congressman, when you look at the fact that the president said

the ultimate thing, if you want to change laws, he told the gop, win elections. look at this. >> you don't like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. go out there and win an election. push to change it, but don't break it. don't break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. >> congressman, does this come down to 2014 next year's election after all we went through in the last 16 to 18 days, does it come down to where will the election go for a new congress of next year. >> it really comes down to this. will the american people remember how reckless and how uncaring the republicans really were in their willingness to run

the country into the ground to take away health care from people because they said that was it. if we would defund obama care, they would be happy. and they let everything else go on. if we would just do that. so this was all about hurting people. and they were recklessly willing to trade the whole economy over this kind of reckless behavior. if the american people forget it in 2014, they do it at their own risk. they have to change some of these people. >> congressman mcdermott, melissa harris-perry, thank you both for your time tonight. and be sure to watch melissa harris-perry weekends at 10:00 a.m. eastern right here on msnbc. coming up, brand new numbers show just how bad the shutdown was for the gop. what's their answer? more sarah palin? really? plus a "politicsnation" field trip tonight inside the right wing media's fact-free

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senator ted cruz and the other tea partiers thought they'd break president obama. but instead he broke them. republicans know it, and it started a civil war. politico reports a gop senator told cruz at a closed door meeting that, quote, president obama gets up every day and

reads the newspaper and thanks god that ted cruz is in the united states senate. ouch. republicans are cracking up all over the place. the gop's big money donors are said to be frustrated with the tea party's losing agenda. a strategist for the conservative chamber of commerce said they're going to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness. and a top corporate lobbyist said, quote, i don't know of anybody in the business community who takes the side of the taliban minority. tough words. but as usual, the tea party thinks they're winning. today the head of a top tea party group predicted they take over the gop. >> they still want to control things from the top down and if they do that, there will absolutely be a split. but my prediction would be that we take over the republican

party and they go the way. >> joining me now is ej dionne of "the washington post." thanks for coming on the show. >> good to be with you, reverend. >> ej, you wrote recently about how gop moderates are grappling with the quote, lunatic fringe, you called it in the party. does the gop fight have implications for the president's agenda. >> well, i think this opens up some space for the president. i mean, it's important to realize that the whole republican party is more conservative than it was 20 or 30 years ago. a former speech writer for president clinton has a piece in "the new yorker" pointing out a lot of policy question between the two sides isn't all that great. but the tea party shows a paranoid style as well as an extremist approach to tactics that just blew up in the republican party's face. and i think the republicans use the energy of the tea party to

take over the house in 2010 and win a big victory. but now the tea party's popularity is really dropping with the country as a whole. the country is seeing this really is extreme politics. and so now a lot of republicans want to run away as fast as possible. and it's a lot of the civil war about worries whether they can hold out in 2014. >> in the past three years, the tea party's disapproval rating has shot up. 49%. that's really half of the american people. now has an unfavorable opinion of the tea party. they're even less popular than ever before, and they're fighting key allies. a right wing talk show host rb radio host mark levin is calling for tea partiers to stage a boycott against the gop's big business interest. watch. >> the business community now is

out to get the tea party candidates. maybe we should make sure that we don't support the businesses that are members of the u.s. chamber of commerce. >> i mean, we're looking, ej, at the far right now going to turn off one of the gop's biggest supporters? business. how do they survive this? >> well, they do have a pretty big pot of money from a certain number of very wealthy right wing folks. they have some capacity also to raise money at the grassroots. but when you have the -- one of the principle elements of the republican party, the tea party, going after the other principle element of the republican coalition other than the religious conservatives, business groups, you've got a party with a huge problem. and i think this whole willingness to risk going over the cliff by not raising the debt ceiling, a lot of business folks have wait a minute. this is something we would never

consider. this could really wreck our companies, wreck our economy. so i also think you're going to have some people in business looking the other way away from the republican party altogether. and say for the time being this party isn't safe even if they do want to cut our taxes. >> now, when you say there's space for obama, how would that space that you say is there for the president effect him driving through his policies in the middle of this fight in the republican party, can he drive through the middle some of the things that he really cares about and americans care about. >> take immigration reform. at the moment the same kind of right wick part of the house republican caucus that tied boehner's hands such that he wasn't willing to just come up with a clean early solution to this last crisis, those folks are now looked at by the party very differently. and i think republican leaders

are going to be much less differential to them. that a lot of rank and file republicans are going to say, look, if we follow your strategy we won't be here the next time. the moderates in the party are really their conservatives but they're more moderate conservatives. we're very timid during this fight. i think at the end of this looking at their numbers in their districts, they're going to go to these tea party folks and say we're not going to let you do this the next time. and if they do do that, that creates some room for some of the things that president obama wants to get through. >> all right. ej, i'm going to have to leave it there. ej dionne, thanks for your time tonight. have a great weekend. >> good to be with you. still ahead, sarah palin is some republicans' answer to the shutdown failure. we'll show you how she and some others on the right haven't learned a thing. but first, the man who cave us -- is back.

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tonight rick santorum is back in our spotlight of shame. he was the gop runner up last year's presidential primary. a circus that gave us this little pearl of wisdom about black people. or was it blah people? >> i don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. >> yep. he's the guy who tried to explain away that comment by claiming he wasn't talking about black people. it was blah people. right. well, mr. santorum is still

throwing red meat to his extremist reporters. this video just surfaced of him talking about same-sex marriage last month. >> when it came to the issue of marriage and changing the definition of marriage, there was no change. none. zero. for 30 years. and then a television show came on the air called "will & grace." and look at it from that point on, because it wasn't just "will & grace." once that happened, others and others and others. then the needle started moving. >> "will & grace" is the problem. santorum is trying to blame pop culture for the failures of his party's agenda. they've done this before. remember dan quayle and "murphy brown"? >> primetime tv has "murphy brown," a character who supposedly epitomizes today's

intelligent, highly paid, professional woman. mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice. >> republicans love to blame tv for their own sinking ratings. but here's the truth they can't face. america is changing. today a new jersey court ruled same-sex marriages can begin on monday. and senator-elect cory booker will be officiating weddings 12:01 a.m. so the problem isn't "murphy brown" and it isn't "will & grace." it is rick santorum and all the close minded people like him. did he think we wouldn't notice his ytds won't kocut it in primetime? nice try but we're turning the channel because we got you. wee!

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this shutdown has been a disaster for republicans. but don't worry. sarah palin has a plan. >> those who can't stand strong to defend our republic, to defend our constitution, heck yeah. they've got to be primaried otherwise we're going down. >> oh, yeah. nothing says subtle strategy adjustment like sarah palin. maybe she should head to virginia where today we're seeing more political fallout. in the spring, the gop candidate for governor ken cuccinelli was leading by three points. in september with republican shutdown fever running high, he fell behind by five points. and now after the shutdown, he's a full eight points behind. something tells me sarah palin is not the solution in virginia. just like ted cruz saying he'd shut down the government again might not be the answer for republicans in congress.

remarkably, they haven't learned anything from the shutdown or from last year's election. >> focus groups described our party as narrow minded, out of touch, and, quote, stuffy old men. >> yes. open the tent and to do that they shut down the government, furlough 800,000 workers, and blow $24 billion. it would almost be funny if it wasn't so sad. joining me now are dana milbank and angela rye. thank you for being here. >> hi, rev. >> thank you. >> dana, some republicans do

admit the shutdown is horrible for the party. but with tea partiers ready for round two, have they learned anything? >> well, here's the problem, reverend, is when you say "they" it's not clear who it is we're talking about in the republican party now. it's become some sort of sea monster with the various heads it has. and yes what's left of the establishment of this party is very clear that things have to change. but if you look at sarah palin and ted cruz, cruz is very thrilled with the outcome. because it's good for his bank roll and his popularity within the tea party. the question here is are the financial interests that have been bank rolling the tea party finally realizing that these people are not aligned with their interests and are going to push back and launch primarying against sarah palin's candidates in these republican primaries.

>> angela, another sign the shutdown has been very bad for the republicans, today was the cook political report is shifting 14 house seats into the democratic column. but it says point blank, it's mostly because of the damage republicans sustained as a result of the shutdown. talk about the politics. how much will this cost the republicans in congress, angela? >> well, rev, i think the one challenge we have is that voters' memories tend to be short and we're more than a year out from the midterm elections. the one positive sign is in 2006 during midterms, the democrats only needed to pick up a small number of seats and ended up picking up 31 seats. so needing 17 to reclaim the majority doesn't sound that troubling. the only other problem is the 2010 census which was the basis for the very gerrymandered

districts that we have now that lean extremely republican. even with this, there could be consequences for their actions. sarah palin talked about primary folks that have been staples to the senate and house for years. folks liked th thad cochran. >> dana, angela mentioned sarah palin. let me show you what sarah palin said about president obama a month after last year's presidential election. listen. >> barack obama is a socialist. he believes in socialism in redistributing wealth, in confiscating hard-earned dollars of small business men and women. >> and dana, this is what sarah palin said about president obama last night. >> what emboldened our enemies and what empowered competitors was his promise to transform

america. the enemy of america's economic freedom is this fundamental transformation of america. >> so will this same old talk, this same old stuff from sarah palin even as republicans the lose elections and get hit in the polls, maybe it works for the right wing media, but doesn't this stuff hold the gop back? >> well, first of all, the republican party is going to have to decide which message it's going with. now sarah's back to the socialist theme. but during the shutdown debate and obama care, they said obama's being too friendly to business. so a socialist who is too friendly to business is going to be a difficult concept for most americans to wrap their brains around. the party establishment and the -- certainly the business community wants something other than sarah palin to be the mouthpiece there. but it's hard to be a louder mouthpiece than she is. i think ted cruz has managed to do that, but they're largely

interchangeable in saying the same thing. so they may be the minority in the party. maybe it's only a quarter of the party who are these kind of true believers, but they're really loud. and it's going to be hard to tamper them down. >> angela, it's hard for me to deal with whether they've learned anything. let's take, for example, republicans talk a big game about widening the tent including bringing in more latino voters. just this summer the head of the rnc said the gop had to do something on immigration. quote, we need comprehensive immigration reform. but this week one of the leading republican tea partiers congressman raul labrador said there's no way he'll work with president obama on immigration. watch. >> absolutely not. i think it would be crazy for the house republicans to go in

on reform on immigration. >> how do you bring in more latinos but don't go in on immigration reform. >> you don't. you talked about the gop autopsy report at the beginning of the program. the autopsy report didn't mean anything. it was a talking point for the summer. we all laughed about it on this network and meanwhile they continued to push that they wanted to really reach out to people that were underserved, people of color. perhaps they should pick up "the rejected stone." >> bill al sharpton. let's be specific. i mentioned the attorney general in virginia, for example. he's running for governor and he's one of the most extreme political candidates in the country. he introduced a person hood bill. he filed lawsuit against obama care. he defended an anti-sodomy law. today we learned he'll be delivering the weekly republican

address, the national party's weekly statement. this is how the gop is going to turn things around? by making its radical even more high profile? >> well, in fairness, if he's going to lose the election in two weeks he's only got a couple weeks left to give this address. he might as well do it now. the party -- look. the virginia gubernatorial race as well as new jersey zblooichbltss this year are typically seen as bellwethers. and it gets beyond cuccinelli it gets to the problem of the republican party generally. if they can't win virginia in a presidential election, it's going to be very hard for them ever to win the presidency. and so i think perhaps inadvertently by featuring cuccinelli there, they are seeing the problem for their party. >> thank you both for your time tonight. have a good weekend. ahead, we're going inside

the right wing media's fact-free universe. it all leads back to one thing. attacking this president. that's next.

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opinions, but you cannot have your own facts. even with the gop facing a national embarrassment this week, the right wing talkers stayed in their fact-free universe. >> he wants to convince you that if the economic state of the union gets worse, it's because of the government shutdown. not true. the reason the economy remains stagnant is obama care. >> actually, it is true. the economy did get worse because of the shutdown. the shutdown cost $24 billion, money taken right out of our economy. but how about some straight talk on the health care law. >> average americans, their families were also feeling the pain thanks to the health care overhaul train wreck. and six of them, they're here with us tonight. >> let's see how much pain they're feeling. salon revealed their investigation ended that today.

they talked to the people supposedly getting gouged by obama care. it turned out none of them had even visited the insurance exchange. this is why president obama called on the american people to tune out the right wing media complex. >> all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict and focus on what the majority of americans sent us here to do. and that's grow this economy. >> all the right wing noise comes back to trying to make this president look bad. but we all know what's happening in reality. joining me now are michael eric dyson and maria teresa kumar. thank you both for being here. >> thank you, rev. >> thank you, reverend. >> dr. dyson, the right wing could find policies to disagree with, but they just want to make up their own facts, why?

>> you're so absolutely right. they're living in a parallel world. the world of facts suggests this government shutdown hurt the very people that supposedly they want to take care of. working class people. though they don't mention them. middle class people. government workers. 800,000-some strong. the reality is poor people were disadvantaged during the shutdown. people lost access to health care and on top of that, some people even lost their lives as a result of some of the extreme measures taken in observation of the shutdown. the reality is obama care was not the supposed victim of this shutdown. it was the american people. and even though they said they wanted to get at obama care, that wasn't on the table. all they did was get out there and show their right wing base they can be rebelliourebelliousy did nothing to further their agenda. >> maria, i want to get back to that segment on obama care on fox.

here's what the guest small business owners said. >> we've also cut back on hiring full-time employees because of the health care cost involved even though we'd love to do that. >> you'd like to hire full-time pleas. but you have to keep them below 30 hours. >> we have to. >> the salon investigation points out that obama care has no effect on businesses without 49 employees or less. salon spoke to the husband who said he only has four employees. the author asked why the cutback on his workforce. he says i have to deal with increased costs. what costs? and how i asked him is any of it due to obama care. there was a long pause after which he said he'd call me back. he never did. this man's business wouldn't be effected by the health care law, but fox was more than happy to

have them on to complain about it. how big a problem is misinformation, maria? >> it's a huge misinformation. if you start looking into that article itself, what they found is that people would save literally thousands of dollars by going into obama care. and by going to the exchanges and participating in the affordable care act. and unfortunately this mechanism of misinformation not only misinforms the american public, but at the same time i take issue with o'reilly when he's saying that the american people were not effected because of the shutdown but it was because of the obama care. the american people are not stupid. there is a reason congressional numbers are at its lowest because the american public could not be fooled. they recognize who's cutting it and who's making sure they can't get food on the table. the fact that you can lay off 800,000 federal workers overnight in one fall swoop. that doesn't make any sense.

>> dr. dyson, we know that there has been problems on the websites and signing up for obama care. but there's a big difference in websites messing up and needing to be corrected. and in giving out blatant misinformation and twisting facts to where you just say things that are blatantly untrue. >> that's so true. let me correct myself. i said loss of health care, i meant a healthy salary. you're right. so technical glitch does not mean there's a problem with the program itself. it means there's some computer problems. when you try to get the knew operating system for apple, you didn't say let's throw the baby out with the bath water. you said let's fix the glitches. the reality is they don't want to confront the fact that what's wrong here is obama care, gop don't care. that's the reality. president obama has put forth an argument about the american public and balancing the budget. let's not hold the american people hostage according to our

narrow, parochial, ideological viewpoints. the american people are not dumb. they understand this congress, especially the right wing of it, held us hostage while they failed to be accountable themselves. >> 16 days. you know, maria, we've seen what happens when someone tries to pop the right wing bubble. they can't handle the troouth. take a listen. >> give me one damn program he said he'd cut. >> he's cut entitlements. >> not entitlements. one program. >> what do you want to yell for? >> because you're lying. >> i'm not lying. >> you are lying. >> you're getting special perks and breaks for yourself. so cut the crap and stop lying to the audience. >> you stop the crap. you don't know what you're talking about. >> the problem is now that you have a law that's been passed that's legitimately passed and upheld by the supreme court that's falling apart. >> sure. >> it's falling apart.

>> that's not clear, bill, that's not clear. >> it's clear to me. if you hang around for the next segment, we'll prove it to you. >> they scream all kind of things. you try to say any information, again, they will not deal with facts. >> well, just because you scream loudest doesn't mean you're right. and what the american people are starting to realize, the reason there was such technical glitches because of the 15 million americans desperately wanting access to health care went into a system that wasn't expecting such high traffic. it doesn't translate into what a large demand there is for health care. how can we be productive and provide people with the information they need so they can make their own decision. they want obama care to fail so badly that they actually prefer their audience not to take advantage of a system many need instead of giving them the freedom and the choice which is the rhetoric we hear from that

side of the aisle, the choice and the freedom to make their own decision. >> i've got to go, but will the american people remember these 16 days of hostage taking as you say? >> absolutely they will. they will remember the president stood firm. he stood on behalf of the american people. he made sure their interests were put front and center and said i refuse to negotiate. we know this man is inclined to be bipartisan and negotiate more than others. but he held firm at the line. because he knows the fate of the american public was at stake. >> michael eric dyson and maria teresa kumar, thank you for your time. still ahead, ted cruz coming to a punchline near you. he got the stephen colbert treatment last night. you'll want to see this next. for teaching us that you can't create the future... by clinging to the past. and with that: you're history. instead of looking behind...

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there's an old saying history repeats itself first at tragedy second as farce. you never want to be a punchline, but the republican party is giving comedians all kinds of material. first it was this hilarious "snl" music video mocking john boehner and michele bachmann for the shutdown. and now it's stephen colbert's turn. here he is at the al smith dinner last night. >> as a journalist theodore white put it, the dinner is.

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the lands' end no iron dress shirt. starting at 49 dollars. it's time for reply al. remember, friend or foe i want to know. don writes with the shutdown, will there be any winners in the long run? well, the american workers lost. 800,000 furloughed. though they will get their money back, we will never get in our heads and shouldn't get in our heads a comfort level we're going government by crisis. in the long run we all win if we say this is enough. we will not tolerate this kind of circus again. if we don't, if we forget, then we all lose. finally tonight, the far right

tried to push to delegitimatize the president. they tried to make him the other. but threw it all, he stays focused on the american people. in my new book "the rejected stone," i talk about digging deep to find strength. i'm excited about my new book. if you'd like to read an excerpt, please go over to our facebook page. facebo facebook.com/politicsnation and find details about my next book signing. i'll be in chicago on monday at noon. i'll be at the museum 7:30 that night. hope to see you all there. remember, dig deep. you'll find the real strength to overcome society barriers and personal barriers. the book is two dimensional. i talk about my personal rejections and my society

rejections. "the rejected stone." thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now. confederacy of hate. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this. fight, fight, fight. that's the echo of this week. you hear it in every remark or grunt from the hard angry right. they call themselves the american people as if the majority that voted for president obama are an invading force of others or group of l s lesser americans. it's that fight again. i once think of a man standing at the robert lee mansion yelling to