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a make-or-break week for president obama. let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm mike barnicle in tonight for chris matthews. leading off tonight, obama's big moment. president obama is facing, perhaps, the most important and consequential week yet of his presidency. it all begins with health care in his speech to a joint session of congress tomorrow night. then there's afghanistan. the september 11th anniversary.

stubbornly high unemployment and growing unease about the deficit. add to that the sense that the president is being shaped by events more than he is shaping them. whether he can turn that around may say a lot about how successful a president he will be. virtually every republican has decided to just say no to anything the president proposes. plus he's faced with this inconvenient truth. liberal democrats won't vote for a health care plan without a public option. moderate democrats won't vote for one with it. two congressional democrats who fall on either side of this issue will be here in just a moment. also, was the white house asleep at the switch when the right wing attack machine went after the president on all fronts? they translated health care reform into death panels and killing grandma and turned today's back to school speech into socialist indoctrination. the white house seems flummoxed by the attacks and now says it's

going to fight back. we'll see. speaking of death panels which don't exist, sarah palin won't stop saying they do. she just wrote that the accuracy of the term has been vindicated. it hasn't but that hasn't stopped her and we'll debate that later. finally, after serving seven years in prison, former congressman jim trafficant has managed to compare himself to, of all people, nelson mandela. that's where it belongs in the "hardball" sideshow. we begin with president obama's big moment. chuck todd is nbc news chief white house correspondent and political director. jonathan martin is politico's senior political writer. gentlemen, let's start with you, chuck. you know better than most, chuck, i've been around a long time. i've got to tell you, this furor over the president's school speech to students, the continuing jam over which democrats are with him on health care, which aren't and the continuing prognostications about all the different polls out there, is the obama presidency at an end? what is going on here?

>> reporter: well, i think, you know, i talked to one outside democratic adviser to this white house and it was put to me this way, that, look, they are aware that in many ways this fall and how -- and frankly, it starts tomorrow, that the white house and the president, himself, is taking a character and leadership test. that this is a moment in time for him to show he can take control of a debate, he can take control of his party. he can figure out a way to cut through some of the problems of sausage making inside of his own party and maybe not about figuring out how to stop polarization among the two political parties. i don't think any one person can end that, but in a minimum becoming a leader, leading his own party out of this health care jam, if you would. i don't think they would describe it as a mess, but it's clearly a political jam. there's only one person that can lead him out of it.

so i've asked some -- in many days, if they look at tomorrow's speech as a chance to test his character and show off his character that that might be a step in the right direction in fixing this perception problem, mike, that i think you're hitting at. >> jonathan, what are you hearing in your reporting? we hear from some sources that the president is going to step up to the plate and, you know, get a little tougher than he has been in the past. he's got a problem clearly with speaker pelosi or some issue with speaker pelosi. seems to be a split with majority leader steny hoyer. what are you hearing? >> well, chuck, as usual is exactly right. the fact is this president is not going to be able to transcend the partisan divide in this country. it's apparently gotten worse. it's not gotten any better. where he can be successful is by trying to get his own party in line in finding some consensus among congressional democrats. if he can do that, that's going to lead to a victory on health care. that gets him past his first hurdle. i talked to a lot of democrats today, mike, for a story that

i'm doing. they are flummoxed themselves because of this right-wing attack machine you mentioned. the fact is if you're the president of the united states and you're in the white house, do you engage these folks on the right wing or ignore them? if you ignore them you've got the sort of death panels that start setting in. if you engage them, does that diminish your office? it's a really tough question. clearly it was a very tough summer in large part because the white house didn't know what to do with some of these forces on the right that earlier drove the conversation on health care. >> chuck, that gets to, you know, back to the school prayer thing i mentioned at the top. i found the controversy over it kind of depressing. sort of people out there having no confidence in their own parenting skills no matter what the president would say in school. it's easy to get isolated in the white house. we all know that. yet, there are elements of that

debate where the president was going to say, wash your hands, respect your teachers, do your homework, respect yourself, and for that message to be so misconstrued out there, are they aware of how incendiary this stuff is? >> well, i tell you, you know, in many ways, it's my understanding, you know, yesterday the president went to cincinnati, afl-cio picnic. everybody came away and went, whoa, where did that guy come from? all of a sudden candidate obama was standing in for president obama. he was fiery, he was -- looked in a good mood but sort of stern and seemed to just want to -- want to light the supporters, you know, on fire. get them fired up. get them behind him rallying him almost in campaign mode. i'm told in many ways because he, himself, was frustrated by how this school speech was treated. the white house had this attitude, look, they were blowing it off. last week robert gibbs referred to it as this is the silly season trying to be dismissive

of it. not any more. these guys want to engage directly now on some of this stuff. go ahead and take some of these folks on. it may be a fringe in their mind that is starting these stories but the problem they've got is when you have 20% to 25% of america, eventually that's the message they get is from that fringe. then they feel like they've got to beat this back because they can't -- they can't be having 20% to 25% of the population not getting their side of the story at all. >> jonathan, before you jump in on what chuck was just telling us, let's listen to president obama, a bit of it yesterday in cincinnati. >> and because we're so close to real reform, some in the special interest are doing what they always do which is just trying to scare the heck out of people. but i've got a question for all these folks who say, you know, we're going to pull the plug on

grandma and this is all about illegal immigrants. you've heard all the lies. i've got a question for all those folks. what are you going to do? what's your answer? what's your solution? and you know what? they don't have one. >> jonathan? your thoughts, please? >> well, i've always thought when this president gets further away from that building that chuck's standing in front of right now, he's much more effective. there's something about the marvel in washington that sort of takes the fire away from this president. once he's out there in a place like cincinnati talking to organized labor, for example, this summer when he was campaigning for jon corzine in new jersey, you saw a similar, more sort of campaign-style president. he's much more effective. part of the challenge was he

wasn't spending all summer in that public campaign mode. a lot of the negotiations were behind closed doors with the american hospital association, with members of congress. it was more of an inside game. he was not sort of doing the outside game at full force all summer long like he was there yesterday in cincinnati. look, i think the back to school episode, mike, that you mentioned and this whole van jones incident, the white house adviser that was forced out over the weekend. if those two incidents are not sort of opening the eyes of a lot of folks in this white house about the still resonant power of the right wing in this country, i don't know what's going to. >> chuck, health care tomorrow night. power of the right wing. barack obama's president of the united states. there's a certain element of power there. >> reporter: there is. i think what you're going to see tomorrow is this. if the speech is successful, mike, joe and jane in kansas city, missouri, are going to be able to tell you what president obama's health care plan is, period. so then if that is what happens

tomorrow and he successfully can do that, outline how to pay for it, outline how things should be covered, even deal with this issue of the public option, he may deal a little bit with the issue of bipartisanship, but i don't think they're going to get into political process a lot. i really think it's going to be about the specifics of what reform would look like after it's implemented. trying to get folks to focus on that. i think we're starting to see, today was a lot of sausage making happening today here on capitol hill on pennsylvania avenue. behind the scenes you're starting to see what's going to happen. on this issue of public option, it's never going to die. it may not be implemented. it is now going to be -- we call it a trigger. it's actually a terrible term to try to explain. the threat of the public option on private insurance. that is a belief that centrist democrats are buying into and it may be enough to keep the left who really want a public option to say, okay, you know, and that's where they're coming together.

that looks like where everything seems to be coming together today, which by the way, the big victory for public option advocates, because you know what we're not talking about? this idea of the co-ops. remember the kent conrad idea, granted try to explain that in 30 seconds and i won't. that seems to have faded. >> yeah. try 30 days you couldn't explain it. jonathan, you agree with chuck on that? >> i was going to say chuck's points are very, very shrewd. i think politically what the trigger does, it provides cover for liberal democrats who have gone out on a limb and said, look, there's no way we can support a bill with no public option. if they contain the trigger language, those democrats, those progressives, can make the argument i'm still voting for a bill that has public option language in there. at the same time you bring home the moderate democrats in the senate from red states who are wary of a public option. >> chuck, before we go, this is a rather sensitive issue. i wonder, is there any sense

within the white house that you hear, that you pick up, that they think race might be a part of this argument against everything that the president does? >> reporter: in the- -- even on background they will never touch that. >> right. >> reporter: they don't want to go near it. they don't want to be accused of crying race. remember, it would come up in the campaign and you would have back and forth sort of accusing them. oh, look, by saying something might have to do with race, obama's playing the race card. there would be -- they're very concerned. they don't ever want -- they will never talk about it as an excuse. outside, advisers, outside advisers to this white house that's usually the quickest way they go to it. they say, if you look at these polls, it's the southern, it's mostly, you know, you look at the school speech. it was a lot of -- it was places in the south that were reactive. so you get a lot of people saying, hey, two plus two plus two plus two eventually equals eight here and maybe it has to do with something with race. this white house doesn't want to touch that. >> right. that is both interesting and

depressing, gentlemen. chuck todd, jonathan martin, thanks very much. coming up, president obama's biggest challenge tomorrow night may be getting his own party to get on the same page about health care reform. we'll talk to two house democrats. one who is demanding public option and one who's more willing to compromise. that's next. as i get older, i'm making changes to support my metabolism. i'm more active, i eat right, and i switched to new one a day women's active metabolism. a complete women's multivitamin plus more for metabolism support. and that's a change i feel good about. new from one a day. spend 10 minutes a month with natural instincts. it's the healthier way to blend away gray. how? it's antioxidant rich and ammonia-free. in fact the more often you use it, the healthier your hair looks. natural instincts, it's all good.

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welcome back to "hardball." will congress pass a health care bill that doesn't include a public option? congresswoman chellie pingree, a democrat from maine. gerry connolly a democrat from virginia.

two people on the same sides and yet maybe not on the same side so much. congresswoman pingree, let's start with you. if there is no public option included in the bill that hits the house floor at some point down the road, will you vote for it or against it? >> that would be a tough one for me. i've already said i would vote against a bill that doesn't have a public option. it's a huge issue to me in terms of really reforming health care. frankly, for my constituents, many of whom still think we should have a single payer health care plan, this is middle ground, moving to the right. they're very worried about the debate going on. i would be concerned if they don't have a public option. >> you're not going to tell me how you'd vote, yes or no, right? >> today i'd vote no. i mean, you know, you never know what the next configuration would be, but i signed on to a letter saying i wouldn't vote for a bill with a public option. i wanted to be -- without a public option. i wanted to be very clear to the president and my colleagues that in my experiences on health care i come from maine, we've done a lot of work with insurance companies. what i hear from people is, you know, why would you want to help

out the insurance companies? that's where the problem is. when people say to us, well, it won't be a level playing field if you don't -- if you put a public option in, you know, i have to say, i didn't get elected to make sure insurance companies made huge profits. the ceos got big salaries. i'm here to make sure we have an equitable plan so people can afford their health care and we really expand it and have major reform. for me right now that is essential. >> congressman connolly, public option doesn't hit your hot button in terms of final version of the bill, does it?

we get to negotiating with the senate, we will already have moved too far in what will be a complicated conference process. so while everybody kind of wants to know today, declare where you are, what are you going to do here, you mentioned it earlier. this is sausage making. there's a lot of complicated maneuvering going to have to go on to get us from here to there. i think everybody knows the president wants to pass a bill. this congress wants to pass a bill. at least for me, with whatever dispute went on with our constituents this summer, the one thing i heard loud and clear was, get this fixed. work together. find a solution.

>> mike, if i could add to that, in some ways it's an academic question. i think chellie and i would agree. it's highly unlikely anything would pass the floor of the house of representatives without a strong public option. >> congressman gerry connolly. congresswoman chellie pingree. thank you very much for your views. up next, former ohio congressman, jim traficant is out of prison and has advice for all us of. ♪ oh, so delicious who cares? jell-o sugar free pudding. every diet needs a little wiggle room.

love that must circumstance i just lot of it. back to "hardball." time for the sideshow. first, shout it from the mountaintop. former governor rod blagojevich was on the "today" show to talk events that led to his

impeachment. >> you're not this person and you believe that you want to tell the people who hired you and trusted you that you didn't let them down. you look for the highest mountaintop you find and you want to shout out, "it just ain't so." no one hears you if you're on top of the mountain. next best thing is to write a book. if what i'm saying is true is true and the tapes will bear out what i say. it's the prosecution that will not allow us to have the tapes heard publicly. if what i say is true is true, somebody is lying here and it's not me. if a governor was stolen by office by false accusations knowingly given, then something is serious ly upside down. that's what the story of this book is. >> i tell you what is not upside down is his hair. great hair. watch blago's turn on "hardball" this monday the 14th. speaking of trouble with the law, former congressman jim traficant got out of the slammer

last week after serving seven years on corruption charges. he gave a speech at his welcome home bash invoking who else, nelson mandela. trafficant put his own twist saying, quote, if you want to know the true nature of a country you must go through its prisons. i know america, identify seen the other side of it and i don't like it. unquote. traficant told supporters the government, quote, had to cheat to convict him. unquote. back in 2002. he plans further major announcements by the end of the week this week. moving on, the "politico" is out with its list of the top washington, d.c., area party animals. guess what? "hardball" regulars made the list. margaret carlton of "bloomberg news." "vanity fair's" chris hitchens and, of course, howard fineman of "newsweek." crazy, crazy party animals, all of them. they've got it all written all over them. joe kennedy ii announced this weekend he will not be running for his uncle ted's senate seat in massachusetts which means no kennedys are in

the mix in that special election. you could call this the end of an era. how long has massachusetts had a kennedy in congress? about 62 straight years. there was a brief blip between 1961 and 1962 when jack kennedy became president and ted kennedy won a special election to the senate, but it looks like the 62-year streak of massachusetts-based kennedys in congress has come to an end. that, 62, is tonight's "big number." up next, why is the conservative right so angry at everything president obama does, from his speech today to schoolchildren to his efforts to reform health care? the right wing attack machine is powered up against the president's every move. what the white house can do to combat it, next. you're watching "hardball" only on msnbc. ♪ ♪ to my family [ female announcer ] clean you can see.

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here's what's happening a. "new york times" reporter kidnapped in aifgs now free. nato troops freed the journalist an giktd the taliban this weekend while trying to visit the scene of a recent airstrike. meanwhile, u.s. military officials say taliban forces killed three marines and one navy corps man in an ambush tuesday part of a training teamworking with the afghan army. focus is on president obama's address to a joint session of congress seen as attempt by the white house to lay out a more definitive position in the debate over health care reform. the space shuttle "discovery" has undocked from the space station. the white house says nasa's plans for another moon shot are a no go and concluded the effort

would be too expensive. welcome back to "hardball." the right wing attack machine ginned up fights against president obama on just about every front from his efforts to overhaul health care to his work in rescuing the economy to his back to school speech, today, to students. so has the white house ignored these attacks for too long? what do they need to do at this point neutralize them? pat buchanan, msnbc political analyst. david corn, washington bureau chief for "mother jones." pat buchanan knew mother jones. so let's start with you, pat. >> i also was part of the right wing attack machine. >> pat, we were speaking earlier, chuck todd was on earlier from the white house.

i told him i have been amazed at the furor that has developed over president obama's speech today to students. high school and some grammar school students, basically saying do your homework, wash your hands so you don't get the flu, respect your parents, respect your teachers and respect yourself. what is going on? what is the deal here? >> well, there's nothing wrong with the speech, itself. it was a good speech to students. i'll tell you what it's all about, mike. the atmosphere and the politics in this town are thoroughly poisoned across the board right now. this was just an occasion where barack obama said he's going to talk to the students and all the sudden the students had these workbooks they were going to work on. mike, back in 1991, george bush first went out to alex deal junior high school right up the street. he was attacked by the "washington post" of using students as props. and turning the school into a media studio. lamar alexander education secretary called to the hill. the gao ordered to investigate

the whole thing. it's a poisoned political atmosphere. this was dropped into the middle of it. >> david, how did it get so toxic? how? >> well, i -- if you remember back to the campaign, i would go to these mccain/palin rallies. there were people there attacking barack obama, literally saying he's a communist, hangs out with terrorists, that he's not legitimate, he's not a natural-born citizen, could never become president if elected. there is the slice of the public out there, 5%, 10%, 15%, listen, they're wackos. it's that clear. they cannot stand this guy. they'll fight him on every front. these are not policy battles. you have people like sarah palin, what's she doing today? out there insisting the health care reform bill does include death panels though the aarp, the ama and expert groups that have looked at the issue say they don't include death panels. this is irrational behavior driven by obama hatred and

people who can't accept him. you have to at least question whether for some of those people, not all, but for some of them there is a racial element to it. >> look, what has happened with barack obama is he's gone from 70% to 50% in his health care proposal. it's not 15% against it. it's a majority of the country that's against it. you have tremendous numbers of people coming out. 2,500 people show up in the middle of august in reston, virginia, a laid-back community, to shout at the former chairman of the democratic party. the point is, mike, this country's very nationally polarized over health care. obama has lost the cachet that he's had. it's not simply rush limbaugh that's done that or the folks over at fox news. it is the country that's losing confidence in this guy. >> listen, the polls still show a majority believe in health care reform. that 70% or so favor a public option. i mean, it's not as if there's a popular revolt. there are people being vocal.

holding up signs accusing him of lennonism and they're getting on tv and causing a great right wing -- >> that's probably because we're putting them on tv. let's talk about those death panels, for example. what sarah palin said today is exactly right. the whole health care proposal cutting costs is leading to rationed care. in the last six months of life where all the expenses are done. people are going to be told, there are procedures, there are drugs and there are surgeries which we're no longer going to give you. in cases with people with alzheimer's, these decisions are going to be made. is the phrase "death panels" in there? no, it's not. >> wait a minute. wait a minute. pat, david, wait a minute. wait a minute. we have an update on sarah palin. she was invited to testify before the new york state senate aging committee. she refused. instead of testifying she submitted written testimony and said, basically, that death panels would be included. she wrote, quote, a great deal of attention was given to my use of the phrase "death panel" in

discussing such rationing despite repeated attempts by many in the media to dismiss this phrase as a myth. its accuracy has been vindicated. >> all right. let me tell you exactly what she meant by these, which was in the bill and which baucus says is now out of it. if you've got, say, some cancer and it spreads, say, to the liver. in that case you get an authorized individual paid by medicare who comes to your house and gives you your options. if you are alone, one of those options, one of those resources. hold it. wait a minute. in oregon they have a death or dignity law or give them a pamphlet to visit those folks? >> listen, i'll give you this piece i'm holding in my hand. ap, no death panel in health care bill. the national right to life committee that you usually agree with, pat, they say there are no death panels. there's nothing mandatory. this is end of life counseling. that is only voluntary. there's no such thing as a death panel.

sarah palin is not correct. the ama, the aarp -- no one says they're there. >> i no. all these different guys -- >> no one says it but you and sarah. >> pat, go ahead. >> the phrase "death panels" is not in the legislation. >> the entity is not. >> the entity, you say, is not there. an individual who is authorized and paid by medicare finds out that your cancer has spread, they're authorized to come and tell you what your options are. hold it. in a legislation which is designed to cut health care costs in the last six months of life. >> it's voluntary, pat. end of life care, you can get it. that's all it says. >> you don't ask for it. they come to the house. >> no, it's voluntary. you have to -- >> let me ask -- let me ask both of you guys this. let's get away from the specifics of what's in the bill, what's not in the bill. go to one of my cockamamy theories. pat, you first. here's my theory. a large element of what's going

on out there in the country right now has to do with the fact there's structural change being suggested. a lot of people don't like change of any kind. structural change is somewhat threatening. the threat of structural change in addition to the dialogue and rhetoric pumped out over the last several months about it has injected a large element of fear in a lot of people in this country. >> you're dead on, mike. >> fear seems to be driving the dialogue. >> mike, you are dead on. here's what folks are hearing out there. they did hear the phrase death panel. that's not in the bill. what they're hearing is obama says, you know, half of all expenses are in the last six months of life. we've got to cut those costs. $500 billion has got to be cut out of medicare. you have folks in their 70s and 80s out there and saying, what is he talking about? you hear about advisers going to come to your house voluntarily and all this. if that is what's causing the fear and apprehension and sarah palin captured it when she used that phrase, admittedly it's not

in the bill, but obama hasn't explained it and he says that part of the bill is going out. why did they run away from it if it's a good idea? >> pat, you're giving sarah palin credit for making something up that happened to hit a chord with people who were worried. that's called demagoguery. that's not something -- i mean, she's making stuff up. it can't be taken out of the bill because it was never -- >> it is in the bill. the death panels -- how can you describe it -- >> you've already conceded there's no such thing as the death panel in the bill. to mike's larger point, i think barack obama did, indeed, represent change to a lot of people. i think not just change in health care but change in the economy and financial regulation and lots of things and also i think cultural change. he represents -- he has a wider view of america, trying to make -- i think a lot of people share.

this minority -- it is still a minority -- are responding against him in a very volatile way. they're easily whipped up by sarah palin and other conservatives. >> pat, let me ask you, if you were in the white house, as fearful a thought as that is, that would put a lot of fear into it. >> i've been in three of them, mike. >> i know that. if you were there today, how would you handle, how would you tell the president and his people to handle the threat, the rhetoric, the incendiary stuff, the polarization, the toxicity in our politics? how would you tell him to handle it? >> well, i think he's gotten behind the curve. there's a lot of things that are out there. let's take this so-called advisers. he immediately said, that's going to be out of the bill and so did the finance committee. those things are going to be gone. the very fact they ran away from it i think contributed to the nervousness, the apprehensions this may be true. what i would have done early on, i think obama should have defined the bill, himself. he's got about five of them sitting out there. there are things different in

each of these things. the opponents are going after him very effectively, hammering him and he's on the defensive on all of these issues. he's gotten behind the curve completely. i would advise him to do what he's going to do wednesday night. i wonder if it's not too late to get a majority bill. >> i agree with pat buchanan. i'm waiting for the lightning bolt. but one of the -- i would add to that that, you know, when barack obama had a chance to define the health care debate and define the health care plan as his, he didn't do that. instead he allowed health care reform to become equated with congress which has approval ratings about half of his. he took the less of the popular political entity in town and said they are the guys and gals really in charge of health care, not me. i think that has hurt him from the get-go. he's the one who had the standing and popularity going into this episode to sort of say, i have a plan, this is what i'm going to fight for. i'm going to explain it to you clearly.

i'm going to push congress as best i can to deliver what i think is best. that would have been a much closer to winning strategy. he's playing catchup. >> mike, what has happened is the opponents have taken pieces of it and defined the bill for the country and the bill they've defined has been losing support steadily going down, down, down, down. >> pat buchanan, who knew mother jones and david corn, who worked for mother jones. >> i think he dated mother jones. >> thank you. up next, president obama's big speech tomorrow night. how can he unite his own party to agree on health care reform? "the politics fix" is coming up. welcome back to "hardball." ] the deeper you clean, the cleaner you feel. olay deep cleansers go beyond what the eye can see.

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welcome back to "hardball." time for "the politics fix." david gregory, moderator of "meet the press." ron brownstein, atlantic media's political director and columnist for "national journal." david, david, david, let me ask you this. now, it's as if i've come in and landed from another planet. i'm seeing the president of the united states attacked for basically telling kids to do their homework and brush after every meal. i'm being told that tomorrow could be a break or make night for his presidency on health care. i heard harry reid, the senate majority leader this afternoon basically saying the public option, maybe it will happen and speaker pelosi standing along side of him saying, no, it has

to happen. what's the deal tomorrow night? what does the president have to do? what's he going to do? >> i think the primary thing he's got to do is get the american people on board and try to persuade them and really drum up for public support for this than exists. the problem with august is the debate got off the rails. the white house knows it. the white house understands at this point there's too few people in america who have any idea who the president wants to do about health care. he's got to change that. he's got to make it something simpler, he's got to be able to own it. that at its very core is what tomorrow night is about. about reaching the american people. if he can do some of that, turn that around, he can apply a little more pressure, primarily within his own party. republicans may be too far gone now. within his own party he can wield more leverage. >> how is it this most articulate of presidents, this guy who took the country by storm based largely on his ability to give a speech and communicate with the public now

has this phrase "public option" out there and most people i know think it's something like take a bus or buy a prius. public option. how did this happen? >> first of all, it's important to recognize how tangental to the overall plan the public option really is. the best estimate of the congressional budget office, david and i talked about before. only 12 million people would be on the public option by 20129 compared to 190 million people in private insurance 16-1. a for those become such a litmus test for the left seems to me overstated. how did you get to this impasse? a fundamental contradictions between inside strategy and outside strategy. he tried learn from clinton in 1993, didn't want to be ov overdescriptive and give them the opportunity to find the water line in each chamber and get the bill forward out of the senate and house. the coast of that, that's worked reasonably well on the inside game until august. he did not have a specific

proposal to go to the country and say if you vote for health care, you will get x, y and z. without that, the grassroots conservatives opponents filled in the blanks even at a time the big institutions who have fought health care in the past including ama and pharmaceutical industry supporting him or largely neutral. in many way, the outside game was hurt by the strategy they those pursue in the inside game. >> david, off what ron just said, using facts, only 12 million people would be affected by the public option by the year 2019, i think those are the numbers he used, that practically begs the question of this white house, do they know what they're doing? >> i think the difficulty is, i talked with an astute republican today who made the point, this is like social security in this regard there, are so many moving pieces to it you're trying to sell all at one time. that's where the white house has gotten bogged down.

what is it they're ultimately selling on this thing? now, i think you'll hear the president talk about security and stability, which is what president clinton was selling in '94 when they got in trouble. i think you're right. the public option is a relatively small piece of it. two big pieces, how many people will you cover who don't now have health insurance and are you ultimately going to drive cost downs in the health care system. it doesn't look like it if the health care system is out of control and now you have more people in it with insurance that's a fundamental problem. the president can't get bogged down in all that. he has to find something he can deliver, he can sell and deliver. >> mike, may i just jump in? the irony, on those two points david mentioned there's substantial consensus how to proceed. in terms of expanding coverage, have a mandate on individuals to buy insurance with government subsidies to help them afford it. in return, the industry has to understood take reform denying

coverage based on pre-existing conditions. and broad agreement instituting moving away from paying for quantity to quality. and then creating an expedited commission to have the authority to try to move the experiments that work more quickly into law. that basic approach has a lot of support not only within the democratic party but the past for reform. and the broad consensus we'll see with groups like wal-mart and circumstance o meeting to talk about shared reform and talk about polarizing real but still secondary issues to the overall package. >> we'll be right back with more on "the politics fix," you're watching "hardball" only on msnbc. moisturizing body washes, you might as well be. you see, their moisturizer sits on top of skin,

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we're back with david gregory and ron brownstein. david, earlier in the show we had congressman david connolly of virginia on. he sort of liked the public option but he said it's not theology to him and his main intent in any legislation is to get to yes. so my question to you and ron, tomorrow night, how does the president of the united states get a majority of people in the house of representatives specifically to get to yes, and doesn't he have to get something out of this ordeal? >> well, look, i think the way

he does that is he says to liberals in his party, look, look what we've got here. are you going to be responsible for taking down health care reform? what we have in the way of an agreement now with the pharmaceutical company, the insurance companies, is something the likes of ted kennedy couldn't achieve over three decades of trying. so let's not -- you know the cliche, let the perfect be the enemy of the good. the other thing i think he's going to say whether he uses these words are not, hey, guys, do you think it's going to get easier to pass health care reform next year? do you think it's going to be more democrats after the midterm election? it's not going to get any better. let us pass something that's significant here and not take it down because we haven't achieved what we think is the only pure approach and try to build on it later. >> how pivotal is it, ron, tomorrow night in terms of the next three years of his presidency, in terms of the off-year election a year from now? >> i think the unfolding of health care is pivotal to the midterm and to the next three years. it's a test not only of his ability to lead the democratic