>> always a pleasure. >> i'm ed schultz, ezra klein is filling in for rachel maddow. >> thank you to you at home for sticking around for the next hour. the great rachel maddow is on assignment, back here tomorrow. now, last night republicans in three states and one u.s. territory, america samoa, were the latest to cast ballots in the republican presidential primaries and caucuses. so, who won? it's straightforward, right, you heard this, it was rick santorum, in fact we said so right on this very network. >> we now have a projected winner in mississippi, nbc news now projects rick santorum will win in mississippi. >> but time has passed a full day, so let's actually take a closer look at that mississippi vote. mississippi has 82 counties, had a total of 40 delegates up for

grabs. what you're looking at is how mississippi voted last night. all of the counties in purple, those are rick santorum counties. all the counties in green, mitt romney. so yeah, close race, but santorum took it. it was clear he had more votes, he had more counties and the end result proved it. 13 delegates for rick santorum, 12 for mitt romney. poor mitt romney. except that wasn't really the end result in mississippi. it might be a win for mitt romney. he got one more vote, it was not accounted for. one more vote from an unusually important voter. guy named henry barbour, you may not have heard of henry barbour, there is no reason you have heard of him. henry barbour is the nephew of former governor haley barbour and the national committeeman for the mississippi republican party. and even though rick santorum won mississippi last night, even though he won the popular vote there, barbour boosted romney to

13 delegates because he is a super delegate. his vote is one delegate. that made it a tie. they have two more super delegates, he will have eeked out a win in delegates despite losing the vote and counties. the same was true elsewhere last night as well. in terms of how many delegates were awarded, mitt romney won more than rick santorum did. chuck todd counted 42 delegates for romney, 38 for santorum. that means romney won the night or part of the night he needed to win in order to move closer to the nomination. now, romney hasn't always seem so strong in the primary he has won a lot of nights like that one. he is way ahead in the delegate count. it isn't even close. now, that is part of the new truth in the republican primary. there are two kinds of presidential primaries, in any given moment. there is momentum-driven kind and delegate-driven kind. if you're a president front-runner what you want is

momentum-driven election, put it away early by piling up one after the other in victor is. iowa votes for you, new hampshire, because you got new hampshire, get south carolina, then maybe super tuesday falls your way. suddenly the other candidates can't raise money, can't get any endorsements and begin dropping like flies. you win the race by momentum. all of a sudden you got everything and turn your attention to the general early, turn your money to the general early. that is pretty much what happened for john kerry in 2004. but it doesn't always go like that. sometimes you wind up in a long warfare race. fighting and scrapping for every delegate. that is where we are right now in the republican race. we have officially moved from momentum mattering to delegates mattering, one reason for that, one reason that rick santorum despite being strong in the polls, despite piling up victory, why he's expected to lose the race he hasn't built a campaign for delegates. as dan boll wrote, the absence

of a good delegate operation is a signal of a campaign ill-prepared for whatever might be coming. the failure of santorum to qualify for tuesday's ballot in virginia is an example what can thoop a small, under funded or disorganized campaign. in a place like ohio, you can see this playing out even though rick santorum lost to mitt romney by less than 1% of the vote, it was pretty much a tie, he got trounced when it came to delegates. thor than a quarter of ohio's delegates were off limits because he didn't have a delegate -- his campaign didn't fill out the paperwork. from this point forward in the republican race, it's all about delegate, nobody is dropping out quick. the holy grail are winner take all. even if you win by a half percentage point you get everything. there are only four winner take all contests left in the race.

rick santorum is in trouble because one of those is in washington d.c. on april 3rd. and in washington d.c., rick santorum won't even appear on the ballot. the funny thing about mitt romney's campaign, the strategy, model they are using, is people they want to be liked, their role models, the big brother they look up to is president obama and his campaign from four years ago. this is probably the only time when mitt romney will tell you at least maybe privately that him and his campaign are sitting there studying what barack obama did and trying to do the exact same thing with the exact same result. during the '08 race, there was a night dubbed super tuesday 2.0. on that night, hillary clinton not only won ohio, she won texas and rhode island, too, the only state barack obama one was vermont. listen what he said that night after losing in these crucial states. >> we do know that senator clinton has won rhode island and

while there are a lot of votes to be counted in ohio, it looks like she won there, too. i want to congratulate senator clinton for running a hard-fought race in both ohio and rhode island. we also know that we have won the state of vermont and so we want to say thank you. to the people of vermont. and we know this. no matter what happens tonight, we have nearly the same delegate lead as we did this morning, and we are on our way to winning this nomination. >> slightly differently, senator clinton you did a great job but we took a bunch of the delegates out from under you. even though barack obama had lost three big states or two big states in rhode island, he was focused on one thing, delegates. while he lost the votes, he was behind the scenes made sure he hadn't lost in delegates.

even though mitt romney lost alabama and mississippi, here is a message from his campaign today. "tuesday's results actually increased governor romney's delegate lead. opponents moves closer to their date of mathematical elimination." that sounds so final, doesn't it? this is a delegate fight now. when barack obama was in the midst of his own delegate fight he was prepared for it. his campaign hired a strategist. berman was the most respected authority on the dark art of delegate math. jeff berman and campaign manager put together a path for barack obama to get the nomination, a long path, a path for delegate slog, came down to that. delegates, delegates, delegates. joining us now is jeff berman, the aforementioned, he's the author of the new book "the magic number" about the fight in

which i think he reveals all his wizard-like tricks. jeff, thank you for being with us here tonight. >> hi, ezra, very good to be with you. >> this santorum campaign just hired a delegate director. at this point in '08 you had your job for a year. have they lost too much time? >> definitely it's a late time to be hiring a delegate director, but never too late so the question now is can they move fast enough and smart enough to make up for a lot of the lost ground. >> the odd thing about winning delegates, you bring it up in the book a little bit even once you win them or think you win them they're not necessarily yours, they can change their minds. that happened late in the '08 race, clinton was pursuing it after the mathematical path was impossible the hope was something would seem obama unelectable and delegates could leave them. can there be a late term switch in delegates if they see mitt romney as not enough strong

enough candidate or something comes out about him? >> there will be some actually quite a few delegates, i believe in the republican system who are technically unbound at various stages in the process, in particular in the caucus states. and then you do have super delegates also. >> and the super delegates are they enough to sway it or the type of leads romney is racking up can he actually -- can they move it if they go in one direction or there is just not enough of them to affect it at that level? >> it is somewhat different. we had roughly 850 super delegates and they are looking at a little over 100, so of course we had twice as many delegates, but still, proportionally we have four times as many as the republicans, so it will have less of an impact on their race, all things being equal. >> so the ron paul campaign has essentially been lying in wait for weeks now waiting for the

state and county conventions, they feel they can move what has been a very small amount of the vote to a larger amount of the delegates to exert power. i know you were involved back i '08, what can the ron paul campaign do here? >> i talk about the conventions that occur in the caucus states. and even in some of the primary states in the democratic side we had a few delegates who would be selected through that process. but i think that in his case, the problem is just that he doesn't have quite enough support to really have that kind of impact. perhaps a rick santorum, if he manages his delegates at these various conventions around the country, he could perhaps have a significant impact on the outcome from the caucus states through good management practices at the conventions. >> if you were advising the

santorum campaign, if they called you for advice, what would you tell them? >> i would tell them number one, they need to hustle up and get on the ball more than they have. number two, i would set up a small unit which is what we did, as i also talk about in the book, we set up a small unit of three professionals whose job was nothing but to work on those caucus states. and i'll tell in the republican process there is more than can be accomplished by knowing what you're doing, having a plan and implementing it. >> i like that idea of the super special delegate unit. jeff berman, author of the new book "the magic number" thank you for joining us this evening. >> thank you. next up, passing a bill to fix america's roads, bridges, rails and ports should be an easy thing to agree on. unless you're the current house of representatives under the leadership of john boehner. the biggest road block in american history with senator barbara, next.

guy, it's pi day. you know pi, the thing with circles. if you thought this show wouldn't commemorate something in this nerdy, i run wonk blog. stay tuned for news organized around trigonometry, won't you?

this used to be the easiest bill to pass on capitol hill. that's why the house public works committee has so many members. people couldn't wait to get on the committee to pass the bill every five years. >> that was illinois senator dick durbin. the bill he's referring to, the

bill formerly known as the easiest bill to pass on capitol hill? is the highway bill. senator durbin is right, once upon a time the highway bill was not only beloved by members of congress far and wide, after all there are potholes to be filled in everyone's district. it was routine. authorized spending on roads, bridges, railways, airports, spending that everybody agrees needs to be done. look, there are plenty of things we argue about whether or not the government should be doing. there is debate over the government should be making sure everyone has health insurance, we'll talk about that coming up. debate over whether or not the government should be going to space. it's not intrinsically obvious it's the federal government's role to put the first foot on mars. but there are a couple of areas where the government has an obvious role, things that everyone agrees the government should be doing. national defense and national infrastructure lead that list. these are public goods. pretty much everybody, no matter their political stripe, thinks the government should fund national defense and infrastructure.

don't take my word for it. listen to jim inhofe of oklahoma. this is not a guy who is big on government. this is one of the most conservative people in the senate, maybe in the entire world. but here he is. >> i say this to my conservative friends that you can -- a conservative in my opinion, should be a big spenders in two areas, national defense and infrastructure. >> two areas. national, i'll write that down. national defense and infrastructure. senator inhofe is putting his money where his mouth he co-authored the bill with barbara boxer. this makes the process sound like the mythic utopia of days gone by. it has not been that easy. the last long term highway bill to be signed in law was in 2005. it expired in 2009. that is a couple years ago. congress has been getting by with short term stop-gap

measures ever since. the highway bill might be the mascot for washington gridlock. today, in the senate, with 17 days to go lf the last stop-gap runs out, a two year highway bill passed. hallelujah, by a lot. the bill got 74 votes. still has to get through the house and that is where the problem is, how speaker john boehner has been trying to pass his own highway bill, trying and failing. two separate house versions have failed to win the support of the majority of members. at this point he seems near to giving up. he said he would take the senate bill or something like it if republicans can't agree on their own bill. it's anyone's guess if they will come behind the bill. the pressure is most certainly on. >> we are, i think now, about two weeks away from a total shut down. the house is away this week, they come back. they are staring at two weeks of a time frame. when you have a bill that gets

74 votes at a time when everything is so contentious, you're barely squeaking by on most of these votes, they ought to take a serious look at taking this bill up and passing it. >> if the house does not pass the highway bill in the section 17 days, bad things happen. they could try another stop gap, that would be the ninth short term extension since '09 when the last expired. as my colleague noted on wonkblog, transportation experts argue the bills have made it harder tore do infrastructure. say they can manage to pass a stop gap measure. if that happens, as of march 31st, states are no longer allowed to spend the money in the highway trust fund, literally not allowed, can't continue to build roads. mass layoffs in construction. roads that don't get fixed. america stops doing anything to improve or repair the crumbling

infrastructure. this could be the future, the very, very near future, if the house isn't able to pass the easiest bill to pass on capitol hill. joining us now is senator barbara boxer, co-author with jim inhofe of the highway bill. thank you for being here. >> thanks, ezra. >> we got in this a little bit in the intro, but you studied more, what happens if we go over the clip in 17 days, what happens if we don't pass a highway bill at all? >> you explained it very well. >> well, thank you. >> the end of the program for now it's gone. they can't even collect the gas tax, which goes b into the highway trust fund, and from there it goes really to private sector companies, that's why 11,000 businesses are holding their breath. 1.8 million construction workers are holding their breath. and i think your set-up piece, i couldn't have said it better it's now in the lap of speaker boehner and leader eric cantor

and i checked today, just before i came on the show, our bill will save 55,000 jobs in ohio. in john boehner's state. it will save 40,000 jobs in eric cantor's state. so, here you have those two leaders there, i would hope that they would not want to see more layoffs in these recessionary times we're finally getting out of slowly and painfully and should take up our bill and pass it. >> your bill, let's talk about the specifics for a moment. it's 108 billion over two years. >> 109 billion. >> that is two thirds the size of the infrastructure request in the president's budget. in a country where the estimated infrastructure gap is in the trillions, does it do enough, are we getting far enough in solving our problem? >> let me tell you that i would much prefer to see a larger bill, but i'm also a pragmatist.

i have to find the sweet spot. we can't pass a democrat only bill it won't happen in the senate. we must reach across the aisle and we did it and what we did is we kept the current level of spending, alleged inflation, but here is the great news, we also took a program called transportation infrastructure financing, and greatly increased that and the republicans and democrats agreed to do this, it's a leveragiing feature. it came from loss ang he less. they passed a sales tax to build. using the program they could count on the federal government to front that money, do those projects over 10 years. the so republicans and democrats embraced it. here's the thing.

it will in fact create up to a million new jobs. so i think because we were clever on using leveraging, this is a very best step forward and i say to john boehner, right on your show tonight, i don't know if he's watching the show or not. >> he always watches the show. >> i think he might be. stop that clicker, mr. boehner. take this bill and pass it! it got 74% of the votes in the united states senate. it's bipartisan, it's fair, it's good. and we need to fix the infrastructure, 70,000 bridges are deficient, 50% of our roads are not in good repair. this will put people to work, it will certainly boost up business because it goes to the private sector, the vast majority of the funds. >> let me ask you about the other side of the bill. we talked about the spending. the one things about taxes, we talked about republican bill, democratic bill, in the 80s when reagan had to do a infrastructure bill he put, he

created a nickel increase in the gas tax. the thing we funded the infrastructure bills, highway bills through gas taxes under the theory people who drive on roads should pay for them. that stopped happening in the bush years, it's not in your bill, to me it's a signal how far washington has moved on taxes. did you have any discussion with your colleagues on that? >> ezra, the gas tax was started a long time ago and still funds infrastructure. so we have in fact kept the gas tax, and dedicate the federal gas tax to the highway trust fund which funds our roads, our bridges and highways, along with state matching funds, that is how it works. we haven't turned our back on the gas tax, it's true we haven't raised it in a very long time for obvious reasons, because we don't want people to feel the pinch. we are facing a big problem here. because the good news is we're getting wetter fuel economy, the bad news is the highway trust fund then gets less money.

so we have to figure out another way to make sure that we can fill that trust fund because i believe and most of us believe at least that there ought toob dedicated source of funding making use of the user fees that we get. >> senator barbara boxer, democrat, california thank you for being with us tonight, congratulations on your bill today. >> house has to pass the senate bill! >> thank you, we'll see what happens here. >> okay. >> coming up, a political zen question, if newt gingrich falls in the forest and he doesn't hear it, is newt gingrich still standing? newt gingrich, chuck norris and monty python, something completely different, coming up.

the main stream media which partly means me has missed the biggest story of the election cycle. yesterday whether rick santorum won alabama and mississippi, he not only beat mitt romney and newt gingrich, and ron paul, but he also beat the unbeatable man. ♪ in the eyes of a ranger, the unsuspecting stranger had better know the truth from wrong from right." >> he bested chuck norris, the man who can slam a revolving door, can divide a number by zero.

who doesn't sleep, just waits. chuck norris endorsed newt gingrich. he recorded robo calls for him. the gingrich campaign put it on youtube saying chuck norris does not endorse, he makes reality. >> hello, this is chuck norris. as my wife gena and i watched the gop debate and went to their website, we were trying to decide which of the candidates would be best to do head-to-combat with president obama. i didn't say hand-to-hand combat even help to i think they would win there, too. gena and i decided newt gingrich would be the best man to beat president obama. >> the only problem is the people of alabama and mississippi didn't listen to chuck norris. perhaps they do not fear roundhouse kicks. but proving that there is a limit to the awesome power that he possess, we suspected that might be true. we suspected it after the 2008 endorsement.

>> when chuck norris does a push up he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the earth down. >> principle, authentic conservative. >> chuck norris doesn't endorse, he tells america how it's going to be. >> that would have been more true if what chuck norris told america is mike huckabee would drop out of the race and not be the next president. first huckabee, now gingrich. but look, you can't blame chuck norris. blame newt gingrich for being much less like walker, texas ranger, and more like another ledge end of the silver screen who that legend is is coming up next. [ cell phon e rings ] [ cell [ female announcer ] with secret outlast, conquer your busy day. ♪ burn! let's do it! hello, jenny! ♪

thank you. [ cellphone rings ] working on it. ♪ hi. hi. how are you? [ female announcer ] outlast your day, any day, with secret's 48-hour odor protection technology. new secret outlast.

last night newt gingrich lost two states that even his own campaign said he absolutely, positively had to win in order to become the candidate for president. in both alabama and mississippi, newt gingrich of georgia, georgia is in the south, of course, lost to rick santorum, a candidate who isn't even from the south. just last week, gingrich's spokesman rc hammond had the following exchange with the wall street journal. question, does he have to win alabama and mississippi to remain a credible candidate. answer, yes. >> he has to win? >> yes.

>> it's not at this point like losing is a waerd anomaly for gingrich. santorum is trailing romney. gingrich is way behind. newt gingrich wasn't chasing last night, he wasn't depressed or dejected, newt gingrich was defiant. >> because this is proportional representation we'll leave alabama and mississippi with substantial number of delegates, increasing our total going toward tampa. i emphasized going to tampa because one of the things proved is that the elite media's effort to convince the nation that mitt romney is inevitable just collapsed. >> watching that clips it appears newt gingrich and i are wearing the same tie. on the subject of campaign's collapsing, this is a picture of calista gingrich introducing her husband in rosemont, illinois. you can see the tie now.

i was racking my brain, wondering what does this speech remind me of, what is this like? i knew somewhere in the deep reaches of part of my brain that makes everything in pop culture metaphor, there is a perfect thing that newt gingrich and his campaign has become. but i couldn't quite place it. i couldn't get there, who is newt gingrich taking his inspiration from? newt gingrich would be the first to tell you he is a historian. newt gingrich can reach back to the great wars of the past wars, upright in the face of adversity, warriors who never gave up. but it took a tweet to remind you which great warrior of yore he's taking his cues from, the black knight. >> i move for no man. >> so be it! ♪ >> aah! >> hiaa!

♪ >> whoops. >> now stand aside, worthy adversary. >> 'tis but a scratch. >> your arm's off. >> no it isn't. >> what's that, then? >> i've had worse. >> you lie. >> come on you pansy. >> aah! >> victory is mine. >> thank me lord -- >> come on, then. >> what? >> have at you. >> you're brave but the fight is mine. >> oh, had enough? >> look you stupid bastard you have no arms left. >> it's just a flesh wound.

>> joining me is steve kornacki, as of today an msnbc political analyst, welcome and congratulations. >> thank you very much. >> newt gingrich is revered author of historical fiction where things that didn't happen in a logical chain of circumstances actually do happen and we see how it turned out. at this point could newt gingrich write an alternative historical fiction in which he goes to tampa and wins the nomination? >> it would go something like this, nobody has majority we go through the summer months and mitt romney and rick santorum are in plane crashes and newt gingrich is the only one left standing. even then i don't think he would get it. >> wouldn't everybody else have to be in a plane crash? what struck me about his campaign for a guy who was speaker of the house, led republicans to one of the most victories of the 20th century, the establishment hates him. they will not let that guy be president. >> he led them to one of the greatest victories they ever had

and made the brand politically poisonous like it's never been before and they remember that and we had reminders of that twice during the campaign when he was surging in the polls, both times, wasn't just romney, wasn't the romney super pac, every republican influential opinion-shaping republican who remembered the 1990s, they joined the pile-on or watched it happen and didn't speak up for gingrich. >> the weird thing about his role in the primary, he says he's there to take out mitt. he says he's like a mitt-seeking missile. and nevertheless, it helps mitt every day newt gingrich does not drop out because it splits the conservative anti-mitt romney vote. rick santorum, who gingrich seems to like very much, is anti-romney, which leads people to wonder is what gingrich doing not dropping out until rick santorum says yes, i will run with you on the ticket if i win the nomination? >> i don't even know if he has thought it out that much. who knows what he has thought at all. >> my sense is two things.

one, were tell me, both your arms fell off last summer. the second thing is he's probably thinking this primary process ends and mitt romney has the most delegates but is let's say 100 short of the magic number, gingrich has 200 delegates coming out of the process and there is suspense, can romney get the numbers, and gingrich is -- he's relevant, that is what he is. he might be looking ahead i want to be relevant when the big political story happens in june. that is my guess. >> i always wondered, he's a smart political mind, does he get how radioactive he is to the broader electorate, frankly the republicans, he's a crater, does he show sort of a self-consciousness about his role in the party? >> i don't think so. i think he has been rewarded for denying these things. anyone in his position who got pushed off the national stage

the way he did in 1998, leading the impeachment, anybody who pushed off the tapes like that, that's iet i'll be a lobbyist, he managed to win south carolina and georgia. he's not going to come close to the republican nomination, making a fool of himself, he has unbelievable capacity to bounce back. there is no shame there. >> no shame can be a powerful thing. >> steve kornacki, thank you for being here. >> sure. right after the show, on the last word, the always interesting always provocative academy awarn film maker michael moore will be there. speaking of mitt romney his greatest accomplishment in massachusetts is the one he's running away the fastest. what mitt romney did right, next.

>> still ahead we'll celebrate pi day, 3.14. 3.145358979322 --

they say it's better to be lucky than ton good. over the past few weeks, the romney campaign has been lucky. he passed a universal health care reform bill in '06 new numbers out of the base state show health care costs are

growing more slowly there than the rest of the station. in '02 and '06 employer sponsored health care rose 6% faster. from '06 to 2010, the period after romneycare, premiums for families increased 3% more slowly than the rest of the country. 9 point swing for them in the right direction. bully for romney. what good news. then, this week a new study came out that look at self-reported health in massachusetts. did romney care improve health of his constituents? oh, yes. the authors found improvements in "physical health, mental health" they found they were largest for the groups the law had done the most to help. for romney this is great news. i mean, fantastic news. to have such striking evidence

of the success of your central achievement come out in the middle of a heated presidential primary. man, that is luck, that is like sunshine and rainbows on your wedding day. and i went to mitt romney's website to see how they were celebrating these fantastic numbers and i clicked over to press released and nothing? i don't mean there were no press releases, there were plenty of press releases. here is mitt romney announces agriculture advisory committee. five questions for president obama. here is mitt romney proud to have support of so many in kansas. which seems like passive-aggressive. like and what about the rest of you in kansas? then i went to his health care page, maybe it was there. seemed an obvious enough place for him to put the triumph. his health care page never mentioned a fact mitt romney as governor of massachusetts passed and implemented the nearest thing to universal health care that exists in any state in the whole country.

never mentions it, like they forgot. or maybe like they are trying to hide it. which is crazy, because the health care plan he passed is working. providing health care to more than 95% of the state's residents, popular, improving health, may be controlling costs, but that is not the really weird thing. the really weird thing is romney's page spends time discussing health care plan, he calls it obamacare. mitt romney hates obamacare. here's the thing about the obamacare-romneycare linkage. mitt romney wrote an op-ed in 2009 which tried to persuade president obama to do health reform the way he did it in massachusetts. no other state made as much progress as massachusetts. then he got specific about what he wanted to do. "first we establish incentives for those uninsured to buy insurance using tax penalties as

we did or tax credits as others proposed. that encourages responsibility for themselves rather than pass medical costs to others." you catch that? you see what he was saying there? using tax penalties to push the uninsured to buy insurance. using an individual mandate. tax credits help them afford it that is in the bill. obama, who opposed an individual mandate in '09, he came around to romney's position. agreed with him, took his advice. at the end of the same op-ed, the federal government can do something we cannot. take step to stop or slow medical inflation. we will tame runaway costs only whether we change incentives." obama took his advice again, the bill is trying, it spends billions of dollars on comparative effectiveness to find what treatments work and what don't. that is how you find out what quality is. how medicare pays doctors to get paid for meeting targets rather than doing more. exactly what romney wanted. he took romney's advice and what

does he say? does he say he inspired national reforms. does he say a democratic president has to take his approach. on his website he wrote, when is the last time a massive government cost raised the consistency of a service? dude, i don't know when the last time was but your massive government lowered cost, raised the consistency of service. and obama followed your advice when he built his program. advice that said and i quote, the federal government can do something we could not. joining me now is johnathon grubber who helped mitt romney design his program and helped the obama administration help design theirs. he is the only author of a graphic novel that has ever been written. what it is, why it is necessary and how it works. good to see you. >> good to see you, ezra. >> you advised the authors of both of the bills.

you know the laws inside and out. is there a huge difference that accounts for romney signed one and is running against the other. >> it is no substantive difference. the core of the national affordable care act or obamacare is the same as what we did in massachusetts. it was based on and inspired by massachusetts. it wouldn't have happened if we didn't succeed in massachusetts. >> you follow the literature on health care reform and health care policy closely. in a lot of cases you are the literature in that. and you live in massachusetts. so i know you have a dog in this fight. tell me in your opinion, is romneycare working? do you think that is a fair read that it has been a moderately successful program. >> reporter: the goal of romneycare was twofold, cover uninsured citizens and we covered two-thirds of citizens. the insurance rate is 2 down 2% which is european levels and the

second was to fix a broken or nongroup insurance market n. that market since we passed this law we have lowered premiums by 50% relative to national trend. we have done this with broad public support. so, yes, it set goels and it achieved them. >> toward the end of romney's op-ed he said the federal government can do what states cannot. that there is a role for them and realign incentives. does reform care do this and take that advice? >> if you can think of the affordable care act as the core of romneycare and building on it in two ways. one is to raise the money to pay for it. romney doesn't talk about the fact that the program was paid for by the federal government. the federal government haven't that luxury. we had to pay for it. that is one way the federal affordable care act is more ambitious and the second is it tackles cost control which we didn't do in massachusetts. it wasn't a goal of our law. looks like we are lowering premiums. that's great but that wasn't the goal.

the federal bill is trying to through a number of avenues tackle the critical issue of health care cost control. >> johnathon grubber, graphic novel creator extraordinaire, thank you for being here tonight. >> thank you for having me, ezra. what would pi day be without pie charts and i refuse to allow that to happen. awesome pie charts are next.

>> did you love when we got to the delegate apportionment at the top of the show. are you in to the con benefit of the law of 2006? if so you are my kind of people. nerds, geeks, probably lovers of charts and have i have a pi day treat for you because this is pi day and every normal person loves pie, the an houring mathematical day of a sir call. it is what you get when you take the distance of a circle and twied it by the diameter when you do that you get pi. pi is kind of magical. it is a number that never stops, never loops, never repeats or ends. the numbers in pi go on and on and on. you can get a million of them on this website here. what you need to know for today is the first three digit of pi 3.14. today is march 14th or 3.14. this is pi day. happy happy happy pi day and this can't be the first time that someone wished you a happy pi day can it? people that aren't self aware can do things like run pi gauntlets they drop pie as though it were a ball in times square and rattle off as many digits of pi wild holding off toy guitars that they do not play.

>> 3.14, 92328464. 8884197169930582. >> that was kind of amazing actually. pi day is that kind of celebration. in certain circles circles whose diameters divide by their circumferences in equal pi of course. it is a big celebration. in my state a day when we novel at our favorite pi charts. this graph showing 70% of the voters backed sarah palin and 63% backed mike huckabee and 60% back mitt romney. if you add that up a lot of people are voting two of three times. the numbers should add up to 100 usually. particularly if you are doing

percentages. the next can be filed under meta it is a pie chart of what you are doing right now. what you are doing right now is reading this pie chart. here's parts of a pie chart. the big blue part and the tiny purple one. those are the parts. this chart has a first cousin once removed. this chart is known as a percentage and it's a favorite of mine. the percentage chart resembles pacman. it is divided in to the part that does resemble pacman and the part that does not resemble pacman. you can probably guess which is which. i think of this as the action pie chart. it shows the death star before and after rebel attack. this one is made of a pie chart made of pi. very funny and smart. somewhere mr. spock is smiling which makes me spiel. i'm off to eat some pie. rachel maddow will be back tomorrow. you can find more of my work with on wonkblog.c