good morning from new york i'm chris hayes, "the new york times" reports the obama administration and european allies will open a new round of negotiations with iran. what president obama has called iran's last chance to resolve the dispute over its nuclear facilities. and officials in oklahoma have arrested two white men in connection with a spree shooting friday in which five black men were shot, three of them fatally. police say they do not know whether race was a motive for the shooting. right now joining me today we have "newsweek" daily beast contributor writer, michelle goldberg. and richard canton, executive editor of "the nation.com" and playright and host of a radio show and jonathan alter, the author of the book "the

promise." great to have you here, jonathan. >> because the past week was, i think it was widely acknowledged the first week of the general election, i want to talk about what the race looks like to me. as the incumbent, president obama has a good-enough record to run on, passing universal health care coverage for the first time in the country's history. but the most central argument for re-election, a slowly-improving world economy is the one message that polling and focus groups show that voters are least receptive to. the president can't say that things are getting better because the electorate is still so anxious. soit so the president is pivoting. >> the congressional republican budget is something different all together. it's a trojan horse, disguised as deficit reduction plans. it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.

it is thinly-veiled social darwinism. >> we saw the president painting mitt romney as stiff and out of touch. >> he said that he's very supportive of this new budget. and he even called it marvelous. which is a word you don't often hear when it comes to describing a budget. it's a word you don't often hear generally. >> it seems to me like president obama has made a calculated decision to draw a contest between a rigid candidate and one who is more relatable and between an extreme party and one that's more moderate. a recent poll mayan an indication of how the strategy will play out. president obama leads mitt romney 51% to 42%. we also have some polling on women which is polling that has sort of dominated the headlines this week. we have the, do we have the swing state polling on women also? maybe not. there it is.

women voters in 12 swing states with a surprisingly robust lead, 54%, to 36%. i find the dynamics of the race really fascinating precisely because of that kind of paradox i tried to identify, which is the chief sort of rationale for re-election is we saved the economy from the great depression, now things are getting better. it's not good -- and he can't really make that argument in as full a very full-throated way. because it is not yet morning in america, there is still such a pervasive sense of economic anxiety. then the question is, what do you make your argument about. there's the weird thing i think by any objective standard, whether you agree with the policy or not, the president has gotten a lot done. whether you think those are good or bad things, there's a big record there. there's a big record of legislative accomplishment. a lot of things on the foreign policy front. some you may like, some you may not. but it doesn't look like the record is going to be the

foundational core of the re-elect. >> it's astonishing that the republicans, however much you disagree with them, are not deeply stupid people. have nonetheless decided to sign on to this radical budget. up to now, we've been hearing they want to fight this about obama. it's amazing to me that they in a way i guess give them credit for earnestness that they want to be up front. it's incredible they've put their names and staked their claim to a budget whose provisions are so unpopular with people. you looked at those swing state numbers, that's before i think people understand that romney has signed on to privatizing medicare kind of gutting medicaid. reducing discretionary spending after defense to i think .75%. >> the best part of the romney, the ryan budget is the notion that by 2050, by mid currentry, nonmilitary discretionary

spending would be zero. basically the government is doing nothing. >> even talking about discretionary spending, that's budget talk, that's washington talk. and the problem that obama is going to have, in stigmatizing the ryan budget and wringing it around mitt romney's neck is to take an abstraction and make it concrete. >> but that abstraction, getting rid of medicare, that's not an be a traction. >> they're not actually -- romney has kind of defended himself on medicare. not on medicaid, which the gutting of medicaid going to hurt a lot of seniors and who vote. and so obama can use that very profitably to explain to seniors that they're going to have to leave their nursing homes if the ryan budget passes and move in with their kids, that would be the effect of the ryan budget. but on medicare he's played a more skillful version of defense. because he, he recently endorsed

this ron widen/ryan plan which gives people a choice, even future seniors to stay in medicare conventional medicare, if they want. so he's going to be able to say no, i'm not gutting medicare. if you want to stay in in medicare, you can. the problem is that people assume that somebody else is going to get cut, not them. them getting cut is an abstraction. >> all of this is running against, i'm those as scary as this other guy and the democrats are not as scary as this party. which really pursuing social darwinism. chris you're right in one extent that obama does have a legislative record he can run on. but on the essential matter of inequality and how people team on the pocketbooks on the budget, 9 % of all the, 93% of all the economic gains in 2010 went to 1%. we still basically divide up the economic pie the way we did under george bush. he's put out a lot of proposals,

but there hasn't been any real fundamental change on tax, the code for example or on the amount of entitlements, so that, that is you know, going to be troubling for him. >> although i don't, i think that overstates a little bit the case to which, two things. i agree, i mean i agree it's a fact that the way that income gains are distributed are highly skewed and have been skewed for a long time and that's not been mitigated in the obama era and in fact it's been exacerbated. >> the fact you do see this kind of distance between the headline economic numbers which look good and the way people feel is precisely because the gains in the economic recovery have been so skewed in their distribution. that said it's remarkable when you look or list the legislative accomplishments of the president, take the domestic policy level, a recovery act, and there's a lot of stuff in the recovery act that's amazing. a lot of spending for the poor. research on batteries, the

recovery act, the affordable care act and dodd-frank, we cover it probably as much as anyone in cable news are bad and don't get the job done. but that's a massive record of legislative accomplishments. >> it's the biggest record since lyndon johnson. people say i long for bill clinton. his legislative record is like this compared to obama's. >> people don't feel. >> part of it is because the affordable care act, which conviction in in 2014. >> i think president obama is framing a narrative. i don't think this election is going to be won on a record, i think it's going to be won on a narrative. they're framed, not based on facts, they're based on perception and feeling. if you're talking about the distance between the fact and a record, about an improving economy, versus the feeling of a populace that does not reflect the fact. you're not talking about the

reality of the record, i think you're talking about the perception and the narrative. >> i think ultimately the engine of self-governance, democratic representation should link at some level. and the fact to me it seems the place where we get anchored to the bedrock of economic reality is the economy improving that's what all the political science models say about predepicting. >> but two challenges, one is that the 2008 campaign will become a fresh narrative as we work into this re-election campaign and that was about the possibility of what america can become under this particular president. and so even with shoring up what they're doing throughout the states for this campaign, is about going back to the reality. and that i think this specific election won't be about the way the record breaks down and it won't be about the foreign policy and the domestic policy gains. i think it will be about who is

best placed to frame a narrative about where america feels is going in the next four years. >> it's a referendum on obama he could very well lose. >> yes. >> it's a comparative judgment between two different visions, radically different visions of the country, he has a chance. >> he's using language that republicans have used towards him. talking about this radical vision and he puts socialism in that. >> let's talk about that and the gender overlay that has encapsulated the race after this. [ male announcer ] this is genco services -- mcallen, texas. in here, heavy rental equipment in the middle of nowhere, is always headed somewhere. to give it a sense of direction, at&t created a mobile asset solution to protect and track everything. so every piece of equipment knows where it is, how it's doing or where it goes next. ♪ this is the bell on the cat. [ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities --

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the democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that republicans have a war on cater pi er pierp

we'd have a problem with caterpill caterpillars. >> talking about the war on women. and i think this is such an interesting story that's developed. the background is that republicans do poorly with women in national elections. mccain lost by 13 or 14 points among women. they need to do better in order to win a national election. and then there's a series of discreet moments, the komen foundation, the planned parenthood thing. the aca regulatory issuing that said that birth control had to be issued even among religious employers. >> and rush limbaugh and ultrasound. and all of this is sort of, i can never tell how much all of this was intentional on either side it seems like the narrative got woven almost independently. i think the democrats have been deft at throwing a lasso around

it. >> i think they blundered into it. >> and then realized something. >> the other thing did you read the memos that came out as a result of the lawsuit in maine, n.o.m., the national organization for marriage. there are secret strategy memos were revealed. even though this is marriage, no it will abortion. one of the secret items on the memo was side-swiping obama and said we need to pick issues. >> we're so used to these cultural wars putting democrats on the defensive and get into a defensive crouch. we've seen the opposite. i feel the republicans are crying uncle. it say that essentially oh, this is -- >> that's not crying uncle. that's still kind of insulting. under the guise of minimizing it, you're insulting any woman who is dumb enough to take this idea seriously. >> even when mitt romney tried to recover from this.

he said, i talked to my wife, ann and she tells me what women are talking about. >> my wife has the occasion to campaign on her own and also with me and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy. and getting good jobs for their kids. and for themselves. they're concerned about gasoline prices. the cost of getting to and from work. taking their kids to school or to practice and so forth, after school. that's when women care about in this country. >> it's like, i don't have the estrogen chip. >> and treats them as human beings. >> he's got this exotic tribe whose strange language and he s

esoteric concerns. >> it's the positions if he says i want to quote get rid of planned parenthood, we now have 50 years of women, swing vote women in the suburbs, women who are going to determine the election, where do they go to get their first birth control? planned parenthood. they haven't forgotten that. where do so many american women go for women's health? planned parenthood. he didn't have to diss planned parenthood. if he hadn't gone after planned parenthood hammer and tong, he wouldn't have lost to rick santorum in wisconsin. he went too far, he went further than he needed to win the nomination, further to the right and that may have lost him the election. >> that speaks about your emergence about the secret strategy notes. i feel what happens to the republicans is they're taking the secret strategy to the nth

degree. first of all they're on the wrong side of history. the entire country has moved. they're losing their way to know what winning even looks like. >> i'm curious to know why you think this is happened. you wrote a book about "kingdom coming" the trenches about religious right, the entire book about the sort of political battle over the means of reproduction, women's sort of reproductive self-determination. why is it -- there's sort of two arguments here. one, i think the argument that we all understand, right, is that the base has driven the republican party too far to the right and this is now hurting them. the question is why has there been no tactical retreat. why isn't there anyone who can say at the top, stop doing this. >> partly this is you have a book coming out about the decline of the elites, that defines the republican party. there's much less of a republican establishment to put the kibosh on these things. and the other thing has to do with mitt romney's lack of bona

fides in this area. so that george w. bush, because he was one of them he could speak very subtly and speak in sort of a code he knew the code. saying i want to promote a culture of life instead of i want to get rid of planned parenthood. so mitt romney doesn't know it and he doesn't have any credibility with these people. so he ends up making these incredibly broad statements, it's not doing whistles, it's audible to everybody. >> and also because he went to a planned parenthood fundraiser in 1994, he feels like he has to go way over to the other extreme. >> and that -- >> i would caution against thinking this is all going to matter in november. and if you look at the 2008 primary, everyone thought that barack obama had been damaged on the white working class vote by hillary clinton's campaign. >> and then even in august, at the democratic national convention, people thought the pumas were never going to vote for barack obama. and in november, obama did very

well amongst women and working-class voters. >> but the analogy is not to independent women, it's to religious right. i think you could overstate the degree to which the religious right is now upset about romney will come around and that's equivalent to the pumas. the fact is that romney has always done bad among women in his race against ted kennedy when there wasn't this big culture war gap, he lost women by 24% or 26%. >> why do you think that is? >> i've talked to people from the kennedy campaign about this because i'm working on a store i about it. they hit him on his economic record about women's issues. if you look at his economic record, it was about all the women he laid off. there's no women in his inner circle. they hit him about the fact that the top 40 people at bain, one was a woman. he just -- >> you know, i think it's two things. one is that his focus group of women is his wife and that's going to be problematic. but also he kind of represents a

"mad men" earra. >> and he has a political clumsiness that is particular to him. a lot of politicians have to move from that as they come from his position of being in the electorate and wanting to win, that's not the unusual space. it's his complete absence of dexterity to being able 20 do that. >> he's an anti-genius when it comes to changing positions. >> and daughters. romney talking about him being one of the boys. we always hear about jobs leaving america.

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i don't want to sit in the warm bath consensus about the weakness of the romney candidacy. i want to say there were a lot of points during this, it relates to what you were saying about hillary clinton and barack obama and puma by the way is party unity, my ass, we are still broadcasting. >> that was one of the dumber movements in recent politics. >> but it wasn't a movement. >> it was a very small group of hillary clinton dead-enders. >> now quoted in the paper. >> they got a ton of coverage. >> they're quoted this year, including some of the fundraisers, without any reference to them having been diehard hillary clinton people, expressing their dissatisfaction with obama as if that's a fresh thing. they've hated him all along. >> my point is that the mechanics of campaign coverage tend to sort of give us this tendency to exaggerate

weaknesses or differences in the moment. we've spent, i've sat here at the desk for six months of this campaign and herman kane and michele bachmann. and mitt romney is going to win. i wonder to what degree democrats and republicans are underestimating the formidable nature of the romney campaign. >> totally. >> i think -- >> i run into people all the time who say obama has got this. they don't know what they're talking about. they have not followed closely, or if they have, they've forgotten all of these campaigns. i don't want to sound an obnoxious gray beard, but this is my seventh or eighth and anyone who thinks this election is in the bag for obama doesn't have a clue. >> explain why that's the case. >> the first time anybody gets a major party nomination they have

close to a 50% chance of getting elected. just because of the structural nature. >> particularly right now. >> in any situation. i mean you know, michael kchaels was leading george w. bush in 1988. >> he was up eht or 10 points. and there are a lot of similar examples. and romney has a lot potentially going for him with the economy, quite possibly sagging over the summer and the same way it did and the last two years looked better at the beginning of the year. sagged over the summer. if that happens, obama is in -- not quite a world of hurt, but serious trouble. >> that's the essential factor, that the employment rate continues to go down. it barely nudged down. and if you count the number of people who left the workforce entirely, it was stagnant. >> if you talk to people in the

obama campaign, the thing that they're terrified about is the one billion, or the $1.2 billion spending campaign. it's one of the things where the obama campaign had the virtue of being the avant-garde of the campaign tech neem in 2008. they are not at there when you look at the post citizens united world. >> there was a piece in the "guardian" that talked about the fact that while people may be saying obama has it in the bag. their campaign does not think that at all. they're on the ground moving in serious numbers. there's no question in terms of the fight that they're expecting to have. they're not expecting to have a fight in battleground states like florida, thousands of people have been deployed already. >> we have a comparison actually. florida, obama has 22 offices open in florida. and romney has zero. and in new hampshire, he has seven offices and romney has zero. >> the overestimation is not

happening inside, it's outside. >> there's the concern about super pacs, a huge story in 2 8 2008. that plus the unsuccessful narrative of the things are getting better economic language. which is not sexy. that isn't something you can win on. that's the reality. there isn't anything you can do in terms of showing figures that show the steady growth that's going to speak to the feelings of lack. >> yes we can have steady improvements at the margins. >> that's not a slogan. they have a massive concern about the super pacs and being able to raise a lot of money fast. what does that do to the narrative of being the 99%, not the 1%. >> on some level they do think they can make the arguments about things getting slowly better. if you look at the outtakes from the documentary that tom hanks is narrating, that's the story they're trying to tell.

although everybody says you can't make that argument. they seem to think they can make the argument. look at 2008 and everything we've been through since then. from health care reform to the killing of osama bin laden to the kind of staving off of massive, a second great depression. >> they said the slogan is general motors is alive and osama bin laden is dead. >> there's a difference between the last state of the union address where he gave you his record. but it was a fighting, bruising, this is a president on the attack, on the offensive. so his stance was very different than kind of the adding up of the record. the speech at the "ap" was framing where the economic narrative is going to be. so i think the manner in which he's going to have this fight is not going to be about that very kind of pure, we're getting better narrative. it's being framed as i'm the fighter that they're not willing to be. but i'm also on your side. and this republican reality is about not being on the right side of history when it comes to

women. the shrinking of the voting rights act, which is about killing gangs from the civil rights movement. there's the whole narrative about we're on your side, they're on some "mad men" reality that doesn't even count. >> we're planting our stik in the middle while they've gone on the end. >> it's still adequate. they don't have enough of a second-term agenda yet. >> i want to hear right after this. improve the health of your skin with aveeno daily moisturizing lotion. the natural oatmeal formula improves skin's health in one day, with significant improvement in 2 weeks. i found a moisturizer for life. [ female announcer ] only from aveeno. since ameriprise financial was founded back in 1894, they've been committed to putting clients first. helping generations through tough times. good times. never taking a bailout. there when you need them. helping millions of americans over the centuries. the strength of a global financial leader.

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jonathan you said something interesting about the, we're talking about what the general election contours are looking like. the fact that each party opened up each round with the speech in the "associated press." what's the second-term ejend. >> elections are the future. they don't walk to talk that much about the record, because

we live in a what have you done for me lately culture. they need to lay out a vision about what a second obama term would loob like. an economy built to last. a make-or-break moment for the middle class and they're going to be doing some things for the middle class. they don't want to have it be all trying to explain why romney is a radical. that has limited use. they have to have, talking about 2008, they have to have some notion of where to go. i think it should be in the national service area. something that appeals to people's idealism. but whatever it is, it's got to be something and they haven't laid it out. >> it's got to be big, they'll need a big anchor policy there. what we've seen so far in the state of the unions and the budgets are little building blocks. green jobs here and batteries here and so you know that's fine as policy and that's what bills are made of. but when they get to you know

october and november they will need a big anchor economic program. >> i'm not sure they're going to do that because it will make them look like big spenders, they're playing defense. it will be more like when clinton ran for re-election in '96 where they played small ball all through the campaign. the real model is bush 2004. trying to, when they destroyed kerry. and that's their playbook. >> it helps that romney and ryan's version of america is basically "the hunger games," that's what they want to convert america to. we'll have poor people and children and throw them into a ring and they can fight for entitlements. >> that runs against the status quo -- >> the other reason that i think it is similar to the 2004 dynamic, so much of that campaign, i was going back and looking at this. i remember driving in wisconsin, a county that kerry won, but by much less than people thought he

would. far outside madison. there was a campaign billboard, a bush billboard that says combat boots or flip-flops, perfectly distilled down essence of that campaign and that campaign was so much about john kerry as flip-flopper, fabric e fabricator, unlikable dufus. if you read -- david axlerod is tweeting this is how a loving dog owner cares for his dog. that dog thing, they're obsessed with the dog thing. the reason with that is i have heard, the dog story totally tanks mitt romney's approval rating. >> people care more about pets than people. >> don't tell them about the hung ee ee eer games-esque futu awaits us. >> the good news about obama is

that flip-flopper is an old metaphor, you need a fresh metaphor in the habit of etch-a-sketch. >> democrats and liberals have cried wolf about budget cuts, for 50 years, any time the rate of increase was not high enough for them or didn't keep pace with inflation, whatever, they went to the barricades and said, this is a budget cut, this is -- not compassionate. and so having cried wolf so often, when the wolf is truly at the door as it is now because this ryan budget is a truly radical document that shreds the social safety net, rips up the american social contract, the american people are going okay, what else you got to tell me, ryan plan, you've been crying wolf about these republicans for so long, why should we care now? >> there's an element in the same way that for example feminists have decrying the slow erosion of reproductive rights for years and years, nobody paid

attention, because it wasn't something that you could see and then all of a sudden the republicans in their enthusiasm or clumsiness made it so overt that nobody could ignore it there's something similar going on with the budget. it used to be you had to get into the technical details to explain why the budgets are kind of unjust or savage. you no longer do, it's all there on the surface. >> and add to that is what you have is the nuance about budget cuts, what they mean to the general populace, when you have the framework, the transvaginal ultrasounds, the voting rights act, the komen fund, the planned parenthood. it doesn't feel like the cranky feminists having an argument. it's very universal. >> on the ryan budget, instead of just going to the well on medicare, where the republicans have some ways of fuzzing up the

debate. to go things like investment in medical and scientific research, investment in student loans. these things would be slashed by 50%. labs would close all over america so it gets to a very fundamental question -- do you believe in investing in the future of the country, or not. >> or are we going to scarf our seed corn. >> and give it all to the wealthy in 20% tax cuts. >> i want to turn our attention to the tea party-infused federal courts. of the benefits of shopping small. on just one day, 100 million of us joined a movement... and main street found its might again. and main street found its fight again. and we, the locals, found delight again. that's the power of all of us. that's the power of all of us. that's the membership effect of american express.

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dogs and implied the president's mother had copulated with animals. two weeks ago to -- take a second to let this sink in. and two weeks ago, in this exchange with paul clement, the lawyer representing the 26 states opposed to the law, justice antonin scalia doesn't say democratic governors, the proper adjective and what was recorded in the court transcript, but rather democratic governors, a term employed by right-wing radio hosts and republican hacks. >> i didn't take the time to figure this out, but maybe you did. is there any chance at all 26 states opposing it have republican governors? and all of the states supporting it have democrat governors? is that possible? >> there's a correlation, justice scalia. >> yeah. >> yeah, democrat governors.

>> it was against this backdrop of ideology on the federal bench that president obama told reporters he had no doubt that the supreme court will find his health care bill constitutionally sound. >> i'm confident that the supreme court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected congress. that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. well, a good example and i'm pretty confident that court will recognize that and not take that step. >> a day later, a judge on the fifth circuit court of appeals threw a tantrum in response. judge injure jerry smith, a

reagan appointee strayed from the topic at hand to push back on the president's comments and demanding that the doj complete this homework assignment. i would like to have from you by noon on thursday a letter stating what is the position of the attorney general and the department of justice in regard to the recent statements by the president stating specifically in deail tail in reference to those statements what the authority is of the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review. joining us at the table is nan aren, president of the alliance of justice. nan, great to have you here. >> wonderful to be here, thank you. >> we had an interesting last weekend, we talked about the scotis arguments and the partisanship and the ideology in the federal bench. first i want to get your sense to watching this strange

outburst in the fifth circuit court of appeals. what do you make of that? >> i think you have to look at what's happened in a larger context, that is, an effort that began with president lonld reagan to place individuals on the federal bench who had a very political agenda, i.e., opposition to abortion, opposition to affirmative action, support for school prayer and we have seen from that moment until now, an effort, a movement effort by ultraconservatives to stack the courts with individuals at every level, including the supreme court, who will essentially impose a political agenda on the rest of the country. >> is the problem, this is where i think it gets interesting and also dicey. because the problem that they're doing a better job? there's two ways of thinking about this. fundamentally let's get rid of this silly delusion that judges

are umpires and they sort of beam down from some space where they neutrally arbitrate. and say they're political actors. and our side, liberals are doing a bad job. they're just getting beaten. or do we have some conception that somehow the nature of these judges departs from our conception of what a judge should be. >> i like to think of judges as more than political actors. they're individuals that we hope approach each case with an open mind, a fair mind. people, some humility and understand most importantly, that the cases they're deciding affect people's lives in very direct ways. what we have seen, however, is that the selection of judges by republican presidents who are selected for one reason and one reason only, they will carry out a very specific agenda.

what we've seen from democratic presidents are individuals who are not necessarily people from the left. in fact most of president obama's and president clinton's judges were individuals who were very moderate. open minded, fair-minded. but very different, very different from ideological judges that don't have missions or agendas. >> i want to zoom in -- >> i'm not saying that's right. but that's what we've seen. >> there's also it seems a difference between ideological judges and partisan judges. i don't think it's a problem to have, democrats should have kind of ideological liberals, that's fine. to me the big difference is especially on the supreme court you see people actually willing to depart from conservative ideology in the service of republican goals. the kind of ultimate example of that was bush v. gore. the problem isn't so much that they're you know kind of steeped in the views of the federalist

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easy label, right? but that label can lead to prejudice and discrimination, and we don't want to go there. so let's try to see people for who they really are. you can help create a more united states.

the more you know. is there a distinction between partisan ideological and in terms of how you're evaluating open-mindedness in terms of the federal judiciary. >> let's talk a look at jerry smith. a man a very active republican from the state of texas before he went on the bench represented oil and gas companies. this is an individual who referred to the league of women voters as the plague of women voters. who referred to feminists as rejects, outcasts, who are perverts. now i would -- >> what he said in the supreme court in decisions about -- >> we can assume because he was ronald reagan's appointee that he was asked about his views on

roe and said he would overturn roe as was every other candidate who was put forward by ronald reagan. >> so there's a certain -- the important distinction here is this idea of someone sort of proving their movement bona fides before being able and then when they're on the bench -- >> here's rush limbaugh talking about jerry smith as a member of his team. >> now yesterday afternoon a judge, a federal judge by the name of jerry smith at the fifth circuit court of appeals in houston had enough. and he demanded that the justice department give him a three-page memo on whether or not this administration understands the concept of judicial review. i saw this, i started, i started cheering, i started laughing. because it's about time people started firing back on this.

the american people love the concept of a team. you have the right people on the team. but we are a team here. there is a team that's opposing this president, and attempting to make him a one-termer this november at the ballot box. it's great to have this response. >> he just says this guy's on the team. he says it just like that. >> that's judicial activism. >> the liberty with the blindfold like justice is supposed to be blind. the whole idea, the founding idea is judges are not supposed to be on the team. even if they're appointed by the president. >> the scary thing is that while he and jerry smith and senator grassley yesterday, who referred to president obama as stupid, not only are they going to tarnish this president, but they'll tarnish the

constitution, they'll tarnish the supreme court and the country with it. and then i think we are taking this way too far away from core constitutional values. way far away from where -- >> i still think, i think you need to give up this sort of techno caratic neutralist goat. i think, let me show you this polling very quickly. this is asking people whether they think the scotis health care act -- democrats being played for chumps in this game and they need to give it up. when bp made a commitment to the gulf,

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the nation of the world." and nan aron and msnbc political analyst, jonathan alter. we're talking about this brewing fight between the president and the federal bench. an exchange that happened this week pursuant to the supreme court oral arguments in which the president said he had every confidence that the supreme court would not overrule the bill. >> and it got everybody up in arms. the irony here is that they said, you saw rush limbaugh if you were with us before the break saying does he understand the concept of judicial review. how dar the president attack this crucible, this core value of constitutionalism with the judicial review. the entire conservative movement has been -- i was going to say

something profane. has been slagging judicial review for 30 years. >> at least since brown versus board of education. >> in either, there are signs, black-and-white photos in the south, impeach earl warren. >> this is just a brief little representative look into this window of an entire line of thinking on the right about unelected judges, how dare they strike anything down. this is newt gingrich talking about how how he's going to send federal marshals that enforce subpoenas that he doesn't like. >> one of the things you say if you don't like what a court has done, the congress should subpoena the judge and bring him before congress and hold a congressional hearing. some people say that's unconstitutional. i'll let that go for a minute. i want to ask you from a practical standpoint how would

you enforce that? would you send the capital police down to arrest him? >> if you had to. or you would instruct the justice department to send the u.s. marshal. >> send a u.s. marshal. michelle? >> i have to say i don't like what obama said. i feel like i don't like the fact that he kind of parroted right-wing talking points about unelected judges. the most fundamental protections of our liberties in the past not under the current supreme court have come from judges being a check on the dem gojic impulses of -- >> you hate democracy? >> i think democracy requires protection of a minority and that's what the court at its best can accomplish. this is new frontiers in audacity for the right to kind of suddenly pretend that any attack on judicial review and judicial independence -- it's just astonishing. when i was writing my first book about religious fundamentalism and the republican party i went

to conferences with republican congressmen where people literally got on their knees and prayed for the judge in the terry schiavo case to be condemned to hell. i remember one pundit again in this conference in washington saying the way to deal with unelected judges is that stalin had the answer, no man, no problem. and you know -- >> i think that was the chief of staff of a sitting congressman who said that. >> yes, it was. the full quote was the stalin quote was death solves all problems, no man, no problem. the hinting the way to deal with judges you don't like is assassination. >> there have been assassination attempts of liberal judges. >> we could just say that judges are activists, right? that's what they do they act and things change. laws get struck down and the court traditionally for the past 30 years have been activists on

social issues, abortion, gay rights, i hope soon and then on economic issues they've also been activists. the difference is that they've been activists in a liberal direction on social issues and conservative direction on economic issues. >> how do we, you want to respond? >> well the fact that republicans particularly ever since the beginning of the obama administration, have been hell bent on making sure that as few nominees get confirmed as possible, nine months after this president took office, every republican senator signed a letter saying they wouldn't vote for anyone who they didn't all agree with. kays later the senator sessions, the ranking member of the

republican committee said our strategy is we will delay and destroy. when one party is playing bare knuckles politics, it seems to me the other party cannot stand back and retreat. we now have a situation where at this moment in time, this president compared to george bush, 138 candidates were approved for judges, george bush had 200. or 200 at the end of his four years. everyone needs to step up. and fight and fight for a good judicia judiciary. >> this is one of his big mistakes in his first term. the first year that they didn't want to pick a fight because they had health care and other very important pieces of legislation they didn't want to have distractions from. but there should have been a point in 2010 and 2011 where the president made this a big public issue and he never did. it never surfaced as a big

issue. >> let me actually say i think this is exculpatory towards the president, i think it goes deeper. i think it's a structural problem. the right holds grassroot rallies, they have live telecast justice rallies across the country when their judges are blocked. it's a grassroots issue and they can mobilize around it. the left doesn't seem to care. the fact that nominees were blocked. a judge who was appointed to the ninth circuit court of appeals and had great credentials, but he was blocked because they thought he had was too liberal. >> the decision in citizens united gives all of us in the progressive world an opportunity. there are americans who don't know the name of that case. but they, when asked about what

happened in that case, and the effects, say, that was wrong. and citizens united is a mobilizer is a galvanizer for progressives. and we all will use citizens united, anyone in a primary state this year, who has heard the robo calls and every time they pick up the radio or watch tv are just treated to a wealth of or series of ads, knows that something is very much out of whack. we've got to bring this court back. we've got to make sure that -- >> what are the levers there? i mean that's what i'm sort of interested in. citizens united is going to raise a lot of money for the democrats and causing a lot of progressive consternation. what are the judicial levers that we have? >> we've got to make sure the fifth circuit court of appeals,

for instance, where jerry smith is, has two openings at the moment. there are no names for either of these openings. they're vacancies. >> that's the white house, that's not anyone but the white house. >> and the district courts, why would a senator sit there and not be filling every, particularly democratic senators, every vacancy in their state? senators can act. the white house and i'm glad to say that the white house is reengaged. i was very pleased to hear the president's tough tone. state of the union, he did talk about judges. so i think there is a sense, on the white house, that -- >> figure out a way to bring these nominations to the floor. ram them through, don't worry about offending the republican votes. >> that's the big question, what is the content -- >> the nuclear option. and you know, that in a heartbeat, if the shoe were on the other foot, the

republicans -- >> we saw it. people forget. the nuclear option when the phrase was first coined, when the fight was first precipitated in 2005, if i'm not mistaken. when the battle happened, the battle was over judicial nominations. i was referring to justice sunday. a coalition-wide mobilization from the megachurches to the grassroots to the people in the senate around the issue of judicial confirmation to the extent they were willing to take this procedurally unprecedented step of essentially annihilating the filibuster. >> in part because democrats were playing the same games with republican -- >> right, right. >> but not on the same scale. >> but the numbers -- >> putting holds on nominations. >> but i think just in terms of sheer numbers, there were so many were bush, there were so many more bush nominees confirmed. >> and that brings me to the point i want to get to, what it seems we have is a very broken

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it seems to me we have a broken nomination process. just in terms of we've seen the norms around the process and norms around judicial confirmation erode, right? i think you could say it is the case that both parties have contributed to the erosion, but one party has contributed much more and been the path-break anywhere terms of pushing that. what is the solution now? now that we have this process, that does really seems

manifestly broken to me and to the point where you have republican appointed federal judges talking about the vacancies on the court. >> it's interesting that even over the last week and the week before, republican commentators were very critical of the arguments made by paul clement in the health care case. you know, i don't think the process is broken. the process is supposed to be messy. it's been messy ever since our democracy was founded. i think it's lopsided. i think there's one party that's, that's playing and the other party is not quite up there yet. which means that all of us have to really step up and stand up and do a lot more. we have to make this issue a priority. as we now know from citizens united, we'll know from health care and it's not just health care.

immigration, voting rights, abortion, next term, proposition eight, gay marriage. >> the voting rights act is going to come before the court and there is a possibility that the voting rights act, one the key provisions of the voting rights act gets essentially struck down. there's affirmative action. even for private universities it might be on the table in terms of how widely the holding is on that ruling. >> i think we've had a wake-up call. i think that's what's happened as a result of this argument a couple of weeks ago. i think more and more people now know how important judicial nominations are. and how high the stakes are. which means we have to find people for judicial seats who not only are prosecutors, corporate lawyers, we want more public interest lawyers, workers. >> but it's not -- >> civil rights lawyers. >> it's not that the appointeeings of democratic

presidents have gotten in have been bad judges. the subtext that somehow they need to be more left-wing. if they were nominated left-wing they'd have less of a chance of being confirmed. the breyers and ginsbergs who are on the supreme court that's the right judicial temperment. what needs to change is the machinery of getting them nominated and confirmed. and being tough-minded enough in the u.s. senate to get these nominations through. you don't have to start imitating the worst of the republican you know, partisanship by nominating a lot of partisan democrats. that's not necessary. >> i don't think partisan democrats is the issue. i think this gets to the bedrock question, are we talking about cementry or a fundamentally different conception of what a judge should be. >> on the fifth circuit court of appealings where jerry smith sits, 16 of the 21 judges on

that circuit have major financial holdings in oil and gas companies. now is that the kind of circuit and the kind of court that a victim of the bp oil spill wans to confront? we need -- >> we need to nominate, with all due respect, we don't need to nominate "nation" magazine editors. >> no -- >> that's not the issue. the issue is not that we don't have enough "nation" editors on this court. the nomination of reasonable ginsberg-type justices are not going through. >> that is what is reasonable? ginsberg -- >> the attack totally unreasonable. >> that was ridiculous attacks. >> reasonable is in the eye of the beholder. that's the whole point here. >> i don't think it works in the court of public opinion so say we want to now go and nominate a lot of political people on the

left. we want to dominate judicious people who happen to have some progressive principles. not try to imitate the worst of the other side. >> or imitate of worst of what they do on the other side, secretly. the point is that no one is paying attention to this at all. go up to any voter, this is inside baseball, at its most intense. right did a very good job of spotlighting a few nominations. you found out who janice rodgers brown was from your preacher. a very, very, very, very ideologically extreme now federal serving federal judge who was one of the precipitating fights over the justice sunday and the nuclear option. you found out who she was from your preacher. but outside of that infrastructure, this is all essentially happening subrosa. >> i think maybe until citizens united there's been this longstanding liberal trust in the court system, compared to the longstanding right wing

demonization. so the idea that we're going to take over the courts didn't have a lot of residence. >> this is going to take a fight. not just with from the white house, or from the senate, but from all of us. this election, the stakes with this election for the future of the supreme court, are immense when you think about it. >> huge stakes. >> and we need to, we now know just how this court and federal courts under it, make decisions that affect every aspect of our lives and we can't sit back. >> here's where i think the fight should be. it's not getting a different kind of more liberal -- >> "nation" editors as a shorthand. it's to explain to the public and the health care debate, open the possibility of this. that the majority of on the supreme court, the five movement conservatives are political,

they are way out of bounds. they're talking about the merits of legislation they have no business doing that. scalia was totally out of bounds. as far as i'm concerned his reputation for intelligence, not just judicial independence and intelligence is in tatters now. somehow this great legal mind when he doesn't realize that insurance is commerce? when he doesn't even know what's in the legislation? when he's vote-counting on in the senate? all of these incredibly inappropriate things. and so to explain and educate the american public that there has been this right-wing takeover of a good chunk of the supreme court. >> but your solution is to trim from the right so you have a more narrow, more centrist court. i think better would be to add to the left so you have a court that spans the broad electorate. i want the west wing solution. >> the main thing is to tell the swing voter in the election. the first thing as nan says is

you've got to get past the election. they'll have a 7-2 majority potentially if romney is elected. to tell the people, that among the stakes in this election, it's not just a tweedle dumb, tweedle dee election, things that they care about like choice and other things are truly on the line in this election. >> one of the things that's really interesting is the court's docket this year is as sort of action-packed a docket as we've had in a long time. is only going to help that. the fact that they've had an the affordable care act argued in an election year, you don't see supreme court arguments very rarely, bush v. gore that you had that in the center. i do think you're right there's going to be an opportunity to raise the visibility of the issue. nan aron, president of the alliance for justice. elizabeth warren's race against scott brown may depend on whether she can make herself

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that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. joining us is playright and author esther arma, who is reading the paper. outside of the presidency, one of the most closely watched contests of the campaign season will the massachusetts senate race between elizabeth warren and scott brown. brown is a savvy veteran who served a dozen years on local massachusetts politics before winning ted kennedy's open seat in 2010 shocking the political establishment in washington and almost destroying chances of getting the affordable care act passed. elizabeth warren is a big name in progressive circles, this is her first political race, meaning she's an unfamiliar name to massachusetts voters as the "nation" magazine documented on video.

>> do you know elizabeth warren? >> no, i don't know elizabeth warren. >> who? >> i know i'm a democrat and i'm voting for martha coakley. i mean elizabeth warren, thank you very much. >> you want to try that again? >> perfect. that actually goes hand in hand with a fantastic cover profile of elizabeth warren by e.j. graph at "the nation" magazine and the same week that there's a review of her in "the national review." the latest "boston globe" poll has the two candidates running neck and neck. and it's a fascinating race for a whole bunch of reasons. elizabeth warren has some kind of innate charisma, some sort of captivating magic about her that has to do with the stances she's taken, her foresight about the problems in the financial/industrial complex. the fights in the bankruptcy law, the fights she's picked and

the idea she has the vision about the core unfairness about the financialized unequal american political economy. and i think one of the great points ej graph makes in the piece is there's a disconnect between "the nation" readers she's got a win in massachusetts in running your first election ever. you'll see people like running for office. running for office is hard. >> she's a natural. i've seen her on the stump. she's a hell of a good candidate. you're talking about the name recognition problem, that's a function of money. that's why money in the state races is so important. she's going to be competitive. financially. i think the challenge for her is to take two or three issues, probably maybe one or two issues, of votes that scott brown has made. my favorite would be the blunt amendment, which i call the your boss in the bedroom amendment. do you, do you want your boss to be able to say -- because of his

personal whims that you're not going to be covered. something to drive home for massachusetts voters. if she runs against scott brown more broadly as somehow a bad guy or too conservative, going to be harder for her to win. she has to vector in on two or three issues. >> richard, you edited the piece, i'm curious what your take-away was from immersing yourself in this reporting. >> it was interesting that ej found a lot of people hadn't heard about either warren or brown yet. right now the campaign is sort of listening tour mode and biographic introduction mode. the two candidates both have very compelling stories. they had very difficult childhoods, elizabeth warren, white working class, had a terrible horrific childhood. >> scott brown had a childhood that involved an alcoholic mother, 17 homes in 18 years. i didn't know about it that much. >> and the memoir is beautifully written and very compelling.

and they're both going around the state introducing themselves to voters and using their personal narratives to draw these subtle political messages. so elizabeth warren's is about how my family had problems, economic ones and the institutions of america helped us get through it. but right now those are being attacked and eroded and i want to restore the opportunity that we've lost. scott brown's narrative is that i have these problems and i worked hard and we should reward the hard workers instead of having government prop up the nonhard workers the sort of lazy people. so there's a sort of darwinism to his story and there's a sort of all in it together with elizabeth warren's story. we'll see which resonates independent voters who are key in the race. >> she can't be tags in harvard professor, that's trouble for her. >> he keeps bringing up the fact that she's a harvard professor. >> what's interesting is they both have integrity narratives in politics, that's a rare place to sit.

normally one person gets to have that and the other person is fighting against what is my narrative going to be. so in terms of framing, part of how you present yourself to the electorate, they're both sort of starting at the same point. the fact that their integrity is kind of an inarguable space right now. it becomes your point about what are the things that each going to pick that's going to find resonance among the massachusetts electorate. it's a hard space to go to. >> this point in the campaign it's personal. and it's interesting because the elizabeth warren who is on the campaign trail in massachusetts is right now much more in the mode of i was a mom, raise a child while also going -- she tells a story about basically saying i couldn't put my kid in day care unless my kid was toilet trained so i just like whipped out the m&ms and went to work and got my child toilet-trained so i could attend law school the next day. what's so fascinating when you read the two profiles they both

come to the place where these are two people who are success stories. they are the stories of people coming from no one in their family in the ivy league, nothing like that, right. who have through a lot of hard work and brain power and charisma and all of those things, succeeded. and they've drawn very different lessons. to me what's so fascinating is what's so issue here and the reason that elizabeth warren is so compelling to progressives, she talks about the breakdown in the mechanisms of meritocracy that allows that to happen and scott brown's fundamental claim, which is mitt romney's claim about the fundamental well-being of the same system. let's talk about that after this break. that's why there's brita, to make the water we drink, taste a little more, perfect. reduce lead and other impurities with the advanced filtration system of brita. mine was earned off vietnam in 1968. over the south pacific in 1943. i got mine in iraq, 2003.

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people on both sides of the aisle. she's a very intelligent, hard-working academic. that being said, with that comes i think a little different way of looking at things. scott brown talking about his opponent, elizabeth warren with a whole slew of backhanded compliments. that gives you a succinct articulation of how he's going to go after her. i think this happens in progressive circles every election cycle there's the candidate who chooses a populist line and we all want it to be a kind of validation of our secret suspicion that if candidates would just get out there and talk about economic justice, they would win. sharron brown has done that. bernie sanders does it effectively and has won. so in some ways it feels like that's on trial in this election as well. >> can a populist win. >> in massachusetts of all

places. >> what's interesting about elizabeth warren, i love the way he uses "academic" as a four-letter word. >> and she ignores her kids. >> it's going -- >> there's that. >> what she does is extraordinary is to frame really complex, we were talking about this in the break. to frame complex ideas that require knewens anuance and det people's eyes glaze over, but she frames it in a way that makes it understandable to the broader populace. she frames things like the defense of marriage act around economic inequality. the innate unfairness of some things. which speaks far more broadly. if you don't share that view, it understands what unfairness looks like. >> and before she was, she's a law professor and has written on bankruptcy law, but she's also written personal finance books. that are very much, paperback this is how much money you should be saving.

basic kitchen table type of stuff. >> dr. phil show, a great training for a candidate, you're talking to people about their personal lives and your personal life and giving people a narrative. >> you were talking about narrative and she is brilliant in her stump speech at telling a story. not just about herself, she starts with her personal story in oklahoma and she tells a story about this country and how about after starting the new deal and the years up to the 1980s, we built a series of ladders to bring people into the middle class. through education, and other programs. and that these are now being threatened. but she told a story of america. you know over the last 70 or 80 years ha was very compelling. i think her ability to do this, is at a high level and if she manages to win, convincingly, i think she'll be a presidential candidate in the future. >> that's a big "if" right?

because scott brown should not be taken for granted. he's an extremely deft politician. he seems like he was in the right place at the right time when he won the special election. it was obviously a special election which is always very different. it was at the height of tea party backlash, there was martha coakley, his opponent, did a very bad job. but he has navigated being part of an extremely zealous partisan caucus and being in a deep blue state, massachusetts. >> romney used to be in that tradition. >> but when i've talked to people in massachusetts, they say they like electing republican governors because they'll keep taxes low. but on the national issues they're still very liberal on all the big national issues. that's why i think it's so surprising he's doing as well as he is. >> he's being very dexterous, he crossed over and voted on dodd-frank, although i should say he voted for it after extracting a whole series of industry-friendly concessions

and he's been raising a ton of money from wall street, a whole bunch of hedge fund-friendly concessions. >> he did vote for -- >> what was smart about him, he is languaging winning rhetorical strategies. so he calls himself the bridge-builder who is willing to cross the aisle in order to help americans. now that's specific 2008 barack obama language and he's framing that within a republican context. that's powerful. >> he's very likable, he has a great narrative, handsome guy. >> former model. and -- >> he's a former mod snl. >> i didn't know that. >> that's where he met his -- >> at a photo shoot? >> he's not been a particularly successful legislator in the senate. it's not like he has bills that he's used those negotiating skills to bring to passage. so the challenge will be for elizabeth warren to take off some of those rough edges.

people don't like partisan polarizing figures. she has to somehow come across as more conciliatory. i think she's capable. >> she has to yoke him -- in this case, everybody has to be yoked to the republican party. at the end of the day, the republican party fundamentally, fundamentally in congress functions as a parliamentary caucus, right? they vote en masse on basically everything. it doesn't matter. and you have to hammer home to the voters, you are not voting for scott brown. you're voting for mitch mcconnell, you are. that's the case. >> hard case to make. because in the -- >> he doesn't look like mitch mcconnell. >> that's why you can't -- that's too big of a message. that's why i was saying you got to take one or two votes, maybe something that relates to the ryan plan, that is extremely unpopular in massachusetts and beat him over the head with it. >> she also has a great record she can run on. she saw -- >> and she can take refuge in the fact that to some extent,

the massachusetts electorate don't know her. >> she is a blank slate right now. she's -- >> what you should know for the news week ahead. [ male announcer ] if you believe the mayan calendar, on december 21st polar shifts will reverse the earth's gravitational pull and hurtle us all into space. which would render retirement planning unnecessary. but say the sun rises on december 22nd, and you still need to retire. td ameritrade's investment consultants can help you build a plan that fits your life. we'll even throw in up to $600 when you open a new account or roll over an old 401(k). so who's in control now, mayans?

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[ male announcer ] for a smoothie with real fruit plus veggie nutrition new v8 v-fusion smoothie. could've had a v8. a quick update on a story we did yesterday, talking about an article by writer john derbashire in which he gave advice to his nonblack children about dealing with african-americans, including such things as staying out of heavily black neighborhoods and to leave an event in which if the number of blacks suddenly swells. he was a columnist for "the national review" and later in the day, the "national review" fired him for the article saying quote it's a free country and he can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants, not in the pages of "national review" or someone associated with "national review" any longer in 2003 he called himself a racist. though said he was a mild, tolerant racist. so it took seven years for

"national review" to catch up with that. you should know the right has made remaking the federal bench in its image a key national priority and it now threatens to topple some of the pillars of those an the left have worked hard. you should know romney is beginning his general election push facing two lashlg obstacles, a swing state poll has him losing to obama by 14 points among women. you should also know there's not a lot of national polling on the latino vote. in february fox news found romney at 14% among latino voters, less than half the 31% mccain got in 2008 and the latino population's voting power is smaller than it should be because though the ranks of the latinos in the country have

swelled, not all are eligible to vote and the number of registered latinos fell between 200 and 2010 largely because of the dislocation caused by the financial crisis which means the obama campaign could see its latino latinos swell. this week a coalition of progressive organization calling itself the 99% spring is coordinating a mass training across the country in the techniques of nonviolent civil disobedience. you should know a fascinating intrarepublican party rift has opened in nebraska where a plan to require the state to pay for pre-natal care of undocumented pregnant women has poll arized the republican majority of the state legislature. supporters of the bill are abortion opponents who want to encourage undocumented women to bring their pregnancies to term. while opponents are also

republicans who like the governor, are dead set against giving so-called special benefits to illegals. you should know the bill was approved by the legislature by 2-1 margin with a good portion of the republicans voting yes. but its fate remains unclear because pitting these two issues against each other is like a conservative ideological version of whether god can make a suitcase so heavy even he can't lift it. if the income disparity between men and women stops improving, governor scott approved the equal pay. the repeal was pushed by state senator glen groffman who told one of our guests that pay disparities can be accounted by women prioritizing child-rearing and you could argue that money is more important for men, as goldberg rors a study by the american association of university women took meritsal status into account and found a

5% pay gap just one year after graduation, which grew to 12% 10 years after graduationth and the source for groff's appeal that there is no differential? not sure of the margin of error. my guests will come back to tell us what they think we should know right after this. sorry. sore knee.

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in just a second, i'll ask our panel for the newsweek ahead. a time for a preview of melissa harris-perry. >> say hi to richard for me. we'll talk about the latest in the shooting spree in tulsa, oklahoma this weekend. left three people dead, two injured, the victims were black. the suspects are white. and there is an investigation as to whether or not this was a hate crime, we'll have a discussion about that.

we'll also talk a little bit about mitt romney and his multiple elephants in the room. it's easter and so we'll do two things. i'll finally get to have sweets after 40 days. we'll talk about food justice and also going to do a little easter egg hunt. >> the politics of peeps, coming up next on "mhp" thanks, melissa. our guests back to tell us what you should know this week. >> one of the things that is so interesting about the current political debate is even though we don't have welfare anymore there, is still a discussion on right faz there is kind of this huge dependency problem and part of our economic crisis is kind of poor people sucking at the public teat. and a story in "the new york times," a really important story about the fact that welfare roles are falling, despite the economic crisis because the states don't have enough money and are going far out of their way to turn people away, no

matter how desperate they are it starts with a woman that goes back to an abusive partner because that's her only option for survival and i think this is all a good reminder of anybody who still suffers from excessive clinton nostalgia, this is a result of one of clinton's signature achievements, welfare reform. >> and one of the finest reporters on welfare. >> and pepsi, coke, and kraft foods dropped out of the pressure ka pain. alec was one of the promoters of florida stand your ground laws which allowed trayvon martin's killer to go free. and if renewed attention on passing anti democratic legislation. voter i.d. laws. laws panning third-party registration, specifically targeted at minority voters.

so you should know it's possible to break off corporations from groups like alec when they overreach and finally know that at&t, walmart, fedex and state farm are also members of alec who haven't dropped their membership yet, but could if call them. >> you should know the name raquia boyt. a 22-year-old african-american from chicago, who was standing a group of young african-americans at 1:00 in the morning and an offduty police officer trove by, they were making some noise, and he asked them to turn the noise down. they essentially ignored him, and he essentially took out a gun and started shooting. no gun was found on the scene by any investigatorses who checked the scene of the crime. the police officer charged with assault. which is a misdemeanor, and ms. boyd is dead. and what you should know is individually millions and millions of americans stand with trayvon martin, stand behind trayvon martin, stand with his

mother, sabrina hilton, but legislatively and institutionally, america is standing with george zimmerman, and the silence around stand your ground laws, a sigh presence from the left. >> a quick mix and match over the first three. the stand your ground laws were pushed by alec. fighting alec, very important. go to change.org with petition campaigns and put more pressure on alec. welfare we forms, republicans saying all we want to do with medicaid is what was done with wall fair. the point of welfare reform is to get people off welfare. getting poor people off medicaid means letting them die in the streets basically. >> there is no version of job. there is nothing else. >> and, finally, very quickly. great play, old play i saw this week, death of a salesman,

totally contemporary, totally fresh. kids living at home with their parents when they are in their 30s, layoffs, people who don't understand that college is the only way to get into the middle class and very contemporary theme. so what's old can be new. >> i want to thank my guests, michelle goldberg, the means of reproduction. and esther urma and jonathan althou alter. we'll be back next weekend. our guests include former senator russ feingold, co-chair of the obama campaign, joining us at this desk and stay up to date on upcoming shows by liking us on facebook. up next, "melissa harris-perry." happy easter. ohhh my head, ohhh. [ speaking in japanese ]

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