republican advisor who worked for the candidate in 2008, the next two weeks will be focused on defining romney. >> the background of this election is the war to provide new information about mitt romney. the romney campaign is trying to fill out the story, trying to break through, point things forward on jobs. the democratic strategy is very simple. can't run on record, data is horrible, we have to destroy romney. this year, both conventions will be about romney. >> but as voters learn more about governor romney, are they liking what they see? >> does it bother you that according to the polls, people don't like you more or is that not important? >> all i can do is be who i am. remember that popeye line, i am what i am and that's all what i am? >> the old popeye defense. mney used that line three times this weekend in an interview with politico, including when asked if he would be opening up more at the

convention. apparently voters are going to get what they see and nothing more. so what have we seen lately from governor romney? >> no one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. they know that this is the place that we were born and raised. ♪ i yam what i yam and that's all what i yam ♪ >> we also know this about mitt romney. quote, i think one of the things i don't do terribly well is to be highly organized, he said, and follow a calendar precisely. ♪ i yam what i yam and that's all what i yam ♪ >> and in case you were wondering, this is what mitt romney knows about mitt romney. quote, i'm emotional. i don't show it quite as clearly as john boehner but i'm an emotional person. there is, i don't know, a societal norm that if you're running for office you can't be emotional and perhaps i bow to that too often. ♪ i yam what i yam and that's all what i yam ♪ >> but as mitt romney gives little detail about what he is and isn't, team obama is wasting no time telling the country exactly what they think he is.

>> i can't speak to governor romney's motivations. what i can say is that he has signed up for positions, extreme positions, that are very consistent with the positions that a number of house republicans have taken, and whether he actually believes in those or not, i have no doubt that he would carry forward some of the things that he's talked about. >> right now, the race is deadlocked. a new "washington post"/abc poll shows among registered voters, governor romney and president obama are within the margin of error in a statistical tie. if romney wants to move the needle this week, he may have to give up the popeye defense and find the answer to a more pressing question. where is the spinach? joining us from tampa is the man who helped bring the word game changer into common parlance, msnbc political analyst and national affairs editor for "new york" magazine, john heilemann. it doesn't really look -- hasn't

looked that stormy down there but we hope you're wearing your galoshes. >> i am here, got my galoshes on. we are hoping for sunshine and hoping to get sunshine despite the fact that you're not here. if you were here, it would be bright and shiny. >> come on. there's a great song about that. let's go right to the race. have the democrats at this point done a better job defining mitt romney ahead of the rnc than the republicans and mitt romney have done? >> well, since the republicans and mitt romney's campaign have done very little to define mitt romney, i would say the democratic side has done much better. if you look at the public opinion polling over the last few months, you have seen governor romney's unfavorability ratings rise. by some measures he's the most unpopular major party candidate heading into his convention that we have seen in our lifetime. i think there's no question that obama's team has done a good job with that. the question is whether that's a reversible or not. we will see that over the next few weeks, the next couple months. >> martin bashir, in your expert

opinion, is the sort of i will call it some amount of negative momentum given where mitt romney is polling in terms of likability and the ability to see eye-to-eye and care about the concerns of the common man, is this negative sort of cloud something he can lift in the next few months? >> it's amazing, isn't it, this man has been running for the presidency for eight years, but he's also simultaneously been running away from his own biography. he doesn't want to talk about what he did in massachusetts because that wasn't entirely favorable. he doesn't really want to talk in detail about what he did at bain capital because that's difficult. you were suggesting to john heilemann the democrats have actually defined this man. i think he's defined himself and now what are we supposed to do, wake up and say for the next two weeks, we're going to get to know this man. we know this man already. we know what he's like. he's a plutocrat, very, very wealthy, he actually isn't particularly compassionate and he's extremely awkward. that's the kind of man he is. what are they going to do, dress him up as some guy who is really getting down with the folks and really relaxed?

i find this whole, i'm sorry, to be slightly contemptuoous. it's ridiculous to impose on the american people the idea we're supposed to learn about this guy. we know him. we know who he is. >> don't you think, aside from loving those vintage popeye cartoon clips which i know you guys were entertained by, the "i am what i am" line is -- i guess that's mitt romney trying to say i'm going to try and own it. >> well, look, i'm in the unlikely position of sticking up for mitt romney here. couple things. one, conventions are traditionally the point at which they try to tell their story in a way that captures the imagination of the american people. he has a chance to do that. that's what conventions are typically about. secondly, he doesn't like to talk about his time in the business world, doesn't like to talk about his time as massachusetts governor. that's a real problem. the other thing he doesn't like to talk about or hasn't yet is his faith. if he does, i think there's ample evidence, at least i've

read, he is a compassionate person, a person who is deeply involved in his community, that he has helped people. whether he tells that story, whether people get to see the mitt romney that they have not yet seen is open to question but that is typically what conventions are about and that is in many respects the task at hand. >> can i say briefly, there's two pieces, though. one is that it's not i am what i am, it's i am what i wasn't. that is to say, i am not the man who was governor, i am not the man who passed the assault weapons ban, i'm not -- >> not nearly as catchy, ari. >> maybe not. >> i'm not the man who was pro-choice and i previously was and now i'm not. all of these things, i am not. >> exactly. and who was defined in part by a piece of legislation that was very good, universal health care at the state level. there's that big pivot. to howard's point, the other problem is, he hasn't been known nationally by doing something or being a senator for 20 years or one of these other sort of onramps. he's in the crucible of these tough campaigns. this is where the obama campaign will have trouble

post-convention, in a way his numbers are slightly artificially depressed. hillary clinton has been very popular when in office, then her numbers obviously go down when she runs for president, because everyone shoots at you, then they go back up. there's a possibility in a different context, he will do better. >> i want to ask about expectations, john. is there going to be a great big reveal? we were talking about the mormon question and we know a mormon pastor will introduce governor romney, but is he really going to wrap his arms around these sort of big issues that we're heretofor not things he ever wanted to discuss? >> i think that's no question. i think they are keeping a pretty tight lid on exactly what his speech is going to say, how much leg or arm or anything else he's going to show on some of the issues that howard mentioned. but look, just to take one slight piece of exception with what martin bashir said, most people in america have not actually paid that much attention to this race. we all do. people who appear on this show, people who talk about this all day long on television, including me and you and everyone on the panel, but most

americans have not paid that much attention and they slowly start to focus now. that's why howard wolfson is so right. the romney campaign feels really good about where they are right now. the poll that came out yesterday that has him up by one point with registered voters and registered voters have generally been worse for romney, he probably is in a better place with likely voters than with registered voters and the fact that the president's at 45% on the eve of the republican convention, before any bounce for mitt romney, the romney campaign feels really good about where they are and that might actually limit the extent to which they feel they need to do something dramatic with his speech thursday night. >> i want to talk about the attacks the romney campaign launched in the direction of team obama and call to everyone's attention something that david corn wrote today. romney has deployed assaults against president barack obama that are tinged with racism, attack ads that push the already much stretched envelope of political truth bending. at this moment as romney commands a national audience, they are poised to build on a foundation of untruthfulness and

obama hatred years in the making. this is on the heels of the comments mitt romney made, the joke he made on friday about the birth certificate but clearly david paints a bigger, more concerning portrait around the president. i guess i wonder how much you think that sticks and that in turn is depressing the president's numbers. >> well, as my colleagues very effectively demonstrated this weekend, it's a tactic and the reason why the romney campaign is using the tactic is that their prior tactics haven't worked well enough. they are going for a more direct character attack on the president than they have used to date because they feel that is the most effective way for them to win the election and they basically admitted as much. you know, when we think about conventions, one pattern that i think is important to note is that there's always kind of an inversely proportional relationship between the nasty, ugly stuff and the lofty elevated hopeful flattering tone. >> i haven't seen any of that stuff yet.

>> remember, it was the gennifer flowers scandal that produced the inspirational man for hope video from president clinton which remains the gold standard of how a candidate presents himself. i think with both of these conventions, with the nastiness of the romney attacks, we will see them try to complement that with ann romney and craig romney and people from governor romney's church and by the way, the same thing will be true next week in charlotte with these ugly racially tinged attacks on the president. that's where they bring out the obama girls, right, the heartwarming, uplifting, positive figures. >> so john heilemann, we have to cut it here but i want to ask you on a scale of one to ten, how epic is the romney video montage going to be? >> a scale of one to ten, somewhere between one and ten. i think they will do a very nice job. they have a lot of great hollywood ad men working on that. i'm sure it will look fantastic. i think it's going to tug at your heartstrings.

you're a sentimental girl. >> wow. one in ten out of one in ten. thank you, john heilemann, as always. coming up, while republicans in tampa monitor the path of tropical storm isaac, the system bears down on new orleans as the anniversary of hurricane katrina approaches. we get the latest information on the storm, next. i am going to become facebook friends with our babysitter. no. these work, right? no. all right. mom! look what i found in the shed! no! no! no! ♪ ew! were you guys just making out in here? what? no! is it okay if i quit my job and start a blog? no. really? cold cuts from a package? yes. [ male announcer ] in a world filled with "no," it's nice to finally say "yes."

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we are keeping an eye on tropical storm isaac as it enters the gulf of mexico. the weather channel's jim

cantore is in new orleans, where they are watching isaac very closely. jim? >> reporter: new orleans is absolutely on high alert. looks like this storm will pass off to our west and even though it's not katrina, it will present its own set of problems. the good news is, they are very confident, you see part of this $15 billion levee system, that will hold back the water. that's the surge part of this. however, what about the rainfall? what if we get two to four inches of rain or two times as much rain as we got with katrina, and that is a very high likelihood. can we keep the water out on both ends? that's yet to be determined. >> thank you to jim cantore. storm clouds could also be heading toward tampa in the form of the republican party. we will look at blustery weather that might just make its way inside the gop's tent after the break. managing my diabetes is part of my life,

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heading away from tampa but republicans are engulfed in their very own cone of uncertainty, as the gop looks to present a unified front this week, they are finding it hard to cover serious fractures within the party. former florida governor jeb bush will be speaking at the convention on wednesday. he says that republicans need to start making some changes. >> our demographics are changing and we have to change not necessarily our core beliefs but how -- the tone of our message and the message and the intensity of it for sure. this is going to be a close election but long term, conservative principles if they are to be successful and implemented, there has to be a concerted effort to reach out to a much broader audience than we do today. >> this while another former republican governor of florida is stirring the waters. charlie crist formally endorsed president obama yesterday, writing as republicans gather in tampa to nominate mitt romney, americans can expect to hear tales of how president obama has failed to work with their party or turn the economy around, but

an element of their party has pitched so far to the extreme right on issues important to women, immigrants, seniors and students, that they have proven incapable of governing for the people. meanwhile, the gop has yet to convince ron paul's movement of young energetic supporters. congressman paul declined a speaking spot at the convention because the romney campaign reportedly required final approval of paul's speech. last night, paul said this to more than 7,000 supporters at his own rally in tampa. >> when you think if there's a party that says we have an open tent, we want new people to come in, we want to appeal to the young people, don't you think they would be begging and pleading that they come into the big tent? well, no. we'll get into the tent, believe me, because we will become the tent. >> while former mississippi governor haley barbour insists the party is unified, he doesn't give much credit to governor romney. >> he's the least conservative of the serious candidates for

the nomination of the conservative party of the united states. where barack obama is the great uniter of republicans. >> joining us now from tampa is the washington bureau chief of mother jones, msnbc political analyst, david corn. david, let's talk about tampa and what's going on down there. that comment from haley barbour i thought was kind of stinging this morning on the day the convention begins. charlie crist is now speaking at the dnc. we just got a little bit of information about who used to work for charlie crist and it's a lot of current romney staffers, including andrea saul. does it hurt to have high profile republicans either questioning or leaving the party as mitt romney is its nominee? >> well, it certainly doesn't help. let's start with that basic premise. mitt romney is coming into tampa and you can see there's a whole hub or actually not, of activity behind me. really with the least amount of

enthusiasm of any candidate in modern times. and paul ryan, by picking paul ryan, he didn't really do that much to juice up the enthusiasm the way that mccain did with sarah palin, at least initially. if you go back and think about the barack obama entrance into denver and how he stormed his way into there, he was not only captivating democrats, the whole country was just amazed and interested in barack obama. here, you really see the culmination of kind of a shotgun wedding that was financed by the super pacs that supported mitt romney. the delegates coming here, whether it's ron paul's tent, yes, let's be a tent, or others who are just kind of willing to settle for this guy. so no one's expecting a historic level of enthusiasm or excitement. i think that's going to be hard for mitt romney to get a lot of momentum, if any, out of this abbreviated convention. >> howard, no one's expecting

the excitement will actually come to the rnc but they want it to, precisely because the party itself seems so fractured. i will say, has anybody who has ever seen a hurricane season, has lived through a hurricane season, choosing to have your convention in august in tampa would seem to be maybe not the best logistically speaking. in the same way, having a convention with this current republican party which is so fractured, so many different elements fighting against each other, whether that's a tea party, whether it's the ron paul libertarians, whether it's the moderate conservative republicans who are increasingly smaller in number, it is not a big surprise that these elements, it is an uncomfortable grouping together of people. i want to read something from the "new york times." some leaders express worry that the turn to contentious social issues in the days leading up to the rnc could undercut the party's need to broaden its appeal. more than anything the party is wracked by the challenge of the establishment by tea party outsiders who are demanding a purge of incumbents who play by a set of rules that many of

these republicans reject. let's talk about how mitt romney can have any sort of unifying elements. >> charlie crist is irrelevant. i don't think in the end the ron paul folks are going to matter that much. what jeb bush said is important. you have a party that in the last couple weeks has really been defined by its most extreme voices. congressman akin in missouri was a disaster, his comments around rape were a disaster for the republican party. i think you are going to see, if they do it right, some effort to at least moderate themselves somewhat. romney only has a little bit of flexibility here because he has to worry about his right but if he doesn't do that, if he doesn't move a little to the center, he will lose a lot of people. that's what jeb bush is so worried about. >> when you think about the republican platform on immigration this week, it is again, it's extreme but it reflects governor romney's position which is

self-deportation. there's no suggestion, i think he's shifted his position slightly over the last month, saying he might consider a dream act, but outside of that, there's no real policy strategy to resolve this issue of immigration and this stance they've taken has proven so offensive to such a large demographic in the country. >> no question. >> i worked for mayor bloomberg. he has been touring the country with other business leaders, most recently rupert murdoch, around this issue of immigration trying to get both parties together around immigration reform. there are a lot of republicans who understand the need for immigration reform. jeb bush is one of them. that's one of the things he's referring to. we have not seen mitt romney do that yet. it's a huge challenge for him. i would argue he needs to begin to do that. >> we are also talking about, certainly this is the republican convention, for republicans by republicans but at the end of the day, the country will be watching this, and there are plenty of people in the united states that understand the republican party has gone far to the right and i guess david corn, at the end of the day, mitt romney needs to win over swing voters so while he has to be concerned about preserving his right flank which is to say the conservative base, he really

does need to deliver a message that is national. >> he needs to win over those undecided voters in six to eight states to win. i have to admit being a little surprised at his choice of paul ryan who puts sort of the republican tea party wing back into full play here, particularly on medicare, a big issue here in florida and other key states. i was talking to a top republican person just a few minutes ago, that's all we get to do now because there's no convention, we talk to each other in the hallways. and this is someone who talked to the romney campaign chieftains and they say they're pretty comfortable where they are right now and they don't expect to have any major changes in their overall strategy. i still, i would have expected weeks ago for him to, you know, this is mr. flip-flopper, for him to have somersalted in the direction of independent centrist voters, the few out there who are undecided. so far, we have seen no sign of that. he's gone after white voters with this welfare attack, gone

after -- to reassure his own base and he's made no real play for the middle. it's hard to fathom what they're thinking because there isn't much time. >> i will say, ari, the thing about ron paul and having seen some of his rallies and speeches, he has a very energetic and young base, which is if the republican party has any kind of long game, it is courting some amount of people who are under the age of 65 and yet, he's basically forfeited them by marginalizing ron paul supporters in this convention. at the same time, who is speaking but newt gingrich has been given a speaking slot. if we're talking about the long game for the republican party, the guy -- is it the guy who wants to do lunar colonies or the guy who is ginning up 25 year olds? >> the age gap was the biggest gap last cycle. it was not gender. voters over 50 went for mccain so those demographics are very

important. rand paul gets to speak instead of ron paul. ron said, as you showed, he wasn't going to get up there if he couldn't have freedom of message. i think that tells you a lot about the uncertainty within the party with having people who are going to get on stage and say things that go outside of the official message. >> martin, setting aside the youth vote, there's also everybody else in the country and we have talked about these numbers before, but more in touch with women's problems, obama is running at 60%, romney at 31%. the numbers on african-americans are so embarrassing, it's almost not mentioning on television. president obama at 94%, romney at zero. zero. goose egg. hispanics, 35% -- >> there must be one. >> i think the big absence, the person we're missing at the moment is pat robertson. remember that pat robertson usually interprets natural disasters for us and he

explained the haitian earthquake was provoked as we know by, as he said, a relationship that the haitian people decided to seek with satan and then 9/11 was provoked by the aclu. is it possible that if pat robertson were interpreting this, he would say the republican convention is under pressure from the storm because paul ryan's budget is cruel and unbiblical and also because newt gingrich has broken the commandment do not commit adultery more times than we can mention. there is an absolute hypocrisy in the way this story has been laid out and it's contradictory and howard was saying earlier that they've got two weeks to kind of correct it. i think the problem is how do you get a 94 to zero improvement in two weeks? how do you do two to one latinos in two weeks? >> as a reporter, there's one strange parallel i keep hearing again and again in interviews, both from the obama people and

the romney people, and that's this. the republicans will say things like what we just heard from governor bush and also from john mccain this weekend, basically saying given the fractured state of this party, given a real problem with diversity, given a candidate who is somewhat imperfect, you know, we have a real problem. yet, the race is pretty even and republicans almost can't believe they're doing as well as they're doing. the obama people say the same thing and they say it about the economy. they say when you look at the historical numbers, when you look at the stagnancy of the economy, i can't believe we're doing as well as we can. >> i totally hear what you're saying, but when we talk about again the survival of the party beyond 2012, when we look towards 2016 and the numbers are not on the side of the gop in terms of these demographics and poll numbers. >> that's completely true, but i don't think there are many people in the romney camp that are worrying about 2016.

they're worrying about the next two months and they seem to be coming up with a strategy which a lot of us can't sort out on how to win in november and that still is going to put them i think in a bad position even if they do win for 2016. talking about the black vote, hispanic vote gap is probably more significant demographically in terms of winning elections now and in the future. and you know, it's still a mystery what mitt romney will say in his speech. if he's going to make any entree, overture to people out there who don't buy the tea party extremism, who don't believe barack obama is a secret muslim socialist, who is an amateur, but with a secret plan to destroy america and turn it into europe. what's he going to say to get beyond that crowd? it's a big puzzlement at this point in time. >> you will be there to witness it, david corn. >> yes. hopefully it will be a little drier then. >> i cannot wait to hear all about it. thank you to david corn in

tampa. here in new york, martin bashir, who you can catch today and every day on his fantastic msnbc -- i can't even say it. >> 12:00 p.m. eastern, thank you. >> "martin bashir" at 4:00 p.m. eastern. there we go. >> thank you. i appreciate that. >> one of these two hosts is better at reading teleprompter than the other. coming up, the obama administration is now in the midst of a massive effort to counteract voter i.d. laws across the country, something attorney general eric holder likened to jim crow era measures during his speech at the naacp last month. >> under the proposed law, concealed hand gun licenses would be acceptable forms of photo i.d. but student i.d.s would not. many of those without i.d.s would have to travel great distances to get them, and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. we call those poll taxes.

>> we will discuss the tactics behind this voter fraudulent behavior when joe sestak and the nation's ari berman join us, next.

today, the obama administration is in court asking a panel of judges to reject south carolina's photo i.d. law. the justice department argues that it will likely disenfranchise minority voters by significant numbers. in recent years, republican governors in ten states have enacted laws requiring voters to show i.d. before casting their votes. republicans argue they're just trying to root out voter fraud but the idea that ineligible voters are swinging elections is pure fantasy. according to nyu's brendan center for justice, americans are more likely to get struck by lightning than to encounter

voter fraud. so what exactly is the purpose of voter i.d. laws? more than anything, these laws help keep certain sectors of the electorate from exercising their constitutional right to vote, and in turn, this helps republicans win elections. the republican leader of the pennsylvania house said as much earlier this summer. >> voter i.d. which is going to allow governor romney to win the state of pennsylvania, done. >> voter i.d. isn't the only tool republicans are using. in the swing states of florida and ohio, republicans are taking aim at early voting hours, which helped president obama win in 2008. according to one ohio republican official, quote, i guess i really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban, read african-american, voter turnout machine. ironic? perhaps. these days contorting, altering, curtailing and otherwise complicating the voting process has very nearly become a republican party platform. in fact, at last week's gop platform committee meeting,

kansas secretary of state drafted an amendment supporting voter i.d. laws. it reportedly made it on to the gop platform. we reached out to the rnc for confirmation but have not received a response. joining us now is former democratic congressman from pennsylvania, joe sestak, and here in new york, "the nation's" ari berman. congressman, i would like to go to you first on this, knowing well as you do the keystone state. what sort of impact do you foresee these laws having in critical swing states? >> we're not going to be able to judge that, because already, there are people who feel they cannot come out to vote and we won't know what the reason is. even today, pennsylvania just announced another change of a dozen changes since the law was signed just five months ago. i, for example, as a military guy, under the first way the law was passed, couldn't even use my military i.d. card because it had the word indefinite under the date. i think the bigger issue here,

alex, is that in the military, every single division on every shift for a year before an election has an officer who goes around to every member of each of the divisions and says here's your absencee ballot, how about filling it out, to where we understand the value of protecting the right to vote. unfortunately here in this great commonwealth, we become a keystone kop rather than the keystone state, to where we want to put the citizen above party. we have a governor, for example, who for eight years as attorney general could not find one case of voter fraud to prosecute and yet instead of focusing on jobs, has decided that his priority had to be to disenfranchise voters. i would be for this end to have a voter i.d. card if you took the time and not have a means that prostitutes the process and gives a number of years to make sure that it can be implemented well. but that's not the case, nor do we have any cases of any voter i.d. that the state of commonwealth could bring up in court last month to try to present to the commonwealth

court judge. >> ari, you have done great, extensive reporting on this subject, in particular the congressman using very strong language there, prostituting the state. we know this is -- this is a problem we've acknowledged on this channel, on this air before, the president's team is taking it very seriously. they are fighting measures that are voter i.d. measures that are happening in pennsylvania, wisconsin, florida and ohio. they know that this is going to matter. could it turn the election? >> it could. you look, this has been one of the most significant changes since the 2010 election is the wholesale change in voting laws across the country. more than a dozen states have changed their voting laws to make it harder for obama's base to vote. you look at all the different voting changes, whether it's making it harder to register to vote, cutting back on early voting, passing voter i.d. laws, disenfranchising ex-felons, purging voters. they are all aimed at making it harder for obama's core coalition to be able to turn out. and there really was no problem of voter fraud in 2008 or in any previous elections that required these kind of laws. what required these kind of laws from the republican party's

perspective was the election of barack obama and the fact that as you mentioned in earlier segments, the country was changing, becoming more diverse. rather than courting those voters, the gop has decided let's just make it harder for them to vote in the next election. >> howard, this is beyond just ensuring that the president isn't re-elected. this is disenfranchising hundreds of thousands, if not millions of minority voters, that quote, it's not my job to worry about african-american turnout. as an elected representative, your job should be worrying and making it easier for people to vote and exercise a constitutional right. >> it is not easy to vote in this country. the republicans are clearly making it more difficult. the bottom line is there's one party that is trying to make it easier for people to vote in this country, the democratic party. another party is trying to make it more difficult for people to vote, the republican party. that's a set of facts. the republicans will try to pretend that isn't so, that this is about the law and enforcing the law, but i think as we are seeing, in many cases, this is

about suppressing president obama's base. >> they are now theoretically writing it into the republican party platform which they will be touting this week. we'll have more on this after the break. it's not exactly coincidence that many of these voter i.d. battles are fought in critical tossup states like pennsylvania and ohio. each one has its own special brand of subversion. we will look at the states of disgrace in particular, next. we're sitting on a bunch of shale gas. there's natural gas under my town. it's a game changer. ♪ it means cleaner, cheaper american-made energy. but we've got to be careful how we get it. design the wells to be safe. thousands of jobs. use the most advanced technology to protect our water. billions in the economy. at chevron, if we can't do it right, we won't do it at all. we've got to think long term. we've got to think long term. ♪

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according to nyu's brendan center for justice, since last year, republicans in 19 states have enacted laws aimed at rolling back voting rights. those laws include high profile voter i.d. laws in texas, south carolina, wisconsin and pennsylvania, all of which are the subject of legal fights and in ohio and florida, republicans have pushed through changes that slash the number of days and hours allowed for early voting. congressman sestak, in pennsylvania in particular, i thought this was staggering,

9.2% of registered voters in pennsylvania lack state-issued voter i.d. 18% in pennsylvania which is 44% black. to say that this is not disproportionately targeting minorities is shocking. in florida, on the sunday before the 2008 election, 43% of early votes came from african-americans. this is a major issue and it trends just exactly along racial lines. >> i think that's exactly why the department of justice has rightly asked the commonwealth of pennsylvania to reveal some of the data by which it made its decision. this is going to impact those that tend to be old, tend to be disabled, tend to be poor, and the minorities. i think that's the same of what's happened here. even the commonwealth judge, who said just a few weeks ago in supporting the state law, he said that somewhere between 1% to 9% of people are going to be impacted by that. 1% is 80,000 people, 9% is

800,000. this is without a question going to go against those that the law must most protect. i can tell you one example of a veteran in my district who is old, disabled, fought in a war, blind, and because he as a child then was adopted by his stepfather, his birth certificate changed and until today, today when they just changed the law one more time, he was unable in time to get the right data in order to go forward and vote. that's the shame about all this. >> ari, when you hear those stories, there are so many anecdotes about people who voted for decades, who understand it to be their constitutional right and all of a sudden the rules change. i thought that in ohio, the fact that now early voting is being changed, it used to be 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. for certain weeks before the election, now 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., there's no logic in terms of cutting back on days and hours of voting. >> the only logic is to make it

harder for democrats to vote. that's what gets at all these different pieces of legislation. it's just so confusing for voters now. in pennsylvania, two months out from the election, somewhere between 80,000 and 800,000 registered voters might not be able to vote. that's crazy. look at ohio, every week, the voting hours change. you look at florida, the voter registration rules, it's one rule, then another rule. beyond the fact that we are suppressing voters, we're just also confusing them unnecessarily. i think it will be an absolute mess on election day. >> not just confusing them but also scaring them. we found, i was in 2004 i worked for the dnc, we worked on this issue, we did focus group. we found that a discussion of how difficult it was to vote actually scared voters away from the polls. they just sort of said you know, it will be a hassle, somebody will want to look at my i.d. and my documentation, i just don't want to deal with it, i'll stay home, i won't bother. even the very discussion of this discourages voting. >> 220 years here in pennsylvania, where the constitution was founded, giving

the right to vote, where that right to vote is mentioned four times in the constitution, yet freedom of the press and freedom of religion is only mentioned once, somehow our commonwealth state has decided party is more important than citizen. that's what's outrageous about this. you're supposed to as a public servant put your party underneath the citizen and that's what's not happened here. >> congressman joe sestak, thank you for your time. we will be monitoring this in your home state and states beyond. thank you to you. coming up, governor romney defends the quote, humor behind his birther comment. for romney supporters like donald trump, president obama's birth certificate is no laughing matter. >> it's not an issue that he likes talking about so what he does is uses reverse psychology on people like you so that you report like oh, gee, he's thrilled with it. he does not like that issue because it's hitting very close to home. you know it and he knows it. >> i will take a look at the

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there's no question about where he was born. he was born in the u.s. this was fun about us and coming home and humor, you know, we got to have a little humor in a campaign as well. >> sometimes his speeches even become more dull and boring by all candidates if you're not allowed to have a little humor. >> it's a moment of levity. >> what was the joke? >> now on to my post-script. last friday, mitt romney, not known for his comedic skills or timing, took a moment to enjoy a moment of levity by bringing up the hilarious birther conspiracy that barack obama was not born in the united states of america and therefore, is not legally allowed to be president of the united states. hilarious doesn't begin to cover it. most of romney's defenders waved

away most of us who found the remark disgracefully unfunny. couldn't we unbutton our tight suit jackets and put down our steaming mugs of political correctness and see how funny governor romney was trying to be? i mean, come on. what's a little humor predicated on fearmongering and race baiting? this campaign needs levity, people. the real shame is that president obama didn't participate in the governor's 2012 laugh riot by making a joke about mormonism or polygamist compounds on next me or whether mitt romney was born in the united states. that would have had everyone in stitches. there will continue to be those who think this is much ado about nothing. politics ain't beanbag and certainly ain't stand-up either but the idea that somehow in one of the most polarized, toxic political environments in american history, a presidential candidate would choose to pick an intellectually and morally repugnant conspiracy theory for a cheap laugh, if it wasn't so irresponsible and truly pathetic, it would in fact be laughable.

thanks again to ari, howard and jodi. that's all for now. see you back here tomorrow at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m. pacific when i am joined by former governor ed rendell, george pataki, steve kornacki and laurence o'donnell. "andrea mitchell reports" is next live from tampa. hello, andrea. hi, alex. here we are at the site of the republican national convention. it is as you know delayed. they will convene at 2:00 for just about two or three minutes, start their deficit clock and we'll have more on that later. we'll be talking to governor bob mcdonnell who chaired the platform committee and talking to the mayor of los angeles, who chairs the democratic national convention in charlotte next week. he's here at the republican convention to present their point of views. we have new polls, we have mitt romney and bobby jindal isn't coming because of the tropical

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right now on "andrea mitchell reports," live from tampa, rain delay. mitt romney's big week gets off to a late start thanks to tropical storm isaac. >> think about the people that are going to be affected by it. >> are you concerned about your convention? >> it will be a great convention. >> as isaac moves across the hot waters of the gulf, hurricane warnings now stretch from louisiana to the florida panhandle, with a potential direct hit to new orleans seven years to the day after hurricane katrina slammed ashore. this time, a different mayor who says they're ready. >> let me say very clearly to everybody, neither the airport nor the supertodome nor the convention center is going to be a shelter of last resort. >> here in tampa, the show goes on. but a four-act play is being downsized to three as mitt romney tries to appeal to a broader audience.