post-convention bounce. a top romney pollster said hey, it's a sugar high from the convention. the basic structure has not changed significantly. notice the word significantly. the politico executive editor write romne advisers privately conceded to them that obama has a much clearer path to victory. most disappointing they say is ohio now leans clearly in obama's favor which is why mitt romney is at a rally right now. politico ken vogel it here with us. ken, no republican has won the white house without winning ohio in the entire history of america. given your reporting at politico, this thing over? should we all go home? >> certainly the advantage obama is enjoying in ohio is something that cheers his supporters in his campaign, but they even acknowledge there's still a lodge way to go particularly to the economic trend line if the job reports have bad news.

there's a chance for mitt romney to make it around the economy and hang the economy around obama's neck. if he does that, we'll see movement in ohio potentially. the other thing kind of favors romney even though president obama outraised him for the first time in august. we saw them just come out with their figures early it this morning. these outside groups that mitt romney has on the side are able to if he cannively bring a negative message in a different way than some candidates who rely on the outside groups to bolster their positives. a negative message is what mitt romney is bringing. they can have a ton of money to do it. >> ken, explain why several romney campaign staffers say we're losing in ohio and we don't know what's going on. if that's real, are they depressed or are they venting? is it a fund-raising technique? >> i think there's a little bit of all of that. ohio being such a key state,

everyone is watching it. there are paths to victory for them without ohio. a lot of what we see right now is looking at the different routes to victory with the two main swing states in one column or the other, that being ohio and florida and how the other swing states may be able to -- there may be a path without one of their swing states for mitt romney. ohio, the depression over ohio in the romney camp is real and they're closely watching it and they have reason to be very concerned about it. >> ken, i think the story here is broader at least to me than just a polling bump for obama out of the convention. i think there's a bigger story here that really obama has been winning this race basically the whole way, since romney emerged from the republican primaries last spring. i don't know if we can see this, but i'll describe it. we have the polling trend that real clear politics puts together. they average together day to day every poll out there. it eliminates the noise with one outlier.

going back to april, obama has clearly been ahead one, two, three, four points except for the start of the republican convention. that has been an obama lead, and that to me, says, yeah, it's a close race. obviously, mitt romney can win. that's significant. if obama going back now four or five months has been leading several points every day in a polling average, this guy has been winning the race all aalong. >> it is significant, and you have to watch the tracking figures. you you also have to watch the jobs reports and the economic news, and then you have to watch how mitt romney positioning himself. we saw on his first major post convention interview, he acknowledged there are parts of obama care he would keep. this was received by a lot of folks and interpreted as tacking towards the center. the convention was the last sort of partisan hurdle where he had to appeal to the republican base which he had no stuch trouble with during the primaries. now it will be interesting. is he going to come back to the center to try to appeal to these undecided voters. there's a very narrow swath of undecided voters, however, so

it's hard for both candidates to sort of hone in on them and then you have to ask yourself, does it become a mobilization game and are they getting their respective bases out if that's the case. certainly those trend lines have to favor president obama. >> ken, i want to go back to the polling memo from romney campaign pollster neil newhouse, which i found really unusual and found it remarkable. it was a point by point rebuttal of the piece over the weekend. they talked about the fact that this is still a tight race. that the battleground has expanded for romney, which the opposite case was made over the weekend in politico. the romney/ryan campaign is targeted. the other thing that struck me here is you see pollsters frengtly issuing polling member based on the data to spin a happy base for the campaign. this seemed like something different. it was talking points and it was making the argument without backing it up by numbers. how unusual is that, and how

much does it spell out exactly how concerned the romney campaign really is? >> certainly the polling memos are for public consumption. make no bones about it being a internal tracking document. when you talk to folks privately, as jim and mike did for this story, there is real concern that is not going to be reek flekted in a document like this. it's a result of tracking polling numbers and focus groups and not just the romney campaigns either but a wide swath of conservative groups who all have this polling data this is available and these are very savvy folks who have been walking this universe of this data and watching it pointed in a direction that is not favorable for mitt romney. they are still going for these swing voters, but at a certain point i think this probably will become a game of mobilizing bases. >> the chatter of late has been that mitt romney has all the

money and barack obama has the ground game. if steve's right, i mean, this bump is isolated around the convention perhaps. if steve is right that obama has been in the lead and it's clear, then, that ground game might be doing its job, how's does he convince voters to keep giving him money if maybe money isn't what is needed to win the election? >> well, as someone suggested earlier, there's a lot of scare tactics involved in fund-raising. you have to be able to say the other side is just cleaning our clock, and we need to compete with them. that's been the really the underlying message of most of the president obama's fund-raising for many, many months. it's gotten more intense as the romney campaign, not just the outside groups supporting mitt romney but the romney campaign surged past president obama in fund-raising. in august for the first time in the last three months since romney emerges as the presumpl active nominee, president obama was able to outfund raise mitt

romney. that should be another point of concern for the romney campaign. however, i don't think we're going to see anything close to that. i don't think we'll see competitiveness and we won't sigh parody in the outside of group fund-raising. mitt romney has a strong advantage. the more these outside groups target president obama on the economy, the more it helps balance president obama's advantage in the ground game. >> all right. ken vogel, thanks very much. >> my pleasure. if you want to know what's going on the race read the piece in salon.com called -- >> barack obama's winning. it's my own plug here and i screwed it up. go read it. salon.com. do people care about mitt romney's mormonism? we'll break it down next in the spin cycle. [ male announcer ] how do you trade? with scottrader streaming quotes, any way you want.

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a strike of choice, and it's the wrong choice for our children. it's not necessary. we need to just finish the job. >> that was chicago mayor rahm emanuel this afternoon calling the first teachers strike in morning a quarter century, unnecessary and unavoidable and wrong. today more than 29,000 educators walked the pickett line. it shut down the third largest school system. teachers are battling the city over pay raises, health care and changes to teacher evaluation and tenure. some 400,000 students are out of

school for who ndz how long. let's put this historic strike through the spin cycle. regardless of whether you think you substantively they have agreement, i don't think you can argue the optics are terrible. two months before an election and chicago is dealing with its own corruption and crime issues. of course, you know, you have millions out of work, desperate for a job that would give anything to go back to work. then, of course, you have wisconsin which just spent a ton of money launching and losing a recall effort as sort of a retaliation over cuts to public employee benefits. i can't think of the worst time to try to elicit some sympathy in this manner. >> from the political standpoint i tend to aagree with you. i think this is tough for me to see, urn, when it's the teachers against the city, against the government. the government is able to hold up, well, you know, putting the

children at risk basically. it's tough to thread that needle through the teachers, but i look at what's going on here. when you listen to the grieva e grievances that the teachers have, what they say here is they see and deal with serious problems in schools that apparently rahm emanuel and people trying to force the changes do not see and aren't interested in addressing. they talk about class sizes, very -- 30 or 50 people in a class and no air-conditioning. there's an emphasis on charter schools. 60 new charter schools. rahm emanuel is big on that. 150 schools already in existence don't have libraries. six-week waits to get textbooks for class. he's saying let's extend the school day by a couple hours, and they're saying, tend the school day? we have no libraries and books. let's address the infrastructure first. >> the teachers unions not just in chicago but aacross the country really feel like their backs are against the wall. it's not because the republicans even.

it's because there's this inner fight within the democratic party. and rahm emanuel, president obama, arne duncan and cory booker and a lot of the younger people in congress, they've been lead gt charge on this education reform movement. it's a pro charter school and pro merit pay and it's hard to get precisely out of the negotiations exactly what the sticking points have been, but it seems like some of those issues is what is driving the debate here. it's interesting to note that this is actually a conflict within the democratic party now. >> it will be interesting to follow. hopefully this doesn't take too long. this weekend in virginia, mitt romney the first mormon to win a naum nax assured the crowd he'd keep god as part of his message. >> i will not take god out of the name of the platform. i will not take god off our coins, and i will not take god out of my heart.

>> romney's religion sparked a dpood deal of interest among americans. according to google searches about romney's faith are trending higher than ever, surpassing any topics democrats used to attack him, that includes bain, tax returns and doggone roof. i think this interest is -- says a number of things. first of all, i think it sort of skew we aers the idea problem g propagated that religious doesn't matter anymore. i think clearly people still care greatly and deeply about the faith of their political candidates. so they're searching this, and i think that curiosity is actually a good thing. i think the reason you're not seeing this play out on sort of a national conversation the way some expected it to is twofold. one, it doesn't cement an existing narrative that's existed about romney the way that religion has been used in the past to do that. if you remember 2008, you know,

attacks on reverend wright cemented a narrative that obama hated america. attacks on sarah palin's pen knee costalism there was she was far right and fanatical in her faith. i don't know the narrative for mitt romney. there's nothing that really works to drive another political story, and then two, this conversation has not been ordained by the political class the way it was in 2008. you know, it wasn't just on the frings that we were having conversations about reverend wright or pen costalism. fox news and other talk radio lifted that conversation on to a national level. on the left liberal media outlets, you know, "the new york times," "time," "newsweek," this media outlet advanced that conversation about sarah palin. no one has done that yet in a significant way, so i think aside p from some trolls on

twitter talking about magic underwear, this really hasn't become, you know, a sanctioned conversation to have nationally. >> let's sanction a conversation on magic underwear. >> rubber stamp that right now. >> i agree it doesn't matter and it's six to dozen half a dozen sort of way it doesn't matter it won't stop mitt romney. people are interested in his faith, but at the beginning there was chatter about is this going to stop him the way obama's blackness is something he has to deal with. that has not been the case, and it's good to see people want to consider the candidate. they're interested, but they're not going to vote -- at least they don't tell us they won't vote for him because of that. it hasn't stopped him. obviously the reverend wright and the attacks on the president and on the potential vice president, sarah palin, were political attacks through the lens of religious. they created a narrative untrue, and they were quite a reach. it was not things that barack

obama was saying. they were things reverend wright was saying. this is not a religion sarah palin was involved in any way perhaps ever. that was something that somebody else was doing. perhaps unfair attacks on them. i mean, it's good that mormonism is not central to the campaign. romney ran the campaign he wanted to run without being stopped by it the way jfk spoke to ebusiness pailianism and say it won't change. >> it has not been central to the presidential campaign. we're not ready for a mormon debate and we're not going to. it was central to the republican primary campaign. i would argue in 1968, 44 years ago, george romney had an easier path to the presidency through his mormonism than mitt romney faces. the republican party today versus 1968, about half is evangelical christians and a lot have very hostile views towards mormonism. they believe it's inxatable with

their view of what christianity is. a long of evangelical christians have that view, and we have the spectacle in the republican primaries of mitt romney even when he was clear he was the nominee, even when his opposition was reduced to rick santorum, he's losing among evangelical christians in mississippi, alabama, southern states or even northern states with significant populations. they were resisting him even past the point. it's still an issue, because look at the clip at the beginning. who is that behind him on the stage? pat robertson. you're trotting out pat robertson in september in a general election? you're still worried about the evangelical christian base, and you want to be seen with him. he has a huge liability with anybody but the evangelical christians as well. >> mike huckabee went out of his way woult saying it to say that mitt romney'faith shouldn't be an issue and he shares our

values. one thing i thought was interesting i was looking at a gallup poll two months ago somehow 18% nationwide said they would not vote for imormon president. that's the same level when george romney was running. so that level has been basically flat since they tarted to ask the question, which i found fascinating. what's interesting to see is after this election, after having a mormon on the national stage for such a long period of time and those ininquires going on in google, if that changes the level of comfort with people of mormon faith. >> it's twice now that he's run and mormonism has been sort of a topic, however briefly. you're right. i think the country will sort of co-less and be more less curious about it in four years. we'll see. ahead in the guest spot today, coming up short presidential front-runners who didn't win the race, how the hillarys and rudys and gores of the political world might help

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almost every presidential race starts with an overwhelming favorite who almost always loses their ballots rather quickly. why do we see well-staffed and funded candidates unprepared for obvious kurch balls. according to a greet new book called "the candidate" the answer is presidential candidates are, quote, doing the equivalent of packing a small suitcase without knowing where they're going or what the weather will be. how do you plan for chaos? in the guest spot in that author, sam pop lynn, the author

of "the candidate." when you begin to run, you got a set of strengths personality-wise and policy-wise, but you have no idea what will be required to be successful in the given election season and you have to adjust to the fly to what's going on in that year and also what the other candidate your opponent is sending back at you. >> yes. i realize there's a great line from mike tyson that really motivated me when i was writing that when he said, every time he was in a championship fight when he was the best fighter in the world. his answer was everybody has a strategy to punch him in the face. >> i love that quote. >> yeah. the world according to mike tyson. and that's when it's your team that matters. you're in the corner and you're dopey, and you've got 30 seconds to get back out there.

you have to have somebody to listen to like the quarterback with 15 seconds or you're getting off the plane and there's a mushroom cloud somewhere in the world and your foreign policy persons gets into your earpiece and says do you want to go with option a or b. you don't have time to debate it. to be agile, you have to work with a floating team. one day foreign policy, one day domestic policy, one day religion, and another day iran. you just have to be very quick at moving, and i started this thinking you should have a brilliant strategy. then i realized all -- with the military says, planning in the military is everything, and the plan it is nothing. the minute the shooting starts, you have to start all over. >> some people feel like there's an inevitable although to candidates. the people around them matter. let's talk about this race a little bit. if you advise romney or obama,

what would you tell each of them to do about what they need to win this race? >> well, the obama playbook, number one, has to be understood as an entirely different playbook than the perfect challenge campaign of 2008. you're not a virgin anymore. you're the president. it's a second date. it's a renewal of the vows, and when you like it or not, you're not changed. you're more of the same. to get rid of the incumbent, there's a reason i call that chapter more of the same. now, some people would like to excuse the expression a lynching. others would like to depose him or like they did in france, behead him. getting rid of somebody in power is not trivial because you're used to him. the old roosevelt don't change horses in the middle of the stream, the obama playbook is

the truman playbook and the clinton playbook of '96. divide the other party by playing off congress. remind people you're the commander in chief. at the same time block the excesses of the extreme wing of the other party. now, he's doing that very well so far, but he has to yet convince people that in a second term he wouldn't be still stalemated by the people that are so unpopular. romney has a more difficult job. >> i was going to ask you about romney's campaign, because it seems like they're relying very heavily on the economic numbers and hoping just that the ongoing recession, the slow recovery will be enough to sink president obama. are they making a mistake in that calculus? does the candidate and the campaign itself really make the difference in a presidential election? >> it makes a difference, but the difference is many of them

have already been made the way mitt romney lurched in the primaries. remember in 2009 mitt romney was going to run as obama care plus business sense, and then the tea party came along and he repudiated everything. today he's saying not quite everything, and maybe some of it is okay. when he got worried in the primaries, he went so far on contraception, he went and embraced the ryan budget. there was a lurching quality, none of the the subtly of ronald reagan and bill clinton when they dealt with the right and left of their primaries being careful to stay close to the center. he would stay to the center and then jump over, and now he's stuck with a budget where he can't fill in numbers. he has to find a way to redefine the ryan budget if he wants to

win. it's not -- people don't trust rich, but they're worried about obama no matter what we do, romney is a mormon, but most people are more worried about a black and how he'll take money from them to give to the poor. if you're retired or middle-aged white person who is threatened about the future. all the neck active spegative se world has damaged romney through the primary through santorum, perry examine gingrich. i'm not sure when you have an incumbent president who has four years that reverend wright matters anymore maybe to mobilize more of the minority vote. >> sam, you talk about some of hillary's mistakes in 2008. what would she have to change in 2016 if she wins to have a better outcome in your estimation? >> no matter how big you are, you have to get down off the pedestal and show that you want

to work for people's votes. hillary gave speeches that would have been perfect as the nominee, but when you're asking people to accept you as their leader, it's a different level of familiarity. it's one of the extraordinary stories of the last century in my mind is the african-american race in hawaii and indonesia winning iowa over an illinois methodist. >> yeah. quite extraordinary. professor pop kin, thank you very much. >> my pleasure. coming up, if mitt romney comes up short in november and the republicans head back into the wilderness, how will they work their way out?

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another few days. it appears president obama got a real boost out of the convention. gallup has the president leading by five points. shameless plug here. i wrote about this today for salon.com called" barack obama is winning." that's the name of my own story. it's becoming clear barack obama is leading this race and has been leading this race. this is important, because there are many people who are comparing 2012 to 2004 when president george w. bush overcame dangerous approval ratings and doubts about his leadership to hold onto the presidency. sort of a similar climate politically. the question is this, if barack obama wins a second term, what happens to be republican party? questions are raised about the way romney's campaign is run with some conservatives slamming the team. joins us now is susan, and susan, i want to put a bit of a windup on the first question because i've been thinking about this a lot. there was a tweet this weekend from joe scarborough, who is

basically making a case a real conservative were the republican nominee. the republicans would be way ahead. i think the conventional wisdom here is if republicans do lose this fall that's the take-away from conservatives. we need a pure alternative next and needing to farther to the right. i get the logic of it. i remember the 1990s with bill clinton. the republican party i think its opposition was as unyielding as the opposition and there was the midterm revolution and newt gingrich and all this stuff. when they lost to clinton in 1996 and an impeachment, they started to think differently. they came up with george w. bush in compassionate conservativism. the apeople was bush could be the republican clinton. he could be the compassionate guy who could sell a message. do you see a potential for that kind of re-evaluation among republicans if they lose this election where they think about

electrici electability than they haven't at this point. >> a strategist loves-thet cals. i think it's too soon, and i don't think you can say what will happen in 2012. i remember when george w. bush came on the scene. it was because he started fund-raising and had a lot of money. the biggest concern when you look towards 2016 are the republicans are going to be concerned about hillary clinton and what she's going to do. you may see again a bunch of people who decide not to because it doesn't seem like the best environment, and then later on there is an opportunity for someone to jump in. i think it's going back to what you mentioned about joe scarborough he was talking about small government conservatives. yes, i think that's where we're going. i hope we're going to governance republicans. people have to get the job done, which right now everyone is paralyzing the system, democrats and republicans. hopefully that's the best take-away. when you get it done, you get

re-elected. >> to susan's point and your point, steve, i think another thing you see instead of this sideways swing to the right or left, you might see a swing from the same old same old establishment candidates. republicans have a history of electing or nominating a runner-up or bush. either next election cycle will be jeb bush or maybe rick santorum or paul ryan carried onto that ticket. maybe 2010 is more the lesson that they'll take and say, look, forget the politics of these guys. these were mostly a lot of newcomers who came from outside of politics, and maybe that's the direction that this 2012 loss, if it is a loss, will send them in for 2016. >> susan, the obama campaign has telegraphed if they -- if the obama administration really if they do win a second term, one of the things that they're going to take up early on is comprehensive immigration reform. there's been a lot of talk this election about where republicans

stand with la teen knetinos and can afford to move forward without significant support from the latino community. you have in the republican primary very far right extreme rhetoric, self-deportations, absolutely no amnesty from the republican party. how will that issue play out within the republican party, do you think, in the next term? >> well, again, it depends on the results of this election, because if governor romney wins, then they're going to feel a little more confident. if not, i'm hoping that they take a lesson, the dream act -- i was one of the republicans for the dream act. that's a good start to reaching out to the latino community. it's not just good government but good politics. that is something that could happen. we need to look towards people who want to govern, and when you do that, it means compromise and greater political outreach. >> no matter who wins, you have a demographic problems.

there's fewer whites in every electorate since 1982. there's a rising number of hispanics in the country. ron brown points out to win this time, governor romney needs a historic performance from white people. lindsey graham underlines this. the demographics race we are losing badly. we are not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term. is he right, and what is the way forward for the 90% party? do you have to broaden out? >> you talk about the white voters in america or any ethnic group. you talk about doing the right thing, taking the right policies. but they do have to do political outreach. there's no doubt about it. that will be seen through compromise. >> the name jeb bush has come up a few times in our conversation today. i imagine it will come up a lot in the next four years if republicans don't win this fall. how much of an issue do you think it is to republicans that his name is bush? just from a sort of basic

political calculations, you know, the links to his brother and all the memories of what happened on george w. bush's watch, how much of a liability is the bush name within the republican party. >> i think they thought it was a liability towards 2012. during 2014, it won't be although all. he has a proven conservative record. people are willing to look at him for who he is. >> susan, thanks so much for joining us. we all know this is a big election. up next, we're going to look to the big screen to put it all in perspective. bob...

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what's in your wallet? she could have done, anything, my mama. she could have been any. >> god bless the mamas. >> my mama worked her whole life and never asked for nothing. >> my mama raised seven children and worked her fingers to the bone. >> might wait until it. >> shouldn't we wait for the governor for this. this pertains to how he runs the campaign. >> piece in a mama-thon. that can go on all night in the south. >> that's a clip from "primary colors." it's the campaign that launched the clintons onto the national stage. hollywood has a long tradition of putting politics on the big screen. the only question we have is where's the popcorn? we wanted to share our favorite political moments. primary colors is my favorite

political movie. the part i love is i'm fascinated by this question whether you go into politics and keep your soul. it's centered around this political staffer henry who joins on with the campaign and becomes very disenchanted with what he sees with the corrupt process and the corrupt politician himself but in the end decides to stick with it. that means an ends and compromising your soul to advance your principle pals is the part of find fascinating. >> "the ides of march." the movie i love, 1999 "election "with the with reese witherspoon, matt broderick, alexander payne. it's a parity of a student body presidential election and a student body. generational statement about millennia millennials. we have the establishment candidate, the chaos canada. let's see a little bit of that.

>> i believe in the voters. they understand that elections aren't just popularity contests. they know this country was built by people just like me who work very hard and don't have everything handed to them on a silver spoon. not like some rich kids who everybody likes because their fathers on mettler cement and give them trucks on their 15th birthday and throw them big parties all the time. they don't have to work for anything. they could they can waltz right in with no qualifications whatsoever and try to take away what other people have worked for very, very hard their entire lives. no, didn't bother me at all. >> i love "election." i'm going to netflix it again tonight. people leak at her like hillary clinton but she'll millennial. >> it's a great move, and i love that reese witherspoon minnesota accident. okey-dokey. >> they make the contrast with the guy that waltz in there being barack obama. >> the football player, right.

>> that is supposed to be the 1992 election. the football player was george bush sr., tracy flick was bill clinton and there's ross perot with the populist message. >> my head is spinning. my real favorite is "all the president's men" but not as fun as the gilley pleuilty pleasure. this is called "true colors." it's terrible. in an amazing way it's about two law students who graduate and go into the rough and tumble world of d.c. politics cus is dak has no ethical boundaries and spader is on the straight and narrow. can their friendship survive. it's terrible. show a little bit of that. >> the ama has to realize people don't give a rat's ass about that, when a simple appendectomy cost $6,000? >> where does congress answer to

the ama and not the people who elected them? i'm sorry. i interrupted. >> no, it's all right. go on. >> just seems that people don't want the ama dictating health care policy anymore than they want exxon running the interior department. >> whoa. it's terrible, there are so many awesomely baud quotes from that movie. >> he's so young there. >> i encourage you to see it on netflix. >> unintentional comedy is the best kind. there's no irony in my choice. i think it's a great political document ril. i encourage you to check it out. it's called "the perfect candidate." it was aired in 1996. it's the story of the 1994 u.s. senate race in virginia. the background on this is i can't think of in the last generation a race that conservatives wanted more than this one. this was oliver north. this was the iran contra figure convicted of lying to congress

and gets out on a technicality in 1990. sets his sights on winning a u.s. senate seat in virginia. record fund-raising from the grassroots across the country. they don't let oliver north get to the u.s. senate. they said that dwreer there was one person in old virginia that oel ver north could beat and wa and there was one person rabe could beat and that was oliver north. and then john warner recruits a moderate republican attorney general, four candidates' race. >> a thriller. >> here is the line that decided the race. let's play it. >> you know something about my opponent. my opponent is a document shredding, constitution trashing commander in chief bashing ayatollah loving, arms dealing,

criminal protecting, resume enhancing, swiss banking, law breaking, letter faking, self-serving, snake oil salesman who can't tell the difference between the truth and a lie. >> wow. >> the tail end of the campaign. final days. he pulls away 46%, 43%. oliver north's dreams ended right there. >> that is the perfect movie for you. >> i know, right? >> all right. well, before we go, we have some news. there's a new member of the cycle team, charlie hitchins and his wife who also works at msnbc welcomed their new beautiful baby daughter today. this is little clare victoria hitchins named after the county in ireland where dad's side of the family is from. mom and dad and big sister

sidney are all doing great. congratulations. still ahead, why we all lose when candidates bend the truth to win an election. my name is adam frucci and i'm the editor of splitsider.com. i love new technology, so when i heard that american express and twitter were teaming up, i was pretty interested. turns out you just sync your american express card securely to your twitter account, tweet specific hashtags, and you'll get offers on things you love. this totally changes the way i think about membership. saving money on the things you want. to me, that's the membership effect. nice boots! i've been fortunate to win on golf's biggest stages. but when joint pain and stiffness from psoriatic arthritis hit, even the smallest things became difficult. i finally understood what serious joint pain is like. i talked to my rheumatologist and he prescribed enbrel.

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campaign ads are often untrue, but mitt romney's welfare claim isn't just a poll lit fact pants on fire sort of thing, it's also playing with fire. the ad says the president is removing the work requirement from welfare which countless independent arbiters have said

is totally untrue. listen to the secretary of explaining stuff say what is actually true. >> when some republican governors asked if they could have waivers to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the obama administration listened. the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment. >> the requirement, as clinton told us, was for more work, not less. the campaign continues running the debunked ad because it's powerful. it's written, the welfare issue triggers anger that's easily directed at democrats. this information comes from senior gop strategists. the article is called "why and how romney is playing the race card." it says the ad may be moving the electorate one to two points in

romney's direction so romney uses welfare the same way reagan used welfare queens stirring reser resentment over poor blacking getting a free ride. it's eye nev to watch this and think there's no racial element at play. why do we see blue dollar white people on the job wile talking about welfare? it seems to say, while you're working the black president is giving your tax dollars to people who aren't. many see this as miring in deep muck. jonathan chase recently wrote in "new york magazine" the racial implications of the welfare smear have raised the moral stakes to a higher plain than the normal campaign fight associating romney with the darkest strains in american political history. this and the old echoes it brings up make some wonder if an obama re-election could say more about this nation than his

election did. obama remains favored to win despite the facts. some say race cost obama 3 to 5 points in '08 and bad economic numbers and gop obstruction impeding progress. so obama arrived on the national scene as an extraordinary politician and now seems a much more ordinary politician and still victory is very much within reach. i think a more ordinary plak politician succeeding in this climate signals progress even more than the success of one who seemed as if he could walk on water. >> i think that's really true and i think that's true also about the idea of the american dream. to me the american dream isn't one or two exceptional people being able to pull themselves up from tough circumstances. it's your average person of average intelligence who works hard and is willing to take those steps being able to pull themselves up. i think your point there is really apt. the other thing i would point out about the romney campaign is not only are they using the

welfare attacks as welfare attacks, they're also trying to paint the president's health care bill as welfare and saying that you're taking money from seniors, of course portrayed as white seniors, and giving them to, quote, other people. they are trying to turn health care also into a welfare attack. >> right. it makes me think of a quote from arthur aesh from the '70s that we will have equality. now black people have to be extraordinary to get ahead, but when we can be mediocre and get ahead. that does it for "the cycle." martin bashir, the airwaves are yours. >> toure, you should be ordained as a minister because you have been preaching today. it's monday, september 10th, and here is what's happening. black sunday. ryan and romney stumble on taxes. >> give me an example of a loophole you will close. >> don't vote verse a right to know which loopholes you're going to go after? >> they didn't even actually analyze the romney plan. there are five other studies -- >> there isn't a romney plan that's been specific