good afternoon. it's tuesday, october the 16th. it's debate night, and the president is loaded up on carbs and ready to go. >> i think you're going to see an exceptionally strong debate performance tonight from the president. >> mitt is prepared. mitt's confident. >> anybody want to see second prize in second prize is a set of steak knives. >> he was fact checking this debate in realtime. sorry, paul, one plus one equals [ bleep ]. >> pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan. if they're 45 years old and they show up and they say they want insurance because i have a heart

disease, it's like, hey, guys, we can't play the game like that. if someone has a heart attack they don't sit in their apartment and die. we pick them up in an ambulance and take them to the hospital and give them care. >> oh, have i got your attention now? >> not familiar with precisely with exactly what i said, but i can't by what i said whatever it was. >> we are here off the long island expressway exit 38, just five hours from tonight's town hall debate at hofstra university. you can see we've got a fired up crowd. that's a few long island iced teas under their belts. awaiting a night that could provide the final push that carries either president obama or mitt romney to victory on november the 6th. the expectations are very different for round two, and the stakes could not be higher. the consensus is clear, the

president must get his mojo back after a weak first debate that left democrats demoralized and his lead eroding in both national polls and battleground states. for romney another debate win could give him the momentum to break the president's hold on swing states like ohio and wisconsin and give him the keys to the white house. and that is why with 21 days to go, the president must use this debate to shatter the mythical mitt romney who is chas currenty entranced the voters. case in point, romney's alleged plan to create 12 million jobs through those proven pro-growth policies. guess what? they're not proven at all, none of it is. in fact, "the washington post" fact checker today gives the most essential claim of romney's campaign four pinocchios. its equivalent of a pants on fire lie. calling even the most reliable

of the numbers highly conditional. fact checker glen kessler writes simply, this is a case of bait and switch. bait and switch. doesn't that sound familiar? kind of like the guy who pushed through the model for individual mandates and a civilized plan for statewide health care coverage now suggesting that emergency rooms are the answer for the uninsured. >> that's the most expensive way to do it. in the emergency room. >> again, different states have different ways of doing that. some provide that care through clinics. some provide the care through emergency rooms. >> yes, and for some it's too late. that's why 45,000 die each other for lack of insurance, something the affordable care act seeks to prevent. so point out the bait and switch, mr. president. don't let this man yank the dreams out from under our young immigrants. don't let him criminalalize a young woman's right to choose, ant don't let him leave the most

vulnerable to hope and pray that an ambulance gets to their house or apartment fast enough. tonight is your one last shot. don't let him get away with the bait and switch again. let's get right to our panel now. at our new new york studio, 30 rockefeller center, richard wolf, vp and executive editor of msnbc.com and here with me joi reid, the managing editor of thegrio.com. i didn't realize you had so many fans. >> you got a few people out here. >> without being hyperbolic or histrionic, how important is tonight for the president? >> debate is very important, martin, and as you understand re-elects are base elections. re-elects are about the base, okay? whether it was george w. bush in 2004, barack obama now, at this stage something like 95% of voters have made up their minds. they've already decided which team they're on. now it is about motivating your

base to go to the polls, to translate support for you into actual votes for you. so the president's job really at this point is to motivate base democrats, to motivate independents who lean toward the democratic party and people who in their hearts say obama and maybe in their heads say romney, to go with their hearts. he has to say i'm fighting for you, for the middle class, i'm f fighting for this job for you. >> richard, democrats are demanding a big performance from the president, but isn't the problem the president could end up fighting the ghost of debates past because who knows which mitt romney will appear tonight. >> well, that is actually the framework, martin. if you're looking at the sweet spot for the president, you're trying to say to both the base and to undecided voters and, frankly, that's an important strategy for the obama campaign,

they're not just running a base only operation. that's the romney approach. there is still a sliver of undecideds where mitt romney has not made the sale, he's not completed the sale. so the sweet spot is to go out there and say which mitt romney are you? are you the mitt romney who has been running as a severe conservative, the one who showed up at the last debate saying you're a moderate? what are voters going to get? if mitt romney cannot close that circle, if he cannot reconcile one version of himself to another, then the hiring part of this hiring and firing decision of every re-election, that hiring part will not be concl e concluded. so the president can rally his base and also reach undecided voters by saying who is this guy standing on stage here because he doesn't sound anything like mitt romney from debates past. >> indeed. joy, polls are showing a tightening in the margins with women voters in particular, but how can that be when we have paul ryan last week suggesting that he doesn't think judges

should divide a -- decide a ruling like the 1973 roe v. wade supreme court justice ruling and also all these claims and suggestions that we have an er and that's your health insurance basically without the affordable care act. if an ambulance turns up, good luck. >> i am in no ways a poll truther but the way you get a tie with female voters is poll with a sample of older white female voters. we have seen in polls past that the women who tend to favor the republican party tend to be the same as the men who tend to favor the republican party. they tend to be older. they tend to be more likely white than minority, and so i am very skeptical, quite frankly, of that gallup/usa today poll because their sample appears not to be representative of the entire voting public. just about every other poll has been consistent in showing a 10, even a 15% gender gap. >> even 20%. >> even 20%. but if you just poll older

voters, you will tend to see more women in that set that are more comfortable with any republican, including mitt romney. >> right. richard, this debate will be a mix of domestic issues and foreign policy. the first time the two men will face off on the tragedy of benghazi, the unrest in the middle east. how much do you think this will factor into the president's efforts to regain his grounds on this issue? >> well, i think there's going to be a really important couple of exchanges. at the bare minimum when you look at where the romney campaign is trying to score points on benghazi, the president needs to point out the obvious here, not only is this a chaotic -- was a chaotic situation, remains so, but gadhafi is gone. when you look at the record of this president in libya, an enemy of the united states for many, many decades is no longer in power tormenting his people and the rest of the people because of maamerican policy wi

mitt romney and the republican party in general has poured scorn on. what is the difference between these two campaigns? again, a tactical approach from the romney campaign, but for the president to say what would you do differently here? are you proposing all-out war or arming rebels when we now know that actually a lot of those arms are already flowing through to jihadists and that's not in anyone's interest? there's a practical level to this debate that the president needs to explain. it's not that easy. it's a town hall format. i'm not sure how passionate the noncommitted voters are going to be about these issues, but i know both candidates will want to battle this out on national tv tonight. >> and, joy, isn't the point richard makes right that in many ways this republican ticket are responsible for a reduction in security at consulates and embassies throughout the world and yet now they're hammering the president and this administration for what has been, let's be frank, a terrible tragedy. >> yeah, absolutely.

one part of this ticket who didn't want to be called congressman ryan in the previous debate happens to be sitting in the body that demanded to and then followed through on cutting our budget for security at these very embassies. at the end of the day, hillary clinton i think stepped forward and said, look, the security at these bases was the responsibility of the state department, and she's obviously a very big person to do that, but the truth of the matter is this congress has stood for cutting the budget for foreign aid, cutting the budget for security at our embassies and they have to own that. but there's something so deeply cynical about the republican ticket running essentially to exploit a tragedy that even the families of these good, dead, and great americans are saying, please leave us out of your cynical attempt to become president. >> joy and richard, thank you both very much, indeed. >> thank you. next, how many people in republican quiet rooms actually agree with this? stay with us.

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either they themselves don't want a black man on air force one or lots of their friends, ie other cretinous liberals don't want a black man on air force one. being a conservative like you, sean, i don't know any actual racists. >> so-called party of lincoln gave up on the legacy of lincoln a very long time ago, yet right wing pundits act as though this isn't the case and insist the real enemies of equality are on the other side.

it is a clever argument to be sure. there's just one problem, take a listen. >> we have the opportunity to send president obama back to chicago. or kenya. we have an opportunity -- >> we're taking donations for that trip to kenya. >> i wish this president would learn how to be an american. >> now, i love being home in this place where ann and i were raised, where both of us were born. no one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. they know this is the place that we were born and raised. >> join joining us now just hours before the second presidential debate here at hofstra university, our msnbc political analyst karen finney and msnbc contributor jonathan capehart. if i might begin with you, john, isn't it time we took back "the washington post" from people like you? isn't it time we hauled your

hide off the white house lawn? >> yeah, wouldn't you think? look, martin, you know, jokes about birth certificates and jokes about kenya and saying that the president needs to learn how to be an american, those will always be applause lines bulldoecause no grown-up e republican party has stood up to those foxx within the far right wing of the republican party who believe this racist birther conspiracy to say enough is enough. what you're doing is based on a lie. it's not true. but also it's deleth map advertising the president of the united states. it's disrespectful and un-american. >> karen, i have lost count of the number of times over this campaign that republicans have said the most appalling things about this president. only to apologize and then carry on using exactly the same rhetoric. but would they be saying these things if there wasn't an

appetite for them? >> well, of course, i think as jonathan is pointing out, part of the problem -- of course, there are moderates in the republican party who don't agree with that kind of language whose own experience is much more diverse and so they don't hold those stereotypes, but they refuse to stand up to the far right wing in their party. they refuse to stand up to rush limbaugh and ann coulter. so these stereotypes and these phrases continue to be repeated because they're afraid, look, they feel like they need that right wing part of their base to get elected. what they don't realize and i think part of this what this election cycle will illustrate is you may be able to win in a gerrymander district that way, but you cannot win a national election without some portion of african-american, latino, more diverse electorate, and so they're going -- comments like jason thompson, you cannot get elected talking to people like that because more of the people that you actually need to vote for you will hear that and be

offended. >> indeed. john, here is an example of the rhetoric i'm talking about. you'll recall that one of the big romney talking points over the summer had to do with this fictional claim that the president was removing work from welfare reform. take a listen to this, john. >> there's no question but that president obama's decision to say that we're going to allow waivers or excuses from work requirements in welfare was designed to shore up part of his base that may not be inclined to go out and vote in the same kind of energy and passion as they did four years ago. >> when mr. romney talks about part of the president's base, john, just who is he referring to there? >> hamiltmm, let's see, probabl black people. >> no, you don't say. >> yeah, yeah. but think about it, i mean, what mitt romney is saying in at certain part is true in the sense that, and hear me out, that president obama was such a big figure, a historic figure

during the 2008 election, that he pulled lots of people who had never voted before, never had a tradition of voting, he got them to the polls. they were young people and they were african-americans who by and large when you look at the exit polls of voting totals in 2008 upped their percentage in terms of the voting public. and so what mitt romney is saying is that, you know, he's pulled out these black people who have the never voted before and, therefore, he's doing this thing with welfare in order to curry favor with them. the big problem with what he's saying is, it's a lie. that is not what the president was doing. he was, you know -- the waiver for the welfare requirements were requested by governors, many of them were republican governors who wanted the flexibility fof their states to pursue those work requirements. there's no flouting of the work requirement. they're not being thrown out the window. it's a cynical, pandering effort by mitt romney to curry favor

with mhis base who at the time e was trying to convince them that he was one of them. >> indeed. karen, how important is it this time round? how important is it tonight that the president inspires those people who came out four years ago? >> well, i mean, to what jonathan was saying, part of the obama strategy four years ago and part of the strategy again this time is to literally change the face of the electorate. it was blacker, it was browner, it was younger, and you're going to see that again. and i'll tell you one of the things, and i think we will hear something about this 47% comment tonight, because part of the reason that was so devastating for mitt romney was that low income white voters were saying, wait a second, that's us. and so -- and they started to understand what those -- that kind of stereotyping language, the kind of effect that had. wait a second, that's not who we are, that's not our experience. we're hard working people, we're not victims. that was having such an impact

on romney, that's why when he went on fax last time he was ready with his answer to try to walk that back because he realized he was not just catering with those sort of dog whistles about welfare, not just sort of speaking to parts of the base, but he was then also offending parts of his base. so i think that's part of what romney is going to have to deal with tonight when he talks to voters in this line of i'm for all of the people. but it will be interesting to see sort of what kind of language he uses. >> it's fascinating. karen finney and jonathan capehart, thank you both so much. much more ahead from the site of tonight's debate. do stay with us. >> you have to put dementia on the differential diagnosis. >> yes, yes. that rare form of dementia where you remember too much. by the way, this knuckle head, keith ablow, is on fox's medical "a" team. little known fact, their medical

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martin. we are getting some more tidbits today. president obama's campaign advisers say he is not going to shy away from trying to draw sharp distinctions between himself and mitt romney on women's issues, on the issue of abortion, pointing out some of mitt romney's shifting language on abortion. also, he's not going to shy away from a campaign tactic that he's been using. president obama has been on the trail essentially hammering mitt romney for not being the real mitt romney during the first debate, saying he wasn't the conservative mitt romney that he has been. i expect that it is likely that the president will take a similar tactic tonight. to point out the fact that mitt romney did take to some extent a shift during that first debate. >> is the president expecting moderate mitt romney this time or is he expecting severely conservative mitt romney? >> well, campaign aides say -- >> i guess it'ses a toss up.

>> what's interesting is i have been speaking to republican strategists who say they are expecting the moderate mitt romney. why? because it's working for him. the polls are getting tighter, and the conservative branch of his party have not been hammering him on this point. so they think it's working. i think that what will be different tonight is that president obama, who seemed to be taken aback by it during the first debate, will be prepared if that is, in fact, what he gets. the biggest challenge for the president though tonight, martin, is that he's got to be aggressive, but he can't appear as being rude. so it's a really fine line that he's going to have to walk, and aides say he's going to be stern but respectful. >> isn't it also true, kristin, that the office of the president almost demands a level of decorum and dignity that isn't afforded other people who are challengers? >> i think that that's absolutely right, and i think that that is what aides were prepping the president for the first debate. they didn't expect him to not engage. i think that's what's going to

be different tonight. i think you will see a different level of engagement and a more aggressive president obama. >> fantastic. incomes's kristin welker. stay with us, the days "top lines" are coming up. [ female announcer ] ready for a taste of what's hot? check out the latest collection of snacks from lean cuisine. creamy spinach artichoke dip, crispy garlic chicken spring rolls. they're this season's must-have accessory. lean cuisine. be culinary chic.

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guy. >> governor romney was supposed to be on with us this thursday. >> the view is high risk because of the five women on it, only one is conservative. >> over the weekend hit people said he had scheduling problems. >> i don't know anything about it. i don't know. >> there are a lot of people who agreed with him when he made the comments about the 47%. >> we have the opportunity to send president obama back to chicago. or kenya. >> no one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. they know this is the place we were born and raised. >> white liberals are always threatening black riots whenever they're about to lose an election. >> you got your halloween costume already. that's awesome. kroo things are going well for me. when you do well, you should give back. it's a karma thing. >> a, b, c. a, always, b, be, c, closing. always be closing. >> you cite a study. there are six other study that is looked at the study you described and say it's completely wrong.

>> some of them are blogs, some from the aei which is hardly an independent group. >> guarantee this math will add up? >> absolutely. six studies have guaranteed. skroop sorry, paul, one plus one equals bull [ bleep ]. >> anybody want to see second prize? a set of steak knifes. >> let's get right to our panel now. in san francisco, rolling stone's tim dickinson who has written a guide on how romney dodges his fair share in taxes in the latest issue, and at the site of the debate here with me is michael scherer washington correspondent for "time" magazine. mike, i want to show everyone the website. it's called romneytaxplan.com. it's a joke site set up by democrats, and as you can see when you try to click on the details, button to learn how romney pays for his $5 billion tax plan, it won't let you do it. now, michael, is the president going to make mr. romney's

labyrinthine tax returns an issue tonight? >> he will and hopefully he will do it for democrats with a little more clarity than he did last time. the denver debate, a lot of it was about this tax plan but you could never really get beyond the sort of policy speak. he's got to come in with one-liners and zingers to make clear what he's saying. the facts are a little more complicated. the president was also for lowering rates in 2011 and eliminating deductions. he also didn't come forward in those negotiations with boehner with exactly how he was going to make the math add up. he was going to lever it to congress. the difference is romney is committing to a huge tax decrease and one that will hit the top as much as -- >> across the board, 20%. >> it's a tax increase that would be weighted heavily to the wealthiest of americans. >> tim, money and jobs and taxes are likely to dominate part of tonight's debate. your new article in "rolling stone" talks about the complex ways mitt romney reduces his tax burden via schemes like feeder funds and blocker funds. have we ever had a man run for

president whose personal taxes are so labyrinthine. >> it's not just that they're complicated. it's mitt romney has been in business with a global financial elite, which is trying to reduce their tax burden no matter how they can. so they set up some of these funds in the cayman islands that literally roll out the red carpet for tax cheats. i mean, have we ever had a presidential candidate who had that kind of history of helping tax evasion, helping rob the u.s. treasury? i mean, this guy's playing by a completely different set of rules than the rest of us have to play by. our labor income gets taxed as labor income. his labor income gets taxed as an investment. it's a rigged system and romney never wants to lead a tax reform that will continue that rigging out into the future. >> what do you think the reaction would be tonight, mike, if romney decided that the way to win this election would be to

literally toss the 20% across the board tax cut out the window and say, actually i'm going to amend that in some way? >> he would risk a huge backlash. it might help him with the middle. >> but he'd win the election, wouldn't he? >> could. it would also raise the flip-flopping issue which he's done pretty well despite the attempts of the obama campaign of putting to bed since he picked paul ryan. the last few months he's not been dealing too much with the expedient charge because he's identified himself with paul ryan. people kind of know where he's coming from. if he dodges it at that point, i mean, he throws it all back into the mix. >> now, tim -- sorry, michael, you wrote a cover story -- sorry, you wrote a cover story for "time" magazine in which you talk about the fact that there don't appear to be any more consequences in relation in fact checking. >> that's right. >> now, the president immediately after the first debate came out on the stump and said he didn't recognize the mitt romney. he talked about romney brushing the 20% tax cut as it were under

the carpet, under the rug. but is that going to resonate with voters if he seeks just to correct romney on every single lie that he's told? >> i think joe biden was actually pretty effective on that point a week ago in the vice presidential debate. i think you will see a lot more of it from obama during the debate. it's one thing to fact check somebody on the stump in front of a friendly crowd. it's a different thing to be standing ten feet away from your opponent and say, sir, that is not true, and have the american people see that. it's much more effective in this setting. debates remain one of the lost places where it's really hard to get away with something if you're opponent is willing to call you on it right there at the moment. >> right. tim, "the washington post" is out with a damning report that debunks romney's claim that he can create 12 million jobs in four years using the same studies the romney campaign cites, the post finds that only 7 million of the jobs are actually created over 10 years. also, one study turns out not to

evaluate the romney plan at all. i guess it's what the vice president would call malarkey. >> the entire romney campaign seems to be a lie wrapped inside a fib inside a distortion. the math doesn't add up on just about anything you dig at. if you dig -- >> sorry, tim, i didn't quite get that. what did you say? >> it's a lie wrapped inside a fib inside a distortion. >> oh, right. okay. thank you. keep going. >> if you dig at any of these facts long enough, they sort of fall apart. so romney is just sort of banking on the fact that he can get away with this, and i think the president does need to call him on it, but i think his larger challenge is just to show up and prove to the american people that he's got some spunk and some fight left in him and that he's really eager and has something to do in his second term other than just stay the course. >> you said just now that you thought joe biden did a good job at calling paul ryan to account. but do you think mitt romney can get away with it, just simple

fudge, hide, dodge? >> over the long term, yeah, i think the electorate is split so deeply right now with 47% willing to forgive anything mitt romney does, a similar percent willing to forgive anything barack obama does. there really isn't much punishment. i think if you have a moment in this debate, really what we're talking about is who will get the sound bites, the moments we can take out of this debate to keep running on your show for the next week. those are the things that will resonate. if you get a moment in this debate where either of them really nails the other person down in a firm way, i think it could resonate, and it could -- there are risks. the more these people deceive, the more risk there is that they get called out in a setting like this. >> indeed, michael, tim, thank you very much. remember, you can catch full coverage of tonight's debate here, right here, on msnbc. next, can romney explain tonight how his tax policies will help the working poor? can the president? stay with us. hello, what do you know about these?

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together for your future. ♪ in a few hours we will learn whether the president has erased the memory of his previous debate performance and a focus group of ohio swing state voters monday may put the point perfectly. the bottom line is while the first debate was important, it was not determinative. swing voters are not ready to switch on the basis of one debate, but they are open to being persuaded if romney continues to outshine obama. joining us now from philadelphia is dr. james peterson, an associate professor at lehigh university and contribute irto thegrio.com, and in new york, ari melber, correspondent for "the nation" and an msnbc contributor. welcome to both of you.

ari, if i might begin with you. the poll is very well respected and the voters in this focus group say they want to see a tough president obama. even if he is sharper, can he fact check in realtime like vice president joe biden did because, frankly, mitt romney produces more lies than sausages in a meat factory. >> well, you know, joe biden did more than fact check. i think he fact slapped paul ryan all over the room, and i think that that came across both in style and in substance. i don't think we're going to see the vam vigor or the same bon hoe mi from president obama. we know he brings a different style from joe biden. he can fact check and redefine the terms of the debate. if you looked at the last debate, taxes were mentioned over 100 times. jobs were mentioned just 50 times. we have talked about that. that was because mitt romney was very effective at defining it as

a discussion about taxes. if you go to those swing voters that you just discussed in the focus group and you look at a lot of people around the country, they care more about jobs than taxes, and i think president obama is going to have to affirmatively define what terrain he wants to be on in addition to reacting to whatever misstatements occur. >> right. dr. peterson, is this the debate where the president finally uses his advantage with female voters and unmasked moderate mitt romney as severely conservative, particularly given what his running mate said last week about not believing that judges were the right people to rule on roe v. wade? >> yeah, i'm shocked more people didn't really jump on ryan for his sort of new strategy for revising how we create law in this country. but ari is absolutely right here that one of the challenges for the president tonight is to make sure that he controls the terms of the debate. i think it's less about him being aggressive, it's less about him punching romney rhetorically and much more about

making sure that things like women's issues have got to get on the table. we spent precious little time over the course of these first two debates talking about the issues that matter to a lot of them, not just women, but a lot of folk in this country about reproductive rights, about the direction this country is going with respect to those rights and the ways in which we can sort of get out of this war against women and all these social issues that actually obscure some of the real issues around jobs and the economy that we also need to be talking about. >> right. ari, is it not also incumbent on the president though to point out that this ticket, this republican ticket, are into the self-deportation of immigrants, they're into appointing judges eventually and hopefully i guess to them who will overturn roe v. wade, they are into defunding planned parenthood. they'd like to take pre-emptive action with respect to iran. the guy opposite me, this is what he believes.

>> i think that's absolutely part of it, and because it is a town hall there will be all these interactions. it will make it more spontaneous. it's easier in some ways to steam roll jim lehrer who is in his late 70s and wanted to have a light touch as compared to a lot of different people who are going to pop up and speak. i think at times i would expect from past town halls they will speak from personal experience that's a chance for the president to do what you're talking about with respect to immigration, with respect to women's issues, and with respect to, i think, the core of a lot of the whole point of an election which is do people have a right to vote regardless of what they look like. just today the supreme court rejected a republican attempt to restrict voting in ohio, an important state. there's no reason why the president shouldn't get on record there and try to draw mitt romney out because he hasn't been clear about where he stands on voting rights. >> yeah. >> indeed. ari melber and dr. james peterson, thank you both very much. >> thanks, martin. >> thanks, martin.

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as we continue to count down to tonight's debate, we're also patiently waiting for mitt romney or paul ryan to provide us with a single definitive example of a loophole or deduction that they plan to close in order for their magical and mythical budget to add up. of course, paul ryan's budget, which republicans voted through the house, slashes everything from meals on wheels to respite care for the disabled to most other forms of social support. and if mitt romney is elected,

he's got an interesting approach to those who may be without insurance after he repeals the affordable care act. >> if someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. we pick them up in an ambulance and take them to the hospital and give them care. >> atlanta mayor kasim reed is kind enough to join us now. good afternoon, sir. >> how are you doing, martin? >> great to have you. you govern a large urban city. what's wrong with the emergency room for those without insurance as mitt romney says? i mean, it seems to be working fine. >> well, aside from being callous and cold, it's the most expensive way to achieve health care. we ought to be making sure people are healthy so they don't have to go to the emergency room. emergency room costs are between two to three times more expensive than a typical method, and they would cause the health care budget in the united states to explode. but he doesn't really care about that because he plans on block granting health care expenses to the states anyway.

it will be up to states to deal with that problem because if he and paul ryan have their way, they will be block granting more and more health care services to the states. >> indeed. let me get your take, sir, on paul ryan's visit to a soup kitchen in ohio on monday. he was there for the purpose of a photo-op. i'm not sure ryan picked up on the irony of it because if he and romney are elected, soup kitchens will be about all the poor have left, won't they? >> well, you know, i think they're learning new words like soup kitchens and middle class. it wasn't until the last 21 days that i think paul ryan and mitt romney became familiar with those terms. but because they were losing so badly and they were dealing with the stench of defeat, they all of a sudden discovered wonderful words like middle class, looking out for the poor, and caring about folks in soup kitchens. i understand that the people at the soup kitchen weren't that happy, but it's a typical stunt that mitt romney and paul ryan

will pull. >> and we should remember, sir, that it was, of course, mitt romney who said that he didn't really care about the poor. the poor have the safety net and they're fine. that was his position. >> he didn't just say it once. he said it twice. he said it very clearly. he said the poor had a safety net, and then, of course, when he was making his powerful, honest, truthful speech in that wonderful hall in boca raton, he, of course, disparaged the 47% which includes many people who are hard-working but have the misbin fet enefit of being . all we know about mitt romney is he wants to be president of the united states. aside from that fact, he will change his position on anything. that's been his entire political career. that's why he hasn't done very well at it. it's really important for the president to remember, while he has a strong record for america, he needs to talk to mitt romney about his fail e eed governorshf

massachusetts. he's offered himself for office for times and on only one of those occasions did the people of massachusetts allow him to win and become governor and he was performing so poorly that he would not have been re-elected, having approval ratings under 38%. the president needs to talk about the billion dollars in debt that he left the state of massachusetts with. he needs to talk about all of the records. we need to talk about the fact that the president generated 10,000 more jobs during his time in office than mitt romney generated when he was the governor of massachusetts. so there's a whole lot to talk about tonight. tonight shouldn't just be about the president's record. he's got a record. it's also got to be about the failed record that caused mitt romney to leap to run for president in 2008 where, of course, he failed. so he's run before. >> indeed. can i just take you back for a moment, sir, to that photograph of paul ryan at the soup kitchen

because given that mr. ryan is a committed catholic, one is slightly surprised that he doesn't take the sermon on the mount seriously where christ says, and i'm quoting, take care not to do your good works before men, to be seen by them, or you will have no reward from your father in heaven. then when you give money to the poor, do not make noise about it, as the false-hearted men do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may have glory from men. i mean, what was he thinking? >> i don't know what he was thinking, but what i do know is what his policies are. i don't want to question his faith, but i do know this, his budget is terrible for working people, for the middle class, and for the poor, and your budget is what matters, not what you say. >> and, sir, a final question, do you expect the president to be very different in his affect as compared with the first debate where many people have felt he was a little lackluster? briefly, if you can. >> of course. i think the president is going

to be calm and strong tonight. i think he's going to be very sharp. i think he's going to be crisp. i think when mitt romney tries to distort the record and be dishonest, he's going to punish him for that, which he should. >> atlanta mayor kasim reed, thank you, sir, so much. thanks so much for watching. chris matthews and "hardball" is next. [ male announcer ] this is joe woods' first day of work.

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