of a day when the nation would proudly proclaim that we're all austrians now but i'll tell you why it might not be too long before the nation claims we're all socialists now and finally there's a reason why i'm hosting the show tonight it's because tom is in iceland he joins me later to talk about life in one of the happiest nations on the planet. you need to know this whether the republican republican party likes it or not willard mitt romney is going to be the nominee the anti romney establishment hope that this weekend's debate doubleheader might change the game in new hampshire they hope that rick santorum fresh off his tie in iowa might step up to be the guy the anti mit's can rally around they hope that newt gingrich who pledged to destroy romney with truthful negative ads would beat up the front runner so badly in front

of television audiences that romney's solid is rock twenty five percent support might begin to disappear they hope that someone anyone could turn this into a race but as we stand here tonight one night ahead of the new hampshire primary none of that happened sure the romney rivals got their hits in sunday morning's n.b.c. debate targeting romney as a failed governor a career politician a corporate raider and a divider. his record was so great as governor of massachusetts why don't you run for reelection i mean if you don't want to even stand before the people of massachusetts and run on your record that was that great why don't you want to bail out the can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney you've been running consistently for years and years and years so this idea that suddenly citizenship showed up in your mind just level with the american people you've been running for so lisa is the one nine hundred ninety s. this nation is divided david because of attitudes like that. but what you just saw

about all that none of it really stuck in fact the only real knock on romney was an odd comment he made unprovoked himself seeming to suggest that only rich people should run for political office. i happened to see my dad run for governor when he was fifty four years old he had good advice to me he said mitt never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage if you get that if you if you have a mortgage to pay don't bother running for office but even that isn't slowing romney down according to the latest new hampshire poll romney is a forty one percent holding a staggering twenty four point lead in the granite state over ron paul who is at seventeen percent while rick santorum sits tied with jon huntsman at eleven percent and looking ahead to new hampshire looking after you have for the south carolina which holds a primary on january twenty first mitt romney is ahead in that state to holding strong at thirty percent with newt gingrich at twenty three percent and rick santorum at nineteen percent and in florida which holds

a primary at the end of the month romney is at the top there as well with thirty six percent twelve points ahead of newt gingrich and twenty points ahead of rick santorum so what does all that mean means that romney is headed for a clean sweep in january and while there are still a lot of states left to speak that's in unprecedented string of victories for any non incumbent republican candidate so what's in store for the republican party moving forward as they try to convince seventy five percent of republican voters that mitt romney really is the guy they want well here offer some insight on this is vince coase senior online editor at the daily caller vince welcome good to see you good to see you so i know that the job of the media is to you know turn this into a horse race get people get people watching but the way i see it. mitt romney won iowa he's headed for a landslide victory in new hampshire he's probably going to win south carolina right he's probably going to win florida. i've read that no other not incumbent

republican has ever pulled off a sweep like that. convince me that this race is not over no i don't think it's inevitable i think it's likely i think you're right in the point in the fact that it's that it's a likely win for romney but i don't think it's an inevitable win for romney now you saw for instance we go back to rick perry and immediately following the i would results he said you know what i'm going to rethink my campaign and the moment michele bachmann drops out the very moment bachmann drops out there's a tweet and saying onward to south carolina you just don't want to be the first guy you know who clearly i think is part of that but also he's on of he's on opportunity and all of these candidates to really it's come down to the conventional wisdom is and i think it's the correct wisdom is that right there is the romney and then there's the anti romney's and that includes with the possible exception of jon huntsman that includes everybody and even ron paul these guys are the answered iranian as these candidates drop out and we'll see perry seems like he has the he's the type who will depending on how badly he gets beat there's actually a chance to somebody else could emerge and just looking at the poll numbers that

you just showed if you were to combine some of those clear there's going to be some spill off on the romney but there's an effective conservative answer to mitt romney that exists in this party i think i think could happen so you say to the reason why the party has yet to coalesce around it is just because there's too many people out there and as though some of them drop the old start to unify behind someone it's a big field yeah i think i think there's something to that i mean they've all had their it's turned in the spotlight and they've all had their bombs and they've all fallen back and it's still still been rumored so i guess you know there's a chance one of them might get a second shot at being here and remember remember in these these early states you know you're right there are romney's polling at all these early states a lot of people at these early states as a winnowing mechanism you're able to get rid of candidates in the field because of who wins in these states but the two of these early states south carolina and new hampshire both took delegate penalties just to shuffle their way forward so you have actually what some thirty some delegates out of eleven hundred total delegates in the vicinity of eleven hundred total delegates across the country so when it comes to the at the end of the day if romney goes through you know it's thirty

seven delegates there are a lot more delegates left so it's not just you know giant power swing. he's making so there's also ron paul out there you know it's pretty consistent he's getting some good showings i mean he got i guess third place in iowa but it was pretty good showing he's going to probably get second place in new hampshire he's polling pretty decently in south carolina right and he's got a strong base of you know probably between ten and twenty percent of the republican party are all about him and these are libertarians you know these are people who are in about compromising. is that can be a problem in a general election if ten to twenty percent of the republican base is not going to follow mitt romney it could be it could potentially be a problem made that is if ron paul decides that he wants to run a third party candidacy because it looks like at this point that ron paul wouldn't capture the nomination but if he wants to run a third party candidacy he can pretty much guarantee brock obama will get another another round in the off in office but it's hard to say rand paul his son a senator from kentucky has come out and said my dad well i guess i don't want to be for my dad but if i'm him i'm not doing this because ultimately that you know

even ron paul wants to beat barack obama here so i will say so let's have a let's just assume that mitt romney is the guy ok and i think he really is the guy is a safe thing to go out and like is the real real live here but it's seems like his line of attack that he's said is both debates and he he says that he doesn't blame obama for the bad economy he blames for making it worse i mean he doesn't blame for the recession he inherited that that's understood he made it worse i want to show this chart this is a job creation chart and see right there the blue where the line starts getting better is where the stimulus act was i remember back then the economy was in full meltdown people talking about great depression secretary treasury hank paulson was coming out of people's hands were shaking bush saying our economy is in great danger today we just created twenty thousand jobs you see all the jobs that have been created right here. how how. romney's not telling the truth when he says

obama's made the economy worse we're not we're not looking at a great depression right now we're doing much better than we were the month eight hundred thousand jobs last month obama took office we're doing i think obama could rightly lean on the fact that he was walking into a recession gobby asli and he had to take it on but when you're showing it our job numbers i mean you can just show now i mean as of today it was as recently it's been speculated back as far back as halloween but the debt has now clips the economy i mean it's it's not like this is like some grand slam it certainly is not clearly you know i believe this is girl labor says it's here including public and private sector jobs a lot of public sector jobs involved in that so if it's a matter of improving the economy i think romney has a lot of a lot of room to say look obama has and he's mounted up trillions of dollars of debt he's contributed to finally now the debt eclipsing the value of the entire united states so i think i think it will take a very good didn't give him a very difficult case to make to say that i'm going over almost like the jobs

argument and we'll leave it at that vince thanks a lot i'm going to show you. got it one of the more eyeopening moments of this last weekend's debate aside from rick perry vowing to really invade iraq was when the so-called populist candidate rick santorum said this about the middle class the governor used the charm earlier that that i shrink from in it's one that i don't think we should be using as republicans middle class or two classes in america coming out against the middle class now that is a bold move but sadly santorum is right at the rate things are going there won't be any classes in america soon. and the middle class in america here's what tom had to say recently about the disappearance of the middle class. new numbers from the census bureau have just come out and they are grim and one in two americans half the nation are living in poverty or are and living in low income lifestyles

basically half of this country is poor a survey of twenty nine mirrors around the country found that one in four americans who showed up in need of food assistance and by and large were eligible didn't receive any help since the banks to resurrect our economy for three years ago four million homes have been foreclosed on and each year more than one and a half million children end up homeless perman cain famously said a few months ago this statement and it's been echoed since in words and certainly in tone and intent by several prominent republicans. i don't have facts to back up but i happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the obama administration don't blame wall street don't blame the big banks if you don't have a job

a you're not rich blame you also you don't think the banks. so how's the pizza man going to react to this chart. for thirty four straight months there have been more than four unemployed job seekers for every one job opening. it's simple math there just aren't enough jobs in america anymore. and it really it's quite remarkable when you look at this because you know this is the last two years of the bush administration this obama comes into office the the stimulus act goes into a into law we're at about here and really comes into effect right about here and here you see the effect of the stimulus act actually starting to put people back to work but we're still way either higher than we should be earlier this year for example a million people. showed up when mcdonald's advertised that they were going to hire sixty thousand folks million people should they have a better chance of getting accepted into harvard university than getting a job mcdonald's when that's true you know something's really functionally wrong

with the country meanwhile corporate c.e.o.'s saw as much as a forty percent increase and last year in their pay at twenty five of the biggest corporations in america the c.e.o.'s are paid more than the entire corporation paid in taxes. and g.o.p. t.v. still wonders why americans are occupying the streets. then there is this article from the front page of today's financial times it's titled seven hundred forty billion dollars pay gap threaten threat to us or recovery but you get what it says what the article says is that the share of national income that goes to workers' wages versus investors profits has gone from the old traditional fifty sixty three percent down to fifty eight percent. this is the lowest level that they have recorded since world war two fact the article itself said this is this is the financial times you know the rich people going to the rich people so that if wages

were at their post war average rate of sixty three percent workers would earn seven hundred forty billion dollars this year about i thousand dollars per worker. can you imagine what an extra five thousand bucks for every worker in the united states not just the families all the way out you got a lot of two family workers to work or families rather than ten thousand dollars what would that do for the average american family that right now is falling out of the middle class it's not like our country is run out of money the money is there. but it's been transferred from the working class to the investing class. this is really a form of theft. and warren buffett says it's class warfare in his classes when. i call it that and it's the reason why people young and old are in the streets. it's there all around the world but in particular here in america to many we put an end to this economy that's of the rich by the rich and frankly for the rich we need to

do something about this. coming out is mitt romney really have a stellar record of job creation or does record actually suggest that history of job destruction and answer after the break. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of being made who can you trust no one who is human view and with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

between rick santorum railing against the term middle class and rick perry promising to reinvade iraq to mitt romney saying elected office is only for rich people the republican candidates are doing a pretty decent job on their own ruining the already tarnished brand name of the republican party but just in case just in case they left anything out the progressive change campaign committee ran some ads during the debates to point out another serious flaw in the republican party platform the paul ryan plan to medicare take a look at this that's out now targeting new hampshire tea party congressman charlie bass as

a social worker here in the north country i spent my life helping people with disabilities now i have a disability if i didn't touch medicare doctors spills could wipe me out and put a burden on the final kids when congressman charlie bass voted to end medicare and that was an attack on new hampshire families just like mine my father worked with charlie and respected him i phone four or five times but charlie bass changed. bass isn't alone mitt romney has fully endorsed the paul ryan plan too and medicare meaning when the general election comes around he'll have to explain to the nation why he wants to take medicare away from future retirees will also have to explain his so-called record of job creation as the head of the private equity firm bain capital today the wall street journal did that form the paper looked into seventy seven businesses that bain invested in between one thousand nine hundred four in one thousand nine hundred nine while the firm was under romney's watch and what they found is this quote twenty two percent of the businesses either filed for

bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the a year after bain first invested sometimes with substantial job losses an additional eight percent ran into so much trouble that all of the money bain invested was lost that's twenty two percent that's one out of five businesses that failed under romney's watch with as the wall street journal reported substantial job losses and just today just today romney seemed to revel in firing people. i like being able to fire people besides services to me. if you know if someone doesn't give me the good service i need i want it i want to say you know that i'm going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me. a fifth of the nation is effectively unemployed today and this is the guy who's supposed to fix the problem the guy who loves firing people joining me now to talk more about this is neil soroka press secretary and spokesperson for the progressive change campaign committee deal it's kind of

credible isn't it this is you know the guy who's claiming to be the ultimate answer for the economy just says you know i like being able to fire people i mean i wish more republicans were honest about how much they love firing people and how much they don't want to get this economy back on track it's almost like he doesn't know any better it's just it's how we made his money it's how we looks at the economy is that you have to strip it to its bones and you know sell it off for investment so yes you're twenty five percent of the gaffe machine and this was a big one so you guys are running during the debates you know just reminding everyone of paul ryan's plan would you guys hope that you think there's a lot of republicans out there who don't fully understand the party they claim to be in support of just voted to end medicare and i know for sure in new hampshire there's a ton of voters they don't really understand that charlie bass has changed over his time over his twelve years in office before he got kicked out in two thousand and

six in an especially since he's rebrand himself as a tea party republican this past term voting on the ryan plan to end medicare was a big big mistake for charlie bass and it's one that's really going to hurt voters and what this ad is about is making sure that new hampshire voters were reminded about what charlie bass did when he voted to end medicare and you know we're going to be talking about a story after this segment about how a lot of the country identifies positively with the term progressive yeah well that's a huge it's a huge thing i think a lot of people around the country when they hear the word progressive they think about moving forward and getting the country back on track and that's what so many americans want in a big big way and that's one of the reasons why we're really proud to call ourselves progressives and support. both progressive candidates around the country and when there were so when the republicans you know i think i think it's inevitable you know but so when they when they when they nominate mitt romney and here's a guy who was born a millionaire made millions laying people off is building multimillion dollar homes

around the country. at a time when there's you know. a whole nation that's fed up with the power on wall street with the kind of corporate topples corporate america. don't the progressive progressives have an opportunity to peel off republicans to peel off republican voters against someone like that i think when you're talking you know what we're talking about is holding someone like charlie bass accountable for his actions and i think when republicans really start hearing about you know or independent specially in new hampshire you've got a ton of independent voters when they start hearing about what their tea party republicans have done and how they've put their livelihood in danger i think they're going to have to think a lot about the candidates the you know the representatives that are there representing them in washington and i think this is going to be a completely different election than two thousand that we've seen what this tea party congress as done for the for the last year so let's look at some of these races we've got a little bit towards surging in the polls basically making scott brown act like

a democrat up in massachusetts what are some other races we should keep in one of the biggest ones that you folks really need to take a look at is really a shame is running in the illinois tenth congressional district in actually it's my home district and it is a bold progressive it's the very first progressive contest big progressive contests of twenty twelve in march and that's one to really pay attention to is a young progressive candidate that's doing great great things and going up against some corporate democrats as well so it's a chance for. really progressive is to make a stand that if in two thousand and twelve if you hold strong and hold progressive values and really fight for the ninety nine percent you can be a successful candidate and that goes all the way you know if you have any custer's actually running against charlie bass in new hampshire she nearly won last time around lost by less than one percent of the vote and i think this time she's going to have a phenomenal chance to one very real quick to about thirty seconds we have left we just learned that ben nelson is retiring a lot of progressives who are happy about you or your organization what's more

important here a democratic party that's more inclusive or one that's more just pure how do we get more pure i mean from the ground how do we get well i don't think what it is is you can have inclusive eighty by standing. for progressive values the fact is as you say as you mentioned earlier there are tons of republicans and independents that really want to progressive party in this country and i think if democrats seize that mantle it's one that's going to be inclusive and it's going to reach tons of voters regard less of how they've identified themselves by ideology in the past yeah well it's so if that happens and let's this should be an interesting year thanks a lot of great great to be here thanks a lot. as the bold progressives try to spread their message a message they're likely to find a pretty favorable audience that's because according to a new survey from the pew research center progressive is the most favorably viewed political term in america with sixty seven percent of the nation having a positive view toward progressives after all who is against progress really who

doesn't want things to get better but here's the really interesting thing about that chart if we could bring it back up capitalism is only viewed positively by half the nation just half and forty percent have a negative view of capitalism a negative view of the sort of economy that we have here in america and of course strolling through a bookstore and noticing what books are popular in the economic section you can see why a good majority of you can see why since a good majority of books out today point to a crisis of capitalism at the end of america such and such or you know it's the end of capitalism as we know it but there's something else with this chart worth looking at. at the top you'll see socialism which is the least favorably favorably viewed term in the american political lexicon thanks in part to the cold war and mostly due to fox news obsession with hurling around socialism as an insult but even though it's the least favorably viewed political term socialism is still

viewed positively by nearly a third of the nation a third of the nation looks at socialism and says fine by me meanwhile the tea party only draws the support of thirty percent of the nation and still holds a lot of pull on capitol hill so given the economic turmoil associated with capitalism today what role might a form of socialism play in wrestling our economy back from the one percent here of her take on this is maria smart she is the national director of the democratic socialists of america maria welcome to the show thanks for having me so as a democratic socialist what's your take on this pew survey it's the least favorable term in america but it also has a lot of there's a lot of people who like it you know almost a third of the nation as i said. yeah we are not surprised by this survey and these numbers i saw some media coverage saying the numbers aren't change from

a year ago before occupy wall street exploded onto the scene so there's some analysis and said oh occupy didn't have an impact on the way americans think about the economy but my analysis of this survey is really that americans have been hurting for a long time for several years and in fact for thirty years we've had a class war waged by the wealthy in this country by the one percent and people are really feeling it you know wages are stagnating income inequality is growing and people are pissed off that's why occupy was able to capture everyone's imagination and continues to organize to this day so yes socialism is not popular in america red baiting is a potent political tool against even moderate non-socialist reforms but people are interested in it they have a positive view of it and the reason they do is because we really stand for democracy and equality and enough people know that something's wrong and that we need to change something that they're willing to explore socialism and they do view

in a positive light and if you look at the numbers young people forty nine percent of people under thirty have a positive view of socialism which is not surprising if you look at what kind of future we have for folks right now folks coming out of college coming out of high school not finding jobs and mired in debt so i see this poll as positive there are probably a lot of the people who don't watch fox news and have actually studied other parts of the world where democratic socialism is struggling but let's go back to here you know there's a lot of economists intellectuals who are referring to. our current troubles the demise of corporate capitalism i mean we really don't have populism it's kind of it's corporate capitalism it's capitalism the pavers the very very wealthy in what way. you know socialism sold a lot of our economic problems to the. well you look at the kind of capitalism that we have today is right it's basically cutthroat corporate capitalism and i

call it in the liberalism it's a form of capitalism that's been around for about thirty years and involves do regulation privatization of public goods cutting cutting the budget busting unions and essentially using the government to empower the one percent against the ninety nine percent so it really is a vicious form of capitalism it's quite different from the kind of capitalism that folks who grew up you know in the post-war era experienced where they had they had better share of the wealth unions were strong and there were a lot of public goods and public programs like the g.i. bill so you know people a lot of folks. are upset with what we've been what's been going on for thirty years and they are looking to other countries for examples of what we can do democratic socialism is the kind of socialism i believe in is profoundly democratic and we basically believe in freedom and equality and democracy and if we had

a political system that was truly democratic the will of the ninety nine percent would be. embodied in the policies that our government has but unfortunately that's not the case a democratic socialist policy would cut the completely bloated military budget and use a lot of those resources to improve public goods and universal programs here we would love to have free headstart for everyone we would love to have free higher education for everyone we'd like to have housing available for everyone who want healthcare to be universal unavailable for everyone we want high polity child care for everyone and elder care and these are all programs that would not only make life much better for everyone and they would give everyone the freedom to explore and explore their individuality and learn and become more productive citizens. but it would also help the economy it would help the economy because people would have

more resources it's you know what we have now with rising poverty and inequality we have a huge problem with demand so many people don't have jobs and the jobs they do have such low wages they can't go over to the bodega and buy as much food as they want to go out and buy a new car and those are the kind of things that keep our economy going well said maria and i think if you asked people in individual basis if they approved all those things they would say absolutely but we're out of time understand organization is hosting a student activist conference february the new york city right yep yep it's in new york city february seventeenth through the nineteenth cornell west francis foxman ok and others and you can find out more on the i was the website right i guess usa ok why do yes usa dot org got it ok thanks a lot maria moving on from the prospect of democratic socialism here in america to a place where democratic socialism is being practiced with great success i'll be joined by a familiar face with a report from a.