ies at 800-974-6006 tty/v. it's time you got the picture. it's time for fios. >> how did you become so will take on the government payroll? >> that is kind of a low blow. >> this week on "inside washington," as democrats prepare for the worst, the white house unleashes its most powerful weapon. the 2010 debates, political discourse at the most elevated level. >the lincoln-douglas debates thy are not. >> you are just jealous you are not on "saturday night live." >> the latest chapter in the housing crisis screwed up foreclosures.

nobody >> knows how many times it was transferred. >> a federal judge orders a halt to "don't ask don't tell." >> it will end on my watch, but i have an obligation to make sure i'm following some of the rules. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> the word you hear repeatedly about this town from the political soothsayers with regards to november 2 is "bloodbath," as an eight democratic bloodbath. the white house has dispatched the most powerful spokesperson to help sinking candidates in several states. >> we have come to court to stop putting the american dream that i know -- come too far to stop putting the american dream that i know, my husband does, that russ nose, out of reach.

we have come too far. >> that is michelle obama throwing a lifeline to the struggling russ feingold. kenji save them, -- and she save him, mark? >> if he is say he will save himself. but michelle obama, the lightning rod in the 2008 colelection, is now more popular. the prime -- the president has not been invited back to colorado since he helped michael bennet win the primary. her numbers are high. we don't deliver votes in this country, which don't deliver groceries, we barely deliver mail. >> 67 percent approval rating, michelle obama. does putting her out there but that in jeopardy, nina? >> i don't think so. the only time she was controversial was early on in the campaign. she is an incredibly graceful

saurrogate who can only help a candidate. i don't think she can elect a candidate anymore than any president can elect a candidate. but she can help. she can help raise money and give a warm, fuzzy feeling. >> how does it look to you, evan? >> obama's approval rating is not that bad compared to progress. but there is kind of a limit as to him now. there is -- lameness to him now. mostly he is just a bystander in all of this. >> a bystander, charles? >> in a country wracked with anxiety over the dead wrestler issue, it is good to see how responsive the political system is. as for michelle, she will not make an iota of difference in any of these races. her husband is toxic in most of these races. as far as wisconsin, russ

feingold, i think, is one of the most principled members of our political class that i have seen in 30 years. of all the democrats who mentioned obamacare, almost all of them are running advertisements against it. he is the guy standing up and defending that knowing how unpopular it is. i salute him. i pick it will cost him. -- i think it will cost him. it looks as if he is not going to make it. >> they have the first lady other because they know republicans will show up at the polls and they are afraid democrats, especially younger ones, will stay home. the president was speaking to to students at george washington university, and did a live town hall on mtv and bet that the internet. >> health care passed and i am proud of the fact that a lot of the people here will benefit directly. >> when asked about partisan sniping, the president was conciliatory. >> i am confident that if we were together over the next

several years, the political temperature will go down, the political rhetoric will go down, because we will actually be making progress on a lot of these issues. >> is he going to get the young people out there to vote? >> no, the surge in the 2008 election was three basic groups, african-american voters, college towns, and first-time voters. you are not going to recreate. you cannot get that souffle to rise again. but he obviously has to get the electorate. the republicans are targeting and harvesting older voters. defending stopping the cuts in medicare -- >> older voters have just learned that for the second year in a row, the cost of living increase will not be applied to social security. >> there is no cost-of-living increase, which is why you are not getting the money. nothing is being taken away from them.

>> but you tell that to them -- >> it is like 1%. >> that is why i am not running for office. >> what has struck me about this campaign, and i have talked to a bunch of members of congress, is the ugliness of it. i am not sure why people would run for office. i've talked to a bunch of numbers, including senior republicans, who are kind of frightened by the ugliness and the nastiness and the lies. >> i think it has been a splendid campaign -- [laughter] and i think election day will be more splendid. but the news of the week was not what we saw in that clip, but what he says in "the new york times magazine" coming out on sunday -- of course, is already on the internet -- in which she tells peter baker that he has just realized that there is no such thing as 8 shovel- ready project.

that will come as a surprise to americans who invested $1 trillion in the projects he told us over and over and over again were shovel-ready. quite an admission. if you are a democrat who supported the stimulus, you are way out on a limb and the sound of the sock is coming out of the white house. >> will house for what the kids go on that limb -- house republicans go on that limb? >> the conventional wisdom is that the house is going to go republican. back to charles' point, the trick for the modern president is to somehow arise out of the muck. the partisanship is so deep. how does the president get noticed? how could the president not be noticed? he has the greatest illegal but in the world. but somehow, obama has managed -- he has the greatest bully pulpit and it will. but somehow, the obama has

managed to make himself not irrelevant, but kind of lame. >> first of all, he may do to much media. >> maybe, but he has not found a way to make himself listened to. >> i think he looks tired and mad. you cannot do that when you are president. you have to let that kind of energy that reagan and clinton -- >> the problem is that he make himself look a little tired and a little mad. if he was really mad -- >> his way of rising out of the muck is to accuse the chamber of commerce of secretly using foreign money without a shred of evidence, so that even "the new york times" points out in a news story that there is no evidence for any of taps. -- for any of that. [ male announcer ] martin o'malley sworn in.

inherits a billion-dollar surplus, low unemployment. o'malley signs the biggest tax hike in maryland history. raids chesapeake bay fund to cover spending. gives raises to top aides. business climate ranks 45th worst in the nation. now 200,000 jobs lost. o'malley covers up jobs report that proved maryland's economy stalled. if re-elected, o'malley will raise taxes again. whether he does, is up to you.

>> what opinions of lakes that have come from the high court to you most object to? >> oh, gosh. give me a specific one. i'm sorry. >> actually, i cannot, because i need you to tell me which ones you object to. >> i'm very sorry. right off the top of my head, i know that there are a lot, but i will put it on my website, i promise you. >> that is christine o'donnell, running for the senate in delaware. there is the controversy and the call of the governor's race over the use of the word "whore," there is the candidate in ohio who dressed up as a nazi, and accused the opponent of engaging in character assassination by talking about it -- [laughter] >> it was a re-enactment. he was not driving a mercedes and carrying a gun. clarification. i have never defended a nazi before, actually.

[laughter] >> i knew the first nazi that charles defended would be a republican candidate for congress. >> as harry reid would say, that is a low blow. [laughter] >> that was a great one. how about the debates? does anybody at a favor? >> -- does anybody have a favorite? >> i guess my favorite is the california gubernatorial debate, christine whitman -- >> net wittman. >> meg whitman, who cannot stop smiling, and jerry brown, who has forgotten how to smile. >> he says he's not going to bars at night. >> i think the fact we have a limit on how much somebody can spend -- she is going to lose. >> politics has become a freak show.

if you go into politics, you have to know that you are going to be a clown, you will be subjected to ridicule. whatever you do any background, whatever little fly on you, is going to be magnified times 23 david brooks had an interesting column on this guy kirk, a centrist republican, could die, served in the navy, who is at -- good guy, served in the navy, and who exaggerated his record a little bit, but he is getting absolutely killed. why go into politics? >>, paladino was not and -- carl paladino was not in the debate, but he got into a shouting match with a reporter or he said something like, "i will rub you out --" >> i will take you out. >> then he got into something ought such lovely -- on homosexuality with hasidic

rabbis, and he spent three days apologizing, and then the rabbi repudiated him. >> he is the howard beale --"i am not mad as hell -- i am mad as hell --" >> the outside, unreported monday is 9-1 republicans. we will see billions of dollars by the end of this campaign. politifact, which has analyzed these advertisements run bite we don't know who -- those are the ones that are not true. they say that 80% of those are basically false. they may have a kernel of truth in them, but basically false. the ones that are accountable, where you see somebody say, "i'm gordon peterson and i paid for this ad," those are basically most of the time true.

the other ones, forget it. when you see the little line at the bottom and you try to see who paid for the advertisement, it is not there long enough and i am too blind to see it. >> what about the attack on the chamber of commerce for foreign money? >> absolutely fallacious. they made it up, the white house did. but that is not the story. the real story is domestic money, billions of dollars, and lack of accountability and transparency. we don't know who is giving it, why they are giving it, and who is behind it could take the case of eight to -- take the case of a two-term democratic congressman in iowa, and a group called american future fund spends $800,000 against him. he is resourceful. but the charges, again, have been false against him. all you need is one of these guys, one member of congress, going down with outside groups

spending $1 million. it will send paralysis of fear throughout the congress nobody in the next congress will do anything except raise money in anticipation of an outside group coming against them, making a big point of not alienating any big interests that want to repeal the estate tax or have the bush tax cuts -- >> according to mike allen in "politico.com" money is pouring in. >> it is hard to imagine congress being more paralyzed than it is. >> you may not like what congress has done in the last two years, but they did stuff. it passed health reform, a financial institution reform. these are big accomplishments. these are big accomplishments, and big interests don't like them. big financial interests don't like them. >> it is really hard to ask for

sacrifice in making tough votes. >> what you are missing is the major accomplishments, and they were. health care reform is a historic accomplishment. i think it's a mistake, but it was historic financial reform, health care, stimulus, cap-and- trade, which was half a successful, at least in the house, is what has stirred the anger and resentment and pushback. this is what the election is about. >> you think that is true? >> it is exactly over what this administration and congress have done. >> the key to success is to do nothing? >> no, if you do something, you do something other than obamacare, $1 trillion of the stimulus on at shovel-ready projects and then announced a year-and-a-half later that there are nine. american people think the money is wasted and they are right.

>> the bank was hsbc bank, a trusty, but that was not that i had the note with in my mortgage. when i found out, i went to my attorney, and we spoke about it, and we filed a motion to dismiss the case. >> all clear on that? as the allegations against bankamerica, jpmorgan chase, talk about social security numbers -- they a social security numbers, mortgages sliced and diced, i don't know why people have so little confidence. >> here is the thing -- we thought we were rescued in 2008, 2009, by tarp and all that. but we are past all that.

there is the suggestion here that we are not, that we have another big financial crisis, that the banks, which are dead center and all this, have all this bad paper, or they cannot find the paper, i guess, and as a result they will not be able to lend any money and we could have another financial crisis, maybe not on the scale of 2008, but enough to give a sharp jolt to the economy. >> they will not get another testy. payments of millions of dollars for bonuses, and i don't understand why, because they don't land. but they are. nobody feels sorry for them. i think people feel that this is their just deserts. they screwed it up once, and now they screwed up twice, and if they lose money, so what? >> if you take down the bank's -- >> i understand that, but people don't understand that. >> you want to say something

nice about the banks? >> i think the wonderful story here is the political story. if you watch what happened immediately after this erupted, there were five democratic senators who immediately called for a moratorium on foreclosures. the white house immediately reacted by saying no. the reason is they understand that if you do that, it sounds wonderful, justice, sweetness and light, you are going to save all the people. if you impose a moratorium right now, you will have a financial catastrophe. you seize up the entire recovery in the housing market, such as it is, and when you release the moratorium, you are going to unleash a million houses on the market at once and there will be a third collapse. the white house has been very careful, even though they want to make a populist argument, because it would destroy the system all over again. >> let's look at the facts. fraudulent work, illegal, on the

part of the banks. they signed off on documents they never read. why? because of the feverish pursuit of profit. when people took out a mortgage, they paid the mortgage payment one month later to an institution they never heard of. three months later, it was a different institution. they were secure ties in all of these mortgages in a headlong bulrush -- securitized in all of these mortgages in headlong gold rush. >> what do we do about it? >> we cannot in any way or more this kind of behavior on the part of the bank's -- reward this kind of behavior on the part of the banks. >> they are so central to our economic behavior that we really punish them, we are back in the soup. >> so we should just say, "held a job, another bonus"? >> if people could not do the

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>> i am absolutely thrilled. all i ever wanted to do is go back to my unit and do my job. i'm really excited. >> that was an air force major, a decorated fighters who was ordered to be reinstated by a federal judge in washington state. a federal judge put a halt on all investigations of days service members, but that is that the end of it. >> the federal government has an obligation to defend the laws of the land even if they believe it is unconstitutional, and that is what obama is doing. they're trying to get the change through congress. if congress does not do this, my suspicion is that by the time this gets to the courts, it may not stand.

that is the hammer hanging over congress' head. but it is going to be messy. is not going to be easy. >> secretary of defense and bob gates has been emphatic about this, that there is a process going on and he wanted to continue -- once its to continue. military personnel -- they got 50,000 questionnaires back, questions about benefits for partners and survivors and so forth. if you talk to military people, off the record, they say they are worried about recruitment. i think the legislative process is necessary. go through the political process of congress. >> i do, too, but that is the problem, congress is so stuck. i am not sure they are going to ok this. >> the president says he favors an orderly, legislative repeal.

>> the president is right and he ought to be commended for acting on principle. we do things in this country often slowly, but in the end it ends up right. but if you short circuit, as with abortion, and do it early as a judicial act, you end up with 20 or 30 years of unnecessary strife. i am sympathetic on this issue, but you should do it the right way, through congress. >> last word. see you next week.