john avlon and reihan salam joins us. maybe some of the things that the president said didn't add up to the military experts, but it's a poignant speech and sean said for a third of his life we were at war. that was beautifully put. >> that was an extraordinary point. world war ii lasted for four years. we have been at war for ten. he talked about the responsible end of the war, but the terms of the debate on al qaeda where it began in afghanistan, where it began. that is a powerful argument that's going to resonate with the american people and it's an achievable goal as well. because it's more modest essentially than some of the goals that have been set out years previous. >> reihan, i thought he was trying to be specific. that it's about al qaeda. nothing else. and in fact, went so far -- i was a little surprised in a national speech to say i'm not trying to completely eradicate the taliban. if some of you want to work with us, that's okay obviously that's a pragmatic thing. >> i see a strong historical parallel here. w

john avlon joins us, reihan salam and michael waldman all with us now. let me ask this question, reihan. exactly how we stand here, because obviously mitt romney when he wrote that op-ed used the words managed bankruptcy, and he used in the cnn debate. now that people like the bailout and think it worked, i'm going to say it was my idea. but when i had a headline when i said i hated it, i was cool having people think that i thought it was terrible. >> well, this is the problem in politics with anything that requires more than three sentences worth of explanation. he backed a managed bankruptcy process and we saw a managed bankruptcy process. we saw a process that many people think was not managed terribly well, that rewarded some creditors over others and rewarded the uaw in a way that was actually pretty inappropriate. so i think that's the concern. the idea is if you had a clean managed bankruptcy process, you could have had a company on a sounder footing, but also a company that wouldn't have as huge an advantage over ford as gm does now. if the taxpay

. >> john avalon, reihan salam and jamal simmons are here.hen he spoke, he didn't use the word voucher, and people have a passionate feeling about it whether they thought it or through or not. but how is it going to fly? >> you have seen this in president obama's race to the top proposal. get structural reform so one idea is lift caps on charter schools and one important thing mitt romney said is let's be sure that digital learning options aren't prohibited. you have a lot of unions at the local level saying hey, we want to fight virtual charters and other things that are giving more parents more nontraditional choices. >> what do you mean, virtual? online classes? >> absolutely. florida offers a ton of supplemental classes. it's expensive -- >> these are supplementary. not instead of? >> well, in some cases instead of as well. but -- >> i don't know about that. >> it allows the option to expand. for some kids that's going to be the right option. not all, obviously. >> supplemental cob -- >> absolutely. >> john, you think this voucher proposa

. >> john avlon is here and so is reihan salam who as of tonight is a cnn contributor and we love it. >> thank you very much. >> the light's bright. he's blinking. thank you very much, erin. i've never seen you so reserved. >> well, i'm very grateful to you guys and i love being on the show and i look forward to jousting with you and my colleagues, you know, for many days to come. days and months to come. >> we love having you. michael waldman is here too. former speechwriter. michael, i have to just ask you because you know joe biden and have worked obviously with many democrats here. he is a man of passion. but that was true passion. >> that was true passion. i think he really feels it. i think he really is offended in a way by the vision of how the economy works. that governor romney has put out both with his record but also with his economic plan. and when you see that kind of passion, it's a political question of does it come off as very hot. but i think he really meant it and i think you'll hear the democrats pound this theme, pound it, pound it over and over and over again. two

. >> john avlon, reihan salam and jamal simmons are with me right now. three musketeers.picking on the president for a few days about politicizing the death of osama bin laden. well, you know what, if they're going to say you're doing it, then you show up on the one-year anniversary and give your big speech and hit a home run. >> that's right. you bigfoot it with the bully pulpit and that's what he did and it shut everybody up. i think the romney camp got the message a little belatedly that arguing against bin laden was a total political loser. concede the point, move it back to the economy, and that's what you heard him doing here today, using a sense of humor which is always good. >> it looked like what he tried to do, reihan, as we said. the president punked mitt romney, put him in a position where all he could say was, yes, good job, sir, basically. >> that's absolutely right. when you think about george h.w. bush, for example, he was a genuine war hero and achieved a tremendous military victory on behalf of the united states in the gulf war. guess what, no one cared.

john avlon, reihan salam and jamal simmons is with me right now.romney probably pretty upset right now. >> as well he should be. you remember the pitch for the dinner with trump and romney was the idea of reaching out to donors or making donations as small as $3. >> right. you win a dinner or something like that. >> who knows what would be served at this dinner. some trump stew perhaps. you are looking at $3 donations and mitt romney has not attracted small dollar donations. the reason the donations are important is partly because those are voters who say i buy into this campaign. i'm vested in the campaign. and then you have a list of people who are more active and engaged supporters. you can use that list for a variety of reasons. is donald trump the best way to gin up and active and engaged voters? >> he's not. that was theory is that he would help raise money for the campaign. these low dollar donors. here is the point. donald trump made himself completely radioactive to the romney campaign. he's stepping all over his story. a guy whose name us

oh we did find them, reihan salam is here and jamal simmons joins me from washington. wanted to lay out for each of you, first, the warning signs for president obama. talk about those, and then we'll get to mitt. warning sign number one, 30% of people polled say they are not as well off as when the president took office. that is on par with bush 41 at 32%. the gender gap is narrowing. president obama is now up 7% among women compared to last month when he was up 19% and in 2008 he won them by 13%. and the third problem, it's a statistical tie on who handles the economy better. 46% obama, 47% romney. jamal, let me start there. considering mitt romney is trying to run as a business guy it would seem this is a good thing for the president but you're not so sure? in terms of the economic one. >> i don't think so. i think the president has to be a little more ahead of mitt romney on this question. ultimately it's going to be an election on the economy and which one they trust most to handle the economy and all the issues they face, so that 46/47 number is a little troubling

reihan salam and jamal simmons joins us from washington. we could get hit by an asteroid and all this would look in perspective. >> ben affleck would ride to the rescue. >> you can't just depend on ben affleck. >> that's true. >> talk about a pha, potentially hazardous advertisement. >> ben hussein affleck as some of us like to call him. >> that would put things in perspective. this is -- in our current, you know, political reality, this is an unbelievable document. i mean it is -- this really pulls back the curtain on the sleaziness of the super pac economy. for folks at home who hear metrosexual black abe lincoln. which is one of their strategies. there's a lot of absurdity which makes you think it's done by a total fringe festival, somebody who has no standing in the republican party. the guy who put this together is fred davis, who's the nephew of senator james imhoff, a very successful, very prominent republican ad man. so this is not just some fly-by-night. this is a 54-page detailed proposal. the more you read it, the more you should

reihan salam is here in new york. they are on the political strike team which we debut tonight, 20 of the best independent political thinkers in the business. we'll got their perspectives all the way through the election. we're talking about the strategy on attracting women and we asked and it was nearly unanimous, almost every single one of the 20 and maybe the people downstairs cheering behind me that you can probably hear, they are women after all cheering for the president. i have to say, something about this, though, as i was watching on video, i'm like maybe the president needs to spend time with some men. i see him with six women on "the view," i see him -- >> but you say that as a joke, but it's actually true. because here's the problem for president obama and i don't know, bill, you may disagree with me, but he has to widen that gender gap and make it a gulch because he doesn't do as well as mitt romney does with men. so if he's losing men which he is, he has to win women by a wide margin. now, historically,

john avlon, reihan salam and jamal simmons are with us now. good to have all of you with us.'m sure they have pleasant things to say about each other as well. they have got to have respect. but the spending is going to be insane, john avlon. we've seen more than $2 billion, super pac spending. $133 million. it's pretty unbelievable. >> it already is insane. >> how do you get a clean, pleasant election when you've got all this money. and a lot of it kind of the hide behind the fig leaf kind of money. right? >> re. >> i didn't say something nasty, it was the super pac. >> there's going to be a tsunami of sleaze coming across our air waves for next six or seven months. >> tsunami of sleaze? i love it. >> it's going to be because of super pac money. anybody that thinks it would have been spent on positive ads, get real. this is going to be ugly, it's going to be negative, it's going to be on both sides. already we've seen 70% of the ads this year so far have been negative. only 9% positive. outside money, five times what it was when president bush was running for re-election. we'

reihan salam and jamal simmons are here.resting article getting a lot of conversation that was pushed out by the obama campaign, but it was done independently by cbs market watch did reporting, saying that the president's spending record is -- well, it's grown the least of any president in the past 60 years, reihan. and in a lot of ways, this really does seem to add up. some other ways, debt is growing at 13.6% a year versus spending at 1.4%. so it doesn't -- there are some real issues here. one thing i thought very interesting, though. a lot of what the president wanted to push through failed because tea party republicans shot down his efforts to increase the spending in washington. ironically he gets the benefit of being the least spending guy in 60 years thanks to the tea party in a sense. >> there's that, and also the fact that in 2009 much depends on who you credit 2009's fiscal year to. president bush passed -- he approved a continuing resolution that said we're going to keep spending at 2008. we're going to keep it on