"new york" magazine's jonathan chait writes very much like an ied olist who enlisted in war and has nows ugliness, obama approaches his job with more depth, less hope and more determination to see it through. joining us now, james lipton. thank you for joining us again. >> thank you for inviting me back. >> it is a hard thing, a sequel. president obama had to not only i think give us an answer to his 2008 convention speech but of course, the looming shadow of his 2004 convention speech when he first entered the national stage. given the task that was on his shoulders, how do you think he did last night? >> i think he did very well. what's the expression, politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. i thought the speech last night was more prose than poetry but perhaps it needed that. perhaps the times needed that. it was rather businesslike and it wasn't until he got halfway into it that he became i thought personally involved in a way that was finally very effective. >> one of the things, when we talk about as jonathan chait writes, it's sort of the maturing of an american presi

jonathan chait ham of "new york" magazine went so far, quote, disqualify his claim to the presidency,nd quote! wow! could the national media work any harder to be lap dogs to this administration? to fix a problem, folks, we first need to have the ability to deal with reality and we really do have to get over being so offended because if we're going to fix the mess we're in, we will have to have somebody with the guts to get it done, and the first way to do that is to talk straight. i hate to be the one to break this to everybody, but in the national media, but governor romney is starting to be that guy. i will make some gaffs here tonight at the chalk board. and i may offend some people and i want to apologize to everybody. i love all the precious darlings i'm about to offend but it has got to be done because this is about setting the record straight and talking about reality. so we're going to call this tonight, this is, the gaffe board. all right? and i want all the mainstream media folks, the precious darlings, to come together and kind of huddle over these gaffs. the census bureau

jonathan chait, the columnist said he's a sneering plutocrat. i have to say, i'm working for the obama super pac so i have never been a fan of his anyway but it's a dramatic revelation of who this guy is. the contempt that he has for people who have earned medicare, earned social security, earned veterans benefits, for people who are struggling to lift themselves and their children out of poverty, they should be heroes in any politician's narrative, republican or democrat, and this sneering contempt he has for them is quite, really quite ugly. >> alice, this 47% that he's talking about, aren't these some of the vets, some of them old people who are on fixed incomes, aren't these people, is this really who mitt romney believes don't have any sense of personal responsibility, don't care about their lives and view themselves as victims? >> well, now, he addressed that in clarifying his statements and granted, this was a very important conversation to have. >> he didn't really address it, though. he kind of brushed by it. he said it was inelegantly

. >> joining me is jonathan chait and "the huffington post's" sam stein.t the differences are and the similarities in the tapes. >> what obama was trying to say was that, yes, there's a constituency that's opposed to him and he expressed it in a kind of condescending way that people don't like and understandably don't like, but it was fundamentally an express of social solidarity. he was saying my policies will benefit these people. we can explain it and we need to make the case, and if we make the case, i think we can get some of them to come our way. romney's was essentially saying my policies are not going to benefit those people, so they're never going to vote for us no matter what which is a kind of a disturbing thing to say if you want to be president. >> your thoughts on what's similar and dissimilar? >> one is trying to reap out and one is assuming they won't be for your cause. another famous comment, he started off saying, why are these people voting for you? it's easy to say they don't want to vote for the black man. they won't vote for me becaus

." >>> joining me today, jonathan chait of "new york" magazine, casey hunt of the associated press, margaret carlson of bloomberg news, and "the new york times" mark leibovich. while governor romney secretly recorded fund-raising comments amount to yet another scoop on a veritable ice cream sunday of campaign gaffes they happen to be an expedient method to insult massive amounts of people. he portrayed 47% of the country for a bunch of government freeloaders. it takes skill to alienate that many americans in one swoop. if romney instead chosen to vilified every person that watched the super bowl he would reach fewer people. it's larger than the number of people who went to the ballot box and voted in 2010. it's equivalent to brushing off every single person who owns a smartphone. despite writing off a truly staggering number of americans many of whom might be voting for romney in november, the candidate appeared on fox last night to defend his comments at the may 17th fund-raiser. >> well, we were, of course, talking about a campaign and how he's going to get close to half the vote. >> so, r