i want to bring ari fleischer in. i can already hear it, democrats are going to say, well, we were outspent seven to one, it wasn't a fair fight, outside interests bought this election. what do you say? >> both sides had more than enough money and resources in wisconsin. i think when you count all the organized labor can do with the number of people they can do into the state, the number of resource, phone banks, et cetera. both sides have nothing to complain about. the republicans i'm talking to, john, it's euphoria. the republican national committee people are pointing out to me how much coordination they did, the number of offices that were open, the aggressive absentee ballot they had. 4 million voters they say, which is more than the republicans had in 2008. they look at this as a crucial test run for wisconsin in november and i think that's right. the real issue at least for the presidency, the land cape is more like 2010 or more like 2008? at least in the snapshot of wisconsin, it looks like 2010. >> you're see

let's go back to ari fleischer. democratic strategist paul begala, an adviser for the pro obama super pac priorities usa action. also with us political analyst gloria borger and david gergen. paul, i want to start with you first. i know you're going do say democrats were outspent seven to one, that was a part in this. you're working with a super pac yourself. when you look at these numbers and nearly 90%, nearly 90% decided weeks ago, does that change the strategy about spending money? >> no. no. i mean, napoleon said god is on the side of the big battalions. you know what? god is usually on the side of the big budgets, too. most elections, the middle is slightly smaller today, the undecided. but most elections in america or in most states come down to that last 10% or so who make up their minds in the last month. 40%, 45% of us go to each of our partisan corners right away. we fight over the last 10% to 20%. that's what happened in wisconsin. it may mean if that 10 keeps shrinking that you have to spend your money

ari knows this.er president bush was up for re-election in 2004 or when bush was still president, mccain was running in 2008. some democrats violated this rule as well. so this is one of the many rules that have crumblemillion recent years. you're right, the president didn't like it. >> ari, you actually had a -- i don't know if you tweeted this. after the president said this, you said, did the president really say the politics stops at the water's edge? that wasn't how he treated bush. >> that's exactly right, and john remembers it. i remember when george bush became president and right away in 2001 then senate majority leader george mitchell criticized president bush when he left the country. paul said it right. it's honored in the breach. i think this is someone that used to be a part of american politics. frankly that changed decades ago. changed largely with the advent of cable television. i don't think it's that big a deal. i think president obama's a pretty tough guy. as for the op-ed written

rahm. >> ari's brother, zek's brother. >> zeke, rahm, ari. >> who was the most difficult? ari?>> the reason ari is the way he is, we had cribs and we literally used to jump into the crib to watch the baby jump. >> so you beat him up a little -- >> no, it was not beating up, just watching him jump in the bed. >> he still sleeps in that bed, doesn't he? >> he doesn't sleep. it's a trained behavior. >> when did you figure out he was crazy? >> that was an early diagnosis. three boys can do that, but you should see what it did to my mother. >> how is your mother? >> she's doing okay. fully med, but she's okay. >> it's really nice to have you. nice to see you last night, the 10,000 jobs initiative today. >> a series of graduations that are great for the city. there's a 10,000 small business that we're doing with our community colleges. we hit a record for our public schools. 60% of our kids now are graduating and more are going to college than ever before. and tour graduation rate in our community colleges overall are up. >> fantastic. and we'll be meeting some of the business -- loo

like ari said, somebody pays for those benefits. in this case it's the middle class who's paying for it. now, what the president said was taken out of context and you know the underlying philosophy for the president is, yes, we need to grow the economy, yes, the private sector needs to be strong and vibrant. yes, we need to create more jobs. and, yes, we need nor teachers, firefighters and cops. that's what's going to make our economy stronger. that's what's going to make our streets safer. >> ari, david axelrod officer the weekend said within the next five months, this whole private sector is doing fine thing is basically going to go away. you think this is really kind of a watershed moment or defining moment for these two campaigns? >> the only way it goes away is if job creation in this country gets strong and i don't know an economist who believes that will be the case. i think what's not going to go away is the next four unemployment reports. that, probably more than anything else, will decide who the next president is. unemplo

ari, what do you make of this.christie has indicated, there's nobody, nobody has been subjected to this kind of thing. we're not trying to say, oh, my god, it's the race card. but the reality is he's the first black president. the degree to which people have descended into the vineyards of viciousness seems to me unprecedented. >> i think it's of a piece with a delegitimatization campaign against the president that's very unfortunate and that relates to racism and the otherness. the other point is that it's not isolated to this sort of no-name "daily caller" guy who's a sorry excuse for a watcha be media figure. if it were really just him i wouldn't care this much but i heard lou dobbs saying isn't it nice to see the president challenged for a change by the media. the problem doesn't stop with "the daily caller" or tucker carlson. it's anyone on the right who wants to stick up for this crap. >> wait a second. >> we've got to take a break. stay with us. next, mitt romney tries to paint president obama into a corner

they are our all-access guests, blair underwood and nicole ari parker. >> you must be stanley. i'm blanch. >> yes. >> where's little woman? >> in the bathroom. >> here with the stars of the revived hit "a streetcar named desire," blair underwood and nicole ari parker. con gratelationgratulatio congratulations. that's a big deal. >> yes. >> the shows are closing out around us. it's by word of mouth. the word on the street is this is the show to come to. >> this is a huge hit. >> "a," it's a classic american play and "b," blair underwood is in it. >> like nicole said, it's a classic. many people feel as though they know it or think they know it. it's important to have a barometer, point of reference. >> one of the perceptions is that you all have radically changed the play from the original tennessee williams version or even the randall version. >> minor things. >> minor changes. >> people are basing it on the movie. a lot of people haven't read the actual play. they're going off the movie version in 1951 which was made at a time when censorship is very high. most of the stories,

ari, what is that history? >> well, as you mentioned, this is not happening in a vacuum.s is happening in florida, a state that wrong took 12,000 voters off of its roams. that was 22 times the margin of victory for george w. bush overall gore. that list was 41% of african-americans. we know african-americans supported gore over bush by 86 points so that purge alone could have made the differences in the 2000 election. now, it's repeating itself in 2012. people are rightfully concerned any time you talk about florida purges, history will repeat itself. >> again, the issue we have to focus on is that there are answers to this that would remove this from the partisan context of a governor trying to punch the list fewer than 90 days. there are technological answers in terms of having a unified voter list that would be precise, accurate. it could be done, but there has been opposition primarily from the republicans in terms of having national legislation that would permit and indeed require that, something we should discuss more down the road. mike papantonio, national trial l

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we're going to talk it over with dana bash, ari fleischer, and paul begala. we know this is a big turnout. both sides trying to get out of vote. what are you hearing as we enter the final hour? >> the turnout across the state of wisconsin is very, very high. at this point it is for the most part anecdotal. we're talking about lines very long pretty much all day in key areas. when you're talking about the republicans, those pushing for the incumbent not to be recalled, i spoke to a senior official in the state who said he's worried. he reason for that is they are hearing anecdotely and also from their political people on the ground there is record turnout in the county of dane. that is where madison is. and that is for the most part pretty liberal. they're worried about that. in fact, one number that he just told me is it's up 118 or 119% from the 2010 election. same goes for milwaukee, the county and city of milwaukee. that would be bad news for republicans. at the same time they also say they're getting good numbers from where they're looking at in the key r

ari's point earlier, you're already at deficit with the community.n if obama is messing up, saying, you're going to do stuff, he said it and is trying to do it. in the same argument he is about other stuff, he is about this issue as well. hey, i have people that oppose me politically. i can't get a paper stamp or a paper clip through congress because they're opposed to me. that's a huge advantage. secondly, because his -- >> you think there's an embedded sort of sense -- it doesn't actually -- that they're already sort of on the president's side, to the degree anybody who tries to rile them up with talk of failed promises -- >> it's just -- you're whistling dixie. you know why? that community is politically more sophisticated than they've been given credit for. they understand the nature of the hardball politics here. they understand that, you know, you can't be too explicit about certain things and have to make your moves strategically in other areas, whereas, you know, romney's coming in with a clean slate. that's great if you're a philosopher. it'

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ari and i were talking about this before we came in. this community has followed this debate.y know what happened on day one when president obama came into the oval office. they know what's been going on in coness. they know that it took to this point for the president to finally say look, if congress isn't going to act then i'm going to have to do this. they're much savvier than romney is getting them credit for. and by the way, he didn't say anything that's going to get him to the 30% that he needs. >> let's listen to what jay carney said today about why the present had to take the action that he did and where the failure lies in getting real progress in this area. >> congress has had the ability to act on this ever since republicans blocked the dream act. we have a situation here where the nominee of the republican party, the head of that party at this point has said he would veto the dream act. that is not encouraging as a sign of cooperation or willingness by republicans. said he would simply veto the dream act. >> yeah, romney said he would veto the dream act. it at one

i'm joined by joe williams and ari melbourne.impressed that the president referred to mitt romney as a patriotic american who should be proud of his financial successes, but drawn the wrong lessons from that experience? >> i thought that was interesting. it was yet again another iteration and reframing of the bain story that the president has had to manipulate over the past two months to be palatable. now we like his success. mitt romney is not an evil capitalist. bain is okay. he drew the wrong lesson from that experience. it has been fascinating to watch this narrative. >> i think she slightly reconstructed that. i have not noted a massive restructure. >> i would not want to play poker with her. she plays a bad hand very well. you are basically proposing this message has been all over the place. if you look at the core message, this president said it is great to make money. the form of the stimulus is to get the economy making more money and hiring people. there is nothing wrong with bain as a company, but there is something wr

joining me, chief white house correspondent jessica yellin and ari fleischer and paul begala. so the private sector is doing fine, then he clarifies the remarks. how big of gaffe do you think this is for the president? >> well, anderson, remember when john mccain said in the 2008 election the fundamentals of the economy are strong and then candidate obama hammered him mercilessly for it saying he was out of touch and he rode that all the way to the victory. president obama hasn't demonstrated repeated instances of being totally out of touch. what it's done is gotten him off message. this press conference was intended to let the president take the offensive, to let him say that it's the republicans in congress who are responsible for these jobs -- the disappointing jobs numbers we just saw and he was trying to get the republicans in congress to take action on his jobs bill. >> the president's critics say that the president is out of touch and this is another example of that. do you think it's similar to that john mccain comment? >> no, it's about a 2.0 on the mccain richter sca

ari, i can't get away from this. why do the republicans keep going down this road when it's in the polls aba an absolute loser for them? >> i think they have some element of stock home syndrome with their base. they look at the tea party of delivering a lot in the midterms. they had a very loud, very angry primary season and i'm not sure they have pivoted out and figured out what is going on in the rest of the country. these are missteps, and the other point is when you control language, you control ideas. there's a longstanding type of reverse political correctness on the right where they want to say you can say this, you can't say that, or we can talk about vaginas as it relates to abortion and controlling things and trying to gin up pro life outrage, but you can't talk about vaginas for your perspective. the fact we have to have this language debate tells you hoe controlling the environment is. and the other point i'll make is that, look, obviously, there are people who are of good faith and have strong religious

so i think they decided to take a pass. >> i want to get a reading from ari. how do you read this? >> i spent a lot of time talking to rubio's staff, actually. it's a little different than what gloryia said. getting bipartisan action together on capitol hill, that the president in taking executive action and just doing a narrow slice of it poison theed well, as senator rubio himself used those exact words, but he's been up front about it today saying this damages the chances of congress getting anything done. that's arguable. the administration has its point of view. i still think they have a legal constitutional problem, that's a separate issue but there's more to it than gloria indicated. >> maria? >> i think marco rubio realized he didn't have the support he needed within his own republican party. i mean, let's remember that speaker boehner, when he first heard about marco rubio's idea and it was just an idea, he nerve put anything on paper, he said clearly it would be very difficult to get anything like that proposal through congress right now. but i also just want to say, repu

ari fleischer and cornell is here. cornell, what about this? are those kind of conspiracy theorists who say this is president clinton getting back at president obama in some way that they haven't always had the warmest of relationships. do you think these kind of off message conversations are deliberate or it is just things that come out in conversation? >> i think the president -- i think president clinton cleared up what he was saying today in the situation room and doubled down on the ideal that, in fact, the wealthy will have to contribute to long-term bringing down the debt. i think this is much ado about nothing. i know the press loves president clinton. he's incredibly popular. i think your cnn poll has him at 66%. which is an incredible number for any politician these days. i think democrats are all in on that because let's talk about what clinton actually did. he raised taxes on the wealthy, and he belt the economy from the middle out. and guess what happened when he built the economy from the middle out? all boats raised. wall street

i wanted to ask you, ari, romney still has a massive problem with latino voters. way he's breaking bread with donald trump, that's hardly the best introduction, is it, in terms of minority groups, particularly in a place like texas where there are so many people who draw their origins from, you know, hispanic backgrounds. >> i think that is a problem for governor romney. i know we could see him on screen right now and whether he's making this pitch today or going around the southwest, these are issues that he's going to have to confront. there's one big interesting thing here, which is the pundits have been wrong. the traditional narrative is you go to your base during the primary and then you move to the center and we all hear that talk. he's not doing that. he continues to be appealing to some of the more divisive members of the party. we'll see how that plays. >> professor, could it be that a terrible economy, even the worst since the great depression, might not be bad enough for such a weak candidate like mitt romney to win? >> i'm afraid you're right. it's a

summer's going to be slow, see what sticks and prepare for an all-out september come september. >> ari, those massachusetts legislators have never actually participated in a presidential campaign before. no one has ever thought to go to get massachusetts legislators to do that. but we're going to be hearing a lot more from the obama campaign about this governship of mitt romney's that he just absolutely -- i mean, i don't know what you have to do to get romney to talk about being governor. >> it's something he seems to think will not be an issue on this campaign. it's weird. the ad is devastating because it is so specific and accurate, for example, there's a section on taxes and mitt romney talked a lot about how he would not raise taxes in massachusetts and it's true, he didn't raise the standard taxes, sales or income but what he did do was add $750 million in fees, which is just another way that the government collects money like taxes but fees are more regressive so the less you make the more they hurt and that is now a fact about his tenure we know and so while you may look at som