joining me now, ari berman, author of "the gop war on voting" and "rolling stone."uthor of "herding donkeys: the fight to rebuild the democratic party and reshape american politics." thanks for joining me. look, it's very simple. if you want people to vote, if you want 100% turnout, we make it easier for them. we don't want that. the media doesn't want it. nobody wants it. they want it contained in one little day where they can report it. they don't like this early voting. you know, why don't we just make it a national holiday? if we really want to make it easy for people to vote? >> what i found when i did my story, lawrence, is republicans really didn't want people who might vote for barack obama to vote in 2012. that's why we saw 38 states primarily controlled by republicans introduce legislation and more than a dozen states pass legislation designed to impede voters at every step of the process. as you mentioned, the voters that will be impeded, they're young voters, minorities, low income voters. they're the core of the obama coalition, they're the coalition of

my colleague ari berman wrote a cover story for "the nation" last week called "how the austerity class rules washington." and we're seeing an austerity class of pundits and politicians and think tanks who have manufactured a crisis in this country of debt and deficits when the real crisis is the jobs crisis. and they treat this guy, congressman, as a serious man. they have defined courage downwards by saying this man is courageous. to what? to gut social security, medicare, and programs that have brought security and dignity to millions of americans? he's on the wrong side of history. >> december 23rd is a big date with this super committee. agreement's got to be made. >> absolutely. >> the democrats have put $1.3 trillion worth of cuts on the table in the next decade. they want a little bit more revenue from the wealthiest. the republicans say no. where's this all going to end up? and how aggressive should the democrats push for cuts? >> you know, ed, i hope to say it but i hope this super committee ends in failure because i think the real failure is if it comes out with real cuts in

" tim carney, an occupier for a night himself, i believe, a few months back, and "the nation's" ari bermancertainly agree with his assessment that this energy is present and that what happens to this energy is entirely unknown. it's tremendously threatening to democratic establishment, to republican establishment, to all sorts of people, to the banks, obviously. what are your opinions to that question, ari? i want to get us rolling here. >> sure. dylan, we know there's this massive disconnect, right, between the public and washington. and as long as the economy stays bad and as long as neither party really talks about it and focuses on the huge jobless crisis, the instability in the society will continue to grow and the sentiment of occupy wall street will continue to grow. >> at the same time, it seems obvious that any protest movement has the opportunity to screw itself up in lots of different ways, and the more people and the more anger and frustration that is involved, the risk profile goes to how they can manage the natural frustration that comes with the protest. what do you want the