this is why david plouffe is talking about abortion, contraception.to keep the lead with women. they need to keep the lead with hispanic voters. so again, that's going to be also a very negative campaign because the vision, i quote another obama strategist saying we want to paint romney as a character of the '50s. he's retro. >> avatar of -- >> i like that. >> french ification of avatar. >> avatar of -- >> i like the way you pronounce that. >> but the notion is, he's '50s. he's old. he's your dad old. and for you voters minority voters, young voters, young college educated unmarried women voters that's a pass that you weren't a full stakeholder in. he wants to go back to an america where you weren't a first class citizen. that's the broader message. >> how does that help obama with the deflation of the kind of message from -- >> you address this had. >> from 2008. >> this is the fear factor. for others in the party in both politics and business, the new obama posture is cause for concern. from the gay marriage decision to the onslaught on bain, had he

. >> well, look, this is an exacting staff, and they do things on the schedule and david plouffe and d not to give up any, but these are not my source, but they have a very, very strict plan and this week was to talk about the campaign roll out, and then a $25 million ad buy in which to go over the accomplishment list, and here we are talking about gay marriage, and it has them tied in knots. >> did they pull back the money? >> i dont n't know if they wast the money, but certainly, a lot of it is spent. >> and now the vice president as you understand the role without getting too personal about this and the sources, is the role of the vice president basically to operate within the confines, the discipline of the white house operation? in other words, he's not an individual thinker, and his job is to play a role supporting the president. it is an operative role, and not a creative role. >> theoretically. >> that is the way they they look at it? >> that is the way that the white houses look at it, but again, someone who is, one, used to being his own voice. >> he has been a senator for 3

they do things on a schedule, david plouffe, jim messina, these are not my sources but they have a strictlan. this week was to talk about the campaign rollout and a $25 million ad buy which they would go over their accomplishment list. here we are day four talking about gay marriage. >> did they pull back the money when they knew it wasn't going to do any good? >> not that i know of. i think a lot of that has already been spent. >> the vice president, as you understand the role, without getting too personal with your sources, is the role of the vice president basically to operate within the confines, the discipline of the white house operation? in other words, he's not an individual thinker, his job is to play a role, supporting the president? it's an operative role, not really a creative role? >> yes, theoretically. >> that's the way they look at it? >> yes. again when you have someone who, one, is used to being his own voice -- >> he's been a senator for 40 years. >> 36 years, might run for president again. clearly is interested in, you know, making his voice be heard. that's how he's c

i was down talking to david plouffe for other reasons. but i asked him specifically, since this was in the news, whether the president had decided to do this before the biden flap. and he was pretty insistent and said, yes, in fact, the president had decided weeks before this that he was planning to do this, make this -- come out with this announcement. he was going to do it probably in may or june, ahead of the convention. and the annoyance with biden was that it kind of forced them into a position where they had to do it on a different timetable and made the president look like he was dragged into it rather than doing it in the way they had planned to do it. i think the politics of it are -- they are i think as mike said a wash. i think they do not believe this is an issue that will move a ton of votes, that most people who would vote against the president on this issue would already vote against them. but they certainly think that among key elements of their coalition, among young voters, college educated voters, particularly unmarried

re-election campaign, a friend of the show, john highland in his new york piece says that senior advisor david plouffethe white house told hidel man, and that the president is going to be overmatched. the president will take on the financing of the campaign. and plouffe said from a political standpoint, i'm almost as worried about that. >> they know that they are going to be outmanned. and remember that money is going to unregulated -- that money is going into these super-pacs that can issue ads are kind of a thing of the past. they will attack this president directly and mitt romney has shown they don't care about lying to the american people about what's true and what's not. so team obama should be worried about that money. >> tim dickenson of rolling stone and karen finney, thank you for joining us tonight. >>> coming up, mitt romney says education is the civil rights issue of our era, little does he know that the civil rights issue of mitt romney's era was civil rights. >>> michelle obama has been doing nonpolitical tv like "the view" today, but sit really nonpolitical? u're out catching a movie.

he quotes, white house political adviser david plouffe saying, quote, from a political standpoint i'm almost worried about that, that meaning the money, as i am about the question of what the economy is going to do over the next three or four months. joining me now is new york magazine national affairs editor john heliemann and steve kornacki. it sounds like he's got a calculator out there. it worries him almost as much as the economy. >> yeah, lawrence, it's true. and it's one of the big takeaways from, more or less, month i spent between chicago and the white house talking to all the senior people running the obama election effort. they are convinced, as are most republicans, that the president is going to get outspent, when you take all the money together. what the president raises, what the dnc raises, what the super pacs raise, what the labor unions raise and spend. then you take all the republican money. again, the super pacs, the they're going to get outspent by a reasonable amount. maybe a billion on the democratic side. a 1.3 billion on the republican side. on the presidentia

core belief if bipartisanship is obama himself and his top political advisors like david axelrod, david plouffe had a theory about politics and government, and the three was you don't mix the two. so there's a political season and you go out and you make your case and you're very forceful, and then there's a governing season. and in the governing season you set the gain society and you kind of do business in a very above board way without going and saying nasty stuff about your opponents behind their backs. i think that was completely wrong, and i think the last six to eight months have shown that to be wrong. but where that comes from is interesting but it comes from the way they very self-consciously define itself in opposition to the clintons. they believe that bill clinton was the inventor of the permanent campaign. campaign never ended. and was always at the campaign, always giving some speeches, always attacking republicans. and obama, above all, they wanted to be the anti-clintons. and the problem with that is it work. it was pretty good. clinton obviously had his glasses and his failing

have colleagues of obama's top political advisers, bill daley who became the chief of staff and david plouffe who became his chief strategist, you know, these guys were, clearly, enormous proponents of that approach. you know, one of daley's colleagues told me that really the reason that daley took the job was that he felt this imperative to get the presidency back toward the middle. and, plus, as one of his colleagues told me specifically said and i'm quoting his colleague: we're going the need a period of ugliness, by which he meant with the left, so that people in the center understand that we're not wasting their tax dollars. so plouffe and daley both felt like two years into the obama presidency, um, obama had become care keytured as a creature of the left, as a big, you know, wasteful, liberal spender and that the best way to, um, to get back on track was to kind of repudiate that caricature and engage with republicans on a deal to cut the deficit. um, so they kind of over a period of a couple weeks had these meetings on saturday. i don't know why saturday was the special day in the whi

. >> david plouffe says i would rather be us than them. what makes them most nervous? first presidential incumbent to get outspend by 30% or 40% if you take it all in. we are going to see $2.5 billion spent in this race between seven and nine states. it's like a test tube experiment. we have never seen anything like that. you never want to get outspent by 40% if you are an incumbent. >> you know how you see thing that is don't make sense like internet start up companies. i tell you what makes no sense. just in my gut. a president saying he's not going to run on his record or people saying we are not going to talk about our record, we are going to talk about our challenger. it doesn't sell. they have to sell the past four years or they lose. >> we'll be right back with willie's news you can't use. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ and we dream up ♪ all the best stuff ♪ and we can make it up ♪ cause we were made for each other ♪ ♪ for always ♪ oh oh ♪ for always support team usa and show our olympic spirit right in our own backyard. so we combined our citi thankyou points to make it happen. tom c

. >> i can't read their mind, the two davids, david plouffe and david axlerod, using this strategy andg it again. i believe that joe biden's parents are the first mother and father in american heft to tell their child, if you work hard, you can grow up to be vice-president, it was heartening to hear him say that. but the bottom line, this is what i called diversion number three, part of the strategy of it's anything, but the economy, stupid. and you know, diversion number one, think about what's happened in the past four weeks, first we had vice-president biden talk about same sex marriage and supposedly stumbled in to forcing the obama administration to flip-flop on same sex marriage. it was anything, but that. it was deliberate in my opinion. and then, we hear that the obama myth mitt romney is a bully. the generous man returning for president in u.s. history and then class warfare rhetoric. when he's talking about dreaming, i'm trying to find the romney quote with only the rich dream. when-- >> and we, i have to cut you off there. the heart of the argument, does it work? does loweri