laura bassett, jamal simmons. lking about these various issues relating to rights of women and legislation. but it is also -- it has a much broader impact which is on this 2012 election. where the women's vote, jamal still pretty important constituency, right? >> absolutely. you can just look at the last two elections george bush lost to john kerry by thigh points among women and he won the presidency. john mccain lost to president obama by 13 points among women and he lost the presidency. you cannot lose women by double digits and be president of the united states. >> bill: what are the republicans thinking when, for example, like on the violence against women act or the lily led led better act and the federal leave act and all of these issues which do impact just the rights of women to be considered first class citizens i guess in this country. laura, what are they thinking? >> i don't know what they're thinking. a lot of their moves have not been very politically smart lately. but you see them like, for instance

coming up next, jamal simmons ways in.ater on, johnny isakson on helping home owners and preventing taxpayer bailouts. we mentioned a moment ago some news from the supreme court. as we go to break, we wanted to show you a clip john paul stevens. he spoke yesterday. you can watch the whole event and our c-span the video library. here is the former justice talking about the death penalty and why he thinks the states will act before the high court does. [video clip] >> i am not sure the democratic process won't provide the answer sooner than the court does. i think there is a significantly growing appreciation of the basic imbalance in the cost- versus-benefit analysis. it does a lot of harm and does little good over a life without the possibility of parole. we have the continuous risk of an incorrect conclusion of the jury. the death penalty having been rejected in michigan on the basis of the fact that two men had been executed and it was later established they were innocent. i think the likelihood is that the public genera

jamal simmons in as a "friend of bill."irst -- >> this is the "full court press." >> other headlines making news on this thursday in sports, the nba eastern conference semifinal was forced to a game seven last night. philadelphia 76ers bounced back from a poor first half showing to beat the boston celtics 82-75. they play for the conference finals on saturday. the miami heat have the opportunity to advance tonight if they beat the indiana pacers, they lead the series three games to two. in the west, oklahoma city and san antonio start their western conference finals on sunday. >> bill: i'm getting confused by this nba thing. i mean there are so many teams and it takes so long. >> it is the playoffs. >> bill: the heat and the pacers, right? >> yes. >> bill: then the celtics and the 76ers. then the winner of those play each other for the eastern champion? >> eastern conference. >> bill: it is going to be august. or september before we get there. >> then we start the next season. they have summer camp. >> the season was like 8

joining me now to go through it all, is jamal simmons, a national democratic editor for govote.com.ia, an msnbc contributor. thank you for being with me tonight. let's get started with our fist topic. voting for mr. popularity. how much will vilikeability matter. president obama showed it on the view, taking a pop culture kwiez from bahair. >> which kardashian was only married for 72 days. >> very good. this one you may not know. what's the controversial sex book that's on million of women's bedside tables. >> i don't know that one. >> good, okay, next. i get home. >> a new gallup poll shows the president has a two to one margin over mitt romney, does that matter or will it be with economy and jobs. clinton was more likeable than his opponent, dole. and bush more than kerry. >> it helps when the president has someone like michelle obama to drop in the mix. likeability is a part of that. the president is sitting in a room, and he will make a decision for their families, and he can trust what that will be. bush beat kerry because people were not sure what kerry would do. we're seeing

. >> 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, reihan salam and jamal simmons is with me right now.itt 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 nam

ryan joins me here and jamal simmons joins me from washington.d 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 42%. 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? >> i don't think so. i think the president has been 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. the one piece of good news here is it's may

. >> 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.

jamal simmons, s.e. cup as well as anne kornblut. great to see all of you. the obama campaign not letting up on the bain issue. i want to play for you what vice president joe biden said yesterday in new hampshire. >> folks, making money for your investors, which romney did very well, is not the president's job. that doesn't mean that private equity guys are bad guys, they're not. but that no more qualifies you to be president than being a plumber. it doesn't -- and by the way, there are a lot of awful smart plumbers. it was totally legitimate for the president to point this out. >> let me also add to that the new nbc/"wall street journal" poll finding 53% of people right now have no opinion of bain. why does the obama campaign think that starting out with bain is the winning issue for them? there's an obama playbook in all of this and massachusetts is second. but why is bain first? >> what you're seeing is that there's not a real understanding in this poll, a real understanding of what bain capital s. 28% of the people have an opinab that means there's a lot

john avlon, and jamal simmons are with us now. good to have all of you with us. 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. 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. >> 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. >> 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 election. we've got a problem, people, and it's going to degrade our civil discourse. it alrea

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 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

joining us to talk about that, democratic strategist jamal simmons and republican political analyst anacampaigning -- while she was campaigning michele bachmann blasts romney as too liberal, a flip-flopper. here is what she told wolf just back in november. >> as governor romney has also advocated for mandating that every citizen in the state of massachusetts also purchase health insurance which is exactly the same as obama care and was a pattern for obama care. he's been on both sides of the abortion issue. he was for abortion. he was against abortion. he was for same-sex marriage and, in fact, i believe had signed 189 marriage license for same-sex couples and then came out against it. and so on issue after issue after issue governor romney has been on both sides. >> ana, you're going to miss michele, aren't you? you're going to miss her there. she was quite the presence and now they've buried the hatchet. they're frenemies. is that going to really help him now? >> i think so. i think it's a very good message she's sending. i was exposed to michele bachmann during the campaign. i learne

tomorrow morning, we talk about race, politics, and the 2012 campaign, with a democratic strategist, jamal simmon. and a look at the government role in the housing market. and then, the ambassador to morocco in the 1990's. "washington journal" is live on c-span at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> from 1971 to 1973, president richard nixon secretly recorded his phone conversations and meetings. this weekend on c-span radio, hear more of the tapes, with conversations between the president and the cia director and the fbi director j. edgar hoover. >> make a statement about the freedom of the press. my inclination is to not say so. i kind of think i should stay out. what is your public relationship? >> you should remain solid about it. >> you would? >> i would, yes. >> you can listen. and nationwide, we are on channel 119 and streaming on c- span.org. >> former supreme court justice john paul stevens on monday commented on the decision of the florida recount in the case of bush v. gore. he was nominated to the supreme court by gerald ford in 1975 and retired in 2010. from the american law institute, this is a l

tomorrow morning, we will talk about waste, politics, and the to dozens of campaign with jamal simmons. republican senator joins us to look at the government's role in that housing market. we will also talk with mark ginsburg. "washington journal" is live every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> richard nixon secretly recorded his conversations and meetings. this weekend, hear more of the nixon tapes. conversations between the president and richard helms and j. edgar hoover. some people think i should make a statement about freedom of the press. [unintelligible] i think i should stay out. what is your judgment on it? >> you should remain absolutely solid about it. >> listen at 90.1 fm. c-re streaming act spanradio.org. >> this is one of the markets where people vote for -- do not vote for the party. this is the city that votes for the candidate. even though this heavily republican, midwest, you are seeing more of that in recent years here in the midwest. they are voting more for what the person stands for. >> export that heritage and literary culture of wichita, kansas. >> this house is the

on "washington journal," we'll talk about the 2012 campaign with democratic strategist jamal simmons could we will look at the government's role in housing market and discuss middle east diplomacy but martinsburg, who was ambassador to morocco in the 1990's -- will discuss middle east diplomacy marc ginsberg. eckstrom 1971-1973, president richard nixon secretly recorded his phone conversations and meetings. this weekend, you are more of the nixon tapes, saturday at 6:00 p.m., with conversations between the president and cia director richard helms, and also j. edgar hoover. >> i am going to make a statement about freedom of the press. my inclination is not to say so. [unintelligible] >> she should remain absolutely silent about it. >> we are straining at c-span radio.org. >> null form on how political campaigns use technology and how it has evolved since the first president critics and the first computer was used to predict the presidential election in 1952. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> election 1952 introduced a new word, univac. the computer became famous overnight. many peopl