>> good morning, chris. >> so jim messina, senior adviser david axelrod put it even more bluntly.an e-mail, "hell yeah, i like obamacare." this is such a politically charged word, though. could they actually shift the strategy? could they shift the message? >> they don't have a choice. obamacare has become a dirty word in politics, and for all his achievements, obama did not do a very good job of selling his health care plan. there are a lot of things that really benefit the average american, preexisting conditions, coverage for young people, et cetera. and when it came out, they did a horrible job of selling it. let the opposition take the high ground and defined the message, and now they're seizing it. maybe a little late, and i think it's the right strategy. >> yeah, the opposition is continuing to go after it. the karl rove super pac american crossroads has a new ad out attacking the president over health care. let me show you a little bit of that. >> you don't have an individual mandate, then what would everybody do? if the government does not force taxpayers to buy health ca

. >> one final point about david plouffe, david axelrod, david gibbs, jim messina. but what other names are involved in the re-election campaign in chicago? >> so stephanie cutter, who was -- who played the communications director in john kerry's campaign in 2004 who served in several white house roles in this white house who in the 2008 campaign helped sort of craft michelle obama's image and message throughout account 2008 campaign. she's a deputy campaign manager out in chicago this time around. and still remember some of the same sort of senior advertising team, jim margolies and other consultants, eric smith, the democratic consultens around town that worked on the advertising component of this. >> quick question about illinois. what's the latest polling between mitt romney and rick santorum? >> i still think the latest polling is showing it it is a tight race. i don't have a sense from the campaigns that there's a lot of private polling going on right now. but i will tell you this. the way illinois is structured is tailormade for mitt romney. this is a big all

jim messina who is the manager of the obama campaign sent out an e-mail to obama supporters say if itg today, president obama would lose to mitt romney based on a poll and he is trying to fund-raise off that. they are not looking at rick santorum with great attention. i see you are playing the video. i think i should talk about this. president obama took prime minister cameron of the uq to his first basketball game. they went not coincidentally to a swing state of ohio. the president talked about why they went there. listen. >> first of all, i thought there was going to be wonderful for the to have a chance not only to see a basketball game for the first time, but to come to the great state of ohio. sometimes when we have foreign visitors, they are only visiting the coasts. they go to new york, washington, they go to los angeles. the heartland is what it's all about. >> vice president biden will be in ohio as well later this week on thursday. he is going to toledo to unleash what all sources are saying will be a very fierce real election-themed speech. we are expecting him to take it

what jim messina was saying is we need every voter, every volunteer, every single person who can givelar. we'ral mile 2, and we have a long way to go until november. we can rest then. >> is that scare tactic going to get a lot of money for the democrats, nancy? >> oh, i don't know. i mean, i think that they -- fund-raisers on both sides typically say this type of thing. i guess i'm not surprised. i do agree with jen i think it will be a tighter race than people may anticipate. that's because you see a republican base spread along multiple candidates, but they will coalesce, and the intensity here will be on the republican side, because they do not want obama. they may not love their nominee, but they dislike him more. >> you continue to assume, jen, like most democrats, that the republican nominee is in fact going to be romney, not santorum? >> well, there's a path for santorum. we know romney has more delegates right now, but he has a couple problems. one is he significantly has outspent. and he still lost two of the races yesterday. so, you know, i think right now what the romney ca

you know, i just got an e-mail from jim messina from the obama camp, it's one of the mass mailings theyut out, came out at 10:23 tonight saying, beware, we're running behind romney right now in the latest polling, send in your 3 bucks. at the very moment the obama campaign is paying attention to the fact that gas prices are at least at the moment endangering the re-election, the republicans are saying, oh, yeah, well, we don't really like this so-called front-runner. just quickly, these are the people that voted for santorum in alabama, and i believe in mississippi. women, college grads, people make under 50k, under 100k. people in young 20s. people who say religion is important to who they vote for. strong antiabortion people. people who trust moral character of their candidates. people who believe romney is not conservative enough. >> yeah. >> i think this is getting -- i think he's getting a rejection from the conservative republicans. i think -- here's something really strange and sectorian i'll be watching. most conservative of the catholic archbishops, most conservative cardinal i

jim messina, who is the manager of the obama campaign, sent out an e-mail today to obama supporters sayingon were held today, president obama would lose to mitt romney, that was based on a washington post poll. he's trying to fund raise off that. so they're not even looking at santorum right now with any great attention. but i see you're playing the video, so i should talk about this. president obama took prime minister cameron of the uk to his very first basketball game. and they went, not coincidentally, to a swing state of ohio. and the president talked about why they went there. listen. >> first of all, i thought it was going to be wonderful for the prime minister to have a chance not only to see a basketball game for the first time, but also to come to the great state of ohio. because sometimes when we have foreign visitors, they're only visiting the coast, they go to new york, to washington, they go to los angeles. but you know, the heartland is what it's all about. >> and vice president biden will be in ohio as well, erin, later this week on thursday, he's going to toledo to unleash

you know, i just got an e-mail from jim messina from the obama camp.t's one of the mass mailings they put out. came out at 10:23 tonight saying, beware, we're running behind romney right now in the latest polling. better send in your 3 bucks. well, at the very moment the obama campaign is paying attention to the fact that gas prices at least are at the moment endangering their re-election, the republicans are saying, oh, yeah, we don't really like this so-called front-runner. just quickly, these are the people that voted for santorum in alabama. i believe in mississippi. women, college grads, people make under 50k. people who make under 100k. young people in their 20s. they're very conservative. people who say their religion is important to who they vote for. strong antiabortion people. people who trust moral character of their candidates. and people who believe romney is not conservative enough. >> yeah. >> i think this is getting -- i think he's getting a rejection from the conservative republicans. i think -- here's something really strange i'll be

. >> and then at the end of the year, after he does his afghanistan review, you know he puts jim messina. they say to him, we will do this with you under one condition: you let us be in charge of how it happens. and we want to do a -- we want to take nine months to do a study and start bringing our people along, too. but we will support it publically if you let us be in charge. and so he said -- he took that deal. they testifyied. it was historic. you know, when mullin and gates in the beginning of 20 telephone10 came out and testifyied in favor of repealing the ban, now at this points, a lot of the gay right activists are saying what you just said: why is it taking so long? sign an order. there are members of congress democrats who are ready to passed passion the bill today. today, in the house and maybe in the senate. but the white house got caught in this. they made a promise to gates and mullin they wouldn't support any of these immediate efforts. they would give them the time they needed. so they got caught between -- now, behind the scenes, there were they are working with the demo

i want to actually, before you answer that, jim messina, president obama's campaign strategist said thate were crazy when we said we could win north carolina. now we believe we can win it that we put the democratic national convention there. states are changing because of the demographics, arizona is going to be a toss-up state. we're looking at georgia. boom. >> i don't know about georgia. oklahoma. did we add oklahoma to the swing state list? i'm not sure. i think what they do there is to make it look like these are non-political events so they throw 18 state they can't win and throw in the rest. it's an energy state. but yeah, no, he's going to go to the swing states he can talk about energy which is an issue in those states. >> let's focus on the campaign strategy. there is a smoke screen, presidential events but really actually probably campaign events. and we've gotten more data about the obama re-elect campaign in reebt days. we've been talking about the gop race. i thought this was interesting. ari, i've been told that your title has been or is net movement correspondent. >> true

. >> in the meantime, jim messina is talking about winning north carolina and virginia, georgia and arizona. we'll talk more about the obama campaign later on. mark halperin, thank you as always. coming up, where do last night's results leave rick santorum? does the mcgyver campaign have the organization and cash to carry on? we'll ask his national communications director hogan gidley when he joins us live next on "now." ♪ i'm michael bazinet, president of creative digital imaging of bangor, maine. we have customers all over the united states. we rely on the postal service for everything that we do. the eastern maine processing facility is vital to our operation and our success. if we lose this processing facility we could lose clientele because of increased mailing times. we would have to consider layoffs as a result of that. closure of this plant will affect all of us. ♪ we have to thank you for the advice on phillips' caplets. magnesium, right? you bet! phillips' caplets use magnesium. works more naturally than stimulant laxatives... for gentle relief of occasional constipation. can i ge

>> well, i had a meeting with jim messina, who is a wonderful friend. he's a senate guy. spent a lot of time with him. david plouffe, who is the brains of the campaign operation for the president. >> did they tell you no money? >> well, there are many ways they're helping us. everyone should know that. i'm pretty proud of my campaign organization i have in nevada. i think people would recognize that the reason i was re-elected is because of the campaign operation i had on the ground. obama has that same campaign operation on the ground. that's important. i don't know why anyone's concerned about the conversations that we had. it's the same conversation i've had with presidents over the years. they have to guard their money. i didn't expect them to bring their checkbook with them. >> right. i guess the reason this sort of becomes an issue is because if you talk to some of your democratic colleagues on the senate side, they will at times voice some displeasure thinking -- saying, listen, the white house, the president, just even on routine things, isn't in regular contact,

what's happened here is the president's reelection team and his campaign manager jim messina has takentwo private businessmen because they oppose the president and his policies and reelection effort and continue to call them out for suggesting they need to disclose all of their donors behind their political action committee. they say they have had enough of this. alan, do you agree with this tactic? >> i would say there should be open and transparency which there is not. you keep referring to the koch brothers as private citizens. i don't heart conservatives saying george soros is a private citizen, let's leave him alone. megyn: this is the president of the united states doing this. >> these people want a pronounced effect on public policy. they raise huge money. the issue with messina is the koch brothers are saying we are just a bunch of people raising grassroots money. megyn: why do they need to when the law doesn't require them to? >> it doesn't require them to, but the president's political action committee, they do reveal, and you will find out if you go to open secrets.org, you

obama campaign manager jim messina sent out a fund-raising e-mail alerting supporters to romn romney'sand then said this. conservatives headed for the fainting couch. former bush solicit tor ted olson took the pages of "wall street journal" to compare democrats pushed back to the koch brothers to nixon enemy list. calling it a despicable abuse of authority and entirely alien to our system of a government of laws. mr. olson is now a lawyer for koch industries. president of government affairs for the koch companies published an open letter to mussina saying the koch brothers pledged $200 million to defeat the president and chastising the president for his, quote, disturbing behavior. in other words. >> leave me alone! >> could we play that again so everybody gets that? this is what they are saying. >> leave me alone! >> the koch brothers. >> i'm sorry, but this is a world historical case of hubress. the koch brothers eating up every last crumb of cake and cry they want to have some as well. spare me. david koch said he is the most radical president we had in the nation and done more dama

advantages, so much better wired in these states, so much better staffed, spening all their money, jim messina is spending all his money out of chicago looking at ways to wire every single state to contact every voter they can. in a 50-50 country, that matters. we have juana summers back with us in gettysburg, pennsylvania, what are you hearing from the santorum folks and what's happening there right now? >> the room is just starting to fill up behind me, i don't know if you can see it but rick santorum will be speaking mind a banner that says freedom. that's different from past election nights where he's been speaking behind a banner that says "made in america" but it's central to the argument he's making to americans. i wret earlier this week about how different the arguments they're making are. mitt romney is talking about job bus santorum is saying it's about something much, much bigger. it's about freedom, about restoring america's core. you can expect to hear a lot of that tonight even as he's in a race that might not tush his way. >> talk about how his mess act seemed to have changed ov

in an effort to boost fund raising, obama campaign manager jim messina sent a message last night titledwhy the race is closer than you think." if a general election were held today, president obama would lose to mitt romney according to the latest poll from washington post and abc news. the poll shows the president and mitt romney in a statistical tie in a general election match-up. and the pro-obama super pac is also hitting up supporters for cash. the "new york times" is reporting that the president's top political adviser is pressuring supporters to donate to the democratic super pac to offset the big spending by republican super pacs. meanwhile, a new poll shows president obama's approval rating at 50%. this is in a sharp contrast to the cbs news/"new york times" poll we showed you yesterday that had the president's approval at 41%. michael steele, any of you guys, actually, the strategy of that e-mail being sent out to reporters. it seems a little, i mean we'll talk about the super pacs when we have more time because one could argue that's extremely hypocritical. and also you could