also, jim messina, the former obama campaign manager. gentlemen, good evening. d to have you on. jim, let's start with you because we have got these two big stories. really huge news here. the full-fda approval of pfizer. something, the white house hopes will get more shots in arms. we are also at a critical point with what is going on in afghanistan and people getting out. so give us a sense of what's on the line for president biden this week, will ya? >> well, look. right now, he's, you know, trying to talk about getting everyone vaccinated. making sure we get to those numbers. obviously, the pfizer thing's a very big deal. at the same time, you are having very good [ inaudible ]. this is going to be in august, in which we were going to kind of soar and he was going to spend a lot of time talking about the economy. and -- and the vaccination efforts. and instead, we are talking about afghanistan, 24/7. and so, you know, when you work in the white house, as you know i was the white house deputy chief of staff. you realize that, every day, something goes wrong th

. >> joining me now to discuss is former obama campaign manager jim messina and mark mckinnon, the formerdviser to george w. bush and executive producer of "the circus." good evening to both of you gentlemen. jealous of the hat, but that's okay, mark. we'll talk about my hat jealousy later. jim, what's your reaction to how this race played out? >> on one side you have kind of national folks wanting to make this a race between a liberal and a moderate. but those of these were progressive candidates. this was really about political positioning and the winner tonight, who by the way started out 35 points behind and was badly outspent, positioned herself as a supporter of joe biden, as someone who could work together to get things done, and went back to the old axiom that mark and i really believe in, which is all politics is local. and she said, i will deliver for my district. i'm going to focus on getting things done, and i'm not going to be a lightning rod in this race. and her opponent, who had way more money, ended up kind of blowing the lead because she nationalized the race and wanted

jim messina. the other khaenls, msnbc typically pretty supportive of president. >> this has been a fiasco by any and every measure. >> joe biden for 20 years has sort of thought that he knew more about afghanistan than anybody else. and he finally gets his chance now as president to do things the way he thought things should have been done all along. so in so many ways this is completely on president biden. >> joe biden is going to be the face of the failure of the withdrawal. >> dana: jim, president biden basically has tried to reverse every trump decision but over the weekend president biden said well my hands were tied because trump made this deal and we had to go through with it. what do you make of that this morning? >> look, what i make of it is there has been bipartisan consensus it was time to get out of afghanistan. mike pompeo the former secretary of state earlier this month he supported biden's plan. we've been there 20 years. america's longest-running war. it was time to get out. why s