. >> joining me tonight, keli goff, who is political correspondent for root.com and sam stein, political rorter for "the huffington post." great to have both of you with us. keli, you first. how offensive is this? imeg reasng is it has to respond to? >> well, i'd say on a scale of 1 to 10, we're heading into, like, 20 territory, ed. i think at a certain point this stepcande ese ert any candidate do to not get support? right? like, i think at this point we have to start having a competition just to see where the lineof offensiveness, how far we can push these boundaries. apparently making rape jokes esn'do it, makg mini cments doesn't do it. maybe somebody has to drop the "n" bomb, but with rick per re and the rock thing. >> sam, how does he overcome this? >> i don't think he does. todd akin should have a rule he shouldn't speak about women or women's issues because it causes him more proems than it's worth. obviously missouri is a conservative state, or trending conservative. it's not going to vote for president obama like it did. claire mccaskill has always been in a dog fight with resp