. >> they will cliff hang with both shoe aficionado luke russert next on "now." ♪ [ male announcer ]s time for medicare open enrollment. are you ready? time to compare plans and see what's new. you don't have to make changes, but it's good to look. maybe you can find better coverage, save money, or both. and check out the preventive benefits you get after the health care law. ♪ medicare open enrollment. now's the time. visit medicare.gov or call 1-800-medicare. ♪ visit medicare.gov or call 1-800-medicare. when you lost the thing you can't believe you lost.. when what you just bought, just broke. or when you have a little trouble a long way from home... as an american express cardmember you can expect some help. but what you might not expect, is you can get all this with a prepaid card. spends like cash. feels like membership. >>> president obama raised some eyebrows during monday's foreign policy debate when he said this of the looming sequester, $109 billion due to hit in 2013 if no action is taken by january 2. >> and first of all the sequester is not something i proposed something

thank you to luke russert and his boat shoes. no socks. no socks. >> what happens when there's no women on the panel it becomes a wrestling match. >> that's true. >> your producer, no socks. >> alex started that. >> coming up, emotions were crude during an exchange over oil on tuesday night but while president obama and governor romney engaged in hand to hand over energy, little mention is being made of climate change. chris hayes joins us to discuss on set just ahead. i have a cold... i took dayquil, but i still have a runny nose. [ male announcer ] dayquil doesn't treat that. huh? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus rushes relief to all your worst cold symptoms, plus it relieves your runny nose. [ sighs ] thank you! [ male announcer ] you're welcome. that's the cold truth! [ male announcer ] it's time for medicare open enrollment. are you ready? time to compare plans and see what's new. you don't have to make changes, but it's good to look. maybe you can find better coverage, save money, or both. and check out the preventive benefits yo

beauty of being end pent. >> joining us from capitol hill, my celebrity doppelganger the sage luke russertnteresting high jinx last night there on the part of both scott brown and elizabeth warren. the fact that he did not want to be associated very clearly did not want to be associated with mitt romney was interesting and definitely trying to put sun light between him and the obstructionist congress he is a part of. what did you make of it? >> absolutely. that's one of his keys to victory to try to get that crossover vote, folks who will vote for barack obama for president but do not want to send an all democratic ticket to washington. but when he's saying well, he said to mitch mcconnell he wasn't satisfied with the direction in which congress was going and would he vote for him, mitch mcconnell is the only republican on the ballot for senate majority leader so if you don't vote for him you're going to be excommunicated. he has to go with mitch mcconnell. i found that fascinating. the supreme court justice answer, scalia known to be a favorite amongst republicans, prime probably not goin

with me is capitol hill correspondent lu correspondent luke russert.hat is interesting is you have a different part of the political world trying to make a statement. >> correct. >> and ohio and pennsylvania, it's always labor's last stand. at least that's the way they talk about it. >> well, you also have in ohio and pennsylvania and those two specific districts, look at ohio. that's a fellow businessman from that state. in pennsylvania you have rothfus backed by eric cantor. people will say, why are they so important? if democrats take back the house, they need sweep races like this to get to the 25. really, the 35. look who the chief backers are. folks with ties to cantor and boehner. you remember who your friends are. >> you do. and, look, we'll get to the overall picture here in a minute. we have to go to mcintyre. he's done everything to run away from the president. but he won't say who is he voting for. >> he's voted against the health care bill. remember six years ago, guys who put him over the top, he's been very effective saying that all poli

>> luke russert attended the p dinner last night. are you still in your tails?> i changed out of my white tails but one of mitt romney's best jokes was he and ann wear white tails around the house. >> we had it earlier in the show. so, luke, explain who gets in there. basically it's a who's who of the new york/washington/southern corridor. >> it's a who's who of southern politics and a who's who in terms of big money catholic donors and folks who are very much involved in catholic charities. it's been going on since 1946. obviously the first catholic to be nominated, a major run for president in 1928 and this thing has grown every single year. in terms of it becoming this tv event that people turn into, that started in 2000 with george w. bush and al gore that in 2008 with john mccain and barack obama we saw it and last night both of them, they had a few good jokes. i thought romney was more aggressive than obama. it was also a home game for romney. they were big wall street guys. ironically they were very much for obama four years ago and i said why the switch?

luke russert who i hear is not wearing boat shoes but we'll move past that quickly. >> this far intoer no boat shoes today alex. the traditional loafer. >> nice loafer. i'm not going to ask about socks. luke, we know this presidential race is incredible fluid. i guess i wonder as a sage of capitol hill, if you think that it's having a measurable effect on some of the key senate races which we'll talk about specifically, but broadly speaking the notion that the conventional wisdom is top of the ticket helps determine down ballot. how true do you think that is in this race? >> well, i think it's very true when you look at some of the senate races, particularly in democratic leaning states like massachusetts and connecticut. president obama being on the ballot will significantly help elizabeth warren and congressman murphy there. when you look at the house, though, the democrats would need to win 25 seats in order to regain it. that number i would actually equate to about 35 due to redistricting and different types of retirement and that number is very difficult. the one way in which yo

we're joined by nbc's luke russert in washington, d.c., and from the heartland, kathy obrad vish, she'solumnist columnist for "the des moines register." you have an interesting perspective on obama because he spent so much time in iowa so early in his national political career in 2007 and 2008. lots of debates out there. we have a debate last night. why is this man so bad at debates? >> well, you know, iowans are familiar both with barack obama and with mitt romney, and i have to say that i think people expected better of the president last night. i was speaking to a group this morning of about 90 people. i asked them to raise their hand if they thought the president had won the debate. not a single person raised his or her hand. so obviously it was that bad. you know, i think the real question is how much it matters at this point in iowa. >> luke, how are you, bro? >> how are you, sir? >> i want to read to you a quote from paul krugman on his blog. the fact is that everything obama said was basically true, while much of what romney said was erither outright false or misleading to be a

. >> nbc's luke russert among the 1,600 people in attendance. did you have a good time?'s a great dinner. we have a partisan divide in the country right now but to have them out here and say jokes, it is heartwarming. i thought they were genuine when they praised each other's families and spouses. >> talked about good husband and good father but not about a good politician or competitor necessarily. how did they seem with each other? what didn't we see on camera? >> i watched the entire night and body language is very telling. there's no love loss there. there's animosity. sometimes they would have to talk by each other and no acknowledgement. separated by the cardinal which is a good person to separate you. not a lot of warmth between ann romney and president obama. sometimes you see politicians saying i don't like you but i like your wife. not in this case. this race is personal. you can see it in moments they weren't poking fun at each other. >> there are times for me during the debate earlier this week where i felt uncomfortable. i thought it got tough. that's a feel

but let me play, michael, bay buchanan on with luke russert this morning and he posed the comment about the latino voters in this country and governor romney and the republican party. let me play it. >> why do latinos distrust governor romney so much? >> well, you know, it goes back. the lady no population is generally speaking part of the democratic base. and so, what we're trying to do obviously is reach out to all americans. >> george w. bush won 40% latino vote in 2004. so they're not completely loyal to one side. it shows there's room for growth. how come governor romney can't do that? >> we're doing everything we can but i think our message is clearly resonating with americans. >> michael, what is your take on that? bay buchanan with the romney campaign, obviously, trying to paint the picture that latinos' vote lock step with the democratic party but that was not the case as luke pointed out just in the recent future with bush. >> well, two things come to mind. the dream act at the top of the list and so too the whole arizona issue which i think has furthered a narrative of the de

let's start with luke russert. now that his baseball team is waiting until next year, we'll concentrate on this election. >> cheap shot. >> my baseball team is on break, too. we're in the same boat. back in d.c., what are the so-called insiders telling you about what's going on with this race? >> it's interesting, toure. obviously, very close in the battleground states. the importance of this debate tonight, republicans that i've spoken to today have said the following. mitt romney has to try to expose barack obama on the issue of libya. he has to try and raise questions about barack obama's policies in the middle east, and try to implement in voters' minds perhaps this guy who takes all this creditor killing osama bin laden, though it was honorable and great in american history. what has he done there? he mismanaged it. barack obama is going to say i'm the only person up here to be commander in chief. i've dealt with it for four years. not only did i kill osama bin laden but understand the real risks. my opponents

. >> anna marie cox, the fix's chris, markos, the king of snark, and luke russert, and we add the nateottom. you have to follow him, too. steve, what have you got? >> yeah, well, you know, my favorite twitter was probably the romney zingers. there were fun ones over the weekend. we had fun ones on the show yesterday. and i think the picture of krystal is my favorite one. i think krystal mentioned this yesterday how twitter changed the real-time events, we have a more dramatic and serious example of it from this campaign, and that was paul ryan's acceptance speech at the republican convention, which was filled with some whoppers. but there was real-time fact-checking playing out on twitter as this was happening. you look at past elections, there might are been a stagger, a delay of a few days for a backlash to build against that speech or never a backlash at all. but because there's so much -- there's an inner connectedness between reporters, pundits, sort of activists, everybody is sort of in one place there on twitter, you know, all of the support material was provided in real time to

two of the best, nbc's dough minico and luke russert join me to talk. dom, i want to talk quickly, we heard from brian talking about 800 mile wide storm, widespread power outages. we are 11 days from the election, if this economies ashore it will be 8 or 7 days from the election, we are not meteorologists here but everything has an impact. where do we go as it relates to this storm is. >> we know living in this area the kind of power outages and issues we've dealt with here just locally and if you wind up having something like that that's that close to the election, i think some of the fears is are they able to get people to the polls if it lasts, if the power outages take place and can you get the polls open, up and running. there could be complications for that. >> and people have their power out and there's damage, does voting become a secondary concern, livelihood ver does -- >> you do. the other thing i would say, one thing is, the president in a natural disaster potential situation has to be the president, the last week of the campaign, it's a har

my celebrity doppelganger luke russert joins us for a peek over the fiscal cliff.of american exceptionalism bad for political discourse? all of that when "now" starts in a mere 180 seconds. [ male announcer ] inside the v8 taste lab. tomato, obviously. haha. there's more than that though, there's a kick to it. there's a pop. wahlalalalallala! pepper, but not pepper, i'm getting like, pep-pepper. it's kind of like drinking a food that's a drink, or a drink that's a food, zip zip zip zip zip! i'm literally getting zinged by the flavor. smooth, but crisp. velvety. kind of makes me feel like a dah zing yah woooooh! [ male announcer ] taste it and describe the indescribable. could've had a v8. woooo! >>> in less than three hours, paul ryan will make a speech addressing, quote, the country's fundamental obligations to society's most vulnerable. quick, someone call a doctor. he's got romnesia. it's wednesday, october 24th and this is "now."

if romney doesn't win and luke russert, i'm going to bring you in on this and throw to you on this comment, if romney comes up short, you are going to have a bunch of conservatives that will blame romney, blame the campaign. when you look at the poll over the last year, romney's favorable ratings are better than the favorable ratings of the republican party. if obama wins he will do it on the backs of aender gap and hispanics. is that mitt romney's issue or the issue of the republican party? that's an interesting question if that's the way things turn out on election day. >> that's the $64,000 question, chuck. if there is romney loss does it make the pear trend more conservative or moderate? that's something we will see in a lame duck session. ping chuck vh1. >> classic. >> i'm sorry, classic. that dates you more. >> don't trust no one over 40 now. that's my problem. >> absolutely. you watch those videos. chuck will be back in just a few minutes with a close-up on colorado. why that battleground state isn't getting respect it deserves. up next, we will hear from both the obama and romney c