i am simon rosenberg. we are grateful that you came out here today. if we had done an event around polling we would have a few more people, but we are lucky to have joining rob shapiro, the chair of our globalization initiative, our good friend edward luce, who is now the former bureau chief of "the financial times," now chief american commentator and is also a published author. he has recently written one of the more influential or at least highly commentated -- there was so much commentary around his book about whether or not america was in decline in the economic issues we will be talking about today and we feel lucky he took time out of his busy schedule to guide us. many of you know rob shapiro, who has a long history of policy leadership here in washington, starting in the early days working for daniel patrick moynihan, to helping advise bill clinton in 1992, and eventually becoming the undersecretary of commerce in the second clinton term. what brought us together is the subject we will talk about today. back in early-2005, when ndn was reborn

simon rosenberg, president and founder of think tank organization and former adviser to president clintonrk easton, a fellow at the cato institute. i know people talk like this about things behind closed doors. i am not dramatically from the president of the united states. this isn't battleship president, governor romney, and oh, he is a "bs-er." he said that rolling stone magazine. is it appropriate, simon? >> i don't think it is any mystery that this is a brutal campaign, megyn. people are fighting hard for what they believe. i think this is normal and look at what barack obama has been called. he has been called a socialist, people have said he didn't have a birth certificate and wasn't born here, the attacks have been unprecedented in some ways. they have been said about him. this is a rough business these days, and i think that we are seeing it in the final days of the campaign. megyn: i think a lot of them will say bring it on. it's the presidency on the line. >> he has a lot of people he needs to win over. i find it humorous that barack obama is accusing romney of being a "bs-er."

is he a democratic strategist and fox news contributor and with us here in washington, simon rosenbergthe president of mdm a center left think tank. all right, simon, let's start with you. gergen, come pro-call and others -- tom brokaw and others joe biden looked a little silly the man was almost 70 years old acting like an eighth grader at the school yard trying to taunt the kid maybe not in the cool crowd. >> look, i think joe biden as you said did what he had to do last night. he was aggressive. he took on paul ryan and the republicans and their arguments in a way that barack obama frankly didn't do in the previous debate. he had energy and vigor which i think is what democrats were looking for. i think you saw joe biden last night maybe not everybody has seen joe biden over the years in debates and other places, but i felt that was the joe biden that i know. and i don't think there was any pretense. as he said, i mean what i say and i say what i mean. >> laura: middle class has been buried in the last four years. that helps the republicans. >> he had a good night. democrats are ver

joining us now for a fair and balanced debate, simon rosenberg and founder of mdn and former clinton mpaign advisor. ron bonjean with us as well on the right of your screen. former communications director for former house speaker dennis hastert. simon, to you first, it is a who won question but also a question about who advanced their campaign priorities the most. give us your take. >> sure. i mean every poll and every focus group done last night had barack obama winning the debate and i think, you know, the democrats feel very good today. we have won three out of the last 4-d bates. we feel like we have momentum going the final two weeks. it is very hard to hearing argue that mitt romney won the debate. charles catt hahmer made a valiant effort that to make that he won the night and there is no polling date to evidence of that. if you want to come in the final debate and do a good job. you want to come out with momentum and troops fired up. that is not the case for republicans today. i think democrats feel confident. we're ahead in the electoral college. 2/3 of the polls out in the l

simon rosenberg, the president and founder of the new democrat network. a former clinton campaign advisor. you heard governor romney there in florida. florida has had its share of misery. i was living there when hurricane andrew hit. how do you conduct a political campaign in this environment, simon, you know, when so many people are hurting, have no power, the last thing they want to hear or on television on the radio is another attacked a? >> well i think there, the president is being the president. i mean he's out, obviously at red cross and at fema and he is clearly leading the recovery effort right now. i think he has a little bit of a political advantage over mitt romney in the sense that mitt romney is just a candidate trying to talk about what is going on when the president has the advantage of actually being responsible for the recovery effort right now. and i think he is doing a good job. he has been praised by pub be republicans and democrats alike last few days for being responsive to their needs. he is going up to new jersey with chris christ

-simon rosenberg. we are grateful that you came out here today.f we had done an event around polli,ng we would have a few more people, but we are lucky to have joining rob shapiro, the chair of our globalization initiative, our good friend edward luce, who is now the former bureau chief of "the financial times," now chief american commentator and is also a published author. he has recently written one of the more influential or at least highly commentated -- there was so much commentary around his book about whether or not america was in decline in the economic issues we will be talking about today and we feel lucky he took time out of his busy schedule to guide us. many of you know rob shapiro, who has a long history of policy leadership here in washington, starting in the early days working for daniel patrick moynihan, to helping advise bill clinton in 1992, and eventually becoming the undersecretary of commerce in the second clinton term. what brought us together is the subject we will talk about today. back in early-2005, when ndn was reborn a

joining me now, simon rosenberg, a former clinton campaign adds advisor and ben ferguson.ent claimed he said it was terror at the town hall debate, that he said that september 12, now we see the information coming in in realtime about the 20 guys and how the ambassador was locked in the safe room and we know how it wound up. that was the first question i wondered was if he night was terror. there is no question he knew four americans were dead. but he knew it was terror. was it appropriate for him to go to vegas on the first, you know, the first time he acknowledges we had a terror attack on his watch? >> well, clearly he did because he went. we are at the very ends of this campaign. i'm sure that was not an easy decision to make. but it also was over. it was handled. we had people in place managing this for him. this is a large government. we have a large military intelligence apparatus. i think they made the decision it had ended it had been settled, we were starting to get information coming in and he didn't change his public or private schedule that day. presidents hav

megyn: simon rosenberg and ben ferguson back with me now. quickly. >> so in "the new york times" today there was a report about the man who's been identified as the leader of the attack who represents an organization called ansar al-sharia who has no, and it says in "the new york times" that this group has no known affiliation with al-qaeda. >> it's still an act of terror. megyn: let him finish, but quickly. i've got to give the floor back to ben because he hasn't had a lot of time. >> go ahead, megyn, give it to ben. >> this is not hard to figure out what the president was saying. our ambassador, hillary clinton and barack obama all said that this was a spontaneous, including when he went to the big stage, the united nations where the world was -- >> that's simply not true, ben. that's simply not true. megyn: okay. you can debate about what the president said at the u.n., but you cannot debate about what susan rice said. >> she said -- megyn: she claim -- blamed it on a video. there's no question about that, simon. >> that's not true, megyn

juning us for a fair and balanced debate, mary katharine ham, hotair.com and simon rosenberg, from a leading progressive think tank and former clinton campaign advisor as well. we brought you both on because you have differing views of the debate last night. mary katherine you think essentially it was a draw. >> i think it was more contentious because in the first debate only one side was fightinging a many even on the left have said. obama would come to the table with more this time, be more aggressive. i think romney relies less on likeability than obama does. there is more risk for him coming after somebody hard that way. i think mostly a tie. see in post-debate polling, a slight win for obama on the top line but when you look a little bit lower on issues like the economy and both cnn and "cbs poll" a double-digit lead for romney how he handled that and the debt. those are really important issues. i'm not sure that a narrow second debate win overcomes those. jon: simon, you wrote that you don't think mitt romney showed himself to be a strong leader last night. you think he hurt hi

simon rosenberg is president and founder of indiana think tank and advocacy organization, former adviser to president clinton. ben ferguson, host of the ben ferguson show. across the board the folks believe mitt romney won this debate and it's starting to move some independent, undecide -d voters into mitt romney's column. the question is, ben, whether that will last and how mitt romney capitalizes on that. >> he capital hraoeu capital cap capitalizes on it with what he did last night. what is different than four years ago when barack obama took the stage in mississippi he came out with grand ideas about all of us coming together and how we are going to cut the deficit in half and the world will like us again, and how we are going to get out of iraq and afghanistan. guess what, now he's going to run on what he's done over the last four years and there is not a lot he can point to to say that they were successful. that's what got him in trouble last night. if mitt romney does this the next couple of debates and he continues to go out there in the way he did last night and saying, this is

and simon rosenberg, president and founder of the new democrat network, also a former clinton campaign. gentlemen, thanks so much for being here. steve, let me start with you. so places like sears and olive garden, red lobster, they're going to give their employees a chunk of change, and supposedly you can go out and buy your own insurance. is this a great idea or a horrible idea? [laughter] >> i actually kind of like the direction here of, basically, saying to workers you can shop around, you can buy the health care plan that really suits your need. so it's a kind of freedom of choice approach. now, the way this ties in, by the way, allison, to obama's health care plan that you were talking about a minute ago is that under obama's plan what you're seeing is a lot of employers are dropping their health care plans that they provided for years to their employers, and they're going to put those workers into what's called the health care exchange under obamacare. that's something that workers are resisting because it means they're not going to get the kind of quality of care that they want