i'm joined tonight by democratic strategist tara dowdell, chris kofinas.nd john nichols, washington correspondent of "the nation" magazine. i think americans, all they want to know, the liberals, the progressives who voted for president obama and went out there and did all the foot soldier work to get him re-elected. all they want to know is did you serve up the big three? chris kofinas, how important of an issue is this? >> well, it's going to be a pretty big issue. i guess there's two ways to look at it. the president, in order to get a big deal, is going to have to propose some type of entitlement changes. the problem is as soon as he proposes entitlement changes there are people on the left and progressives like yourself and others who are going to get very upset and angry about why re with doing this, especially if the republicans aren't willing to put real revenues on the table. so i have a hard time believing at that dinner last night, unless the wine was really, really good, that republicans were really proposing any type of serious revenues that w