gasoline is becoming an increasingly precious commodity in some area. traffic has become so bad, in new york city, mayor michael bloomberg mandated any commuter car entering the city must have at least three people in it. president obama and governor romney s renewed campaign come as the latest polls show president obama lead big six points in eye but locked in a tight balle with romney in new hampshire and wisconsin. nearly all interviews conducted before hurricane sandy, which just might end up being the defining moment of this election. joining me today to discuss all of this and more, msnbc political analyst and national affairs editor for new york magazine, john heilemann. msnbc political analyst and executive editor of msnbc.com, richard wolffe. msnbc political analyst, jonathan alter of bloomberg view, and msnbc political analyst and former dnc, karen
finney, hopefully joining us shortly. john, i go to you first. in terms of sandy being an inflection point, game changer, if you will, a term we do not toss around lightly, are we is it is it a game changer? can you prognosticate that far? do you think the president is stronger coming out of the sandy response as a candidate? look, there s no question that if you think about this storm and what it s done to the media environment over the course of the week, it s blackout coverage. so the president s been in that coverage. and to some extent, much driven by the storm but he s he s there, he s the president on screen. governor romney has been nowhere. he s just it s not his fault. he s just not part of this conversation. he doesn t have anything to say about it. he doesn t have a role to play. so if you re a challenger, running a presidential campaign, in the last week to essentially be blocked from the airwaves for
through before. it was obvious they were attacking president obama for the sake of it. there was a moment where people said, can we just get something done? and then we went back to our corners and it became partisan. ee again it s interesting to where we came back to where we started. can you put aside your blind hatred of barack obama for two seconds and let s help some folks who really need it. look yes. we re all in agreement. who wants to rise to opposition? cheap partisan shot. i thought i heard you trying to make a comment but i turned to you and you said nothing. the end of the romney campaign is about saying the president s gone small. actually what we re seeing is, the republican party going small as the president gets bigger and more presidential. you know, if they want to make a bigger case, now s the time to make it. benghazi s taking it smaller and smaller. that, i think, we re going to have to leave it there, my
called by the romney campaign and asked to say something harsh about the president, but he certainly did not mince words yesterday in coral gables. let s take a listen to what he had to say. do you honestly think that this president is capable of bringing people together? his entire strategy is to blame others, starting with my brother, of course. basically, he blames every possible thing rather than having the humility to be able to reach out and to find common ground i thought that was, a, surprising from jeb bush, someone who is a republican, former republican governor, and certainly a surrogate for the romney campaign, but harsh words, especially given what the president was doing yesterday. yeah, i think that s true. and governor bush has not been the most hot eyed partisan among significant republican players in the past. this that is all hands on deck moment where surrogates are asked to do this kind of stuff.
the campaign. you know they both of them have been not totally sole on the notion that romney was going to win for most of the time. privately both is that what s happening? i think both of them are looking, to some extent, what comes next. i m not saying they don t want governor romney to win this election but both skap ceptical his chances for a year and a half. governor christie, not taking anything away from i think he was genuinely star struck to be on marine one, but he needs to get re-elected. he has a tough re-election battle. you can t be on the wrong side of president obama in the disaster situation if you re going to win re-election in a blue state in a year from now when he has to run again. which, by the way the only way he can run in 2016 if is he wins again. politics are there. governor bush s politics are different. trying to get himself back into play after having been out for a long time, he s going to be a different hoe down for him and a