of taking some of these big steps that we need to take as a country, like immigration reform, addressing global warm and climate change. it s the people coming together. their grit and determination of what we ve gone through over the last four years, the biggest economic crisis in a generation. ending a war, drawing down another war. ending don t ask accident don t tell. all of these things we accomplish together. we re not done. we have to continue doing that, and i think that you ll hear that from the president over the course of this weekend, and i think you ll hear that going forward into the second term. one of the things that the president is going to need is a lot of political ammunition, if you will. to use a bad metaphor for the fights that are to come ahead. there would be a political action group. tell us about that. jim messina is apparently going to head it. tell us why and what the purpose is, because arguably what the president really needs
aren t getting the health care and benefits they need. when women are reintegrating back into society, they are not getting the support, the mental health care or the compensation. the assumption is they haven t seen combat. maybe they were communication specialists or a member of a female team attached to an infantry. they are not getting the same credit or recognition. the brass ceiling in the military world, as opposed to the gas ceiling prevents women from accessing more assignments. the most prestigious assignments are tied to combat arms. there is no question about it. the military is a fighting force, as you point out. let me ask you this. does don t ask don t tell make any room for this. does ending don t ask don t tell and recognizing that on the question of gay identity this is no longer relevant for fighting, does this also help women who can say, okay, listen, if we re going to get rid of don t ask, don t tell, this is also a time
these people who don t, even if they don t support marriage support civil unions and are comfortable with gay people in a way that wasn t the case a decade ago. we here in the washington bubble have gone on about this issue head strong, it s all we talked about all over, we re going back through these pew polls, this issue gay marriage, ranks 18 out of 18 in terms of importance, dead last. the economy, gay marriage, 28. how much more system does this have or will we talk about it in the last few weeks in october november? i think we re talking about it now because it was an historic moment when the sitting president said that he was in favor of gay marriage. i don t think we ll talk about it next week. next week i don t know the war on seniors or whoever is next in the line that these campaigns go through as they are attacking various populations. gay marriage, it s just this once again become a sort of secondary issue, that people don t see as hugely important. even on the democ
tremendous courage in the eroding discrimination on the federal level from not enforcing doma challenges, from ending don t ask don t tell, from extending benefits equally to gay and lesbians as well as others who are federal employees, for saying that anybody who is taking medicaid and medicare in hospitals can t deny visitation rights from same sex partners so. there are over 1,000 laws now in this nation that discriminate, federal laws, whether they are social security and others, this is a president who obviously understands how things work at the state laws but he has been courageously moving to end discrimination on a federal level. in 1958 two dozen states outlawed interracial marriage. at what point does gay marriage become the federal issue? that s the point. exactly the point. we have state moves and federal moves. my hope is what we ve seen from obama in his first term, slowly eroding the discrimination on the federal level, at some point
lowering health care costs and you re never going to go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick. making sure that we have reform the financial system so we never again have taxpayer funded bailouts and the system is more stable and secure. ending don t ask don t tell. decimating al qaeda, including bin laden being taken off the field. when it comes to the economy, we ve got a lot more work to do. and we re going to keep on at it. the president was asked about the republicans who are trying to take his job away from him. it doesn t really matter who the nominee is going to be. the core philosophy they re expressing is the same. and the contrast in visions between where i want to take the country and where they say they want to take the country is going to be stark. the american people will have a good choice and it will be a good debate. what do you make of the surge