there s one just take away the moral problem here, which is that the right to vote is a matter of human dignity, human rights. fundamental. corner stone of democracy, self-determination, throw that out for a second and talk about raw politics. one political coalition in america, this is a fact. i think everyone would agree one political coalition benefits from a larger turn out one benefits from a smaller turn out. what s fascinating in this ohio case when you have the individual county boards of elections making county by county policy about early voting and every county board of election has two republicans and two democrats if i m not mistaken, you basically broke this story, groundbreaking reporting, i thought it was so interesting. in the counties that were very republican the county boards of elections were saying hey let s keep stuff open make it easy for people to vote. the democrats on the county board went along with it because
seriously? why am i learning it now? the first is because my book has not become a runaway best seller. we re working on it, america. look. it was partly i do describe this really remarkably relentless republican campaign of distortion. you ve had a really incompetent democratic messaging. you ve had a media that just really screwed the story. and finally, you have the sort of unavoidable problem of this is a jobs bill that was passed while jobs were hemorrhaging. we lost 800,000 jobs in 09. you have one more issue, though. sam. i was going add it didn t help that president obama turned towards austerity so quickly after this because then how do you tout the success of those programs if you repudiate the idea that the government should be spending money. three points, jobs, jobs,
he also voted for $715 billion stimulus plan almost identical to the obama plan. less green stuff, less money for the arts, less money for americorps, more money for army corps of engineers, but otherwise pretty similar. thank you to my guests, sam seder, maya wiley, judith browne-dianis and michael grunwald from time, thank you, all. thank you for joining us. we ll be back next weekend, saturday, sunday, 8:00 eastern. our guests, joan walsh from salon.com. a new book called what s the matter with white people, why we long for a golden age that never was, and an incredible must read new essay about race in the obama area, and coming up next, melissa harris-perry. paul ryan was supposed to bring big ideas into focus, how did the dominant story of the week become mitt romney s taxes again. that s melissa harris-perry up
our chance to make some changes to our lives and create some stability for ourselves once again. we ll be there. we ll payback into the system afterwards as well. maya. one of the dirty little secrets here is that many, many people who need these kinds of safety net programs work. they work. the truth is there s 48 million americans in this country today who are hungry. and 40% of them are working now. so there s this kind of myth that safety net systems are for lazy people, the paul ryan statement is actually undermining to the actual you know good laws are based on facts not fiction. this is a hammock that lulls people. this is a lifeline for people and tanya s story is the story of millions of americans. but unfortunately our perception in this country of poor people, it has an actual, we can like see them. we see them as people of color.
don t worry. we haven t forgotten, you still like things to push. [ engine revs ] the all-new cadillac xts has arrived, and it s bringing the future forward. so we just played i think a pretty jaw dropping bit of tape from 2002, and it shows paul ryan defending what was then a bush, george w. bush stimulus and using every single argument on the basic defendant argument about stimulus. i m curious, mike you ve written this book that s the most i think thorough investigation of the recovery act and politics of it and what did it. what is your response when you hear that? shocked. [ laughter ] you know, i think i to tell the story in the book about how, you know, republicans even