massachusetts race against scott brown. the system is rigged. look around. oil companies guzzle down billions in profits. billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. and wall street ceos, the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs, still strut around congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them. does anyone here have a problem with that? well, i do too. i do too. so, guys, i thought it was a strong speech, but i have to say elizabeth warren has a problem here. she s fallen several points behind, i think about five or six points behind scott brown in this race. i think there s a frustration and a concern among democrats in massachusetts and nationally that the elizabeth warren that everyone was introduced to last year if you remember, there
agree with exactly what he wants to do policy-wise. how does he convince us he s going to be able to work with an obstructionist republican congress? i m not sure he s going to try that. you know, we ve seen certain nods to bipartisanship and some of his remarks, but i ve also read a lot of great profiles in the last couple days talking about the lessons he s learned from his presidency and one lesson they have learned is you can t win by talking about compromise. you ve got to really have power and use it effectively and be aggressive and push the other guys back against the wall. i m not sure if we re going to hear that in the speech. that s certainly what they re thinking inside the white house, i believe. nick, a lot of people are saying obama s got to give us new ideas and advance the ball, but what i hear from michelle and from bill clinton and some others is that we re on the right track. a sort of steady way of saying we re on the right track. which do you expect from obama
the modern traditionist for the president to go one night and the presidential candidate to go the other night. last night it was supposed to be joe biden s night. instead, it was president clinton s night. one of the effects of bill clinton s speech, you saw how there s this clinton renaissance going on. it s really setting up hillary clinton as a front runner like we ve never seen before. so i m really interested to see how he plays this speech tonight. this is a guy who obviously wants obama to get re-elected but also wants to be in the mix for 2016. and i think joe biden will clearly make the sort of every-man pitch that you re all talking about. willie, let s go back to bill clinton. i think that s what he did very effectively last night too. sort of explain obama s policies in language that, you know, the every man can understand. in fact, i came upon a great headline this morning saying pass health care?
was that viral video where she had this impromptu explanation of the social contract. it was charismatic. i think democrats looked at that last fall and said this really is the perfect messenger for what we re trying to say about the economy. i don t think that same elizabeth warren is who and what people in massachusetts have been seeing since then. i think it s part of the reason she s fallen behind. i look at that speech last night, and i guess i would have said serviceable was the word that came to mind. i think there was a real basic problem here. this was 10:00 last night. look what else is on television. there was the nfl opener. in boston and massachusetts, there was a red sox game. why is that significant? i think one of the reasons she s behind is because there s working class, middle class voters in massachusetts who scott brown has forged an emotional and cultural connection with. he s really used his force to do this. he s aired ads in which he talks about the red sox. he
in order to try to paint the current leadership of the republican party as a bunch of radical extremists. but rather than name call, rather than say they re radical extremists, it s more the kind of in sorrow than in anger approach that bill clinton is a master of because by praising those moderate figures, he can kind of run the others off into the rails. that s what he was trying to do in that speech last night, and it was masterfully done, especially to the ears of moderate undecided voters who hate the partisanship, who hate the division, and who would like to be told a story about cooperation. there s no cooperation with the right wing of the republican party, as the republican party proved. it is a right-wing party right now. but bill clinton told that story in a clever and i think shrewd way. howard, really nice to see you on the show. thank you. interesting quote in the new york times today. republicans came in like they