you re below 50% so i think that s a factor. i think, you know, you ve also had in these swing states a barrage of ads against romney and his business record. i think some of his negatives are still high. but i think to your other point, harold, it s significant because i don t think there are a lot of democrats touting their support for it and i don t think they want to make that a big part of the conversation. even if it is upheld. which is why i spoke to one republican aide on capitol hill yesterday who said there s nothing that can happen today that takes us off of the offensive. republicans will still argue that the law needs to be repealed. the house speaker has said that will be, you know, what he tries to do this year. i still think that s the rallying cry. but i do say this, if the health care law is upheld, and there is the prospect of it, you know, as we re all making fun of this morning getting into the numbers, if it is a 6-3 decision, to uphold the law, that represents so
against the tides of history. it was a legislative monolith out of sync with an ipad world, in an era of the smartphone, obama was rotary dial health reform. the signs this was so were everywhere. barack obama and the pelosi/reid of the democratic party blew past them. the obama health care law was unpopular with the american public over time. a health care dinosaur like obama care was likely to implode under its own weight. howard dean, respond to that. i know there are a lot of things you personally don t like about this legislation and you don t think the democrats handled it correctly. but i take it that you don t agree with everything that daniel wrote here? i generally don t bother to respond to the editorial pages of the wall street journal with good reason. you dismiss every editorial that s in the really? i do. i never read them. how do you do that? does that mean i should not read the editorial page of the new york times ?
this is the most unpopular part of the bill. i don t think it should have been in there in the first place. the bill does fine without it. a lot of things in this bill people like. i believe that even though the obama folks have put up a fuss about the vidindividual mandate rom is going to say the president s initiative got ruined but the truth is people have a lot to like and got rid of the thing they hate, about 70% of americans. i think that s a huge win for the president although he s going to lose the inside the beltway squirmish in the first week or two. why did you say it wasn t necessary to begin with? it s never been necessary. we did this 20 years ago except a little tougher in favor of the consumer and a lot of cry then about the individual mandate and insurance market was going to be ruined. for 20 years we ve had insurance market in vermont where everybody s guaranteed to be able to buy insurance as long as they re vermont citizens and where there s no individual manda
welcome back to morning joe. i m disturbed this morning for a lot of reasons. probably not the same reasons you re disturb the because i m self-involved and shallow. to talk more about this let s bring in time magazine editor rick stengel. here to reveal the latest issue of time magazine and then i want to talk about regional profiling which willie and i have long advocated against and we think your editors your copy editors are engaging in regional profiling. first, rick stengel reveal the cover. one of the more important historical developments going on in the world today was the egyptian election. our cover story is about that. and entitled the revolution that wasn t. because, in fact, what we had have happen for good or ill, we can talk about that is the reassertion of control by the egyptian military which in many ways hasn t been out of control
win, petty corruption. yeah. and so and snarky letters. let s talk about at the top of your list you have leaders of destiny, george washington, abraham lincoln, fdr followed by jefferson jackson and roosevelt. not a lot of surprises there. bottom of the list, james buchanan, franklin pierce, harold ford jr. s favorite president, andrew johnson, millhard fillmore and warren g. harding but a more fascinating group, split decision presidents and one of those split decision presidents is a president who i appreciate more every year and moving him into like the near great or great list dwight eisenhower who quietly did things for eight years that nobody seemed to recognize. my mom who was an fdr democrat, said he was lazy, stupid and just played golf all day.