regime and the frustration of the world's failed diplomacy. >> we begin with the obama campaign's effort to change the subject and refocus the presidential campaign on mitt romney's business record. team obama buying tv time during the evening news in five battle ground states. wednesday night voter in colorado, ohio, pennsylvania and virginia will see this tv ad attacking the private record at the equity firm bain capital. >> we view mitt romney as a job destroyer. >> to get up on national tv and brag about making jobs when he has destroyed thousands of people's careers, lifetimes, just destroying people. >> he is running for president and if he is going to run the country the way he ran our business, i wouldn't want him there. he would be so out of touch with the average person in this country. >> our chief white house correspondent jessica yellowen is traveling with the president and the goal is obvious, defining him as greedy, cold and heartless. why is that such an urgent obama campaign priority. >> they would like to define him to voters before he defines himself unlike you and me, most people haven't focused in and many of the viewers have not focused on the campaign as intently as political junkies, and so now that people are starting to pay attention, the campaign wants to get a jump on mitt romney and he is calling himself the premise of the campaign is that he creates jobs. they want to argue that's not what the record has been at bain. and so this is what they're unveiling and i will tell you, though, a republican who obviously has motivation here says the ad buy is quite tieny and so that he is getting the campaign is getting more play, more bang for the buck from our conversation about this and the play they're getting on news channels than they're actually getting from the actual buy, waiting for a response from the obama campaign on that. >> media manipulation, i would be stunned if that were the case. >> yeah. >> if you go back to the republican primaries, one of the things you heard often from team obama is that governor romney was running only negative ads and said it was proof he had nothing positive to run on. do they worry at all the same will now be said of them? >> flatly, no. they argue they're running positive ads because the president put out his positive ad messages in addition to these and i would also point out, john, this isn't even new from the democrats. when i was in iowa before the rep an primary, the republican primary, the democrats brought someone to town who had been laid off by mitt romney, or that's what he argued, and the democrats were making the case that bain did this before, so this has been a message the democrats have been pushing for many months now assuming that romney would be the nominee, for some months now, and they have been pushing this argument and so expect to see it and this is just the first in a series of ads pushing this narrative that romney in their words doesn't create jobs, he kills them, and this is just a start. >> even if this is a tiny ad by the yeah website as well as and this will not go away. >> yes. >> thanks. one approximate earn that knows a bit about bain capital is howard anderson, one of the first investors and calls himself a recovering venture captain list and teaches business at mit. >> thanks for your time tonight. i want to play more of the ad and ask you if it is a fair characterization. listen. >> they closed it down and filed for bankruptcy without any determine for the families of the communities. >> like a vampire. >> is he a vampire that comes in and sucks the life out of things. >> sometimes they use the term vulture captain list and they're not that either. sometimes they don't do as well had he hoped and can sometimes like staples and sports authority, they do even better. >> and so when you hear this, and you heard some of it in the republican primaries and now you're hearing it from the president's team saying essentially that bain is a vulture, bain is a vietnam pair, and mitt romney is this greedy, captain list, cold, heartless guy who all he wants to do is make money and he doesn't care what he has to do to make money, is that fair? >> not really. the bain capital way is essentially to take an analytical approach to business, to correct mistakes, and to make it grow or to make it profitable. it doesn't always work. that's the nature of capitalism. bain capital which is a private equity firm is the best capitalism when it does well and sometimes the worst when things don't work out. >> so when the company hears the name smeared like this and i know some that still work at bain and a lot of them happen to be democrats and why doesn't the company do more? can it do more to put the record out there if the record is different? >> bain would like a much lower profile. mitt was the leader. mitt did a superb job. from '85 to '99 bain's returns were 88% per year which is a phenomenal record. bain likes to go a little stealth under the radar and doesn't even like all of the publicity that they have gotten. >> they may have to do something like this. the reputation is at stake. this is something you told the boston globe in february. they figured out a way to make money if if they lose money. it is heads we win, tails we win. you are defending the company here but that doesn't sound fair. >> sometimes the company doesn't think i am defending at all. venture capital, john, is a little like sex and so is private equity. >> i am not sure i want to ask you to explain that but go ahead. you got me now. >> when it is good, john, it is very, very good. when it is bad, it is still pretty good. >> howard anderson, that one will be remembered by a lot of people. i think we will check back in as the campaign season unfolds and i don't think i will top that in the 54 minutes left of the program. thank you so much. gloria joins us now. this does crystalize the big argument here. if it is a referendum on the president's record, it is hard, fair or unfair because it is tough economic times or is it a choice between a guy president of the struggling economy and what they want you to think, a guy that would not help you out. >> what they're clearly trying to do with this ad and we are magnifying by the way the impact of this ad, and that they're trying to define mitt romney and they're also trying to disqualify mitt romney because they want to turn this into a choice and they want to disqualify him before you make your choice and what the romney campaign is saying compared to what? compared to whom? barack obama? we'll take our record. i will tell you the romney campaign put out a web video hours ago responding to this ad because no charge can be left unanswered in this kind of 24/7 news cycle in a campaign and they pointed to a company called steel dynamics which was a company that bain helped get off the ground in the mid-90s and did very well and is now the fifth largest u.s. steel maker, so they're pointing to a success story where mitt romney created jobs. >> i don't think there is any question that governor romney is going to have to do a better job explaining that whether it is the success of steel dynamics or staples or others but what the obama people are doing is playing into trying to exploit an existing weakness. this is from our recent poll. who is more in touch with the problems of the middle class, president obama 51%, governor romney, 33%. in a competitive presidential election and the blue collar workers in a battle ground state, that's the challenge and what teem obama here is trying to exploit. >> right. cares about someone like me, understands my problems, those are key polling questions you ask during a presidential race. when people vote for a president. they want to believe this person understands the economic suffering they're going through, and that is why we see president obama talking about the middle class and mitt romney now saying that president obama is the one who is out of touch and not mitt romney, and the obama campaign wants to say, you know what, mitt romney is a man who cannot possibly understand your problems. he is so out of touch, and that's the debate we're going to be seeing going into the fall. >> they put the web video up and essentially team obama trying to get them to take the bait and spend some of their money and spend more of their money defending the record as opposed to going after the president. >> of course. absolutely. we put this up and we're going to force you to respond to it and they have to spend the time and the money to respond to it, and that's the way -- that's why this is going to be a billion dollar plus campaign because this is how they feel they have to deploy their resources. >> on a local tv station in a battle ground state. that was our mistake. >> that would be good. >> the obama campaign is already attacking rick santorum in i on women's issues and a report card on what his record really shows and later head starts rolling because of j.p. morgan chase's $2 billion loss. ♪ [ male announcer ] for our families... our neighbors... and our communities... america's beverage companies have created a wide range of new choices. developing smaller portion sizes and more low- & no-calorie beverages... adding clear calorie labels so you know exactly what you're choosing... and in schools, replacing full-calorie soft drinks with lower-calorie options. with more choices and fewer calories, america's beverage companies are delivering. born to leap, born to stalk, and born to pounce. to understand why, we journeyed to africa, where their wild ancestor was born. there we discovered that cats, no matter where they are... are born to be cats. and shouldn't your cat be who he was born to be? 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[ yawning sound ] mitt romney, they say, is the leader of a republican war on women. >> so this november we're going to remember. >> how you threw women under the bus just to get the nomination. >> let's put that to the test as we continue our report card on the candidates and the major issues. one question is whether governor romney supports equal pay for women. >> does governor romney support the ledbetter act. >> we'll get back to you on that. >> and his critics cite the pledge to add federal funding to planned parenthood. >> is the program so critical it is worth borrowing money from china and of course you get i had are of obama care. planned parenthood, we'll get rid of that. >> and also the blunt amend thamt allows employers to deny contraceptive coverage in the herlt care plan if they have a oral objection. they praise the record of appointing women to leadership posts >> governor romney who whom i have worked for over a decade had 50% women in the leadership of his administration. we were the only state in the nation that had that at the time. >> the question is is there a romney led gop war on women. joining me to discuss, donna edwards of maryland and kathy mcmorris rojers. is there? >> absolutely not. it is a myth. >> if it is a myth, i am sorry to interrupt, but if it is a myth, one of the reason this is myth gets perpetuated or exaggerated or amplified is you have a team running for president of the united states. you heard the conference call. they should know his position, should they not? >> that was a bill that was passed and signed into law early 2009 and it has been several years. republicans absolutely support equal pay for equal work, and in very quickly came along after that and said, you know what, no one is proposing we repeal or change the lilly led better. >> the staff didn't do him a favor. >> i think it is incomplete if you look at it is the economy, the jobs, the debt, and that's what women are concerned about as we head into the election. >> governor romney makes the point. are you the democrat. listen to governor romney when he talks in public about the mythical what he says war on women. >> there has been talk about a war on women. the real war on women has been waged by the obama administration's failure on the economy. do you know how many women, what percent of the job losses were women? 92.3%. >> are women going to make their choices and, look, democratic women and republican women who made their choices, in the middle, people decide and had back and forth and will make their choices about what is a liberal conservative policy divide, whether they should fund planned parent lood or on the economic circumstances of their life come october and november? >> a lot of those decisions in fact are economic. the fact that governor romney can't decide whether he supports the lilly ledbetter fair pay act when women are make being 77 cents on the daughter is a share. in maryland it is 83 cents. it is unacceptable, and governor romney should have a position on that. when it comes to economics, when a family knows that they're getting 25% less than they ought to because we don't have fair pay in this country, that's an economic question for women and for families. i think it is all fair game and contraception, if you can't make decisions about your own private health care and extra sepgs, what that means is that you can't make decisions about education, about jobs, about planning your family, and i think it is really unacceptable for governor romney to embrace the republican budget. in fact, you can call it a war. you can call it whatever you want. the facts speak for themselves where women's educational opportunities are cut back, where there are cutbacks on things like child care that women really depend on and where two-thirds of the women actually receive pell grants and yet the republican budget that governor rick santorum in i endorses and embraces slashes. >> you hear a fairness argument and she says fairness with a special hit on women in the republican budget. >> right. equal pay for equal work. theres no controversy, and when you look at women that are with similar education, similar experience on the job market, the pay gap that is referenced very quickly closes, those are not an appears appears comparison. when you look at the contraception issue, they're not talking about taking it away. it was president obama through health and human service that is proceed toesd to change the rule regarding insurance policies and the coverage of contraception. it was president obama that proposed that change. >> and republicans had a great issue when he was at war with catholic and other religious institutions. they had a great issue. did they over play their hand with the blunt amendment that would allow anybody to say i have a moral objection, not just a religious institution, if it was john king inc. that could say i don't like contraception and i won't put it on my health care plan. did the republicans over play a winning hand. >> i think it is important to remember with president obama that initiated the whole debate. republicans are about getting people back to work, the best thing we can do for women and families and 50% of children graduating from college are unemployed and under employed, and we have had the longest streak of unemployment since the great depression, of high unemployment, over 8%. we have a record debt this president has accumulated, $5 trillion in at the time. these are the issues that women and families are concerned about and women are the decision makers in the country. >> put the numbers up. if you look at the registered voter choice for president, among men a split. a statistical tie. look at the gender gap, 55% for the president and 39% for romney. >> the reason there is a gap even under the economic recovery where we were losing 750,000 jobs when the president took office, the first thing he did is signed into law the fair pay act and embraced the stimulus package to make sure that our educators, many of whom are women, continued to work. he embraced legislation that to ensure that women are getting back to work, 4 million jobs created in this economy, over 25 months of growth, and 1.2 million of those are women. the president is actually embracing policies that do great service to women where as you just look at the plain language of the budget and they're slashing. >> how does he close that gap? >> he is closing that gap. it is president obama's policies that have failed, failed women, failed families, failed americans and getting people back to work. i think what the democrats recognize and why they calculated this and put together this war on women is because they know the republicans won the women's vote in 2010. it was the first time since ronald reagan, the republicans won the women's vote and they know they have to do better. >> they went win the women's vote by taking away contraception and by taking away pell grants. >> they will win the women's vote by getting americans back to work. >> that is not a way to win the women's vote by taking away those. >> economic opportunities will win the women. >> 176 days to have the debate. we'll bring you back. thank you both for coming. if you ever stepped into the street without looking because you were sending a text, listen up. we're going to tell you where you could get a $54 ticket for jay walking while texting. i will say maybe it should be higher. people will get mad. why it is a big week for the man that got us on facebook. schedu. schedu. the first technology of its kind... mom and dad, i have great news. is now providing answers families need. siemens. answers. on my journey across america, i found new ways to tell people about saving money. this is bobby. say hello bobby. hello bobby. do you know you could save hundreds on car insurance over the phone, online or at your local geico office? tell us bobby, what would you do with all those savings? hire a better ventriloquist. your lips are moving. geico®. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. welcome back. here is kate pald baldwin with the latest news you need to know right now. >> happy monday to all of you. bring you up to speed. former senator john edwards daughter cate may testify tomorrow but they may not hear from edwards himself. the attorneys began presenting their case and indicated they may finish by the end of the week