swept away in the next election. plus, texas governor rick perry is so against government handouts, that he took a load of money for his own farm. that's our ethic con job of the day. welcome to the show. i'm al sharpton. tonight's lead -- the big night in wisconsin is also a major moment for the progressive movement. we're just three hours away from the polls closing on an unprecedented recall election. six republican state senators are facing recall, if democrats can flip three seats, they win control. seven months ago, governor scott walker with the support of a gop state senate majority cut collective bargaining rights for public employees. [ chanting ] >> this recall election tonight is not just about wisconsin. it's about an assault on workers and the middle class that has gone nationwide. similar laws have now popped up across the country in maine, michigan, ohio, florida, wisconsin. so tonight in wisconsin, they're expecting a massive turnout. whatever the outcome, it would be a defining moment for the progressive movement. i know, because i've traveled through ohio. i've traveled through indiana and others. in the wake of the midterm elections, as these new governors and state legislators really declared war on collective bargaining and working people. tonight is the measure of whether the country begins in the state of wisconsin is a national drive to push back, or whether we have more to go to build a movement of resistance. but resist we must. and we will about that be committed. joining me now for madison, wisconsin, is ed shultz, host of "the ed show" here on msnbc. he's been the leading voice, not a leading voice, but to me the leading voice on this story to the start. welcome back to the 6:00 hour. i feel like i'm in your seat. what is at stake here tonight, ed? >> reverend, everything is at stake in the middle class for this country. ground zero for the middle class and organized labor. let mets put it in a nut shol. the democrats have the ground game, the republicans have the money. who will win tonight? this is not only a referendum on scott walker and his radical agenda, but the first big test how progressives will fight back against the supreme court ruling. al, you wouldn't believe how much money has been poured into some of these districts. we're talking about close to $40 million in six state races in this state of wisconsin. the turnout today has been at presidential levels in some of these districts. i think one to watch will be in suburban milwaukee, where roberta darling, a close associate to the governor and helped write that antiunion bill is getting a strong push on the ground from the democrats and strong push from sandy pasch. i think she has an outside shot there. i think the democrats will pick up three, i think they'll get the majority back, they might get four, but this race is the crown jewel. if they with defeat alberta darlgts, if they can win in that district, that will be very good for the democrats, so enthusiasm here is high, but the fact is no one anticipated this kind of turnout, so what does it mean on a tuesday in august that has no record of this happening before. >> the race that you called the crown jewel, the legislator darling, senator darling, is very close to scott walker? she is very close. she has been instrumental in pushing forward the radical agenda. she has had $8 million poured in to support her from out of state. the comment was made earlier on this network about the democrats have outraised the republicans, that is not true. the republicans have far more money in all six of these districts. some of the democrats locally have outraised the local opponents, but the money that's been poured into here is absolutely astounding. very interesting dynamic. president obama won every one of these six districts. scott walker won every one of these six districts, so what does this turnout mean? have we really seen a sea change in rural wisconsin, because the rural vote is very active. >> i think that's why it's so important, ed. when you look at the fact that these races were, what, maybe 3 million last year, now you're dealing with almost 40 million. one of the things that i think people need to know around the country, this is not a wisconsin story. the right wing knows what's at stake when they pour in this kind of money. let me show you this company. wellpoint insurance, put huge sums of money in here for the republicans, and this is the insurance company that raised premiums in california, canceled coverage for breast cancer patients, anti-health care reform, and they put in big money here. so the country is looking at this, the right wing will use this to hammer down the progressive movement if we're not successful tonight. a lot is depending on what goes on tonight on whether we have really built to where we need to build a resistance movement. >> well, the democrats feel very good about the fact there is heavy voting where they need it. so it depends on what turns out from the standpoint of just what kind of ground game the republicans really didn't have, how much money is going to affect the republican turnout, because it has been negative ad after negative ad. you wouldn't believe it. you would think that barack obama was on the ballot right now and the tea partiers were hellbent for an election to make it happen. that's the intensity we have seen here in wisconsin. >> in many ways, barack obama and those that support the are on the ballot. if they got away with it, it would spread to ohio and across the country, then they have began the breaking of the infrastructure toward a real maintaining of some kind of coalition and unity in 2012. you know, i traveled in ohio with some of those, and look at what they did in ohio. in ohio you can't recall the elected officials, but you can recall the legislation. they needed 231,000 signatures to put the antiunion bill on the ballot for repeal. they got 1.3 million signatures in ohio to put that on the ballot for this fall, and i know when i was traveling around those rallies dealing with that, so this is a national movement. this is the first battle in the war to preserve our country for our working class people's right to organize. the first battle is wisconsin tonight. >> no question about it, and i think this is going to be a real template that's being presented to progressives in all of those states that you mentioned -- new jersey, ohio, indiana, michigan and florida, and anywhere where there's a recall. if the democrats, al, are not successful tonight, it is going to be time for the democrats nationally to take a step back, regroup and figure out a strategy on how to fight this kind of money that has poured into wisconsin. >> right. >> and if the democrats are successful tonight, it is really the template on how to get it done. i think the progressives in this state, as profound as it is, they have been brilliant to the basics. they have gone door to door. they have talked to their neighbors. they have taken people by the hand to do what they've got to do. they made the countless hours of phone calls. they have done all the things, you know, that -- it's the old saying, al, you can't take my heart, you can't take my soul, and you're not going to take my vote. that really has been the attitude against this big money that's come into this state. >> well, we'll be watching, and we're going to clearly watch -- wait a minute, i hear people cheering, but i hear somebody singing. >> they're over here. >> it sounds like scott walker, scott walker singing in my hear. ♪ o my darling ♪ o my darling -- that's the race you told me to watch with senator darling. >> thank you, al. >> ed show, 10:00 eastern time, right here on msnbc. joining me now, two of wisconsin's 14 state senators who fled wisconsin in an effort to stall the gop attack on their constituents. senator leena taylor and senator chris lawson. thank you for being here on this important night. >> thank you. >> well, i hear the people cheering, and does that mean that people have been out there pulling out -- has voter turnout been in your area, senator taylor? >> they definitely have. as a matter of fact, in some of the wards that i've been in -- because there are ten milwaukee wards in particular, one ward had 56 votes? our last supreme court race. and in this particular time right now, my last check it was at 700. 700 plus votes. >> wow. >> yes. so people are coming out. we are getting people who have not voted, getting people who have voted normally only in presidential election and we get people who voted all the time. we're going to do this. we're going to send darling walking. i'm loving it. >> you along with senator taylor and 12 others fled the state. you made the ultimate sacrifice in terms of staying out of the state, trying to block this vote, at your own expense, you did this out of your own pockets. >> that's right. >> today is the day that you may be able to score a real victory. how do you feel? and what are you hearing? >> we're really excited. this was a long time in the making, i think from the very beginning, republicans tried to duck accountability, you know? we stepped away to make sure that the people of wisconsin could be heard. every step of the way, republicans tried to shut them down, tried to run away from their constituents from wisconsin, but today's the day we take our state back. that's exactly what democracy looks like. so we're excited about what's going to happen tonight. >> senator taylor, let me ask you this. if we are successful in turning back the tide of those that want to stop the right of collective bargaining. if you flip three seats tonight, does this begin the walk toward recalling governor walker? >> there's no question that it does, but i want to refer to something you said. as a reverend, you know what you confess out your mouth is important. if not if we do it -- we're going to do it tonight. >> i stand corrected. >> i appreciate that, reverend. then we are going to come back on january 3rd. i'm going to carry the first clipboard. i'm going to write the first signature. we're going to go for our governor and make sure he does what his name says, we're going to make sure he's a walker. we're going to walk him out. >> i think you have a bit of preacher in you. i know that about you, leena. >> i heard that before. >> let me say this. to people around the country that don't live in wisconsin, the thing i've been trying to stress, this isn't just about wisconsin. this is about all over the country. >> correct. >> they used wisconsin, then ohio, indiana, and on and on. >> that's correct. >> as ground zero to begin to gin in the states' rights movement against collective bargaining, so every working class, every middle-class american needs to look at what's going on tonight, chris, in wisconsin, and know this is about us. wouldn't you agree with that, senator larsen? >> i think absolutely. it's going to show the rest of the country, with the states you mentioned, we're going to show tonight that when we stand up for the middle class and stand up on progressive values, we win. they can't buy their way out of accountability. we're going to show america what true progressive values should be like. >> i thank you both for your times. polls are still about two hours there. i can't tell you who to vote for, but i can tell you in wisconsin. in those districts, you should by voting. ahead, should president obama bring congress back from their recess? the calls are growing. we'll discuss. texas governor rick perry loves slamming government handouts, but that wasn't always the case. and eric cantor shows us again wile it's called the tea party downgrade. you won't believe what he's telling republicans. that's next. 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[ spits ] [ both laugh ] [ shapiro ] we created legal zoom to help you take care of the ones you love. go to legalzoom.com today and complete your will in minutes. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. go to legalzoom.com today and complete your will in minutes. go! go! completing an atm deposit in record time... that's a step forward. go! go! with deposit friendly atms, you can make ultra fast, secure deposits with no slips or envelopes. take a step forward and chase what matters. the markets finally broke the losing streak today, bouncing back 429 points, but despite that good news, the tea party is threatening to strike again. house majority leader eric cantor is sticking to his antitax guns saying, quote -- there will be pressure to compromise on tax increases. we will be told that there's no other way forward. i respectfully disagree. apparently republicans will protect tax breaks for the rich no matter what it does for the country. of course, sarah palin tries to blame the president, writing, quote -- be wary of efforts president obama makes to fix the debt problem. the more he tries to fix things, the worse they get, because his solutions always involve spending more, taxing more, growing government, and increasing the debt. sarah, in case you didn't bother to read the details of the downgrade, it's not the spending. it's the brinksmanship. besides, check out this tea party rally over the weekend, sarah. >> this week, and i wrote it down, they are blaming the credit downgrade on the tea party movement. >> the tea party not just pushing the economy to the brink, but bragging about it, too. no matter what it does to the joining me now, former senator and republican congressman earnest istuch. thank you for joining me took. >> good to be with you, reverend. >> let me ask you, congressman, don't you feel a little shudder when you see the tea party people at that rally celebrating the downgrading of the aaa rating of this country? >> well, what i saw on that footage did not look to me look somebody was celebrating, but nobody should be celebrating that downgrade. when you see what it does to people's savings, retirement plans, what it does to economic growth. the downgrade is a bad thing. nobody should be cheering over it. i don't think that you can say that one person or one group is totally responsible for it, but there's sure plenty of people hashed be sharing the blame. >> but i think clearly that the lady is saying they're blaming the tea partiers, and they started cheering. i don't know how you define celebrating, but where i come from, cheering means that you are absolutely happy about being identified as having done that, and i couldn't think of anything worse, given that you just said yourself what the downgrading does. >> nobody should be cheering. sure. again, that was a quick footage, but i think it's talking about somebody that's kind of talking about the fact that the tea party gets blamed by the left for everything that happened, and i think it was talking about the mockery that people try to aim toward the tea party, which is a serious movement of millions of americans. >> we can disagree. >> sure. >> i think if they felt they were being mocked, they would have been booing, not cheering. paul ryan believes that revenue should be on a table. listen to this. >> would you be open-minded to including some of that revenue? >> if we're convincingly restructuring the entitlement programs and getting that spending line down to meet that revenue line, then can you have higher revenue growth through more economy growth, the answer is yes. >> now, who's right, paul ryan or eric cantor? >> well, there's a difference between talking about tax increases and revenue increases. increasing tack rates, you know, i remember the speech that john f. kennedy gave when he was president, saying that actually reducing tax rates was going to produce economic growth and produce extra revenue. so i think there's a lot of confusion, because sometimes people are asked about revenue increases, sometimes they're asked about tax rate increases, and the best way that you can increase revenue right now is to get the economy healthy again. that will bring in a lot more revenue for the federal government than any sort of tax increase could ever bring in. >> that's like saying the best way to get things we had is to bring in water. the question is, how do you bring in the water? >> good question. >> how do you do that without reforming the tax the way that we have taxing in this country, dealing with the tax breaks that were given by former president bush. >> there were interesting numbers that came out this summer. it you took all the of the money, the taxable income of every american that makes more than $100,000 a year, their total income would be insufficient to cover the deficit of one years. >> but it would be a significant amount of money. just take those that wood to pay. >> but that's a ten-year figure. let's not confuse them -- >> with all due respect, congressman, what i have a problem with, with all due respect, is when it comes to take money from entitlement, and even messing with social security, which has nothing to do with the deficit, a lot of tea party eiers and people have problems going step by step to get there, but when we talk about step reform, it's all or none. >> let's not quu the ten-year figure with a one-year figure. >> that would be over a trillion, you're absolutely right. >> again you won't get $400 by ona year by increasing the taxes on the rich. i think you'll find that you're talking about a ten-year figure there, but again, if you don't start recognizing what is causing businesses to hold back -- for example, apple computer has over $80 billion that it's holding in offshore banks because of the tax bill that it gets if it rebatery yates the money. one way to bring more money back and to get it invested is to let them bring money back without facing the highest corporate tax rate we have anywhere in the world. that's part of tax reform. even president obama -- >> okay. i got it now. >> president obama said he wouldn't bring down corporate tax rates. >> in order to get some people that outsource jobs, took advantage of loopholes at the expense of americans that were working. >> what loopholes? >> we need to lure them, bribe them back into bringing back money they made from us in the first place and that's good government? >> no, this is money they made overseas that we would like them to bring to the u.s. >> but they're american companies that should have -- >> they're global companies. >> in many cases should never have had the right to go overseas, using loop holes and enjoy what they do in america. we need to bring them back, but at the same rate that other americans have to here. congressman istook, we have to go. >> an