in just a moment, congresswoman marsha blackburn in a moment. while we get her to a microphone, i want to get response from you guys to that poll. that comports my feelings about who won the debate. steve, as a republican, does that feel like a reasonable response? undecided voters, i certainly think it s in the realm of possibility. you have to look at where all the flash polls are. the thing to remember, just like last week, those undecided voters, they will break to the winner side over the next 48 hours. that lead will spread. if, in fact, there s a 20-point lead off of the flash polls on average with 20% undecided by the time we get through the next day or so, that s going to be a 30, 40-point lead. it will be viewed as a more
i think it does. joining us now is congressman chris van hollen, maryland democrat, chairman of the democratic congressional campaign committee. he was vice president biden s sparring partner during his debate prep which means congressman value hollen s time in life as fake paul ryan is coming to a close. congressman, thanks for joining us. yeah, hopefully i now go through my reprogramming here. exactly. tell me your overall assessment of the debate. i know i can cut to the bottom line and i know you think your candidate did well, but what particularly did you like and dislike about tonight? oh, what i liked was the fact that the vice president came out swinging for the middle class. his passion came through. he marshalled all the facts in support of his argument and showed the ryan/romney plan would be a gut punch to the middle class. look, he reminded people romney and ryan were for privatizing social security. that helps cut to the quick on this medicare voucher debate. esse
for joining us. i will just say it is not a sign of strength for the republican side to come out after the debate and say, listen, the unemployment number is rigged. i realize the republicans have decided that they don t want the unemployment rate to be below 8%, so they re going to say it secretly isn t. that s not a way you telegraph you think you won this debate. i was just going to say in politics there s no bad questions, only bad answers. there you had a clinic on a bunch of bad answers. if you are going to be pro life, a morally serious position, what paul ryan said, an answer to chris question is this. he believes that roe v. wade was wrongly decided. the judges should not have decided that position. that position should rest with the states. that was what paul ryan s position is. if that s going to be the position, which is the pro life
go to a much more aggressive form of privatization. he continued to promote different forms of privatization through the next decade until 2010. it was when he really got charged with creating a budget that all republicans could sign on to that boehner and other members said you have to take this out of your budget because we can t go into battle like this. ryan was, in terms of what you had in the house, he was the leader of the privatization movement and was much more committed to it than just your run of the mill average conservative. this seems like a really important moment in the campaign. this, to me, seems like something that s very, very important. in 2004, george w. bush won re-election and said i earn political capital, now i m going to spend it. he tried to spend it on privatizing social security. paul ryan was on board. the democrats have now signaled as of this debate tonight they re going to try to it hold him to that, make him run on privatizing social security.
top romney people told me immediately after the debate joe biden did check off all the boxes. he said he tried to fit ten pounds into a five-pound bag. well, i do that. i think biden had a tougher thing to do. it was sort of a dive with more degree of difficulty. he executed it well. ryan had some good counterattack lines. biden is the one who had to do what he did and he did it. john, you know how i score these things? not with say who won, who won. it s how the polls move the next couple days thereafter. clearly the result of the first presidential debate was very helpful to romney. i will predict now, benghazi suspect going to move many voters. abortion rights is going to move a lot of voters, especially single women. you re going to see movement away from romney/ryan in the next couple days. i think if you think about what mitt romney accomplished in