because joe biden did what president obama should have done which was to look into the camera and look at me, i m a democrat. all right? i ve been in the senate for years. we re the democratic party. we believe in medicare. we believe in social insurance. do you trust me or do you trust this 40-something-kid who comes from the world of conservative think tanks scheming to get rid of the program since its beginning and inception? who do you trust? that was just the simple question. he said, look at the reputational capital that has been built up over time in those two parties over what we are going to do. and trust yourself on who is going to vouch save medicare. on the issue of afghanistan, it was clear paul ryan is arguing a position, passionately, that s unpopular. i mean what is the position? there s no well, he got lost in the answers on afghanistan. i don t disagree with that at all. the point is the position the vice president was arguing which is we want to have afgh
making these decisions, i don t know if every pro lifer will do that. we also have a cnn research poll out. 48% say paul ryan won tonight s debate. 44% say vice president biden. we saw a big margin the other direction in the cbs snap poll with many more people saying vice president biden won in the cbs poll. paul ryan having a four-point edge in the cnn snap poll. much more ahead. you re watching ms nbc s live coverage of the vice presidential debate. mitt romney s a good man. he cares about 100% of americans in this country. i think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don t come out of your mouth the right way. but i always say what i mean.
paul ryan s plans. joe biden went there tonight. should we see that as the intention of the democratic side to go there, holding the republicans accountable for paul ryan s old idea and george w. bush s old idea to privatize social security? i think it was one of joe biden s best moments. there s no question where paul ryan stood. even before the stock market crash, he was arguing we should go to privatizing social security. when people lost 30, 40% or more of their savings, he was still clinging to this crazy notion. joe biden put him on the spot tonight. he had to admit it. the same thing held true for medicare. joe biden would not allow paul ryan to dance away from his crazy views. on the issue of afghanistan, it was confusing on the surface and more confusing the deeper they got. my sense is that the difference between the two campaigns is that both sides agree with the 2014 plan to leave afghanistan, but that the romney and ryan
him in the domestic policy discussion was the letters to his office. yeah. on the stimulus front. brutal. he blamed it on his staff. that s going it be replayed on a lot of clips tomorrow. that was a tough, clean staff. he blamed it on his staff. tonight he said we did it because constituents made us. they will not the domestic policy and the tax end of it they will not say what loopholes. they won t do it. no. we re going to close these loopholes. martha raddatz pushed hard on that, the mortgage deduction in particular. the recovery act, it s important to remember, paul ryan voted for a stimulus bill that was $700 billion. okay? the republican house caucus voted for their own version of the stimulus bill. he talked about borrowing money from china as a ridiculous thing to do and the $830 billion price tag was through the moon astronom astronomic. they voted for one that was essentially roughly the same size.
money to pay more out of their pocket. they re talking about medicare there. in terms of social security, at some point, martha said, you stood with bush on privatization, saying that to paul ryan, specifically talking about when he was in the congress during the bush administration back in the mid-2000s. it isn t just that paul ryan stood with bush on privatization. he stood well to the right on privatization. this is from a memo from pete wayner, who s a member of the bush administration talking about some of the various privatization plans. he wrote, at that time, that, quote, if we borrow $1.2 trillion, talking about ryan s plan, to cover personal savings accounts and make though changes to wage indexing, we ll borrow trillions and have trillions more in unfunded liabilities. ryan s plan was actually well to the right of what the bush administration ended up proposing. these huge transition costs to