Roundtable I: State of the Race

roundtable. George will is off today. But we're joined by matthew dowd, van jones, greta van susteren of fox news, welcome back. Ralph reed and the chair of the democratic party debbie wasserman... See More

roundtable. George will is off today. But we're joined by matthew dowd, van jones, greta van susteren of fox news, welcome back. Ralph reed and the chair of the democratic party debbie wasserman schultz. Let's talk about what has changed since tuesday's debate. Matt dowd, on tuesday night, you gave the win to president obama so did karl rove. But mitt romney still has the momentum. If you look at what happened before the first debate, then the first debate and then the second debate. I think romney won overwhelm the first debate. Romney stopped any momentum that the president had. I think what the president did by showing up this time with some energy and some force, is that he actually stopped that momentum that romney had and gained some enthusiasm back which is why I think we see the race today, basically a slight advantage for the president today, a slight advantage. You would still say a slight advantage? Very slight advantage. The debate changed enthusiasm. I wouldn't agree with that. I think if you look at the cnn flash poll, did it affect your vote? 25% said for romney. 25% for obama. No net change at all out of the second debate. But if you look at the monmouth university poll, 9% of the voters said that the first debate changed their mind. That 9% broke 77% for romney only 18% for obama. It was the biggest swing in an election in the modern era coming out of a first debate and obama didn't really change that. Chairman, even the new cnn poll out this morning showed a tie. Momentum is measured by actual turnout. Which in many states, early voting, ohio, iowa, and absentee balloting across the country, including my home state of florida, the proof is in the actual ballots cast. And if you look at the battleground states that are most key, we're well ahead, the president is well ahead in terms of turnout and from our democratic voters from where we were in 2008 in ohio and iowa. And in florida, specifically, republicans generally far outpace us in absentee requests. We have closed the gap. By 85% in terms of absentee requests. Well ahead on election day. And we will be. One of the things that was clear, greta, how little respect they have for each other. Actually, lot of men liked the debate. They like the fighting. A lot of women didn't like it. I don't think we learned anything particularly new. I thought it was disappointing for the american people. Well, it was definitely heated. But a couple of things, obviously the first debate did more for romney than the second debate did for obama. Obama had two jobs to do and he did them both. He had to stop the momentum. He was able to stop the momentum. Now we're back tied. The other thing that he had to do and did do was to get the base back exchanged. People were proud to stand up and fact-check -- president obama put fact-checkers out of work because he fact-checked in realtime. Matt, no question that obama got the democrats engaged again on tuesday night. The flip and the surge among some women voters to mitt romney? I think that's the main -- two-thirds of all swing voters in this country are women. 54% of the people who are going to vote are women. Women by and large are going to decide this election just like -- as they should. As they should. But I think the interesting thing about this is, the pattern is so familiar to 2004. President bush had a six-point lead. In the following two debates he didn't win them but got back into the game. As of today, eight years it was 48%-48%. This is all about the base. In my view and the enthusiasm of the support. Is that comforting news to you? If you look at the state of florida, the incumbent has won every election since 1984 when they won florida. The bottom line with women, though, specifically, women are going to make decisions on job creation, economic choices, making sure that we focus on rebuilding our economy for the middle class out. Making sure when it comes to women's health we have a president that has our backs. The contrast between these two choices couldn't be more clear. Romney would take us backwards and women don't want that. I worked on that '04 campaign, too, those final four weeks, you didn't have two-thirds of womeand children in poverty. 600,000 more women out of work than the day he took office. A total of 9.7 million women either out of work or giving up looking. Or working part-time because they can't find full-time work. 70% of them, george, say they're going to vote on pocketbook issues. Look the economy, jobs and deficit. That's not a good issue mix for obama going into the final 16 days. The good thing about women voters is they're pretty dlib ra tif. They know what the economy looked like before the 2004 and after the 2004 election. We got an economy that was passed off. Women are fair. When you got to clean up that mess, sometimes it takes a while to clean up. We need to take a break. You get the final word. I think women may think time's up. Four years. Whether that's fair or not, he's had four years, and he can't keep saying what was so horrible. But, I think that's the problem, though. Three years to turn it around. Let her answer it. I think it's very telling. Mitt romney on a point-blank question, refused to answer whether equal pay for equal work. That binders thing, I know that the democratic party is room nating. Women have heard so much worse. Women have heard so much worse than binders full of women. It's insulting to women. Women care about jobs and economics. Can I do a quick reality check? Women, over on the course of their lifetime, because we earn 70 cents for every dollar a man makes we lose $430,000 of our professional life. I'm with you on that equal pay. It's that binders comment. The binders comment was silly. Everybody's in agreement on equal pay. It's been against the law to pay a woman less for the same work since -- let mfinish. Since the equal pay act was passed in 1973. The leadbetter act was passed, it was signed into law. Romney said that he has no plans to revisit it. This is an attempt -- but we do have to take a break. Lot more roundtable to come.