MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript

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SCHULTZ: Welcome back to THE ED SHOW, and thanks for watching tonight.
The right-wing networks hate merchant across the street, Sean Hannity, the master of making stuff up about the Democrats. Look at the way they framed the midterm election on his show last night.

This is hilarious. It read--you could see all these fear merchants sitting at home on their couch--"Democrats in Panic Mode as 2010 Midterms Approach."

Just because that little dirt bag Frank Luntz makes some prediction doesn"t mean that Democrats are in a panic mode.

Now, Sean, I"m pretty sure that the Democrats are not in the panic mode considering the latest Gallup poll, which I know you pay attention to. Among registered voters, it shows that Democrats leading Republicans 49 percent to 43 percent.

This is the first significant lead for the Democrats since Gallup began weekly tracking of this measure back in March. So the numbers certainly don"t lie, but it appears that once again, Fox News just keeps the lies coming.
For more on this let"s turn to the DCCC congressman--chairman of the DCCC, Chris Van Hollen.

You know, you look pretty dapper tonight. You don"t look too disheveled. You don"t look like you"re in a panic mode. Get it together.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), CHAIRMAN, DCCC: I don"t look like I"m running scared, do I, Ed? No.

SCHULTZ: This is the kind of garbage that you"re going to have to--
I mean, it was up on the screen. It"s constant over there.
What"s the game plan to battle it back?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, listen, Ed, you just pointed out the latest Gallup poll. And what"s going to happen is the American people are going to focus more and more on the stakes of this election in 2010.

And what they are coming to realize is that it"s bad enough that Republicans in Washington have tried to cynically stop progress and moving toward a new economy, and putting people back to work and getting jobs going again. That"s bad enough, but what"s even worse is what they would actually do if given the chance.

And what we"re finally beginning to hear is what they would do. We hear from John Boehner, the Republican leader, that he would immediately work to repeal Wall Street accountability and reform. He would strike that down.
At the same time, we know that their head guy on the Budget Committee has a plan to partially privatize Social Security. So, talk about a boon to Wall Street, a bonanza. That would mean hundreds of billions of dollars for Wall Street.

Now, they want to repeal health care reform, that"s bad enough. They are going to put the insurance industry back in charge.

But you know what? They also have a plan, a point person on the Budget Committee, to turn it into a voucher program and throw seniors over to the insurance industry with a voucher that declines in value every year.
So people need to understand what the costs of Republican leadership would be and what they would do if given the chance.

SCHULTZ: Yes. Congressman, are your folks and your caucus ready to go home and look at their constituents in the eye and passionately tell them that there are "Psycho Talkers" on the other side, that they are not telling the truth to the American people, and we must keep this progressive movement going to change the country? Because what--I mean, I think they are just going to have to be passionate about this, because I think that there may be some folks who are wavering a little bit, that want to hear it.

VAN HOLLEN: Look, people are raring to go. I mean, people are really getting motivated to get out there.

We have a pitched battle. People know what a challenge it is this cycle. But nobody is sitting back. Nobody is taking anything for granted.

We"re going to go on offense, and we"re going to go on offense with the issues that we"ve tackled and the fact that we"ve begun to put people back to work. After all, we know what the end of the movie was for the Bush policies. Right?

After eight years, they actually lost private sector jobs. Over 600,000 private sectors were lost during the entire eight years of the Bush administration.
So we"re finally getting back on track. The last thing people want to do is to go back to the same policies that created the mess.

SCHULTZ: Yes.

VAN HOLLEN: And so we have to be on offense. We can talk about the good things we"ve done, but we also have to paint a very clear picture of what the consequences of Republicans being in charge would be.

And the good news is they are telling us more every day. We just want them to keep talking, because the more the American people know about what they would do, the more the people don"t want to go there.

SCHULTZ: Well, I think part of the convincing is they lie and they obstruct. That"s who they are.

And in the recent 48-hour news cycle, none of them have been able to come
up with a definite plan of what they would do to create jobs in this country. They are all about vilifying anything the majority party wants to do.
Congressman, keep up the good work. Appreciate your time tonight.

VAN HOLLEN: Thank you, Ed.

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