What will Wednesday bring for Obama, Romney?

>> let's get right to our panel now. with me is ana marie cox of "the guardian," little anliana gil valletta and krystal ball my colleague. before i say anything else, i want to say i love you women.

>> yeah!

>> on a serious note, mitt romney tells us america is inches from the apocalypse, we're going to lose our freedoms and our foundation of our judeo- christian religion .

>> i did write about that --

>> i read that. that's why i'm asking.

>> when people get apocalyptic, i guess i believe in the country more than you do. we've had a pretty solid run. we've had republican presidents and democratic presidents . we've made a lot of mistakes but capitalism has somehow survived. during the great depression the top income tax rate was 90%. you know what? we're still like buying stuff that's different off of the shelves. we don't have a lot of brand "x." we're not a socialist country .

>> so no armageddon.

>> no armageddon.

>> okay. krystal , let's stay with this for a moment. the president -- let's say the president is victorious. the senate remains democrat, the house remains republican, what happens in relation to people like john boehner who for the last few years and, indeed, his fellow compatriot and mr. eric cantor have obstructed this president from achieving anything.

>> there's good news and bad news. the good news is because of the way the fiscal cliff, a term i don't like but i'll use, is structured, things have to happen. the bush tax cuts have to expire. something has to happen there. unemployment insurance , the payroll tax cuts, sequestration, these are all things that are going to happen if nothing happens. so there is some impetus for something to happen regardless of house republicans' intentions. the bad news is as bad as the house republican caucus has been, it is likely in this election to get worse, more --

>> worse?

>> more ideological, more people who have been reasonable retiring, more far right tea party zealots getting elected, so i have little hope in terms of sort of bipartisan comity, but i think the president will be in a better position to get things done.

>> of course, he won't have to run for re-election during this campaign so mitch mcconnell won't have to deny him that. litt as you look back at mitt romney , has refused to say whether he supports the president's proposal which is allowing the children of illegal immigrants to remain in the country and not pursue them for deportation. was that self-deportation comment the most damaging thing for him in relation to latino voters?

>> i think the most damaging thing, not just for mitt romney , but for the party as a whole was the way the, you know, candidates early on were trying to be so conservative and appeal to the far right and not lose their base that some of the things that were said earlier on before he was the republican candidate are now backfiring to him and we remember. self-deportation makes absolutely no sense. get back into the line makes no sense. but at the same time you're hearing a rhetoric of we want to find solutions. marco rubio has this great plan. i still wish i would have seen it or maybe they would have disclosed it. and now when --

>> that was a mistake. romney could have taken that up.

>> he could have taken that and he said it in many places. he said it here, you know, at nbc that he has a solution but we haven't seen it. he needs to start tempering his fear of scaring his own base and realizing that it makes more strategic sense to appeal to the fastest growing segment of voters in this country which is latinos.

>> anna marie , we were talking about a potential apocalypse and you quoted capitalism. we've heard some fears about socialism taking over if the president is re-elected. take a listen to this.

>> sooner or later in a socialist society , you come up against the ceiling. you have a class background to be and you have an economic no-growth society. there's no opportunity. the exact opposite.

>> there's no " jersey shore " in england where kids can come out of nowhere and become famous.

>> apologize i'm a fellow countryman of that individual. i apologize for him.

>> apologize for the other one.

>> indeed, but he says there's no " jersey shore ." there actually is a " jersey shore " show in the uk.

>> well, there's that and also i'm not sure if you want to put forward that as a up from nothing kind of path for a lot of young people . the problem is that actually we do have problems with economic mobility in this society and it's because of our lopsided form of capitalism. it's a form of capitalism that favors the rich over and over , favors korm favors corporations over and over . monetary inequality has increased in the united states and countries -- the studies find that countries that have the greatest income inequality are the countries that are the hardest to move up in.

>> they're actually the least happy in terms of the population.

>> yes, exactly. so a little bit of socialism kind of mixed in there when you do enough to kind of lessen that gap, you actually get more social mobility . you get people coming up doing better than their parents.

>> you know what's interesting about that, back to the profile of immigrants in the u.s. are for hispanics in particular when you look at what is that segment of the fastest growing group of small businesses , it happens to be minority-owned businesses and hispanics two times growing faster than the rest. back to what you were saying, something must be right in the mix that is allowing for new immigrants, people that come here with nothing to be able to realize the so-called american dream we think is dead but when you look at the numbers for small businesses is not dead because they are growing and they're the fastest growing segment.

>> krystal , we've talked about the economy and we were talking about disparities. but on social issues, romney has said that he plans no big legislative change in relation to, for example, roe v. wade . if he's elected, do you believe him?

>> well, roe v. wade isn't a legislative issue. it's a matter of who he appoints to the supreme court .

>> sure. so that, therefore, is potentially in the balance.

>> there is no way imaginable that he would appoint someone to the supreme court who would uphold roe v. wade . there's just no way that social conservatives in that party would allow him to do that. there's no way republicans would confirm a nominee who would uphold roe v. wade and we have never, ever in any circumstance seen mitt romney stand up to his own party, to his own base when they are bullying him in a certain direction. whether he wants to make social issues the forefront of his presidential term is one question, but his party, we have seen what they have done legislatively and there is no question that issues of controlling women and limiting their access to health care have been at the forefront of their agenda and i fully would expect mitt romney to go along with that.

>> to krystal 's point, an anna marie , wouldn't romney have helped himself even if he had just stood up to the offensive things rush limbaugh had said for example. wouldn't he have helped himself if he could have found some willingness and inclination to defend women in an appropriate manner. he couldn't do it even in relation to someone like sandra fluke.

>> i think that's true. i think this is a problem almost every one of mitt romney 's flaws come back to his disconnect with how real people live and what real people do. i don't think he understands what it's like to be caught up in something like that. i don't think he understands what it's like to be obviously to be a woman. it's interesting to me, ann romney is such a compelling figure in so many ways, but mitt romney doesn't seem to understand this is not like some social issue that women just care about. that this is an economic issue for women, that being insulted in a public sphere like that is something that happens to women daily and that we don't have the way to fight back that men do in that particular kind of situation.

>> i totally agree and it disgusts me as the father of two daughters and i'm married to a woman, that that continues. quick, from all of you, prediction. who is going to win this election? krystal ?

>> i think president obama is going to win, and i don't think it's going to be a particularly late night .

>> you don't?

>> i don't. i think virginia is going to go for him pretty early. juneau about virginia .

>> i'm right there with her. i just saw someone tweet out that virginia had actually a bigger turnout today than 2008 . that's fantastic for the president and that does seem to me we're probably not going to be up all night.

>> of course, i have to put my latino filter on. the one thing i'm looking forward to, regardless of rooting for the winner, is the fact that we could see history in the making today. if president obama does get 73% of the latino vote, which is what it's been projected, that is record-breaking. we have never seen a president get this number. bill clinton got 72% in 1996 . i will be very excited to see history unfold.

>> indeed, and so would we. there are a few hours left yet, to make sure you go to the polls. you have been fabulous. next,