Obama preps for debate night

>>> and politico's executive editor jim vand high joins us now. the kinds of things the president has to be weary of, the president on september 11th , 2008 , at a service nation summit, let's watch.

>> washington is broken. my campaign has been premised from the start on the idea that we have top fundamentally change how washington works.

>> so i assume you're going to suggest mitt romney could now say, what have you changed? how have you fixed it?

>> it's a long list of quotes that the president has had about things he would do in office, whether reforming immigration right away, turning around the economy, changing the tone in washington . romney wants and needs to use those words against him in a debate to paint a picture of a presidency that has not been a success and make the case there needs to be change. so far he's not successfully prosecuted that case and i think the debate is best and maybe last chance to effectively make it to create more of an opportunity for him to talk about how things would be different under a romney administration.

>> and the next year in 2009 , on the today program he said give me three years or else i'm out of here. take a look at this.

>> right.

>> if i don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition.

>> so he said it himself. that --

>> right.

>> the voters would be judging him in three years as to whether he achieved it.

>> on that quote on the economy and those other quotes from earlier in the presidency he promised to get unemployment down, certainly down below 8% by election day . that's not going to to be achieved and where republicans are trying to hit him hardest on, lots of big promises, ideas, not lots of big results. the frustration in the romney camp those attacks have not worked over the last couple months. spent a lot of money on advertising to make that very case and so far it's not breaking through. largely because of a lot of missteps on romney 's part have overshadowed some of the media scrutiny of president obama .

>> one of the biggest missteps likely the 47,000 --

>> 47%.

>> 47%, rather. that clearly is something that is going to be front and center of the debate when he's got to somehow try to persuade people that he cares about them, empathetic and he isn't writing off half the electorate.

>> a reason if you live in northern virginia like i do you can't watch a program without seeing that ad now that obama campaign is running where they use the voiceover of him talking about the 47% and putp up those images of the people covered by the 47%. very effective. lots of polling over the last couple days that show that message is really breaking through, that people are aware of this debate over his comments and that it's hurting mitt romney because it plays into a caricature that the obama campaign has tried to paint of mitt romney from the beginning of this campaign. i'm certain president obama will use that quote against him repeatedly in the debate tomorrow and mitt romney has to figure out how to pivot from that and make the case against barack obama .