Todd: First Lady captures audience like no other convention speaker

>> chuck todd . chuck can be hard bitten on these things, comparing this reaction with anything that you saw, for example, last week in tampa.

>> let's compare, first, the 10:00 hours. night one of the republicans, night one of the democrats. you know, at the time not one of the republicans, you think that was a pretty good night. ann romney was good. then you walk away going, why did she not end the night? why did chris christie end the night? compare how well they corey ohio graphed? you start with introducing the 10:00 hour. you start with an introduction to someone that you may not know, julian castro and then you end the way they ended tonight. michelle obama owned this convention, the delegates. i've been on the floor in the way that no speaker that has owned the floor of the convention in tampa. you could just -- you heard the -- you could watch emotional connections from the delegates to the first lady. it was very powerful to watch and it's got to be something that democrats have to feel good about just the -- how much passion there is for the president. here, the passion on the floor when you saw it was never for mitt romney . it was always against the president. and it's just -- it is just one of those striking differences, at least on this first night that i've taken away being here, seeing how everybody here is listening to all of the speeches, even the ones at 8:00 and 7:00 and at 8:30 versus sam pa where they really only tuned in at 10:00 .

>> chuck, let me ask you something about chris hayes said about the structure, be that this is an effort to take inarguably the president's strong suit and the first lady shares in it, which is likeability, personal attractiveness, for lack of a better term, and to apply that asset to the liability of how he is seen to be handling the economy, the first lady trying to bridge that asset into that liability by saying, if you like him as a person you should know the things that you like about him as a person are what he is applying to the economy. do you think that's what she was trying to do and is that smart? ze

>> well, i do. in this case, if the president wins in this tough economy, it's going to be because he won the economic values argument and it seems -- there's one polling way to measure this, rachel. we show it. yes, mitt romney beats the president on who has better economic ideas but then you ask that question, who will be more likely to look out for the middle class ? well, that's what michelle obama was testifying to. hey, look at -- let me tell you how he was brought up, let me tell you how i was brought up. we were the middle class . we had debt. she was testifying to that. and he's already winning on that score and they want to exploit that cap and expand it more. it plays into the weakness they think of mitt romney personally and let's be crass about this and look at the battleground states . it plays in ohio. it plays in wisconsin. it plays in florida. a lot of struggling middle class families in those three states in particular.

>> chuck, thank you. i want