Political panel: How will Sandy effect the vote?

>>> our saturday super panel. tom brokaw , how about that?

>> that's for the people of alabama and lsu care about more than the president.

>> i'm confident in that prediction.

>> tom, i want to talk about this larger issue that i think no matter who wins or loses. the winning candidate has to govern a nation that is really, really divided.

>> yeah, it's not going to be a mandate it appears from all the polling that we're seeing and just the anecdotal evidence as well, i think it's going to be tougher for president obama if he gets re-elected because it does appear that the house will remain in the hands of the republicans and a lot of those are tea party members who will be going back to the house. i've been talk to go some of them. they have not given up the cause, the crusade. they're not going away. for governor romney , he likes to talk about how well he got along with the democrats when he was in the massachusetts state house . it's a different set of democrats that he'll be dealing with if he gets to be president who are in the senate and it appears that they'll hang on to the senate.

>> one of the things that may be going on here, that some of the republicans may be hinting at, al of you are new yorkers, and the idea that some shou they froze the race that we know, but did it actually help the president? maybe all of us are too consumed to know about it for sure. but eroll, the cooperation between bloomberg, cuomo, chris tea and the president couldn't have hert him.

>> it shows the guy can do his day job at a minimum. and you know, freezing the race for a few days really hurts romney . he had a lot of ground to make up in some key states and he just got pushed off the page. he didn't have any active roll that would take him into the news cycle related to sandy and margin marginally, around the edges a lot of the worst scenarios happen to be republican strong holds. it so happens a lot of the places that were devastated were in more conservative areas.

>> when christie said he was thanking president obama , two days before it was about how the president was terrible at bipartisanship and the mitt romney presidency would be good at it.

>> i think it takes a big storm to make a big case for big government and i think that's what we've seen. you have a situation where romney was calling for emergency services to be pushed back to the states and for there to be sharing, but when you've got a block of 12 states sitting together.

>> kelly, one of the reasons i was told that mitt romney was so doing this bipartisan message is suburban women.

>> absolutely.

>> and women were tired of this polarization.

>> they are and you know they're going to decide the election. many of them who voted for obama last time around may have been on the fence this time around. i think on that point i think one of the issues of vurnables for the president has been this leadership issues question not being a strong enough leader. voila, the week before the election he clearly has shown leadership on this issue that many suburban women will be able to work with him and get something done.

>> is this blaming sandy by republicans a little unfair?

>> if they do blame it on sandy, it will be unfair. i think if the president wins it's going to be the get out the vote that he's going to put together across the country in ohio and all of the key states. he'll win with the latino vote, with the african-american vote, with women generally, with what labor impact still remains in those states. so he's going to do a patch work thing but they're very confident about that. what i do think that the month of october has told us is that the absence of passion for either one of these candidates, because the national got moved --

>> so easily.

>> they really did. they just moved around the landscape, wake up tuesday morning i'm going to go the other way.

>> that remind me of 2000 . bush-gore was that way. the passion wasn't for each of them.

>> that's right. i agree with that. and i think that may be one reason it's time to bring on bill clinton as we're seeing.

>> it is also a reminder. this is why i think, what if they're both right. what if they're both ride about their models and we end up with this collision of recounts. i think it's more possible than people realize.

>> i do, too. and having been through it in 2000 .

>> when we come back, we're going to do a little bit of surprises.

>> i only have a few years left.

>> you haven't seen it all, i promise you.

>> 269-269. then you can say you've seen it all. trivia time. we asked name the only two states that flipped their presidential vote both in 2004 and in 2008 . they were gore, bush, obama. they why iowa and new mexico. could they flip again? we'll be right back. from democracy