>>> of the president's strategy to rally support for his plan to raise taxes on people that make over $250,000. today the president hosts small business owners, but the big event perhaps is friday. that's when the president takes his message on the road with a campaign style tour of a pennsylvania business. the goal, increase public pressure on republicans to support his plan. how speaker john boehner is pushing back. today his office released a statement saying the target of the president's rally should be the congressional democrats who want to raise tax rates on small businesses rather than cut spending. the white house in the meantime defends the public campaign and told chuck todd within the last hour it's doing all it can to strike a deal as soon as possible.
>> isn't everybody just killing time until the deadline comes?
>> no. it doesn't seem like killing time to me, chuck.
>> it's the final week and the jet fumes and people get out of school and people will hammer it out?
>> he has not waited for people to start smelling the jet fuels at a national airport . he's active ly put forward a plan.
>> another issue, how to get to the 218 votes needed to get a deal through the house if both parties are claiming a mandate. here's the challenge aaccording to our first read team. take a look. 205 house republican incumbents ran for re-election. 93% of them won. what's more, 117 of them won by getting at least 60% of the vote. in other words, house republicans were elected by a different electorate than the presidential and key senate contests. let me bring in nbc news deputy editor dominico. i thought that was a great explainer in first read, because that's what it boils down to, those numbers.
>> the house is different than the senate. the house has to deal with primaries potentially from the right. the senate, they have to be elected statewide. if you drill down even further, 88% of all of those house members won with at least 55% of the vote. so in a 55% race, it's not that close. it's a 10-point race. you're looking at maybe 20, 23 people who are elected with less than 55% of the vote. that's closer to what democrats are really trying to aim for.
>> absolutely. let's talk a little bit about what speaker boehner was saying, his reaction to the president going out, p if you will, to the people on friday. i think it's a toy factory. they make among other things the angry bird game or something. it's interesting because presidential historian doris kerns good win says he needs it to use the people like with other great presidents in our history.
>> when we heard him signal this during the campaign that he knows change doesn't come from inside washington , it comes from oulsd. i think that he signaled that early on during that fiscal cliff negotiation, if he were to get re-elected, he sees at least a little bit of leverage there, if not a mandate to be able to go and campaign outside to put pressure on house republicans who might be thinking about maybe signing onto something but not totally sure if they will. use some of that outside pressure to try to sway them to be more open
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