Transcript: 'Morning Joe' (8-12-10)

Full transcript. Excerpt below:

SCARBOROUGH: By the way, this will shock you, Barnicle. Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winner, "New York Times" columnist weighed in on this last night and he described, this is going to shock you. He described Robert Gibbs actions as, quote, "stupid."

BARNICLE: I`ve never heard him say that word about anything or anyone that`s so unlike Professor Krugman.

SCARBOROUGH: I scanned it and say where he is going to say stupid, stupid, stupid. It was the fifth paragraph.

BARNICLE: Stupid, scan the page and it pops up.

JANSING: Which roughly describes apparently how most of America feels about every single person in Washington.

SCARBOROUGH: The polls yesterday that came out.

JANSING: Unbelievable. I don`t remember anything like this. The new NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" polls showing things, let`s say, not looking good for the president, for Republicans, for Democrats, Congress as a whole.

When asked as a country is better off since Barack Obama became president, just 31 percent thought the country is faring better and 68 percent said it was worse off or the same.

When asked what issues the president has fallen short on the top answers were reducing government spending, cutting the budget deficit, the economy.

Americans were split on Obama`s overall job performance, 47 percent approving and 48 percent disapproving. The Democratic Party also hit a record high in their negative ratings, 44 percent to 33 percent positive.

It`s even worse for the Republicans, 46 percent of the country has a negative view of the GOP, 24 percent a positive view. As for the job Congress is doing, an overwhelming majority, 72 percent disapproved, only 21 percent say Congress is doing a good job.

SCARBOROUGH: Chris, I don`t know where to start, Halpern and I were talking about this yesterday. Willie, usually it`s a zero sum game. If you have the party in power, the Republicans are in the White House.

Their approval ratings go down, Democrat numbers go up. But the Democratic Party`s numbers have gone down and the Republican Party`s numbers have gone down even more.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s a messed up scale where both sides are going down. The question is what does that mean for the presumption that Democrats are going to get wiped out in the fall? If the Republicans are as unpopular as they are, what does that mean for the elections?

SCARBOROUGH: That`s the big question, and, Mike, that`s is what we are trying to figure out and nobody knows because this is unchartered territory.

Halpern here yesterday was saying they could lose 50, 55 seats. If so, right now, according to the American people, Republicans would be beating something with nothing.