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Transcript: The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 1/27/22

Guests: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD); Jared Bernstein; Caroline Randall Williams, Michele Bratcher Goodwin

Summary

President Joe Biden renews his pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. The January 6 Committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol obtained hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump tried to hide from the committee. The U.S. economy grew at 6.9 percent annual rate by the end of 2021. This is significantly better than analysts` expectations. Last night South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn told us the story of how he had been urging candidate Joe Biden to publicly pledge to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.

Transcript

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.

And I watched tentatively your report on the Irish fishermen who are now telling the Russian navy, Vladimir Putin`s navy, to go play their games somewhere else. And the man quoted as saying, we are not moving. He`s the head of the court fisherman`s association.

His name is Patrick Murphy. I don`t think Vladimir Putin knows enough Murphy`s and I don`t think he does. I grew up with a whole gang of Murphy`s in Dorchester, and Rachel, in my experience, when Murphy`s say we`re not moving, Murphy`s do not move. They do not move.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, "TRMS": I will tell you that we have been covering this story for a few days. On the show and we didn`t do it on the show yesterday because of all the breaking news about the Supreme Court and everything. We`ve had other stuff to do. We worked on producing a segment for the show and last night it didn`t happen. I think about half of the production staff of "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" is about ready to volunteer to go to Cork, to go make sure the fisherman can get the word out about what they`re doing and also because everybody wants to meet these men.

O`DONNELL: Yes, and that point about the meeting they had with the Russian ambassador, when they come out and say it`s all fine, the Russian ambassador basically caved to our demands and said he will stay away from our fishing grounds, and Russia comes out and the nice that. I suspect that the fishermen are right and Vladimir Putin doesn`t want the official word to be we backed down, but next Thursday, we`re going to see who is right.

MADDOW: And it`s also -- how is it that with these military exercises, which are clearly not disconnected from the threats about what`s going on in Ukraine, and there`s a lot to say about that, the military exercises and the minutes that they are raging on the borders of Ukraine. But how is it that these fishermen are the ones who have to go to the embassy to go negotiate the terms of the war exercises? I mean, like, they`re willing to do it because they want their prong grounds open. They need to go fish for mackerel.

But they shouldn`t have to be the ones to do literal diplomacy with the ambassador with the Russians thinking they could yank their chains by we are nagging on the promises made in these meetings. I mean, we ask a lot of our fishermen just put fish on the table, and when it comes to asking them to like, you know, avert world war three on our behalf, I think they deserve some backup.

O`DONNELL: Well, I could imagine Irish government officials, Irish foreign minister speaking to the Russian ambassador in trying to explain the Murphy`s to them and then eventually just giving up and bring on the Murphy`s. Let them talk directly to this guy.

MADDOW: Yeah. Let`s see how it goes next year -- next week with your little exercises guys. Let`s see how it goes.

O`DONNELL: Right.

MADDOW: Thanks, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel.

Well, we are going to see something that we have never seen before. This is the strangest development in the televised history of Supreme Court confirmation processes. We are going to see an audition for the United States Supreme Court. And that audition will be televised. It will be on television next week.

On Tuesday, South Carolina federal judge, Michelle Childs, will testify at her Senate confirmation hearing for a promotion by President Biden to the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals, the most important federal appeals court in the country. More Supreme Court justices come from that court than any other. President Biden nominated Judge Childs to be for the court of appeals in December and as luck would happen her confirmation hearing was scheduled before the severe news is today that Justice Stephen Breyer will retire at the end of the Supreme Court`s term in the early summer.

Tuesday`s hearing will be in effect, a full dressed rehearsal for the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Judge Michelle Childs, if President Obama nominates her to the Supreme Court at the end of February, which is the timetable that the president announced today for his big decision.

[22:05:14]

The hearing will also show us whether any other nominee the president might choose will be subjected to in these Senate judiciary committees. Judge Childs might be able to actually win the Supreme Court job next Tuesday by delivering a stellar performance and what will be her second confirmation hearing as a federal judge.

The other person at the top of the White House list to replace Justice Breyer has already been through two Senate confirmations. First, as a district court judge nominated by President Obama, and last year as a nominee, by President Biden for the Washington, D.C., certain court of appeals. This is the same appeals court. That President Biden has nominated Judge Childs to join, the list of black women who are fully qualified to be Supreme Court justices is very, very long.

That long list includes lawyers, law professors, judges all over the country. But because the United States Senate is dysfunctional, extremely dysfunctional, the list of possible nominees who could be confirmed by a 50/50 Senate is perhaps the shortest list we`ve ever had.

The Senate is no place -- it`s four realists you know how to count votes. It will be no more important vote count in the Senate in the first two years of the Biden presidency and the vote on President Biden`s first Supreme Court nominee.

At Justice Breyer`s retirement announcement today, President Biden said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity. That person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. It is long overdue in my opinion. I made that commitment during that campaign for president and I will keep that commitment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: No president has ever known more about the Senate confirmation process than Joe Biden. Joe Biden used to run confirmation hearings for Supreme Court judges when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. White House chief of staff Ron Klain served as counsel to that committee and has guided the Supreme Court nominees through the confirmation process. They are both Senate realists. They both want to eliminate risk, any risk of any kind in these single most important choice Joe Biden will make since he took the oath of office as president.

And the way to do that, the way to eliminate risk is to choose someone who has already been confirmed by the Senate, preferably someone who has been confirmed by the current senate. The only person on the White House list who feels that description is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson who won her Senate confirmation to the circuit court of appeals last year, with 53 votes, including three Republican votes, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski.

Last night on this program, Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina made a strong case for the conformability of his favorite for the Supreme Court, South Carolina federal judge, Michelle Childs, especially after James Clyburn has successfully lobbied successfully apparently both Republican South Carolina senators to support Judge Childs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): It`s big time supporter of Michelle Childs, Lindsey supports her. Tim Scott supports her. I`ve had discussions with both of them.

I would not have gone as far as I did with her without talking to those two senators and I`ve talked to them about Michelle, and they respect her. She has tremendous bipartisan support. I`ve talked to judges all over this country, and they would say to me she is the best.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Until relatively recently you didn`t have to be a very good vote counter when dominating Supreme Court justices. Unanimous votes in the Senate were not unusual. The single most conservative Supreme Court justice of the 20th century Antonin Scalia was confirmed by the Senate 98 to nothing in 1986.

[22:10:07]

And in those days, everyone in the Senate believed that the only reason to vote against a nominee for the Supreme Court was that the nominee was plainly and qualified to be a judge, early in the 21st century when Chuck Schumer was still a relatively junior member of the Senate, he publicly mused about the possibility, just the possibility of voting against a Supreme Court nominee, simply because he disagreed with the nominees opinions, and that was considered heresy in the Senate when Chuck Schumer first mentioned it.

Now? It is the norm in the Senate. The vote for Joe Biden`s nominee for the Supreme Court is going to be very, very close vote. And so, it is extremely unlikely Joe Biden will take a chance of nominating someone who has not been through the Senate confirmation process, like for example, Judge Leondra Kruger of the California Senator.

There is no doubt about Judge Kruger`s judicial brilliance and qualifications, having served as a Supreme Court clerk and as an acting deputy solicitor general in the Obama administration. But she has never felt the pressure of a Senate judiciary confirmation hearing for a federal judgeship.

And we have already seen how much particular experience like that matters to Joe Biden. The reason I was always close to certain that candidate Joe Biden was going to choose Kamala Harris as his nominee is because Kamala Harris had experience on the presidential campaign trail.

I asked Joe Biden about that in Michigan the day before he won the Michigan primary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: In your experience, and I`m in your lifetime of political experience as watching this choice made. Do you think that it`s important that if the someone who actually has been tested on that presidential debate stage the way, I assume, Barack Obama thought it was very important that is vice president show candidate had already been tested at that level as you were standing beside him on the debate stage?

BIDEN: I think that`s a very important factor.

O`DONNELL: Very important factor. And we`re going to leave it at that today? OK.

BIDEN: Yes.

By the way, there`s a number of women as well tested in other ways. Not on the debate stage but in their states. It`s that they`ve been national figures. So, you know, but, yes, I think that`s an important factor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: That is the way Joe Biden thinks. Joe Biden knew how strong a vice president from candidate Kamala Harris would be because he saw her on the presidential debate stage just as Barack Obama saw Joe Biden to sit on the president stage before choosing him as vice presidential nominee.

If we were back in the days of unanimous votes for Supreme Court justices, Joe Biden could have a much, much longer list of possible Supreme Court nominees then he probably does tonight.

Joe Biden does not approach Supreme Court Senate confirmation hearings as an optimist. He approaches them as a realist. The only optimist in this story is the justice who is retiring from the Supreme Court.

Today, Justice Breyer cited George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and the references name made to the Democratic government of the United States being an experiment and an ongoing experiment in self government. Justice Breyer said that this is what he tells students about that experiment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER, SUPREME COURT: It`s us, but it`s you, it`s that next generation. The one after that, my grandchildren and their children. They will determine whether the experiment still works, and of course, I`m an optimist and I am pretty sure it will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Leading off our discussion tonight is Melissa Murray, professor of law at New York University. She served as a law clerk for Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. She is an MSNBC contributor.

Also with us, Michele Bratcher Goodwin, chancellor professor at law at the University of California-Irvine. She has submitted amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court.

And I would like to begin by saying that both of my guest tonight, both of our guests would be on the very long list of qualified women for the United States Supreme Court tonight if this process wasn`t so ruined by the current dysfunction of the United States Senate.

[22:15:15]

And, Professor Murray, let me begin with you. And I don`t want to lock this discussion in to the Senate realist parameters that I just described for the audience. And I`d like to hear what you would consider and what you would want the president to be considered ideally without worrying about what the vote count is.

MELISSA MURRAY, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think in order to think about who should be nominated to fill this seat, you have to think about the fact that this is likely a court whose ideological fracture is not going to change with the addition of this new justice. Nevertheless, we will have a liberal wing of three justices that will be composed entirely of women, two of whom will be women of color.

As the court faces some of its biggest challenges, the fallout from whatever they choose to do with Roe v. Wade this spring, the affirmative action case moving forward, I think what is needed is somebody on the liberal ring who can join the other two, and being forceful voices of dissent, because that`s going to be the realistic goal going forward.

They do not have enough to make a majority. It is unlikely that they will be able to persuade their conservative colleagues to join them. They will be in dissent. And the question is, can they write dissents for the ages, the kind of the dissents that eventually in time, become majority opinions.

O`DONNELL: Professor Goodwin, if you could have a few minutes with the president, what would you tell him about what you would hope for in this choice?

MICHELE BRATCHER GOODWIN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE LAW PROFESSOR: Let`s be clear. In his choice, we have the potential to have a justice on the court, who is familiar with the African American community. Deeply, intimately, who is committed to justice, who has equal temperament, somebody who is committed to the rule of law, reads law well.

And we haven`t had since Justice Thurgood Marshall on the court, somebody who is very clearly able to articulate a case and commitment to issues that affect the African American community who happens to be African American. There are justices on the court who have been very clear in their compassion, in their commitment to civil liberties and civil rights and how they affect everybody, including African Americans.

But we haven`t had a justice on the court since Justice Thurgood Marshall who represents us in a way that is unapologetic, let us say.

O`DONNELL: Professor Murray, I want to go back to your time in law school, perhaps shortly thereafter, where you`re looking at the United States Supreme Court and there is no woman on the court who looks like you. What did that feel like, and what were your thoughts then about the prospects or how long we might wait before we can see a black woman on the Supreme Court?

MURRAY: Let`s be very clear about this, Lawrence, that was every day in law school, because during the time I was in law school, there was only about 20 years ago, there were very few fabric in American women, professors, in the ranks of the top law schools, or even in the ranks of all of the law schools. We are very much a small minority.

Professor Godwin and I have known each other for years, that`s how close the sorority is. Not being able to see yourself represented in the institutions that you occupy is very -- it`s difficult. To imagine yourself to be a law professor but have no models on which to mold yourself, that`s incredibly difficult.

I`ve seen institutions like the Supreme Court, ones that have an important impact on the lives of so many people, including women of color, to not see your own views represented there with some of the most important issues affecting you are decided, that I think is absolutely untenable in a democracy like ours.

O`DONNELL: Professor Goodwin, the same question, when you`re in law school, every law student is thinking about the Supreme Court pretty much every day. You don`t see anyone on the court, no women on the court who looks like you. What was that like and what was it like when you heard Joe Biden say during the presidential campaign that he would nominate a Black woman to the court?

GOODWIN: Well, this has been a glaring absence to the Supreme Court, and there`s been a lot of vitriol in the last day or two about the possibility of naming a Black movement to the Supreme Court. And I would urge people to not be distracted by the game and by some of that which is even lean into a bit of racism in terms of presumption and the inflammatory rhetoric that`s been associated with it.

[22:20:09]

But like Professor Murray, when I entered into law school, there was one African American woman and the faculty. When I began teaching in law school, I was the only African American on that faculty. On the second law school faculty that I taught on, there are two African Americans who were on the faculty.

And so, we are still at a time at which we are following that long arc of justice that Dr. Martin Luther King talked about so long ago. We are getting there, but to just give you an example, when I was in law school, 30 years ago, it was common that women were not referenced in cases and that the standard language was a reasonable man standard. In fact, it seems to be a pushback that some of us did, which was to say, whatever reasonable person or reasonable woman, and that was seen as heresy because the tradition had simply been so normalized about men.

So this is a refreshing addition that we`ve heard over the last day or so, and I think that for many people, they will be inspired by what this represents.

O`DONNELL: Professor Murray, what should we be looking for in next week `s remarkable under the circumstances, scheduled confirmation hearing for Judge Childs?

MURRAY: I think this is going to be, as you say, an audition. I think the Biden administration as you have suggested will be looking for someone who is easily confirmable. So, I think they`re going to be looking for whether or not she makes it through this confirmation and good order.

The D.C. Circuit is the court that is often talked about as the second most important cord in the United States after the Supreme Court. Many of the current justices who are on the court right now came from the D.C. Circuit.

But Judge Childs has a different education background, that adds much needed diversity. She is a graduate of the University of South Florida and South Carolina`s law school. And of course, most of the justices in the current courtyard graduates of Ivy League institutions with one exception, Amy Coney Barrett.

So, not only would she add racial and gender diversity, she would diversity of that experience and she would be a justice would come almost directly from a district court with a short stint in between perhaps at the circuit court.

O`DONNELL: Professor Goodwin, quickly before our break, how is important is it that the president consider breaking this Harvard-Yale lock on the Supreme Court?

GOODWIN: It`s incredibly important because the supreme justices are meant to deliberate in a way that is representative of all Americans, and most Americans don`t attend Ivy League institutions, and it`s a court that has been narrowing social economic status in terms of where the justices have been educated, and even in terms of the religious background.

We have to do a much better job at the Supreme Court, and I would also suggest at our lower court levels to. So it would be refreshing to see President Biden, as he has already done with some of his other picks, seek to diversify the court. And I would say that also includes with experience, people who are not necessarily coming from prosecutorial lens or having worked for large law firms representing businesses and corporations.

O`DONNELL: Professor Melissa Murray and Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin, thank you very much for joining us tonight. It looks like we will be on the subject for a couple of months. So please, keep your 10:00 p.m. slots available for us. We would like to hear from you some more.

Thank you very much.

GOODWIN: Thanks for having me.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

And coming up, the front runner for the next Supreme Court nomination has been very helpful to the January 6th committee`s investigation, simply by following the law and the constitution.

Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee, joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:28:18]

O`DONNELL: The January Six Committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol obtained hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump tried to hide from the committee, thanks to a ruling by a three judge panel of the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that included Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson who, tonight, is at the top of the short list of possible candidates to replace Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Judge Jackson is the only candidate for the Supreme Court who has ruled on matters involving investigations of the Trump administration.

Last year, Judge Jackson wrote the opinion that required White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to the House Judiciary Committee, and overruling claims in executive privilege. Judge Jackson wrote, presidents are not kings. They do not have subjects bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.

Unanimous circuit court opinion that allowed the January Six Committee to obtain the record of the Trump White House says, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden`s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the political branches over these documents. Both branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the committee`s inquiry into an attack on the legislative branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power.

[22:29:57]

O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He`s a member of the January 6 Committee and served as the lead impeachment manager in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

He is the author of the new book, "Unthinkable", and importantly for our purposes tonight he is a professor of Constitutional Law. I don`t know whether I should call you Congressman or Professor Raskin tonight.

But I am eager to get your reaction to where things stand tonight with Justice Breyer`s formal announcement today, the president`s promise to make a decision within the month of February and possibly on to Senate confirmation hearings at some point in March.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well good evening, Lawrence. Thank you for having me. It`s definitely an exciting moment. It always is when we can put someone new on the Supreme Court. I would hope this process moves as quickly as the process did for Amy Coney Barrett when she was added to the Supreme Court. That was a matter of weeks for the whole thing to happen.

So I`m hoping that we`re not going to run into, you know, a whole sequence of roadblocks and obstruction from the GOP.

And you know, in terms of the decision that you were just citing of course, being part of that decision hardly put Judge Jackson out on some kind of legal limb or in the vanguard of legal consciousness. I mean I think a dozen judges all decided that way, I think only Clarence Thomas ends up on the other side with that. It`s just so obvious when you have the Congress and the current president of the United States, the executive branch weighing in to say there`s no reason to invoke executive privilege.

And all you`ve got is a former president who`s trying to cover-up his involvement in insurrection and trying to stop it and not even offering any kind of legal justification for that.

So it was a good thing she did. And she`s been a very strong judge. But I don`t think that isolates her in anyway, you know, because she was part of that.

O`DONNELL: If she finds herself in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, surely Senator Cruz will go after those particular opinions but as you say they are backed up with virtually unanimously by the Supreme Court.

M1: Yes, I mean Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh voted that way. I mean it would have been an active really radical right-wing traditional activism to concoct compelling interest for Donald Trump when the majority found he did not even advance any interest, much less a compelling one that would override an agreement between the legislative and executive branches that there was no warrant for invocation of the executive privilege, which of course is an exceptional remedy anyway.

I mean the basic rule of our courts is that the sovereign gets the evidence it wants. The rule of law depends on that and of course, you know, that`s why the January 6 Committee has been winning all of these cases against the various coup plotters and insurrectionists who think that somehow Donald Trump can wave a magic wand the way he used to do and prevent them from having to testify before our committee.

O`DONNELL: At this point do you have what you need from the courts? Has the January 6 Committee been backed up by the courts adequately?

RASKIN: Well, you know, the overwhelming number of witnesses have gotten the right idea from what the courts have done, and they are cooperating and testifying, right.

I`d say we have a couple of lingering problems. I mean one is that there are some witnesses who have clearly material fact-based testimony that they need to render or turn over to us who think that they can just invoke the Fifth Amendment promiscuously for everything.

They can come in and answer 800 questions with the Fifth Amendment. I`ve never seen anything like it. That`s not how the Fifth Amendment is to be used. The Fifth Amendment is only to be invoked when you believe that the response would be self-incriminating, but you can`t simply say I don`t want to have anything to do with this investigation, even if it wouldn`t incriminate you in any right.

So that`s one thing we need to clear up and then the other, of course, is those witnesses who are just refusing even to show up or to be part of it. I mean Steve Bannon is one of them.

And so we have to use those mechanism of criminal contempt and civil contempt to make it clear that everybody owes the sovereign his or her honest and truthful testimony.

[22:34:50]

RASKIN: So we`ve got most of everything we wanted from the courts but that`s not to say that we`re not going to end up going to the courts in specific cases to compel people to participate or else to advance a valid constitutional privilege and not a phony one.

O`DONNELL: Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.

RASKIN: The pleasure is mine.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

Coming up, President Biden got huge economic news today -- good news today. And the Affordable Care Act that he helped President Obama pass just had its best enrollment period ever.

Economic adviser to President Biden Jared Bernstein joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: The economic data has just been published to show that 2021, last year, was the strongest year for the U.S. economy since 1984.

[22:39:55]

O`DONNELL: The U.S. economy grew at 6.9 percent annual rate by the end of 2021. This is significantly better than analysts expectations. Prior to that in a statement, President Biden claimed credit for the record economic growth saying, "This is no accident. My economic strategy is creating good jobs for Americans, rebuilding our manufacturing and strengthening our supply chains here at home to help make our companies more competitive."

And joining us now is Jared Bernstein. He`s a member of President Biden`s Council of Economic Advisers. Thank you very much for joining us tonight, really appreciate it.

You have good news to share about the growth rate in the American economy but as we know the economy is more than one statistic. Is the growth rate - - is the price of this growth rate inflation?

JARED BERNSTEIN, WHITE HOUSE COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS: Not in a sense that this growth rate is adjusted for inflation, that is, we just achieved the strongest GDP growth in 2021 in almost 40 years as you said in your introduction. And that is adjusting for inflation. That is a real growth rate.

Now also, in the background of that very fast GDP growth, is one of the tightest labor markets this country has ever seen. Unemployment fell faster last year than it ever has on record. Those data go all the way back to 1948. Over six billion jobs created.

If I were sitting here talking to you a year ago, which by the way, I probably was, we would`ve been looking at 800,000 claims on unemployment insurance. This morning we learned that there`s something around 260,000.

All of those kinds of statistics I say, not just to flood you with numbers, but to make the connection between a strong growing economy on the GDP side with that growth reaching working families to an extremely tight labor market.

O`DONNELL: Who are the beneficiaries of this growth rate, because it`s one of those numbers where it`s a big macro number.

BERNSTEIN: Yes.

O`DONNELL: But some people could be out there saying gee, I don`t feel this at all.

BERNSTEIN: Yes. Now it`s a great point. I mean (INAUDIBLE) started talking about GDP, they recently say wait a second -- I don`t eat GDP, I don`t drive in GDP, I don`t pay rent with GDP.

And the fact is again the connection there that is so critical, Lawrence, is the tight job market which disproportionately is providing its benefits to those in the bottom half.

I just saw some new numbers today. If you look at the wage growth of people in the bottom half of the job market, their pay is actually growing faster than workers at the top, now that is obviously opposite to the way it`s been in periods where job markets have been more slack, where they`ve been less tight.

And the reason for that is that when job markets get as tight as they are now, and we actually have about the highest number of job openings on record. In fact, more job openings than are even are unemployed people.

When you get to that level of labor demand, workers have a lot more bargaining clout. I have to tell you, that is at the core of Biden-omics. Strong bargaining clout so we ensure that working people benefit from economic growth.

And we also have inflation issues that we should get into. They are out there, too. But at the same time against the backdrop of that inflation is the fastest growing economy in 40 years with the tightest labor market in generations.

O`DONNELL: And what about the record enrollment for the Affordable Care Act? How does that affect workers in the economy?

BERNSTEIN: It really achieves one of the key goals of the Biden-Harris administration, which is to ensure that health care is a right, not privilege and that it`s accessible and affordable. And that occurs through a record breaking 14.5 million people who signed up for 2022 health care coverage for the marketplace exchanges of the Affordable Care Act.

Now, that includes just under six million people who have newly gained coverage. So the uninsured rate actually fell over the past year from about 10 to about 9 percent. So these are critically important gains again for the folks who need them the most.

O`DONNELL: Jared Bernstein, thank you very much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

BERNSTEIN: My pleasure.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

And coming up, Caroline Randall Williams returns to THE LAST WORD to discuss the historic choice President Biden`s is about to make in his first nomination to the United States Supreme Court. Caroline Randall Williams joins us next.

[22:44:58]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: Last night South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn told us the story of how he had been urging candidate Joe Biden to publicly pledge to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. Some of the Biden`s campaign staff were opposed to the candidate making that announcement. They were opposed to it for tactical reasons.

And finally, during a commercial break in the South Carolina presidential debate, right there on TV, James Clyburn told Joe Biden about the feelings of his most important focus group -- his three daughters.

[22:49:43]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): I see (ph) it with Joe Biden, it`s what I`ve been hearing from them and their friends. I talk to them a lot. And they were telling me that there was this undercurrent out there that had to do with the feeling that African-American women were not given their just due from the Democratic Party. And one of the things they brought up to me was the Supreme Court.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: And after that backstage conversation during a commercial break in the presidential debate, Joe Biden went back out on the debate stage and said this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When we talked about the Supreme Court, I`m looking forward to making sure there is a black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure that in fact (INAUDIBLE).

O`DONNELL: And the rest is on its way to becoming history. Joining us now is Caroline Randall Williams -- poet, essayist, and educator. She is writer in residence at Vanderbilt University.

Caroline, thank you very much for joining us tonight. And this TV drama called Supreme Court confirmation, which in TV terms began on that debate stage in South Carolina, is about a much longer story than that that has been with us for quite some time.

And I`ve been eager this week to get your reflections on where we stand tonight in that larger story.

CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: Well, thank you so much for having me, Lawrence. It`s great to be back. This is terrifically personal for me on so many levels. And being here -- when James Clyburn speaks, first of all, you`re staggered by his gravitas and his competence, and I feel this tremendous gratitude that he gave voice to this concern of black women that we do feel.

You are speaking to a young woman who is the great granddaughter of a man called Avon Williams whose sister, Norma Erica Williams, gave birth to a man that we are all familiar with called Thurgood Marshall. My grandfather Thurgood Marshall were first cousins. My grandfather`s first job as a young lawyer was working for his cousin, Thurgood.

And I grew up thinking about that legacy from the vantage of coming up underneath family photos and portraits, and thinking about why there has been such a space between what my relative was able to accomplish and then a repeat of that wonderful accomplishment.

And I love that Joe Biden is a white man who followed a black man into the oval office and then when he stepped into it on his own terms, he brought a black woman with him.

And he has made good on those promises and those actions in that stance from the moment that he, you know, took the stage with Barack Obama.

And I think that it`s a moment of reckoning for this country to see if their one half can work the other half have the right thing and get the right thing done.

Black women in America has been voting with the popular vote of America for the last five presidents. We`ve only gotten three of those five into the office and that`s an untenable -- yet another untenable three-fifths compromise in my opinion.

And I think that having a black woman represent the judiciary branch in the Supreme Court would be a fortification of my faith in democracy`s capacity to heal itself, even after all of these radical ruptures that we have been witnessing over the last, you know, five, six years.

O`DONNELL: It`s one of those moments that now that it comes, the first thing you can feel about it is, why did it take so long and so was it something conflicted in the way that we feel about this? Good that it`s happening, but can it really be 2022 where we are sitting here watching this happen for the first time?

WILLIAMS: I mean my answer is, sure it can. I think that the arc of history is slow. It does bend (ph) with justice but it`s real slow.

I mean think about this Lawrence, we still has never had a black person hold either of the two highest offices in the land who had a black mother, I mean thinking about black women in that condition. You know, being born in this country of a black female body does not get you to the presidency or the vice presidency yet.

And that is something that I still as a black women think about. But at the very least, we can think that it gets you into the Supreme Court. We can think that it gets you into the halls of the Senate and of Congress.

[22:54:43]

WILLIAMS: We have a long, long way to go. And the work is hard and wild. And you know the Republicans, if they want to argue about how it`s fraught to make this an identity politics expression well, they had three chances to pick a person of color from their side. They placed three white judges on that court.

And so, you know, the Democrats are going to do the right thing as usual and take the side of attempting to make the bodies that represent the American people look more like the scope, breadth and depth of the American people.

O`DONNELL: Caroline Randall Williams, thank you very much for joining us as we begin what is this historic journey of covering this Senate confirmation.

We really appreciate it.

WILLIAMS: Great to be here Lawrence. Goodnight.

O`DONNELL: Thank you. Tonight`s LAST WORD is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: Time for tonight`s LAST WORD.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Justice Breyer`s law clerks and his colleagues that`s (INAUDIBLE) know, describe him and has worked (ph) his desire to learn more, his kindness to those around him and his optimism for the promise of our country.

[22:59:58]

BIDEN: And he has patiently sought common ground and build consensus so he can bring the court together. I think he`s a model public servant in a time of great division in this time.

Justice Breyer has been everything his country could have asked of him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: President Biden gets tonight`s LAST WORD.

"THE 11TH HOUR" starts now.

END