Summary
Senate Republicans blocked debate on voting rights bill. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon is interviewed. Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California is interviewed. Joe Biden is the most popular president since Barack Obama. A Gallup poll released today finds President Biden with a 56 percent approval rating. President Biden`s ideas are even more popular than he is. It`s election night in New York City after voters had their first experience of ranked choice voting for the mayor of New York City and district attorney. A difficult election is underway in Africa`s second largest country by population. Ethiopians began voting yesterday, but some areas of the country, including the northern region of Tigray have not even scheduled the vote yet.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.
And you know it`s election night in -- well, if not in America, in New York City, because Steve Kornacki`s gong tot be here this hour. We`re going to get to see him again. I haven`t seen him in a while. That`s going to be really fun.
Also with us, Rachel, leading off is Senator Jeff Merkley, who is the Senate`s leading expert on the so-called filibuster rule, which now becomes all the important after today`s vote.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Excellent, excellent. I`m not sure I`ve ever seen Steve Kornacki and his khakis as work on a ranked choice voting election. So I`m very much looking forward watching him break this down.
O`DONNELL: You know, Rachel, I started to write a script about the ranked choice thing, and I did a couple of shots at it and I just went, I`m leaving that to Kornacki. It`s just going to be, and here`s Steve Kornacki, and go ahead and explain ranked choice. I just -- it`s tough.
MADDOW: When it comes -- from the point of view of the voter I always thought it should be called one, two, three voting. In this case, it will be one, two, three, four, five voting. From the point of voter, you don`t have to do anything that hard. The hard part to explain is how it gets tabulated, like candidate kicked, ranked choice moves up, retabulated, like the counting the vote part of it is hard to explain.
What you do as a voter isn`t that hard. But I bet Kornacki can explain even that part --
O`DONNELL: It -- it is exactly. It`s the counting the vote spot in the script where I just gave up, and you can watch that on TV later this hour. You`ll see the point, ranked choice. They get too choose their top five. Then -- here`s Steve. It`s going to go just like that.
(LAUGHTER)
MADDOW: Excellent. Now he knows to be ready in the middle of your sentence. Very good.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, yeah, thank you, Rachel.
MADDOW: Thanks, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
What we saw in the United States Senate today was a show performed for two senators, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, brought to voting rights bill for a vote just to show Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema that bipartisanship is hopeless in the United States Senate on voting rights and so much more.
Joe Manchin got an agreement with Chuck Schumer that the Democrats would adopt the Manchin compromise version of the bill, and still, Joe Manchin could not get a single Republican to go along with that. And so, the Republicans won today by preventing the bill from reaching the necessary 60-vote threshold to proceed.
Senator Manchin released this statement today saying, quote: Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues refuse to allow debate on this legislation despite the reasonable changes made to focus the bill on the core issues facing our democracy.
As I have said before, the right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy, and protecting that right should not be about party or politic s. I remain committed to finding a bipartisan pathway forward because the future of our democracy is worth it.
After the vote, reporters asked Joe Manchin once again about the possibility of him supporting reform of the Senate`s so-called filibuster rule.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): No, guys, listen, I think you all know where I stand on the filibuster.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: I think you all know where I stand on the filibuster. Well, no, Senator Manchin, we do not.
In one of Joe Manchin`s first act acts as a United States senator, he actually voted to eliminate what we saw today. On January 27, 2011, Senator Joe Manchin voted in favor of resolution which he cosponsored, which he proudly then said in a press release would have, quote, eliminated the filibuster on motions to proceed to a debate on substance of a bill. The vote was 44 in favor, and 51 opposed.
Joe Manchin was one of the minority of senators ten years ago who was this favor of completely eliminating the 60-vote threshold on motions to proceed to debate which is what the vote was about today. The vote wasn`t about to bill today. It was just about, can we debate the bill?
When Joe Manchin cast that vote ten years ago against the current Senate rule, he explained his vote in a press release saying, West Virginians deserve a government that works for them, and they are understandably frustrated with the way things get done or don`t in Washington.
And at the end of his first year in the United States Senate on December 13, 2011, Senator Joe Manchin sponsored another bill to make another change in the Senate rules on the 60-vote threshold. Senator Manchin said that rule change would, quote, fix the filibuster. If senators want to halt action on a bill, they must take to the floor and hold it through sustained debate, and Senator Manchin repeated his objective to, quote, end filibusters on motions to proceed to debate.
Ten years ago, Joe Manchin could see with the clear eyes of a new senator just how broken the Senate rules were and how they were being exploited. And Joe Manchin recently said similar things in a private meeting, comments that are leaked to the press and indicated Joe Manchin is open to changing the 60-vote threshold rules.
Joe Manchin was right ten years ago. He was right ten years ago when he was the leader -- the leader of a movement to change the Senate rules.
Joe Manchin was right that we should never, ever, ever allow filibusters on the motion to proceed to have a debate. But now that almost every single Democratic senator agrees with Joe Manchin on that, Joe Manchin may not agree with Joe Manchin about that, because ten years is such a long time in the United States Senate now. Ten years ago was a long time ago. So long ago that Joe Manchin might be forgetting what he supported himself ten years ago, what he said himself ten years ago about what happened today.
He predicted this ten years ago. That the Senate could be dysfunctional if you allowed votes like this on simply the motion to proceed to debate. Ten years ago was a long time ago. Ten years ago Donald Trump was still a TV clown and a con man running frauds off Trump University, and Mitch McConnell ten years ago was completely in favor of the Voting Rights Act.
The last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized, it passed the Senate 98-0, with Mitch McConnell voting to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. And then the Republican appointees on the United States Supreme Court got to it and struck down the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which Mitch McConnell had supported.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who`s in her first term as a senator actually demonstrated in an op-ed in "The Washington Post" about the 60-vote threshold that she knows close to nothing about the history of that Senate rule and how it`s been used and abused. If the staff wrote it they should be fired because it`s full of falsehoods, outright falsehoods in an imaginary world in which bills passed by 51 votes in the Senate will be repealed when the Senate power shifts even though she couldn`t get examples of that happening.
Obamacare passed with 51 votes. And eventually, Republicans tried to repeal it with 51 votes and they failed. Senator Sinema`s op-ed piece said that Medicaid could be changed drastically by Republicans if we got rid of the protective 60-vote threshold that protects Medicaid and Medicare so well.
She obviously has absolutely no idea that there`s nothing stopping Republicans from repealing the existence of Medicaid and Medicare and they can do that with 51 votes in a reconciliation bill any time they wanted to come up with those 51 votes.
Senator Sinema might be much smarter than her public comments on this issue, but the op-ed piece published in her name and possibly written by her staff, it`s the single most historically and procedurally ignorant entry on the Senate rules discussion so far.
And when asked about it by NBC`s Garrett Haake today on the day when Republicans used the Senate rules to refuse to allow just a debate of voting rights, Senator Sinema was speechless, literally speechless, and speechless in the worst possible way. She actually laughed about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Senator, what do you say to Democrats who are disappointed by your op-ed about the filibuster feeling maybe they could still change your mind?
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: The Democrats fighting for voting rights on the Senate floor were fighting against a Republican hypocrisy, perfectly framed by Georgia`s Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): Surely some of my Republican friends believe in this chamber we should be able to debate about voting rights. After all, voting rights are preservative of all other rights and what could be more hypocritical and cynical than invoking minority rights in the Senate as a pretext for preventing debate about how to preserve minority rights in the society?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Tonight, President Biden issued a statement saying, the creed we shall overcome is a long time mainstay of the civil rights movement. By coming together, Democrats took the next step forward in this continuous struggle, not just on Capitol Hill, but across the country, and a step forward to honor all those who came before us, people of all races and ages who sacrificed and died to protect this sacred right.
I`ll have more to say on this next week, but let me be clear, this fight is far from over. Far from over. I have been engage in this work my whole career, and we are going to be ramping up our efforts to overcome again for the people for our very democracy.
Joining us now Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Senator Merkley. Really appreciate it.
SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR): Pleasure to be with you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: You have become the senate`s leading expert on this so-called filibuster rule, and it`s really the 60-vote threshold rule, which is technically a different thing from filibusters. And have you -- have you made progress to the point in presenting the case against it to your Democratic colleagues that we are down -- would you say we`re down to the point of Senators Sinema and Senator Manchin are the only ones left in coming to this agreement?
MERKLEY: Lawrence, let me present it this way. There`s been a social contract in the Senate that the majority does not run over the top of the minority. It`s very different from the House. That`s from the very beginning, 26 senators said, we can listen to each other and hear everyone out before we took a vote.
That was so successful that in 1805, when the rules were written, they got rid of the motion to close debate or call to question, because it was never needed because of this courtesy of listening to each other.
So when my colleagues talk about the importance of bipartisanship and their goal in support of sustaining the filibuster, what they`re referring to is this social contract that you don`t run over the top of the minority. They have a full chance to participate. They should have a chance to do amendments. The speeches should be heard. They should be able to delay to seek compromise.
But there`s another half of the social contract, which is ultimately, the minority cannot paralyze the Senate, cannot turn it into a deep freeze. And that is the half that Mitch McConnell has destroyed.
In the first six years I was in the Senate and Harry Reid was the majority leader, he suffered through 400 -- we all suffered through more than 400 of -- if you can call them filibusters, but essentially obstruction of the Senate to be able to go forward, and each obstruction requires a intervening date plus 30 hours of debate, which means a whole week is destroyed.
There aren`t 400 hours in a six-year or weeks -- in a -- in a six-year period. And so, it`s really like walking knee deep in mud.
So we have to come together as Democrats and first reach out to Republicans with the foundation that Joe Manchin laid out and some of the adjustments that we were talking about over the weekend and say, okay, you can see the text now. He hasn`t completely released -- maybe he has tonight, released the text. Go through it.
Another opportunity, come and join us. This should be, as Senators Sinema and Senator Manchin say, this should be bipartisan. These are fundamental values. This is the right of every American to vote.
This is stopping billionaires from buying elections with dark money. This is stopping gerrymandering that corrupts equal representation in the House of Representatives. This is ending conflicts of interest and corruption that means public servants aren`t serving the public. So, Republicans across the country embrace these core (ph) ideals. They support it overwhelmingly, 3-1.
And so, it`s only in the Senate and the House where we have Republicans saying, hey, we want to bail on these fundamental American protections and values and really the foundation of our republic.
So what has to happen now, if we`ll reach out the Republicans, hopefully, they will join us. Certainly, Manchin has a lot of good ideas on the table to support these core principles.
And then if they reject that, which we kind of anticipate that they will, then we`re going to have to be 50 Democrats coming together to say, we have a responsibility to save your nation, to save our Constitution, and we have to figure out how to complete the other half of the social contract.
No, we won`t run over the top of the Republicans. Yes, they`ll be able to participate. Yes, they`ll be able to debate. But in the end, they can`t paralyze the Senate and prevent us from protecting the fundamental values our nation has.
O`DONNELL: So, Senator, the question today is, did today`s show work for Joe Manchin and for Senator Sinema?
You saw Senator Sinema actually laughing about this today. I`m not sure anything`s going to work with her.
But -- and, by the way, I have not been a critic of Senator Sinema in any way whatsoever until I read her op-ed piece, which is the single most ignorant thing about the Senate I`ve ever seen a senator write and have their name on.
But do the Democrats believe that the show today to show Joe Manchin and show Senator Sinema that there is no Republican support, did it work?
MERKLEY: I think the stronger point today was to show that 50 Democrats were ready to debate and pursue the defense of voting rights and fundamental principles of democracy in America, and 50 Republicans, corrupted by power, were not willing to do so. We`re giving them another opportunity. We still hope they join us.
But then let`s note that in her as say that you refer to, Senator Sinema said, we need to have senators come together, debate the filibuster, share their concerns and their perspectives.
I take that as a vote of good faith that she, as others, are ready to come together and have this debate, share our his -- our knowledge of history, our knowledge of the Senate, our understanding of our responsibilities, and I think together if it comes to that, and Republicans will not join us, 50 senators are going to find a path. It`s too important to fail.
O`DONNELL: Senator Jeff Merkley, hope you`re right. Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
MERKLEY: I hope so.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
MERKLEY: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California. He previously served as the secretary of state of California.
And, Senator Padilla, in your role as secretary of state, of course, you`re closer to the voting process than most of the senators have ever been. What was -- where you do believe the Senate has to go now?
And, again, let`s be -- let`s be honest about this, this was a show for two Democrats. It was a show for Joe Manchin to prove to him what the Republicans could do. It was a show for Senator Sinema to prove to her what`s really happening here.
We`re going to have another show apparently on the John Lewis possibly voting rights bill, where the Republicans will also block that. And apparently some time after that, Senator Merkley says, then all 50 Democrats will get together and really try to convince these two to come along to change the rule.
SEN. ALEX PADILLA (D-CA): Well, Lawrence, good to be back with you.
First of all, let`s talk about what happened today. Was it disappointing? Yes. Was it shocking? No. And it`s certainly not over.
What we saw today was the American people saw one party stands up for fundamental voting rights for all Americans and one is scared of the debate. What are they scared of?
The reason I say it`s not shocking -- look how the year started, with a deadly insurrection of January 6th, and just a few weeks ago by not supporting an independent bipartisan commission to get to the root cause of that, Republicans clearly walked away from the notion of a peaceful transition of power, and now, they`re walking away from our fundamental right to vote.
So, yes, our democracy is on the line.
O`DONNELL: So democracy is on the line. We all hear the rhetoric coming from the Democrats. We hear the Senate Democrats saying this will not stand, all that talk.
But it all comes down to this rule. Everyone knows it`s down to the rule. It`s not down to policy, we get it. It`s down to the rule, and we know there are at least two Democrats standing in the way of changing the Senate rule and reducing that 60-vote threshold down to a majority vote threshold.
If that doesn`t happen, does that mean the Democrats will then just, okay, give up, the words didn`t mean anything, we tried, they wouldn`t change the rule?
PADILLA: No, failure is not an option here. So, we`re going to have to keep pressing and maybe, just maybe we can move more of my colleagues on the question of filibuster. If it was up to me, we`d eliminate it -- but at least creating a carve-out, an exception for saving our democracy.
I got to remain hopeful. Number one, if we were having this discussion a week ago, my colleague, Senator Manchin, wasn`t a yes on this bill. But we rolled up our sleeves, worked on it, we got him to yes. We got him to yes on this measure. Maybe there`s room for movement on the filibuster.
The other thing I remind us of is, look, you know, giving honor to those who marched, who fought, who died during the civil rights movement for the Civil Rights Act, for the Voting Rights Act, it didn`t happen in one attempt, but they kept at it until they got, you know, historic legislation and protections.
And we`re fighting for those same rights and protections today. So, we can`t afford to come up just because we came up a few votes short today.
O`DONNELL: Senator, as a new senator, I don`t know whether it`s encouraging or discouraging for you to discover that Joe Manchin ten years ago was voting exactly the opposite to the way he`s talking today about the so-called filibuster rule. Maybe it`s encouraging to know that you can do things and they`ll be forgotten by people ten years later. I`m not sure.
But Joe Manchin, ten years ago when he was in your position as a new senator, one of the first things he wanted to do was to -- and he voted to change this rule that blocked this vote -- that blocked this bill today.
O`DONNELL: Right. And, look, prior to him joining the Senate, Joe Manchin was a governor. Prior to him serving as governor, he was the state secretary of state. A few more years ago than myself, but at least he has familiarity with how important a fair electoral process is on the ground.
I`m going to hope we can continue to appeal to them, both on substance and on process, because 2022 is going to be here before we know it.
O`DONNELL: Senator Alex Padilla, who represents more people in the United States Senate than anyone other than himself and Senator Feinstein -- thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
PADILLA: Thank you, Lawrence. Have a good night.
O`DONNELL: Coming up, Jonathan Capehart and Norm Ornstein will join us on what`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is about the American people`s right to vote, unfettered. It is about their access to the right to vote in a meaningful way, because nobody is debating, I don`t believe, whether all Americans have to right to vote. The issue here is, is there actual access to the voting process, or is that being impeded?
And the bottom line is that the president and I are very clear, we support S.1. We support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and the fight is not over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: And joining us now, Norm Ornstein, congressional historian. He`s the emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and coauthor of "It`s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism." Also joining us, Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for "The Washington Post" and host of "THE SUNDAY SHOW WITH JONATHAN CAPEHART" right here on MSNBC.
Jonathan, as the vice president was walking away from those questions today, they kept asking, what`s next? What`s next? She did not turn and answer that.
And so, Jonathan, I turn to you -- what is next?
JONATHAN CAPEHART, MSNBC HOST, "THE SUNDAY SHOW": What is next, I think, is trying to figure out, is there a way to get both Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema to a place where they would at least entertain or even vote for a change in the filibuster rules to allow for a vote of the For the People Act?
Whether they`re able to do that especially given the op-ed that you have so thoroughly trashed that Senator Sinema wrote for "The Washington Post." but she made it clear, she`s not for doing anything with the filibuster. And so, I think right now, the battle will be in getting those two to come off their position.
And with Senator Manchin, as you laid out his history, there`s some wiggle room there. Then if you go back to the recording of him on a No Labels call, yeah, I`d be down for lowering it to 50 and tinkering. He`s more line for tinkering. It`s Senator Sinema.
So, I agree with the vice president. The battle is not over. Democrats should not give up.
O`DONNELL: Norm, Joe Manchin says many of the ludicrous sayings that Senator Sinema says, like that today, Joe Manchin once again said, the filibuster is needed to protect democracy. And it`s just -- it`s the most idiotic thing you can possibly say.
However, he`s got a much more interesting record. I had actually forgotten until today that ten years ago, he sponsored -- sponsored a rule change that he voted for when he was one of the smart 44 in the minority voting for that rules change on the 60-vote threshold.
Senator Sinema is another matter. There`s no evidence she`s ever had a clear thought about this.
NORM ORNSTEIN, CONGRESSIONAL HISTORIAN: And, you know, Lawrence, in our previous discussions, we noted that Sinema might be more of a problem because she was more of an enigma on this than Manchin. Much of the work that I`ve done, along with Al Franken, has been aimed at trying to get Joe Manchin to a place where he could say, we`re not ending or weakening the filibuster, we`re restoring it while we`re actually doing something that`s going to provide opportunities to vote and to put the burden on the minority where it belongs.
And I think the actions today demonstrating that not a single Republican actually deviated from this rhetoric of states` rights. This was -- I`d love to go back and look at what Richard Russell and James Eastland and George Wallace said about the sanctity of states and their own voting places, which parallels what the Republicans were saying today. Not a single one went along. Not one other than Senator Murkowski has gone along with Joe Manchin`s effort to get the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. So what comes next is to maybe have one or two or three more examples that show the Republicans are going to unite together to block everything that Democrats want that`s meaningful and that it`s time to bring about a change.
And hopefully you can have to same kind of argument with Sinema that we`re not going to get rid of it, ok, you`re right. We need to preserve something. Here`s the way we can do it.
And we have multiple options. The ones that Joe Manchin talked about on that call.
O`DONNELL: Yes, Jonathan. It turns out that Norm Ornstein`s been trying to get Joe Manchin to agree with what Joe Manchin thought ten years ago on this exact subject.
When you go back to ten years you find Mitch McConnell completely supporting the Voting Rights Act, joining the unanimous vote in the senate in the last time it was reauthorized, reauthorized for 25 years. Mitch McConnell voted for it.
And so wo what you`re seeing here is a changed universe in the senate where something about the Senate has to change if there`s going to be any progress.
JONATHAN CAPEHART, MSNBC HOST: Right. And I actually think senator Manchin did the whole process, actually, a favor by unexpectedly putting out his compromise. And I`m going to disagree a little bit with Norm here. It wasn`t just Democratic priorities that were in that bill. There were Republican priorities in that bill, i.e., voter ID.
These folks have spent decades saying we must have voter ID, so Manchin says, ok, here it is, and they vote unanimously against it today.
And so what Manchin has done is put them in a box. He has revealed the lie that they even want to do anything in a bipartisan nature. Today`s vote shows that they absolutely do not. And it is all about power.
O`DONNELL: Jonathan Capehart, Norm Ornstein, thank you both for joining our discussion tonight.
And be sure to watch "PRIDE OF THE WHITE HOUSE", Jonathan Capehart`s conversation with LGBTQ members of the Biden White House, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
That`s Sunday at 10:00 p.m. -- 10:00 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.
Coming up, Joe Biden is the most popular president since Barack Obama. And Joe Biden`s proposals are even more popular than he is.
David Plouffe will join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Joe Biden is the most popular president since Barack Obama. A Gallup poll released today finds President Biden with a 56 percent approval rating. The president who lived in the White House between Barack Obama and Joe Biden never got even as high as 50 percent in the approval rating.
President Biden`s ideas are even more popular than he is. A Monmouth University poll finds 68 percent of Americans support President Biden`s infrastructure plan. 66 percent of Americans support the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that has already been passed by the House of Representatives.
Today Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said that they believe a bipartisan agreement on the framework of a police reform bill that would need 60 votes in the Senate could be reached by the end of the week.
Steve Ricchetti is a counselor to the president, who has decades of experience in the White House negotiations with the Senate, beginning in the Clinton White House followed by the Obama White House. And today Steve Ricchetti met with a bipartisan group of senators that included 11 Republicans who realized just how popular the Biden infrastructure plan is.
Those senators are developing a compromise version of the infrastructure bill that could clear the 60-vote threshold in the senate.
The White House has former senators serving as president and vice president. Two of the most experienced senate strategists that any White House has ever had in Steve Ricchetti and White House chief of staff Ron Klain. But the Senate remains the biggest roadblock to the Biden agenda.
Joining us now, someone who was on the inside of the Obama White House legislative battles, David Plouffe, former campaign manager and White House senior adviser to President Barack Obama. He is an MSNBC political analyst.
And David, from your old spot in the White House, watching what happened in the Senate today, what happens next, and do you fear -- because you have a good feel for voters` reaction to this stuff -- do you fear Democratic voters` impatience with this process that is going on in the Senate, which is clearly some sort of performance art for Joe Manchin and Senator Sinema to prove to them that the Republicans really are what they say they are?
DAVID PLOUFFEE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, maybe, Lawrence. You know the Senate very well, so this is just what it is. But now Sinema and Manchin have the commission (ph) structure, which is so important. If people have commission structure, do they have offerings to do something a little bit differently than they were saying previously?
And so now with unified Republican opposition -- listen, we should get rid of the filibuster entirely. The Republican Party is not an opposition party anymore. It`s a cult that`s basically bent on destroying democracy so they can achieve power that they never relinquished (ph).
Now, these are not normal times. So we -- the Democrats should use all the power they have right now to do all they could (INAUDIBLE).
But where we may be headed is a carve out. Certainly Mitch McConnell changed the rules to allow Supreme Court justices to be confirmed with 50 votes. Surely democracy and republic-saving legislation, you could find a way to do a carve out.
And now I think Manchin and Sinema have the commission started to say, we did all we could, particularly Manchin who put out a proposal that had voter ID to say, this isn`t on the level. So now we have to move to a change in Senate rules.
Policing and infrastructure, that`s great. My guess is those are the only areas the Biden White House will get Senate Republican support. Well, if they do, that`s wonderful.
But you have to know that everything else -- immigration, voting rights, tax changes, more investment in child care -- there will be no Republican senators for that. So you have to operate accordingly (ph) in my view.
O`DONNELL: Do you think -- I mean that meeting Steve Ricchetti had today would be a big deal in a normal world where you`ve got 11 Republicans in the room working on a bill -- that`s clearly more than you`re going to need for the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
But won`t Mitch McConnell at some point pull at least five of them back from that negotiation? They`ll find something in the final version of the bill that they don`t like? Because I just don`t see how Mitch McConnell can allow Joe Biden to have an infrastructure bill in any form since it is so popular and would help Joe Biden`s support so much.
PLOUFFE: It would be surprising. Mitch McConnell certainly is a place where good ideas go to die. But I do think there may be something where McConnell and other Republicans (INAUDIBLE) when they criticized for not working with Biden, can say no, no, some of our colleagues were there when they were on policing reform. Some of them were there on infrastructure. So there`s something in it for them as well.
So I`d be surprised on infrastructure if McConnell let`s them go all the way. But you can see the argument where then they can say on everything else, you know, there`s too much tax raising (ph). There`s too much granting of healthcare. There`s too much voting reform.
We`re not going to do any of that. But we were there on policing reform and infrastructure, which again, would be a good thing. But I think you have to look at this entire path, you can understand -- that`s what they`re up to.
Again, I would be surprised if McConnell gives them that long of a leash but I could see a scenario where he might.
O`DONNELL: Let me go back to what concerns Democrats should have in the Senate, in the White House now, about voter frustration because they`re watching these things happen, and they`re watching, you know, Chuck Schumer make that same speech over and over again that we will not allow this to stand, and they don`t see any way in which the Democrats can get around the roadblock in the Senate?
PLOUFFE: Well, right. So Democratic voters and activists who worked so hard to win back the Senate and White House I`m sure are frustrated. And I think a lot of Americans who believe we should be a democracy, not an autocracy are also watching this with great interest.
So we now know they`re going two ways (INAUDIBLE). You`re not going to get, even if you move the filibuster down to 55, which is something Manchin has talked about, I don`t think there will be five Republicans or any Republicans.
So you`re either going get rid of the filibuster entirely, which we should continue to make the argument for. Or you find a carve out that said because threat to democracy is so real, because it`s happening all over the country, Manchin and Sinema can say, I didn`t want to do this, but the Republicans are serious as a heart attack about ending our democracy and so we have to take this step.
I think that`s -- I think any Democrat who says anything other than that is not being honest. There`s two ways. We get rid of the filibuster entirely or we have a carve-out. If we don`t do that then it`s all empty words.
O`DONNELL: David Plouffe, thank you very much for joining us again tonight. Always appreciate it.
PLOUFFE: Of course, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Coming up, the votes are being count in the New York City tonight where voters are choosing a new mayor and a new district attorney. Steve Kornacki will be at the big board next.
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O`DONNELL: It`s election night in New York City after voters had their first experience of ranked choice voting for the mayor of New York City and district attorney. The ballot gave voters the opportunity to choose their top five candidates for mayor.
Joining us now with the latest is MSNBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki. Steve, what do we need to know?
STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: We`re getting a bunch of numbers, Lawrence. Let me take you through what we do know. A lot of numbers have come in tonight. Let me call those up.
And let me explain exactly what you`re looking at here because again, this is a complicated system here in New York. But basically, the results you`re going to get here are going to come in in phases.
What you`re looking at on your screen right now are in-person votes. That means these are votes that were cast by people going to the polls today on election day or going out and voting early.
There are also a lot of votes in this race that are cast by mail. What you`re seeing on your screen does not reflect any mail-in ballots.
Now, probably the expectation is about 80 percent of all the votes are going to come from this pool, the in-person pool. And most of those votes have now been counted. Ok, so most of the biggest pool of votes -- that`s what you`re seeing.
One other wrinkle, you`re only seeing the first choice. This whole reallocation process where they have rounds of tabulation, candidates get eliminated, votes get reallocated -- that`s not happening tonight. That`s not going to happen for a while.
So what you`re seeing though is these are the bulk of the first preference votes. And Eric Adams who is the Brooklyn borough president right now with about a ten-point advantage over his nearest competitors, Maya Wiley, Kathryn Garcia. And then a big line after them down to fourth place, Andrew Yang.
There are so many first choice votes in right now, Lawrence, and I think realistically we`re looking at a three-way contest here -- Adams, Wiley and Garcia. So we will see. There will be more votes that come in tonight. We`ll see exactly how this lands tonight, but probably at the end of the night it`s going to look something like it does right now.
And then the biggest variable is going to be this -- the mail-in ballots, and they are not going to open those for another week. And the question on the mail-in ballots I think is quickly going to become Wiley or Garcia. Who does better in those mail-in ballots to get into second place?
Ok. Can one of them create distance from the other? And can one of them get close enough to Adams where when you do all of these ranked choice reallocations, re-tabulations, they could potentially overtake him. So I think that`s the biggest piece of suspense that`s coming out of tonight.
It looks like coming out of tonight, this is realistically going to be three candidates here in the running. We`re still going to have a big chunk of mail-in ballots that aren`t even going to be opened for another week.
There`s a question here of who emerges as the main challenger there to Adams and can they overtake him in all those rounds of reallocation, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Steve Kornacki, thank you very much. And I`m so glad you don`t have to have a late night over this one.
KORNACKI: It will be long couple of weeks instead.
O`DONNELL: That`s right. Thank you, Steve.
KORNACKI: You got it.
O`DONNELL: And coming up, there`s also an election going on in Ethiopia now where the prime minister who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is locked in real combat with forces in a region of the country that he cannot control.
"The New York Times" columnist Nicholas Kristof will join us on that and guide us through it next.
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O`DONNELL: A difficult election is underway in Africa`s second largest country by population. Ethiopians began voting yesterday, but some areas of the country, including the northern region of Tigray have not even scheduled the vote yet.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is favored to win. He was appointed prime minister in 2018 after the elected prime minister resigned. A year later, prime minister Abiy won the Nobel Prize -- Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work to end the conflict between Ethiopia and its neighbor, Eritrea, which was then Africa`s deadliest border war.
Since then, Prime Minister Abiy`s peace-making skills have not been enough to subdue an uprising against his government centered in the northern region of Tigray.
Seven million of Ethiopia`s 110 million people live in Tigray which has become a war zone. With the Nobel Prize winner now in command of an army within his own country, thousands of civilians have been killed and over two million people have been displaced since November. The United Nations says the Tigray region is facing the world`s worst famine.
Our next guest is asking us to not look away from Ethiopia. In his "New York Times" column, our next guest has said that what is happening in Ethiopia is something that we must focus on and the American government must focus on.
Joining us now is Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for "The New York Times". Nick, thank you very much for joining us, really appreciate it.
First of all the election is going to take weeks. Apparently there are sections of the country that are not especially involved in the violence that they haven`t voted either. So we`re going to have to wait and see what happens there.
But let`s start with what can the United States do about what is happening inside Ethiopia.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF, COLUMNIST, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": So the Biden administration has tried to put pressure on Prime Minister Abiy to lighten up on the quite brutal repression that is underway in the Tigray area. But I don`t think it`s been enough.
I mean at the end of the day, we have hundreds of -- we have the worst famine in the world in ten years. We have hundreds of thousands of people who may starve to death. We have a campaign of mass rape underway. We have aid workers being killed. We have food being blocked to get there.
And in the face of all that, you know, the Biden administration has imposed sanctions on people, it has sent special envoys. But I don`t think it has applied enough pressure to a country that is, after all, the largest American aid recipient in sub-Saharan Africa.
I think we have to, you know, turn the screws rather harder if we`re going to get Prime Minister Abiy to stop this.
O`DONNELL: Is there any way to decide -- the prime minister`s argument is that the violence against the government was vicious or as vicious as what the government troops have delivered in response to it.
Is there any way to say which side has been behaving worse than the other?
KRISTOF: Oh I mean look, both sides behaved badly. And you know, it did start to some degree with a mutiny in Tigray. But when we have a government that is allied with us that uses modern military equipment to mow down civilians, not justify other combatants to engage in a campaign of mass rape, and then try to starve a large region into submission, and to then bring in the Eritrean forces from next door to add to that, then, you know, that is not an appropriate response.
It is war crimes. I think it reeks of genocide, and there`s simply no excuse for what the Ethiopian government is doing right now.
O`DONNELL: And what can we expect while this election is going on? Any reduction in the government`s action against the insurgence.
KRISTOF: Prime Minister Abiy keeps promising that the Eritrean forces will leave and that the conflict is almost over, but there`s no real sign of that. It`s not clear if Eritreans want to leave. And meanwhile you have this, you know, this mass starvation that seems to be getting worse. Kids are already dying. And you know, look, if Prime Minister Abiy wants to fight the Tigrayans, that`s fine. He shouldn`t be starving kids.
O`DONNELL: Nicholas Kristof, thank you very much for guiding us through this crisis tonight. We really appreciate it.
KRISTOF: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: And that is tonight`s LAST WORD.
"THE 11TH HOUR WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS" starts now.