i guess i ll just start with i set it up there saying it looks like we re heading towards a shutdown here. i know there is a couple of days, i guess, maybe about 40 hours between now and when the deadline would be, and, beth, just is there anything we re missing here, anything that can happen between now and then that you can see that would keep us from going to a shutdown? at this point, i feel like the momentum is definitely headed in that direction. it felt completely different, maybe 24, 48 hours ago. it is amazing how quickly these things change. but at this point, it just seems like they re at a complete impasse. and, lynn, you know, covering this as well what do you think the next step would be then? harry reid says the senate will take out the anti-obama care language, they will send it back to the house unless, you know, they re bluffing somehow, they re putting out the word he doesn t have a plan at this point for what will come after that. how will the house respond to
can they change? or can obama care work even if one of the two major parties never accepts its legitimacy. we ll talk about this with perry baker jr., beth ryanert and richard wolffe, executive editor at msnbc.com and author of the new book the message, the reselling of president obama. i ll start with joe. i think no one knows the clinton years better than joe conyers. i wonder how you look at that scene this week with bill clinton and barack obama getting together to talk about health care. it really seems to me that the failure of bill clinton was an essential on health care was an essential element in the success of getting the affordable care act through under president obama. i could not agree more, steve. i would say one thing. the reason that the two democratic presidents were sitting on that stage together lies within the history of health care that goes back even further. it goes back to truman at least
really get a detailed plan where it is going to happen. there say reason for that. not trying to repeal medicare. trying to save it, right. that one didn t work. save it. right. it is one of those, i tend to share what you re saying, i have to admit, i m thinking back to march 2010 and we re telling people, talk to me in a year or two, and we re still here now saying when is this going to turn around. but it is still survived which is something else. i want to thank beth ryanert, perry bacon jr. and joe conoson. we promised earlier we would show you the dramatic conclusion of up against the clock, our game show, the closest contest in the history of up against the clock. here s how it ended. 400, jonathan, you have 200, joe, you have negative 200. this is a 300 point question. members of congress from both parties expressed concern this week when the u.s. postal service announced plans to raise
colleagues and get nothing done in the senate but still will mack you a hero to your party s grassroots, that s a dangerous recipe. i don t think that stands the test of time. it may give you the popularity for a day or a week or a month, but i think in terms of ultimately being a victor, running for president, becoming the leading role over marco rubio in the republican party, i don t think i just want to make a point before we run out of time, i m bursting. i think what is fascinating here is he made an incursion into the house by trying to undercut the house republican leadership. that is worthy of discovery. ted cruz meet and plotting strategy. beth, quickly. what is interesting about the poll you showed is how marco rubio s star has fallen and he tried to pass legislation. he tried to pass legislation that republican party elders said was crucial to the party, you know, retaking the white house in 2016. yet he s now seen as someone
democrats. but they can lose their seats to fellow republicans in primaries. so it could be that even if americans do blame a shutdown on the gop, house republicans will still decide that it is in their own personal political self-interest to resist giving in. and, again this is just the shutdown we re talking about here. even if this gets resolved soon, we re still weeks away from facing the exact same impasse over something even more ominous, the debt ceiling. i have to admit, i struggle to see how this can all be resolved. maybe our panel can help me. let s bring them in. for that, we have beth ryanert, ken salazar, josh green, the senior national correspondent at bloomberg business week, written this week s very timely cover story, john boehner doesn t run congress, meet the man who does, he s talking about jim demint. we ll ask him about that. and we have lynn sweet, the washington bureau chief for the chicago sun times. thank you for joining us.