hi. who is this? carlos scola. who the hell is this? i m dave letterman. i m calling from new york city. no kidding? hang on. i ll put you on speaker. how is the conclave going? anybody emerged as the front-runner? hello? well, it s a couple of votes for darwin and some wise ass wrote in joe pesci! have you guys been able to agree on anything yet? yeah. we agreed that indicate hudson is not only hot, she is red hot, right, guys? whoa! that is pretty good. welcome back. you like that one? mike barnicle and harold ford jr. is still with us.
if it goes longer, you might get people considered more of a long shot. that would include cardinal o malley and cardinal dolan. it s really interesting when you re out in rome that the tourist industry would love to see an american pope. they think it will bring a lot of media and a lot of tourists and thus a lot of dollars into the city. it s surprising to see a lot of the roamens i ve talked to say they want nothing to do with a tallian pope because then it s business as usual. there is agreement if we would see white smoke today, it would be one of the favorites. probably the one person is the archbishop off of milan, cardinal scola would be an early favorite the longer it goes on. conventional wisdom is it would be more of a long shot. we re guaranteed to see smoke at some portion of this morning, correct? yes. they do two votes. assuming, assuming that they
after a single vote on tuesday and two more this morning, the cardinal electors have failed to reach a two-thirds majority as they try to choose the next pope. msnbc s chris jansing is live for us from the vatican with more. so, our man down there with you, giving you the play-by-play. george weigel seems to say that the longer this goes without a pope, the less likely the front-runner, cardinal scola, is to getting the job. reporter: that is the conventional wisdom, chuck. and i think that means that we still have to wait probably through several more votes, at least this afternoon and tomorrow morning. and if no one is elected pope, then people will start to think, well, maybe there are some divisions and they need to go to the alternative candidate. that alternative candidate could be good news if you re rooting for an american pope. and i can tell you, just being around rome, that certainly the tourism industry here is rooting for an american pope, because they think it will be m
so the thinking is probably another one from the reformer side will come up and try to take those votes and they ll vote again this afternoon. all of that said, we really don t know. but the people who watch all of this think that s where the best money is on all of this and they ll have a couple more votes this afternoon, late morning your time. if they don t get a pope, there will be more black smoke. they ll pray about it and do it again tomorrow. steve: shepherd, you re talking about the politics there at the vatican. scola is the cardinal from milan; right? correct. cardinal from milan. very close to benedict xvi. personally more of an extrovert with greater optimism about the church s prospects in the here and now. it was widely believed that benedict xvi tried to hard to get reforms in place, the vatican bank controversy that had come along, the scandal after that. it is widely believed here he tried really hard, couldn t get things done he
clever money, i would argue, is probably going on a nonsurprising choice. what do you think will happen? well, i can t really predict but i think you re right. we could very well be surprised. my own money is on cardinal scola. he s remarkable, a great pastor and a very strong organizer. but i will confess the dark horse in my judgment is cardinal dolan. cardinal dolan is on the people s vote but from what i hear, and maybe we will come back to you on this, doesn t have the cardinal support. cardinal o malley in boston has a lot more support than cardinal dolan has. am i right? yeah, and don t you love by the way, cardinal o malley out of boston, cardinal dolan out of new york. somehow we still made this a boston and new york rivalry all the way, thousands of miles away. how do we do that one. you re right, but it s primarily because cardinal dolan in a lot of people s opinions is too