i have to tell you, chris, up until very, very recently, and i mean just the last month or so, maybe, harry reid was as plugged in as he was when he was a just senator, or as much as he could be. indeed, during the couple dozen zoom interviews i did with him for the book, senators and former senators called harry reid and he would let me listen in to the conversations. i, of course, asked him about that frustration, but one thing he never did was speak ill of his former colleagues and how they were handling things. i think there are people who believe that harry reid would have been a different kind of leader than chuck schumer has been during this time, but he would never criticize schumer. but i have to tell you, i think if you look at harry reid s history and the deals that he was able to broker with jim jeffards to switch parties, to get obamacare passed the achievement he was most proud of, i think that maybe he would
to isolate. norm ornstein, angus king invoked you in the last hour talking about what needs to be done in the senate, but i want to first of all in terms of the 60-vote threshold, which i want to get to in a moment, but i want to begin with david s reporting on joe manchin. you ve seen all of these party switches, and you ve seen that momentum over decades now, an it s been basically a one-way street except for jim jeffards from a northern state. it remains something of a political miracle that joe manchin can be elected in the state of west virginia with the word democrat beside his name and angus king is afraid to have that word beside his name in the state of maine. and bernie sanders was offered the democratic party s endorsement the last time he ran, and he said i don t want
manchin has been. and it is reminiscent of the first time a senator switched parties at a time when each party had 50 senators, vermont s republican senator gym jeffords switched to the democratic party after years of whispered encouragement from his democratic neighbors. and the moment, the instant senator jeffards switched party, control of the senate switched from republicans to democrats. there had never been a more dramatic moment in the senate. most of the party switching, though, in the senate in our lifetimes, almost all of it, has been democrats switching to the republican party. that s the most common switch. that phenomenon began in earnest when south carolina s strong thurman switched to the republican party in 1964 over civil rights. many southern democrats who did not switch were either defeated