this, you know, kind of posturing that tells the american people that we d rather fight than get along. all right. democrat from missouri, claire mccaskill. senator, thanks very much for coming on this morning. thank you. up next, we re going to dig deeper into our brand new nbc news/ wall street journal poll. republicans aren t confident they have a guy who can beat obama, and we ll look at what newt gingrich could have big problems outside of his core constituency. our pollsters are here to crunch the numbers. plus, new numbers about just how polarized our country has become. what you really think about the tea party and occupy wall street. but first a look ahead at the president s schedule. he s going to ft. bragg down in north carolina in what will be his wrap-up remarks on the troops coming home from iraq. you re watching the daily run don, only on msnbc. i love the holidays.
volatile environment that we could in likely see third and fourth party candidates emerge. always have them on the ballot, but people that can get 10%, 20% of the vote collectively. conventional wisdom says that definitely guarantees the president s re-election but the re-election team yesterday in a briefing with reporters very much seemed fearful of a third party. i think it s what bill said. it s a very volatile electorate. i think anyone who is going to say one element will help one or the other party right now a year out, you know, it s just they are not understanding how volatile this is. chuck, the final thing i ll say, the gingrich candidacy surge is fascinating in this poll. i do think given the overall broader numbers and dissatisfaction with congress, it will be an interesting campaign against gingrich. you know, in some respects he is the original flahertior of this brand of politics and the question in a debate between
reduction of epa rules and de-funding the president s health care law, unemployment benefits from 79 to 59. this is a country where 1 in 45 children are homeless and doesn t sit well with progress i was. a lot of i a lot still needs to be figured out. the public is fed up with the gridlock. when asked to rank this year s congress in terms of overall performance, 13% of americans called it below average. 42% described it as one of the worst ever, the worst showing for any congress since we started asking this question more than 20 years ago. think about it. 75% of the country calls this congress below average or one of the worst. senator claire mccaskill is a democrat from missouri and joins me now. we did the little switch there with luke. senator, let me ask you this. the basic premise seems to be republicans say, okay, democrats, we ll give you the unemployment extension, we ll give you the extension of the payroll tax holiday.
harry reid at the behest of president obama has said that he will not move a bill to fund the entire united states government which runs out of funding on friday, december 16th, until they figure out what to do with the payroll tax cut holiday. that is a real issue here on capitol hill that s going to be interesting to see how voters decide which side comes out on top. republicans are now saying, look, democrats have accused us for the last six months of trying to hold the government hostage. they are now doing the same thing. republicans are now emboldened after their vote, chuck. honestly the first real win that the gop leadership has had all year on a substantial budget bill where they didn t have massive defections and even picked up ten democrats. right. they are now thinking because of the keystone pipeline provision, idea to build the pipeline all the way from canada down to the gulf for oil, has split democrats and environmental labor unions, they now can change the narrati
issue, and even though, you know, i want to believe that americans understand we have three branches of government, republicans in control of the house. i think the responsibility is ultimately going to fall on the president, and if the economy is still struggling that s going to hurt his party and going to make democratic chances of taking the house more difficult, you know. it s true that congress isn t popular. candidates aren t popular but race by race i think it s still an uphill fight for democrats. as the folks on congress always like to say, as bad as our rating is technically, the rating is better collectively than the president s in the districts. nathan gonzales, politics in stereo, congratulations. i think it s a good idea or we wouldn t have put you on. all right, buddy. thank you. we ve got an exciting announcement, nbc news and msnbc.com, we have officially launched nbcpolitics.com, our digital hub for all of our political reporting including highlights from daily