i use herpecin l.re, it penetrates deep to treat. it soothes, moisturizes, and creates an spf 30 barrier, to protect against flare-ups caused by the sun. herpecin l. welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. to our viewers in the united states and around the world, thank you for sharing this important day with us. day three of a government shutdown and a big question this hour is whether the government will reopen any time soon. a critical vote set to begin any moment now after more gut checks. mitch mcconnell tried to answer democrats' concerns saying if they intended to reopen the government, his intention was to open a debate with a level

playing field and an amendment process. was that enough? let's get to cnn's phil mattingly looiive on capitol hi. phil, is it enough? will they be able to reopen the government? >> reporter: several of them sounding very positive, and one government aide just texted me and said they believe the votes are there. they will at least have 60 or more to reopen the government. as you know, mitch mcconnell on the senate floor last night and again this morning, saying this process will allow a government vote to come to the floor even if the group of number two leaders in the house, democrats and republicans, don't come to the floor for the next two weeks. that will happen after the next deadline which will be february 8, assuming the senate and house do pass this. democrats had a lengthy, nearly two-hour caucus meeting where they went back and forth on this. i'm told there are pretty significant divides within the caucus on the direction forward,

but what is winning the day or did win the day, at least from what i understand in the meeting right now, there are enough democrats right now that are frustrated with this, don't believe this is the fight they needed to have, believe the majority leader's commitment is enough and they just want to move forward at this point, john. >> phil, as we watch the senate get ready to have this big vote, assuming -- and we'll watch and count them as everything about this has been unpredictable -- assuming the vote in the senate is there, how long will it take to reopen? >> it won't take long. as soon as the senate moves, they will as well. republican leaders have also made clear that the votes for the funding bill are already there. the question is how will house democrats line up on this, if they follow suit with their democratic colleagues or if they continue to oppose things because they're not happy with the length of the commitments the majority leader is willing to make. the house is planning to follow suit. they just need a couple votes to

move that forward. after that it will head to the president's desk and the government will reopen, assuming everything goes according to what we're hearing right now. obviously things have been a little inflexible the last 24 hours. >> because of that, don't go far. we'll bring in dana bash. we'll get back to phil mattingly as more develops. now about dana. you were talking to government sources by e-mail while they were actually in that caucus meeting. it looks like the democrats are shifting. are republicans about to say they blinked? >> of course republicans are probably going to say that, and the fact of the matter is at the end of the day when people are going to be analyzing this, it seems to me, at least, my analysis i'll give you, is that the messaging war was performed pretty well by republicans. democrats did a good job for their base, too, but overall republicans fought back in a concerted way that we really haven't seen during the trump

presidency. on the question of what's going to happen right now and why. do john, you're right, i was communicating with democrat sources in the meeting they had trying to see if what mitch mcconnell said was enough. i got texts from people who voted no before saying they are yeses because they want to try to get past this very, very retched trust deficit that they all have. that is really the key question. assuming this vote passes that's going to come up momentarily, assuming that the government is reopened shortly, how will this -- not just necessarily the commitment that mcconnell made on the floor, but i'm told by sources in both parties who were involved in this bipartisan series of discussions, john, over the past two or three days, how will they act as kind of a compass for what's going to happen in the future? they say that they are going to. they say they are going to be a

backstop to make sure that the white house and the republican leadership keeps their commitment on this immigration issue. we'll see. >> we'll see is a great point. i want to make sure i have the math right. five democrats had broken ranks on the initial vote back friday when the government initially shut down. four or five more is what mitch mcconnell needed, maybe five or six more democrats to go into chuck schumer and say, we've had enough. is that math right? >> yes, i think that math is right, and my impression, although i haven't actually explicitly talked enough to eno get it to 60, my impression is it will pass with a healthy majority or supermajority, that it will be beyond 60. >> dana bash is going to stay with us. as we watch, we're waiting for the senate to start the vote. we'll keep it on the screen and take you there when the vote starts. let's go to jeff zeleny. jeff, a simple question right here. we've had a united states government shutdown. we are two and a half days into that shutdown and we've not had

one public appearance by the president of the united states. now it appears we're poised to end that shutdown with no meetings with the president or key people involved. how can they explain the so-called great deal maker hasn't been present? >> no doubt the president has been on the sidelines with the exception of being on the phones and talking to republicans in the last 24 to 36 hours. he has been absent. i'm told by a white house official as dana and phil were reporting, the white house is, quote, optimistic this is going to pass the senate. they've gotten word from those democratic senators. they do believe there are 60 votes there and likely is as often is the case in washington. there are going to be many more than 60. people are going to climb on this because democrats don't want to look like they're voting against this. back to the president, john. he's been in residence here all morning, i'm told. he's been talking to republicans only, not democrats. a couple reasons why. one, some of his advisers believe his conversations with democrats, like senator schumer

on friday, was not necessarily productive. and two, they think it complicates the message of blaming the democrats here. but it is pretty extraordinary that the only time the president was seen this weekend -- and he was here at the white house all weekend long spending a rare weekend here -- was in photographs that his advisers sent out. he was in the oval office with a phone but he did not say anything publicly. look for him to address this very quickly. after the house votes this afternoon, i'm told the president will weigh in on this, of course, and perhaps take a credit for orchestrating this, for being involved in it. but john, it is clear he has not been a central player in this. all the negotiations have been happening on capitol hill, john. >> a number of republicans actually saying they hoped he would stay quiet because they thought they could make progress as long as he stayed quiet. for anyone just joining us, we're in the moment of truth here. you're watching the floor of the united states senate. a vote any moment now on what's called a continuing resolution, a short-term spending measure to reopen the united states

government. by all indications from our sources, enough democrats now prepared to join the republicans to make that happen. so we're expecting a vote in the senate to reopen the government at any moment. that legislation would then go to the house which promises to take it up quite quickly. as we watch this play out, drama in washington that has circumstances around the world. three days in. can the democrats, if this vote goes as we expect it to go right now, can they say they got what they wanted? what they said going in was we want a vote or a deal on daca, the so-called d.r.e.a.m.ers. understanding that if you didn't get the deal as part of this legislation that you at least had a commitment to have a process where you had some certainty you could get something to the finish line. is this enough? can the democrats make the case publicly that they have certainty they can get something to the finish line, or certainty

they can get a vote in the senate? >> they can't say this will get over the finish line. we don't know what's going to happen in the house. we don't know what president trump is going to do, if it even gets out of the senate and out of the house. the most they can do is there's going to be an effort to try to bring this to the floor before february 8, which is what mitch mcconnell said on the floor. he hoped and intended to bring to the floor. he said we bring it after february 8th only if the government is open. so what does that mean? the democrats can't essentially shut the government down over the next continuing resolution and demand they move on immigration. because mcconnell won't move then. democrats will probably come out and say, we've gotten mcconnell to a place he wasn't before. he's assured us we're going to move on this and we will fight the next government shutdown fight if he does not live up to his commitments. but i'm told, john, some progressive senators are not happy about this. there will probably be a deep divide playing out in the coming days. >> the progressives, and i think we'll see this more on the house

side than the senate side, that their party is blamed. if we hold out for a deal for the d.r.e.a.m.ers, we don't have a deal. we have a commitment going forward. these are the key words this morning. if the president starts to speak, we'll interrupt this. these are the key words this morning. the president came into session. a bipartisan group of about 25 senators, and they told the majority leader, give the democrats something. this is what he was willing to give. >> should these issues not be resolved by the time the funding bill before us expires on february 8th, so long as the government remains open, so long as the government remains open, it would be my intention to take up legislation here in the senate that would address daca, border security and related issues. let me be clear. this immigration debate will have a level playing field at the outset and an amendment

process that is fair to all sides. >> that last part, level playing field, an amendment process open to all sides. democrats in the senate can make the case, okay, we will get to put our proposals forward. again, let's assume we're waiting for this vote that, they vote here to reopen the government. we're talking in 24 hours not about a shutdown but back to the immigration debate. is there any guarantee that something that passes the senate would even be taken up by the republican house? >> i don't think the progressives who are lodging complaints against reopening the government or against the position of their caucus here are wrong. i'm really struck by the fact that democrats, if they reopen the government today, haven't gotten anything or anywhere. they're in precisely the same position that they were when the government shut down on friday. they've made absolutely no progress because republicans were vowing to move to immigration after the government

funding roadblock on friday. so they're in exact ly the same position that they were three days ago, and it's not clear to me they got anything except for the bad press that accrued to them from this shutdown. >> they're bad. the democrats' bet is that by november when there is an election, this will be forgotten if the government reopens. if the president is still popul popular, that's what will carry to november, not that we had a shutdown. that's their bet. we're having this conversation in the middle of january, by november this will be long forgotten, and then the question will be, did they get this immigration? the republicans did have a disciplined strategy to say the democrats were shutting down the government to protect illegal immigrants. is that what you want, american people? it's a national converation but it also matters most in a handful of states -- if the republicans want to keep their senate majority, they want to knock off a couple democrats this year. one of them is john tester from the state of montana. listen to the white house budget

director, rick mulvaney, saying, people of montana, when your senator comes home, don't believe him. >> i think the folks who hold the cards here are the democrats who say they want to work across the aisle, the ones who go home. john tester who goes back to montana and says, vote for me, i'm a really good bipartisan guy, i can work with republicans. folks like that who are now here in washington not doing that. those are the folks holding the keys. >> there was a question in the trump administration. do they have a good administration? can they message good politics? >> i do have to give a little credit to the trumpian/schumer shutdown. the facts are pretty cut and dried here, that democrats wanted this one particular thing. they were otherwise undisputablely happy about what was in this bill and didn't object to it. now we have this shorter bill, a slightly shorter time frame than

we had last week, and in the words of "the wedding singer" perhaps that could have been brought to my attention on friday. >> this is high stakes stuff. in this news cycle, yes, people may forget faster. you have to convince your base, look, it was really important that we stood up and fought, but also nobody else should blame us and we didn't really get anything but it was righteous. that's what ted cruz tried to do in 2013 and it didn't work. >> the reason democrats are folding their cards as quickly as they are, if they do go ahead and vote to reopen the government, the strength across the caucus was never very strong. i was speaking to a democratic senator this morning, part of the central caucus, and it was clear from our discussions that he wasn't going to hold out even for a few more days, never mind weeks and months. there was never a clear exit strategy for democrats if they had any reasonable hope of achieving anything. that's why i think you're seeing

these scentrist democrats bail out quicker than they were going to. >> mcconnell said something that isn't something he could even really promise, to have a fair and level playing field, he needs to have agreement on both sides, a unanimous consent agreement. if someone doesn't like what he's bringing forward, they can object and make it go away. >> or they can have nothing to do with the immigration question which is thorny enough or be in a quagmire. that's why what we're about to hear is so important. we're waiting for the senate that could lead to reopening the united states government. we're told the democratic leader chuck schumer just out of a meeting with his colleagues. it will be the democrats that have to deliver the vote. we'll take you to chuck schumer live after a quick break. hi i'm joan lunden.

today's senior living communities have never been better, with amazing amenities like movie theaters, exercise rooms and swimming pools, public cafes, bars and bistros straight to the senate democratic leader chuck schumer. >> thank you, mr. president. now, today, we drink seltzer. today we enter the third day of the trump shutdown. the first ever real shutdown to occur when one party controls the entire legislative process. the republican party controls the house, the senate, the presidency, and yet they were

unable to keep the government open for the american people. leader mcconnell knows it takes 60 votes to win passage of a spending bill, and yet he moved forward with a last-minute extension that he knew lacked the votes. both democrats and republicans voted against that bill. the reason the republican majority had such difficulty finding consensus is they could never get a firm grip on what the president of their party wanted to do. these days you never know who to deal with when it comes to the republicans. the republican leaders told me to work out a deal with the white house. the white house said work it out with republican leaders on the hill. separately, president trump turned away from not one, but two, bipartisan compromises. each would have averted this

shutdown. each would have led to a deal on the budget and health care and disaster aid and things like opioids and veterans and pensions and on immigration. my recent offer to the president was a generous one. i put his signature campaign issue on the table in exchange for daca, and still he turned away. president trump's unwillingness to compromise caused the trump shutdown and brought us to this moment. the facts are well known. now i wish to update the senate on where things stand after this weekend. since our meeting in the oval office on friday, the president and i have not spoken. and the white house refused to engage in negotiations over the weekend. the great deal-making president sat on the sidelines.

despite and because of this frustration, i've been having conversations with the republican leader over the weekend about a path forward. after several discussions, offers, counteroffers, the republican leader and i have come to an arrangement. we will vote today to reopen the government to continue negotiating a global agreement with the commitment that if an agreement isn't reached by february the 8th, the senate will immediately proceed to consideration of legislation dealing with daca. the process will be neutral and fair to all sides. we expect that a bipartisan bill on daca will receive fair consideration and an up or down vote on the floor. now, it's a shame, mr. president, that the american people and the senate have had to endure such hand-wringing,

finger-pointing stridency to reach a guarantee that we will likely address this urgent issue. it is something the majority could have avoided entirely, a concern the president could have obviates if he were only willing to take yes for an answer. while this procedure will not satisfy everyone on both sides, it's a way forward. i'm confident that we can get the 60 votes in the senate for a daca bill. and now there is a real pathway to get a bill on the floor and through the senate. it is a good solution, and i will vote for it. i'm incredibly grateful to the bipartisan group that has come together in recent days to renew the immigration debate with a sense of urgency.

there you are. i believe that this group has the potential to return the senate to the kind of place it should be on the issue of immigration, a place for bipartisanship, a place for action, a place for achievement. the bipartisan group, in a very fine way, filled the glaring absence of the president in these talks. i expect the majority leader to fulfill his commitment to the senate, to me and to the bipartisan group and abide by this agreement. if he does not, of course, and i expect he will, he will have breached the trust of not only the democratic senators but members of his own party as well. through these complicated and lengthy negotiations, democrats have always sought to be

reasonable, to act in good faith and get something real done. despite all of our treatys, the president was abstinate. despite our wish for daca, the senate has muddled along too long from our most impressive challenges until the last moment. that ends today. the republican majority now has 17 days to prevent the d.r.e.a.m.ers from being deported. mr. president, we have a way to address the fate of the d.r.e.a.m.ers. starting right now, instead of waiting until march, with the minority and the moderate middle empowered to bring a bill to the floor instead of being held by

the most strident, anti-immigration voices in the republican caucus. and we, on our side of the aisle, will continue to fight as strongly as we can for the d.r.e.a.m.ers in the weeks ahead. i say to all americans, urge your senators to vote yes on the bipartisan compromise when it comes forward. write, tweet, e-mail, phone, visit, do everything you can so we can finally pass this bill. in a few hours, the government will reopen. we have a lot to do. the issue of the d.r.e.a.m.ers demands resolution. a budget must be written. health care has to be addressed. relief provided to disaster-stricken parts of our country. pensions and opioids, veterans, childcare. all have to be taken care of.

the trump shutdown will soon end. but the work must go on. and it will. thank you and i yield the floor. >> senate democratic leader chuck schumer of new york speaking there. a lot of political explanation, some would say spin. him trying to explain the big shutdown. let's listen to the majority leader. >> i have an intention to support the measure before us. i think if we've learned anything during this process, it's that a strategy to shut down the government over the issue of illegal immigration is something the american people didn't understand and would not have understood in the future. so i'm glad we've gotten past that, that we have a chance now to get back to work, and

therefore, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call be waived. >> is there objection? without objection, the court will impos ere to waive quorum. >> we hereby move to bring to a close with the further amendment to the house amendment to the senate amendment hr-15 brought to us by 17 senators. >> by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is, is it the intent to concur the house senate -- amendment to the senate amendment. the court will call the role. >> mr. president, before we call roll, i ask unanimous consent

that the democrats be allowed to address the chamber for three minutes with the great approval of the majority leader. >> is there objection? without objection. >> mr. president, thank you very much, and i thank the majority leader for this opportunity. let me thank my friend, my colleague and our leader on the democratic side for his passionate, personal commitment to this issue involving the d.r.e.a.m.ers and daca. he has been by my side and i've been inspired by his leadership from the start. and let me thank my colleagues. so many of you cast a vote that was very hard and very difficult because you believed as i did that the issue of immigration, the issue of the d.r.e.a.m.ers is a civil rights issue of our time. you stuck your necks out and said i'm ready to go on the record even though it will be hard to explain back home, and i will never forget that. the question now is how do we move forward? what i have seen here on the floor and the senate in the last

few days is something we have not seen for years. constructive bipartisan conversations of dialogue on the floor, not just about this issue, which is obviously front and center, but about the future of this institution and what the senate will be from this point forward. that to me has been encouraging because it says to me that we do have an opportunity to work together. my special thanks to senator susan collins, my friend senator lisa murkowski for joining with jeff flake and joining with lindsey graham and joining with cory gardner and others who have been working on this issue for so long to try to make a positive impact on this debate so we can move forward. i cannot tell my colleagues how many have come up to me from the other side of the aisle and said, we're with you on this issue. we want to help you get this done. each of them has a little different take on what that means, but i do believe them. and i do believe we have this opportunity to move together. now comes the test.

the real test as to whether we can get this done. whether we can be the senate again. whether we can return to a regular ardor on the floor and constructively have a debate. for some of you, it will be the first time you've ever seen it. believe me, it's worth the price of admission for all of you to come to the united states senate. my last word is this. we have gathered the largest bipartisan group of senators to move forward on the d.r.e.a.m. act and immigration. we have a process. i want to thank senator mcconnell for specifically saying today it will be a level playing field. it will be open to both sides. we will move to the issue as he characterized it this morning of daca and immigration. thank you for doing that. i believe that sets the stage for us to work together. for the first time in five years, we will have a debate on the floor of the senate on the d.r.e.a.m. act and immigration. to all the d.r.e.a.m.ers who are watching today, don't give up. i know that your lives are hanging in the balance on what

we do here on capitol hill and with the white house. three weeks from now i hope to be joining you in celebrating the passage with you and your families and communities of a measure which will strengthen america and give you an opportunity to report for our future. >> the clerk will call the roll. >> mr. alexander. >> aye. >> the united states senate now voting on a resolution that would reopen the united states government. the senate is passing hits plan because it would change its house plan and have to go to the house. the united states government now shut down because this measure failed to pass at midnight fr friday, reopened at the end of the day. if it passes 60 days to end the debate, then it will be sent to the house, then the white house. some motivating words from democrat chuck schumer, then the majority leader mitch mcconnell,

and dick durbin speaking on the politics of that. he has been shepherding the d.r.e.a.m.ers act for some time. some will be angry thinking the democrats blinked too soon, thinking the democrats didn't get as much commitment on legislation. we're watching a lot of politics play oucht. i want to bring in dana bash who has covered the senate for quite some time. dana, the democrats saying we got what we needed, a commitment to debate in the senate, but there is no reason to think that if they pass a daca bill, an immigration bill in the senate, there is no guarantee that anything like that will pass in the house, is there? >> no, there isn't at all, and that's why the not so subtle trashing of the president the democratic leader started with by saying, what happened to the guy who was supposed to make deals, was so critical because schumer was taunting the president. he knows if it gets to the point where you're going to need to

pass this in the house, that is going to be up to the president. the president is going to be the one who has to step forward and give house republicans cover. from the house speaker, who is going to have to be forced by the president to put that whatever bipartisan deal it is on the floor, knowing that it might not get the majority of the majority of republicans which this speaker and past speakers have been loathe to do. so that is what was interesting. the other observation i have, john, we're so focused on, you know, kind of the politics of it now, but looking forward to the way that the democratic party and the politics of the democratic party is going to play out, the choice that chuck schumer made today, just as somebody who has covered him for a long time, it seems to me he went with his heart, because he's a dealmaker at heart, and not with his head. which is probably telling him, we have to keep the resistance

moving, we have to keep the democratic base energized. he was clearly impressed by the democrats who have been working with republicans the past few days. we have to put an end to this, we have to put this forward. and he didn't go along with the progressives who i'm guessing we're going to see some of them, voting no on this. he certainly, as you said, is going to hear from a lot of those progressives that he gave in and he gave in too soon. >> i don't want to get too far ahead of what we're watching here because the united states government has been shut down since 12:01 a.m. saturday morning. the impact of that shutdown will be more limited, two of weekend sunday. it appears they will vote and it will reach the house by dinnertime. the government should be fully reopened by tomorrow, tuesday, the second day of the work week. let's go to jeff zeleny.

jeff, i'm sure there is no question at all the president is ready to sign this as soon as it gets there. any sense of how the president will react from his public tongue lashing he just received from his friend chuck, democratic leader in the senate, and as you well know behind the scenes, a lot of republicans have also said the only way they've resolved this shutdown is for the president to stay in the house and stay quiet. >> that's exactly what happened. the president has been extraordinarily out of this picture, at least for most of the past three days or so. i've been told by a white house official that we are going to see the president speak after that house vote. it has to pass the senate -- we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves here -- it has to pass in the senate and the house can swiftly take it up. the president is reengaged in this in a public way, likely speaking before he would sign this bill. but john, it certainly raises an interesting question, what happens going forward here? the president, as we know, has

been on several sides of this issue. i think that one thing is clear, despite the fact the government will be reopening, it looks like, if things happen as it seems they will, there is no change in the hardened positions on immigration and daca. so the president still has a decision to make, a challenge for his leadership. is he going to do what he's talked about several times and do something for the d.r.e.a.m.ers, or is he going to take a harder line on this? this simply moves things down the road three weeks or so, but certainly a sense of relief here that the white house, and of course the president is going to try to reframe this as a win for him, that democrats blinked. it's partially true, but i think the bigger question here is what happens after this? will the president stay disengaged or will he re-engage on this immigration fight because that's the next thing to come. he'll be giving a state of the art union address next week

where he has the chance to frame and reframe all of this debate, john. >> jeff zeleny at the white house. appreciate that. it's an interesting moment. we'll watch this vote. we'll tell you the senate vote as soon as they tally the votes in the senate. then they expect to pass the resolution to refund the government, to reopen the government, then it goes to the house of representatives. what will we learn from this, what will they learn from this, more importantly? let's start with the president. the president will sign this. he wants to say the government is reopened, everything is fine, go back to your lives. what he says and the tone of what he says will be incredibly important to what comes next, including this debate. he moved from tuesday trump, an act of love, i will sign it, i will take the heat, to thursday trump, a much more hardline, i want more, i want my wall money. will we get a clear statement

about here's what i'm for, here's what i'm against. let's pass a bill and stick to it. >> i don't think the president has been all that inconsistent. he's been consistent in saying he wants to do something on daca. he has a tremendous amount of sympathy and empathy for these kids, and he's also been a hardliner on essentially all the other issues surrounding immigration. what i think is being painted as inconsistent is he's tying these two things together. he's saying, in exchange for showing sympathy, empathy which he definitely feels on daca, he wants these hardline changes. that is what immigration hardliners are pushing him to do. i don't think trump necessarily himself feels he needs a one-for-one trade, but those truly are his positions and i think he waivers back and forth about the extent to which he wants to link these two together. >> if the president passes the daca plan, i assume it will have

some wall money in it, i'm sure it will have something to do with plane migration. in an election year, knowing how much we know arpd the house, again, in an election year. is there, quote, unquote, a bill that can pass the house without the president saying, you have to pass this, i will take the heat. >> most of the pressure of the republican base, especially in light of the shutdowns and the folding on it, which appears what we're about to do, can't stand the leader getting it to change. i'm not sure why republican leaders would feel like that. >> it's so much more polarized in the senate, to be able to get something in the house. paul ryan will have to calculate that he'll have to get his members on board. not democratic members, they can take their own hard line,

conservatives will try to take his own hard line and we'll try to move a deal within his own conference. that will make it go further to the right. it didn't even make it to the floor. this is going to be another test for paul ryan. >> i was communicating this, and he said, we will have a daca debate in the house, it's just what is that daca debate? if you're watching in the short term, the united states ordering right now to end the government shutdo shutdown. one of the things that's been fascinating in recent days is all the conservative praise for mitch mcconnell and speaker paul ryan. they are often treated like satan in the concertive logosphere. but there is praise to the republican leaders for holding firm here. >> the bottom line, and i don't think it matters how much trump

was involved in the day to day, and i don't know how many news cycles this story lasts, anyway, but i think democrats got a sense of where they are, and the republicans found they can have leadership. you had democrats and the likes of louie gutierrez talking openly about, we'll do the wall to get the d.r.e.a.m.ers. that was not the message on tuesday when he was tuesday trump. he got them to move on something, and by the way, i'm not sure republican voters are fine with daca. it's a very loud part of the base that's not. they have to consider that. >> in an odd way, you're making the point while we have not seen from this president traditional deal making, he sends people around and says, i am great at

making deals, i'm good at what i do, but it looks like the ball has moved his way a tlittle bit. >> it actually works in his favor. >> one thing we have to keep in mind here, there is a three-week deal. they'll be right back in this mess in three weeks. whatever short-term victory they made, i feel like after democrats agree to back off their resistance here, they could be right back in the situation in three weeks. >> they promised to have an immigration debate at least in the senate. that has been quicksand, quagmire, that has been it in the last few semesters. we have critics saying, we just passed a bill for the deficit. the growth will make up for it, we have to be careful. so even if the republicans think they won this one, they're back

into tough issues very quick. >> i think there are two facts here that work on immigration, but i think trump's broadcast to paul ryan, that their position really wasn't the position of the republican base and they've hardened on the issue. the second factor is the president did campaign, railing against the republican establishment, and he now finds himself really trapped inside a system that he hates. so he isn't the deal maker, but he is really a hostage of washington, and i think that's why you've seen him kind of sidelined and quiet and essentially a prisoner of the political system just sort of waiting for paul ryan and chuck schum schumer and mitch mcconnell to set him free. >> i don't think it's important how much schumer backed off his demands on saturday. i talked to him saturday night and he said we need to get a good bipartisan agreement that

allows us to get a defense winner and a non-defense winner. he rejected the notion of doing the three-week continuing resolution, so he has come a long way in putting faith in mcconnell that they could get some sort of agreement. in large part it has to do with pressure from the middle of his caucus to cut this deal. schumer has backed off those demands. >> he didn't get cement on any of them. he doesn't get a firm commitment, i don't think, on any of the things you just mentioned. >> i think ileana makes a great point in that this is essentially the trump camp immigration prevailing here, and i think one reason it shut down is the republican at large can see that they can take that provision and grow. >> a real quick point, i think many republicans will thank trump for that sort of backbone of the party, for feeling like

they can stand up to this messaging and saying, look, we're not the ones shutting this down. weave been on both sides of the coin and you're not going to call us hostage makers this time. a lot of people will get credit for that. >> she calls it the trump shootdown and the debate in the next days and coming month. one of the big questions is not how much more than 60? they need 60 votes. that's one question. the other question, phil, you see the signs of discontent as voters vote no. >> it's no question that they're well above 60 but i'm finding out who is planning to vote no. you have warren, sanders, gillenbrand, harris. >> you are connected to those names who are considered rather

disheart ning, is that these are democrats that are very unhappy. this was the decision to have the path forward. the one caucus meeting for more than two hours, there was a very really split by democrats on how to win this on the house side. nancy pelosi already seeing they're going to vote against this. there is really one primary reason. it's such a huge trust issue whether it goes by the senate. they've seen immigration with or on the vine as it goes to the senate? there is nothing saying that there is trust in the illegal immigration. it also says in just a few weeks we'll be here again. these types of voices, these people who are voting right now are certainly rising inside the

democratic party. they are saying this wasn't the right decision, and those voices will certainly be able to say, we told you so if things get back in a bad place. i have one other thing, john, i want to point out that i thought was interesting. when senator durbin came to the floor, he's been in this progressive wing, he's been the leader on information with daca and the republican party. he definitely did not want to enter into a deal where he didn't feel like he had firm commitments. he pointed to the bipartisan group that's been meeting over the past few days. we've all seen this happen before, we've all seen efforts. members of that group are very hopeful that this is now a new strain or a new thread in the senate that can perhaps serve as a group of bipartisan senators who change the path way or change the direction of how the debate is considered, how legislation is considered, of how politics are considered in the chamber. is that too much to ask in the history of today? probably so based on the last day or so. keep an eye on the days ahead,

because if chuck schumer is saying they look forward to a path forward, maybe that is actually the case. >> they track the final votes, and tracking that is very important. dana bash is with us. dana, leet pick up on that point. you have 25 to 30 senators, bipartisan group, in a senate of 100, that's a group that can affect the calendar, can affect how politicians do business. but the senate can pass 70 bills and that means nothing unless the house passes them. at the end of today the government shutdown will begin. but then they go back to a budget pension and the like. is there any group that can g get -- can you get that done without consistent leadership publicly from the united states saying, i need you to do this for me. >> no. there is no chance without

leadership. maybe not consistent leadership because that hasn't happened because we've seen the kind of gutter-to-gutter, siderail-to-siderail on where the president is blessing that kind of deal or not. we've seen him do it in public, let alone private. when it gets to that point that this group of democratic and republican senators that phil was talking about can force something to get through the senate, when it gets to the point of getting this to the house, it must be with republican -- with the president, republican president and his leadership. there is no question about it. i've heard that from republican leadership source after source about the fact that he is the one who spent the past year making sure that his base still believed in him. and it worked. he's got the capitol with the base, not these rank and file

republicans who are are very worried if they vote for anything in their base, they'll be gone. >> based on your reporting overed weekend, including this morning, and your experience of years covering capitol hill, does anything change here? coming into this, it was all, the schumer/mcconnell relationship is unfixable. is there anything from a governing perspective -- they voted to reopen the government now, but now they go with another government shutdown three weeks away. is there anything you've learned from this that tells you it will be any different, or are we going to careen up to the edge of the cliff in three weeks? >> i'm going to try to give you a hopeful answer and say i think this could be different. i think it is because of that group. in fact, several members of that

group of bipartisan senators, they called themselves the commonsense caucus, by the way, have told me this is on the republican and democratic side, that they believe they have formed a very important coalition that can work as a backstop. not just on the issue of immigration and the broader question of funding the military and other issues that are kind of tied up in this current government shutdown, but i think that there has been a realization, john, that even on the tough issues that they need the president to work on like immigration, that they can't rely on him. and particularly the democrats who watched chuck schumer go over to the white house on friday and try to get a deal. according to schumer, the white house did dispute some of this, but schumer has told his colleagues that he thought he had a very good framework and the rug was pulled out. so what the adults in the room

in the united states senate have done is say, we have to figure this out for ourselves no matter what the president should do. this is the way it should work. we've seen an absence of leadership, of coming together. this is the way it should work. we'll see if they can actually find fruition. >> we'll see if they can find fruition. what we do now is watching that finish, they voted to end the government shutdown. it looks like this will most likely be a three-day government shutdown in early 2018, and as phil mattingly was noting, a lot of 2020 calculations in thousand they were voting here. a lot of senators expected to vote no. and you have someone who also fills in that group. >> yeah, comey harris suggests a

false choice. you either fund the government or take care of these daca kids. we can do both. diane feinstein is not happy. many don't like the way this deal has gone down, so this is a divide in this caucus on this deal, and it will get more pro mouncpro -- pronounced. >> so you thought if the government were to shut down the government, they should get more to reopen the government. we don't have a bill, we don't have a commitment, we don't have a plan, we just have a promise to debate and there is no guarantee anything will get passed. what is the test, i guess, for chuck schumer in the next three weeks to prove to that base that

this was worth it? >> he's got to deliver a deal that would essentially give legal status to d.r.e.a.m.ers. the challenge for him is he's got all these moderate democrats up for reelection. he has to balance the moderates and the conservative. they're up for reelection. >> which is going to bring us back to the question. this has been a bit of a curveball in the control room. i've tried to ask them to get ready for me, that you interviewed senator lindsey graham this morning. i give them a moment to pull this up for me. you're correct in the sense that the president has been very consistent that i want my wall, and he's flexible on that, exactly what it is, but he wants a decent amount of money to build some part of a wall. some of it can be technology, some can be something else. >> he's fixated on it so i don't think he's moved away from funding for some kind of wall. that's where i think there has

been a misconception that trump is the tool of his advisers. we're seeing this come up now where people say, it's john kelly who is pulling him back from making these deals, or steven miller who is pulling him back from making these deals. i don't think they'll change the president's position on wanting a wall and on wanting something in exchange for doing a daca deal. >> as we watch this play out, again, the united states senate voting to end the u.s. government shutdown. the legislation would then go to the house. you heard from reporters here, dana bash, that that may not work. here's diane feinstein on the floor. >> the republicans have put forth what they did with chip, which in the senate they never showed much interest in. all of a sudden chip was their chit. they put that on the table. and they said america was a country of sophie's choice.

you either choose the d.r.e.a.m.ers or you choose the chip hits. no, we support all of that. america can take care of all of its children. >> a little bit of washington speak there, but chip is the children's health program which is a bipartisan program that has deep bipartisan support, and the republicans did put up money for that for six years, i believe? the resolution funded that program which in some states are are out of money. the republicans put that in the original bill saying, here, democrats, vote for this because here's what you've been asking for, the chip, the children's health insurance money for six years and we'll deal with d.r.e.a.m.ers later. nancy pelosi saying, no, we can do it all at once. again, a sign of frustration among progressive democrats, where we are even as we prepare to reopen the government. >> they had many years in a majority in which they could have eliminated this false choice by doing it legislatively and did not and did not attempt to. this is a lot harder and now they're not in the majority. sometimes when you're in the

minority, you get promises. i do think there are a couple things that calculus has changed. first the subtraction of bannon which changes things should it get there eventually. and this senate debate, i'm not sure how much republicans want to go on the record about. they're on the wrong side of pretty much every other issue in the security column, so i don't know how much that's going to help, either. >> you don't get to say this very often in today's washington, 81-18. 81-18 the motion to move this debate and respectively move to reopen the government by a vote of 81-18. that is overwhelming, so a lot of people in america watching and around the world will say, if they can pass this 81-18, why did they shut down the government in the first place? >> i think the answer is because there is a lot of pressure from democratic activists. what this bill tells me is there are 18 democratic senators with

possible presidential ambition in 2020, ask thatnd that's why voted against it. >> rand paul is one. >> this is how democrats wound up in a situation that really didn't have an obvious exit strategy. you could hope for c api tulation. that probably isn't realistic. they think, rightly or wrongly, that republicans would have moved against the president. i think chuck schumer and democratic centrists didn't share that. >> you're having a 2018 conversation, you can have a 2020 conversation or a 2022 conversation, that if you're chuck schumer and you plan to take back the elections, you don't have them from other states saying, hey, my state is different, let's be careful here. >> what this does, if there

isn't a daca resolution and these kids start to become deported, at least now it will be clear which party is to blame. >> i think as far as josh is concerned, both parties are trying to rev up their bases. trump is a base president. you always hear him doing things that play to his base and the democrats are matching that. that was a political move by chuck schumer and the democrats. >> i'm going to be a broken record on that between now and november, but we're in a year we're dealing with the president's popular party. they don't show up for congressional elections, so this is the only nixon can go to china, can only trump get an immigration deal? will we get an immigration deal that some folks call amnesty in an election year? >> it's all up to the president in some ways. he needs to be very clear what he supports, not back off what

he supports, and if he does cut a deal with the senate democrats, he has to take this to the house and sell the house on this, too. the president is really going to have to step forward here in order to get something through. he can't take this backseat position like he did over the weekend here. >> if he can't, chuck schumer's job, and i think he's trying to thread the needle here, is both to keep that base encouraged by shutting down the government but not carrying it to where it doesn't work for democrats. >> i'm not sure that needle was threaded. >> to our viewers, you're watching the united states senate still voting. they made the agreement to reopen the government. so the temporary dysfunction, or whatever your views on who was to blame, should end in the united states government. if you're planning to go to the federal institution in the next few days, it should be cleared up. final thought? >> here we are. i don't know if i have a

takeaway yet except that it's still not clear to me what democrats got except that it was a potentially risky move for chuck schumer and i truly wonder if his base will be satisfied even if he does strike a deal in the next three weeks. >> we'll see how it goes. thank you, dana bash. the white house press holding a briefing next hour. we'll start with our breaking news coverage right now. this is cnn breaking news. in a bipartisan way. everyone is talking with each other, trying to help each other and not at each other. i want to thank susan for always being there. we started this, her and i started in 2013 when the first shutdown happened. we're just so frustrated, her and i were always talking, can't we just get some like-minded people together? that's when we started to push our leadership in a