♪ if it's wednesday, the president and party are facing a lot of questions after biden's big address on voting rights yesterday afternoon as he pushes the senate down a path that likely leads to a dead end. and then what? plus the inflation surge continues amid the ongoing supply chain backlogs as consumer prices rise at a pace this country hasn't seen in 40 years. the transportation secretary pete buttigieg addresses the response to those backlogs ahead. and later the latest white house response to the run away omicron surge. install a new testing czar and

promises to schools of an additional 10 million covid tests per month. welcome to "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. democrats facing a whole bunch of questions right now. what is their end game on voting rights? president biden endorsed yesterday changing the rules of the senate to expand and protect the right to vote. the only problem, democrats don't have the votes to do it. and the president's fiery words yesterday didn't offer much in the way of road map for actual action. >> not a single republican has displayed the courage to stand up to a defeated president to protect america's right to vote. not one. i believe the threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these

voting rights bills, debate them, vote, let the majority prevail. i'm making it clear to protect our democracy i support changing the senate rules. whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights. >> senate leader schumer told reporters this morning that following the president's speech, members of his caucus had lengthy meetings with the two key democratic hold outs. joe manchin and kyrsten sinema. those talks did not yield any breakthroughs leading towards careening towards failure on an issue they repeatedly said that failure is not an option. >> we are trying to come to a place. we're not there yet. i wouldn't want anybody to think this was easy. >> if those two senators won't guarantee senators the votes, will you still put that on the floor? >> it is my understanding it will be a vote. senators are elected to vote and

timing is important on this matter. >> so that leaves us back at the question of what is the democrat's end game? moments ago the white house confirmed that president biden will attend the caucus lunch to discuss the push to pass voting rights and potential changes to senate rules. right now members of the congressional black caucus are about to hold a news conference as the progressive base grows increasingly frustrated with the lack of action on this issue. the big questions about the path forward for the party. how do they get stuck arguing amongst themselves so much about procedure instead of hammering home the actual issue? did they wait too long to turn their focus to voting rights? should they have made some filibuster changes right at the beginning? make it the talking filibuster at first and prove to manchin and sinema if changes could actually matter. what about this potential side deal being cooked up? democrats want to pass something on this issue even if it doesn't satisfy their base.

half a loaf, two slices of bread for the electoral college reform act. joined now by kelly o'donnell, nbc senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake. kelly, let me begin with you and sort of the white house perspective on this. do they have an end game other than creating more pressure on manchin and sinema? >> well, they lack the levers of actual power. they can't change these rules? they can't change the senate. the president who is an institutionalist supported in many iterations over the years and publicly embracing this new rule, the new approach to the rule. so what they are kind of ultimately doing is a shaming strategy to say if members whether they be democrats or republicans don't go along with this, they are aligning themselves with some of the most notorious names who opposed

civil rights over time. that's basically where we are. working the phones. the president and vice president over the next several days, we were told. the luncheon that you referred to tomorrow, which is basically the kind of team meeting that happens every week among senate democrats. that's where the president will go for that face-to-face time. as you outlined, they might have done a lot of things differently earlier on in the first year of the presidency. they are where they are now. the president is in this moment expanding a lot of capital at a time when based on polling and you're the expert on that, he is not in a strong position politically, but he's using this time to try to demonstrate especially to african american voters and he knows the senate math. he has had intense discussions. he said it is all about standing on the right side of history and risking not standing up for what he believes in. so, he's looking at this not

only as a way to persuade in the moment, but to be kind of in the ark of history, if he can't get it done, he will at least have expended at much of his energy and capital trying to get it done. >> i want to play, though, some comments from mitt romney because i have to say in this era when you get a response from mitt romney on a subject like this, i wonder if anybody in the white house thinks it may be they could have handled this differently. let me play you what romney said. >> he said that the goal of some republicans is to, quote, turn the will of the voters into a mere suggestion. and so president biden goes down the same tragic road taken by president trump. casting doubt on the reliability of american elections. this is a sad, sad day. i expected more of president

biden who came in to office with the stated goal of bringing the country together. >> right now we know mitch mcconnell is on the senate floor excoriating the president on that speech. but, kelly, my question is to this i can't recall a meeting of mitt romney, lisa murkowski, susan collins, rob portman, you see where i'm going here at the white house on voting rights. on whether there was something -- there clearly is a working group here on something. the power of the presidency is two-fold. the bully pulpit and the power to convene. we haven't seen the power to convene used on this issue on the other side of the aisle. why not? >> well, that's an interesting question. one of the issues certainly when you talk about traditional republican views is they believe that voting is the domain of states. we can certainly point to a lot of states at the state level and acting voting measures that are questionable, that have raised doubts about fairness and we

have seen how the supreme court had acted to roll back the voting rights act in some ways where there is this call for federal oversight. there is a history among republicans, including mitch mcconnell, voting to support voting rights. in some ways, i think republicans who were in the mood for bipartisanship were more focused on matters like infrastructure and politically for their own base and their own constituents voting rights has become such a product of the left, there wasn't a lot of benefit to them to do that. and so now you've got a voice like mitt romney who has been one of those. let's remember, he voted to impeach president trump. he is making the argument that to oppose the specific pair of bills, which in some ways nationalize elections, which is not a conservative way of viewing elections apart from abuses, that there ought to be some way for finding common ground. and democrats certainly the

white house does not want an off ramp with some moderate approach. they want an all or nothing on this. and they're trying to make the big lie as they've now adopted that language referring to president trump's actions on the election as one of their tools. >> garrett haake, let me pose the question to you that we posed at the top. what is chuck schumer, but i'll alter the question a little bit. what is chuck schumer's end game here? >> i wish i could tell you, chuck. this is the challenge of reporting this out all week. schumer laid out a couple steps of a plan, but not all of it. they will vote on the voting rights bills on or by monday, martin luther king day. and then vote on rules change. he hasn't specified what those rule changes even would be and i don't know a democratic senator who thinks that that vote will be successful. look, i think it's entirely possible that schumer is bluffing here and this is a strategy to exert maximum pressure on sinema and manchin without forcing them to vote

because we saw what happened the last time too much pressure arguably was used on joe manchin and that was in the form of a statement from the white house that mentioned his name. it was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back on the build back better negotiations. i have a hard time seeing how more pressure on manchin including going on the floor and line-up as the president said with the george wallaces of the world will be conducive to getting him to work with democrats on all the other issues that he remains a linchpin. it is very difficult to see around the corner of the rest of the week to where chuck schumer wants this to go other than kind of hoping this behind the scenes pressure on manchin and sinema changes their well-stated positions. >> john, i don't understand why, do they have another way of trying to pressure manchin and sinema? because it seems like they're saying, well, we tried it with spending priorities and it didn't work and now we'll do it on voting priorities and hammer the same round hole into the square peg.

>> yeah, it's, you know, i'm not sure what the end game is here either. there are different ways this vote can happen. >> how convoluted could it get? >> well, we'll have some reporting on that, too. i don't want to give away too much. different ways this could happen. but here a couple things here. one, they weren't this close on the filibuster last year. it's a fair point to make in schumer's defense and the white house defense. there were a number of democrats who would have opposed it at that time and activists off the hill have worked on these democrats. they worked on angus king, john tester, others, diane feinstein, mark warner. they have come to a point where they have gotten this close. so, there has been some momentum and now they're at this point where they have to act. the other point here is that we had this inflation report today and that was terrible news for

bbb, the build back better act. in some sense, where do democrats go? there are some other legislation they can go to, but build back better, the president's top priority is in huge trouble, you know. it helped stall it last month. today's report not going to help it. in some ways, they've got to go somewhere and this is something the base has been really affect on. so, you know, in some ways it makes political sense. but if you come up with a loss here, how does that help you? i don't see. it is never good to lose a vote. >> garrett haake, i'm also curious the various ways to deal with the filibuster. it seems like they don't want to try an incremental change. i think they have 50 votes to make it a talking filibuster again. is there any sort of off ramp there where they, all right, let's go ahead and make the republicans do a talking

filibuster and voting rights for days on end. why not go there? >> i'm not sure they have those votes, chuck. the way i read kyrsten sinema's opposition to this and she's more challenging because she rarely speaks direct on this. we get statements from her answers and harder to get answers to direct questions. her issue here is that any weakening of the filibuster will come around against democrats in the future. the idea that a future congress controlled by republicans, imagine a world in which that happens and donald trump is back in office and all democrats could do is speak up and delay legislation they would want to oppose. she doesn't want to see it weakened even in that way. the small changes that joe manchin had talked about like getting rid of the filibuster on the first of two votes and start debate and you could make an argument as bres was saying here that maybe you chip away at this over time but i think that's part of the problem here. there are at least half a dozen different schools of thoughts on

ways to modify the senate rules more broadly to get this done and as best i can count, there aren't 50 votes for any one of them that would make a substantive difference on passing legislation. >> kelly, i'm curious if you've gotten reaction to the new inflation report from the white house and what they say this does to build back better. >> their argument is that they need the large sweep of this sort of biden agenda economically, which they believe when you look at some of the first pieces that have been put in place with the american rescue plan, with the infrastructure, with the jobs numbers that those pieces are beginning to show some benefits. they recognize inflation is a problem, they believe they've made some positive moves on supply chain and they believe that this is about continuing the work of the biden agenda to try to get that done. that's an answer coming from their point of view.

clearly more inflation is an argument in the favor of joe manchin who has said more spending is a problem. so, inflation is a real threat to the biden economic presidency right now even if that is something that they want to argue against. and they can point to some good figures like the jobless rate and they can certainly talk about some of the benefits like wages going up but the real cost of goods and the real experience that people are having with that is something that many americans are living with day to day and as their wages go up they're spending more of that on those things whether it's meat at the grocery store or fuel in their cars and so forth. so, it's a challenge for the president for sure. >> bres, build back better or another covid relief bill? what is more realistic this spring? >> i think build back better is the current form will not pass. but even scaled down forms, manchin has offered some ideas.

it could get a scaled back form. i do think a covid relief bill, government funding has to be, they have to move forward on government funding by february 18th, something has to happen. you could package a covid relief bill with disaster aid and government funding package and that could all come together. maybe not by the 18th but late february, early march. you know, kelly said it. the president, they need something when he goes and talks to the nation, you know, that some victory. if it's not here, he has to have something. that is something they could build on with an election, you know, electoral college act bill and something. he has to some ws in the next couple weeks. >> they have to come up with some exit ramp, that's for sure. thank you all for getting us started. up next we'll speak with

jeff merkley he has been trying for months, even years. he will be here to discuss what happens next. maybe he has an answer to how this ends. later, the latest from the white house covid response team as the administration vows to send 10 million tests per month to schools nationwide. you're watching "meet the press daily." "meet the press "meet the press daily.but when it comes to my insurance i don't. i use liberty mutual, they customize your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. wooo, yeaa, woooooo and, by switching you could even save 665 dollars. yeah. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. ♪ people everywhere living with only pay for what you need. type 2 diabetes are waking up to what's possible... with rybelsus®.

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delivering marks slamming. yesterday specifically to change senate rules. as we reported start of the hour, president biden will head to capitol hill tomorrow to discuss potential changes trying to find a bath forward. i'm joined now by a senate democrat who will be in that meeting tomorrow and somebody who has been trying to change filibuster i'd argue for years. i want to say senator jeff merkley democrat from oregon pretty much since the day you got here? >> that's right, chuck. just from the moment i arrived and saw the senate deteriorated as i was here as a younger individual before i returned home to oregon. it has only gotten worse since. >> before we get to the present challenge here. explain why -- i'll be honest, not a mystery where joe manchin was on this issue and where at the start of the senate where somewhere between 4 and 6

democratic senators were on this issue, you probably know the whip count better than i do. but beginning of every senate there is a rules package and we're in a 50/50 senate. you guys had it. why not attempt talking filibuster. the incremental filibuster changes right that manchin says he needs to see before he's ready to say, let's give up on the whole thing. why didn't that occur then? was there not a debate about it? i understand not going for broke here, but why not try to reform the filibuster, particularly if you think it's going to prove your point that it's still goegto be an obstacle. why not try to do that at the beginning of the senate. was that a missed opportunity? >> well, it would be a glorious thing to do. but unlike every other legislative body in the country the senate has continuing rules and to be able to get a new rule proposal before the body for debate requires cooperation of both parties. so, we, obviously, didn't have mitch mcconnell's cooperation to put reform before the body so

that's the challenge. you almost have to fix the filibuster to have a chance to fix the filibuster, if you will. >> that's odd. so, apparently you're only going to need 50 votes to change the rules. why wouldn't you have needed 50 votes to enact a new rule then? i'm a little bit confused. >> with 50 votes reinterpret the existing rules the black and white rules stay the same and reinterpret their application. this is what the democrats do when they created a simple majority for lower level nominees and what mitch mcconnell did when he changed the number of hours it says in the rule and consider someone for eight or more hours and change it to two hours in order to speed up getting the people he wanted on to the court. so, this reinterpretation requires a ruling of the hair and 50 votes to sustain that ruling or override that ruling.

here's the thing, philosophically the democrats and the caucus have a variety of perspectives. i've argued, for example, let's restore the filibuster. if you have the leverage that comes from slowing things down, you have to be on the floor giving speeches. it's a public act. you did it in front of america and america can weigh in. are you heroes or are you bums. i argued that we should imply the two speech rule that has been in our rule since we were founded as a senate ask still in our rules today on final passage. these are using traditional rules of the senate but essentially applying them to the question of final passage of a bill. and that's the challenge. we never get to final passage now because always an amendment pending. so, that would be a beautiful thing. and i think it meets what my colleagues say when they say they don't want to get rid of 60 votes. well, there's two possible meanings to that. one, they want everything to be passed by 60 votes.

don't let the minority make the decision, let the majority make the decision. that's the problem with mitch mcconnell having this 60-vote ability to veto anything democrats want to do. because you end up in a situation where the democrats want to veto the republicans and the republicans want to veto the democrats and it's an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. we can't test out new ideas and do small fixes because each side is fixated on blocking each other. the filibuster says, yeah, you get leverage and slow things down but you are not setting to negotiate because you're doing the painful work of being on the floor and the majority has a senate to negotiate because they're in the painful situation by the minority and that's the most valuable thing we have. >> this is not how the senate worked in the 1950s. i was speaking with max baucus and he said, look, he remembers george mitchell used to snore and they had cots in the cloak

room. the talking filibuster wasn't that long ago they had it and i assume you don't need to introduce a new rule. it sounds like you can reinterpret the rule back to what it was. again, i guess i go back to that. do you think you have a better chance of getting 50 votes for that than you do for the carve out to make voting rights like a debt like you did with the debt ceiling and just a full carve out? >> that is the question. i can tell you a lot of members who feel like i do that would much rather have a talking filibuster than a carve out. we want to honor the role of the minority. the minority should make it tough to get things passed and it will come down to where a couple of our members stand. by the way, it was a situation before 1975 rule change where you had to be on the floor because you had to be there for the votes. and it was those who showed up. in.

is '75 they made it an absolute number, 60. that means who want to debate don't have to show up. they don't really want to debate, they just want to paralyze and as that became slowly understood in the late years of the. is '70s and '80s being applied to everything. that's where we're at. massive obstruction. we're having more than 100 blockades a year. this is how the senate has been paralyzed and damaged and number one practitioner of this is mitch mcconal and takes the floor and i would never do this and he has done it. he has led this effort and paralysis and delay has been his calling card and he's still at it today. >> i'm curious, garrett haake was talking about how kyrsten sinema's biggest objection to doing this is that she thinks that once you go down this road, the other side will take it further. she's saying that could happen in the future. that's already happened.

you know, we can debate whether harry reid's decision to push the envelope on all judges except supreme court, right. he took it one place and mitch mcconnell said, okay, fine, i'm going with supreme court. this isn't a new issue. how does she respond to that when you say it's already happened? >> we'll have to leave it to her how she responds. but my case here is that mitch mcconnell really likes the current situation because his top priorities is simple majority because that's the court and that is tax cuts. and he's twice changed the rules to make tax cuts a simple majority. if there is another top priority that comes along and he decides that not leaving reproductive rights to the courts or to the states and he wants to do it nationally and his base pushes for that, then he would do it on that. but the fact is he's got the perfect situation where his

priorities are simple majority and super majority and so he loves the current situation. so it has already happened. and i think the best way to preserve the future is create something that does honor the minority and that's the talking filibuster. if we do that, the minority can slow us down for a long time, huge incentive to negotiate, huge incentive to agree and republicans will want to keep that in place because they feel like more often the democrats want to do policy changes than day do. >> very quickly, respond to mitch mcconnell's criticism that, you know, if there was really the priority of the president's, why did he spend nine months focused on other things? would of, could of, should of is what every sports fan does at the end of the season. >> i have been right in the middle of it because i led the for the people act and i was able to get 49 votes lined up with sponsors and i couldn't get

the 50th with joe. we had a group and sat down over the summer and negotiate through every provision and we created a new name and new lead sponsor amy klobuchar and she has done a fabulous job and then a bill that will work, but we can't get to that bill unless we also fix the rule. and get rid of the minority veto. it has been long and torturous and i just, my frustration level is through the roof. my fellow senators' frustration is through the roof and it's not at all clear, will we do a carve out? will we do a talking filibuster? will we do neither and that's the drama unfolding in this next week. >> excellent. senator, i have to live it there. my midwestern relatives would be glad you said roof and not roof. senator merkley, thanks coming on. nbc news caught up with secretary pete buttigieg at the port of l.a. as inflation soars

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meat, poultry, fish and eggs which cost 12.5% more than they did the previous year. bringing down those costs the biden administration keeping store shelves stocked with goods remains a challenge. pete buttigieg visited the ports in l.a. to see what is being done for the supply train disruption. jo, this is one of those things they have to look like they're trying and these little things might help down the road, but there is not a lot they can actually do to cure this inflation issue in the short term. >> yeah, it's a very big challenge to fish in the short term. no doubt. the transportation department saying it will take months for consumers to feel the effects. secretary buttigieg visiting the ports of long beach and los angeles as they dole out new grant money. $241 million to basically help

modernize the ports and that includes railways like at the port of long beach. really the supply chain issues, although the holiday season has passed, continue to be very challenging. i actually asked secretary buttigieg exactly when this will end. he says he doesn't have a crystal ball and this is more of what he said to me. so, if you were to explain to a shopper where the biggest pain point is right now, is it here at the ports? is it on the railways? is it in the warehouses? where is it? >> the truth is if you see a ship off shore here waiting for a chance to unload its goods, there's a good chance the reasons have to do with something 1,000 miles inland like an issue with labor capacity in trucking. right now we have something like 300,000 truck drivers leaving that job every single year. >> i asked him then how much should truckers be paid to attract truckers back on to the roadways and he says that truckers ought to be paid for

that critical time that they end up waiting. so many truckers not compensated for that time. as you look ahead to reshoring and making that long distance between say china and the u.s. feel a little bit shorter for consumers, secretary buttigieg saying that they do want to bring more jobs back to the u.s., reshore those american jobs but little specifics yet on how they plan to do that ahead of the next holiday season, chuck. >> jo, some of the supply chain issue is not in our hands. it's in china's hands and that's something that i think has got to be frustrating to a lot of folks in washington. jo ling kent, thank you. the latest from the white house covid response team. schools and hospitals nationwide. you're watching "meet the press daily." you're watching "meet the press daily. ew juicy steak, pepper jack cheese, and smokey baja chipotle sauce. save big. order through the app.

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welcome back the white house covid response team announcing

new details to send 10 million covid-19 tests to k-12 schools nationwide every month. both rapid antigen and pcr test will be supplied and overseeing that effort and the entire federal government's testing program is the newly named senior adviser to the white house covid response team somebody quite familiar to us in 2020. the hypercontagious omicron variant pushes schools and hospitals to the brink. data shows almost 5,400 schools had to cancel some form of in-person learning last week. and nationwide more than 150,000 covid patients are currently hospitalized, that means one in five hospital beds in this country is currently occupied by a covid positive patient. covid is spreading so rapidly at this rate most people are going to get covid. joining me now is msnbc

contributor and dr. blackstock just as we were getting this news from the federal government here about schools and more testing, it does seem as if everybody is starting to choose their own adventure on the state level. the main department of education changed something here with contact tracing and i'm curious what you think. conducting contact tracing in a timely and thorough manner is becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible for school personnel given the fast spread of the omicron variant and the advised standard that the state put in and permits schools with universal masking policies to suspend contact tracing if they're not able to conduct it effectively in order to rededicate staff to focus on covid-19 strategies. i'm sure hospitals and schools are going we want to follow the most stringent set of rules but

we don't have enough resources to do it. what do you make of this decision? >> right, chuck. they have no other choice. they have been forced into this position. we have very high transmission levels of this virus and it's true. contact tracing is an effective strategy containing the virus. but only up to a certain point. when you have levels as high as the current levels of omicron transmission it basically is ineffective combine would the fact that we have inspected staff and public health workers. i think what we're seeing in maine is likely going to happen, unfortunately, in other states. >> let me ask you this. we didn't -- we look like we are caught off guard by this variant. we didn't have enough testing supplies ready to go as the demand for testing and i've heard some argue that even pre-omicron we wouldn't have had the testing supplies necessary for the rush before the holidays. but given that another variant

is probably inevitable here and, you know, it will be maybe luck whether it's a worse variant or a better variant. what do we need to do to prepare for a summer variant if we think this is going to become seasonal? >> chuck, that's such a great question and definitely another variant is around the corner because we have such high levels of transmission and that's when variants emerge. the more people that they infect, the more often they replicate and more often mutations happen. i think omicron is almost a gift to us. a gift because while it's more transmissible, it's not more virulent but there will be a variant that will be both soon. we need to use this time to ramp up our messaging around what kind of mask to use. really the cdc needs to be direct. everyone needs to wear an n95 or equivalent masks. we need to get free high-quality n95 masks out to the american public and use the protection

act to ramp up testing and the government needs to work with private manufacturers to increase the amount of rapid testing that's available and get it out to all residents. you know, thought just through the website and not through insurers. it has to be found in grocery stores and libraries and made incredibly accessible to the american public. i think also this is the time to put that air travel vaccine mandate in place. i know biden has talked about it, but we know from polling that people would be willing to get vaccinated if they needed vaccines to travel. and so i think that it's clear what needs to be put in place. it just depends on whether the political will is there and i really think this administration can get it done but we can't get caught behind like we did this time. >> dr. blackstock, when i heard you say we have to be able to get more testing and we have to get more masks. i heard that in march of 2020, april of 2020. i mean, there is a part of me that is how are we nearly two

years into this and we're in a cul-de-sac on testing and masks. >> i feel the same way. we know that abbott threw away millions of tests over the summer because they thought the pandemic was coming to an end and there wasn't enough testing demand for the tests. right now two years in we're clear that there are surges. one, we're clear that coronavirus is here to stay. it's not endemic yet because right now virus cases are increasing exponentially. we're still very much in a pandemic, but i think that we as american public we need to really push our elected officials to get it right this time and that happens at a local, state and federal level. i think i need to see more urgency from this administration that, yes, it's great that we're getting these rapid tests but we don't need them in a few weeks. we need them right now. >> yeah. common sense advice you just gave. better mask, more tests faster

available, vaccine mandate on domestic travel seems not, doesn't seem like a -- dr. blackstock, always appreciate getting your perspective and expertise. >> thank you. the former senate leader lies in state at the u.s. capitol. you're watching "meet the press daily. watching "meet the press watching "meet the press daily. i looked on ancestry and just started digging just to talk to my parents about it and to send it to my grandparents and be like, hey this person we're all related to look at this crazy stuff they did in arizona 100 years ago. it actually gives you a picture of their life, so you get to feel like

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welcome back. this is a live look here at the capitol where former senate majority leader and senate democratic leader harry reid is lying in state. the nevada senator died recently following a long battle with cancer. joining me is byron dorgan, longtime democrat from north dakota. good to see you. shays, chuck, good to see you. >> walk me through this. the most intriguing thing for me about harry reid's successful political career is i thought he was an introvert. it's always odd to me when you see introverts win over all their colleagues. what made him the senate leader? what is it that senate democrats said, you know what, i trust you, harry reid? >> you mentioned introvert. let me tell you an extrovert moment. i was on an airplane sitting across the aisle from harry decades ago when word came that senator laxalt was not going to run for election.

this big smile came across harry's face because he knew what that meant, he was going to run for the united states senate. he had lost to laxalt previously. he went to the senate and became senate leader. you asked the question, you know, what existed there? it's really interesting, he was never the sparkle in the room. if you walked into a room, he was never the sparkle in that room. he was quiet, he could be blunt. he was no-nonsense. and he would always ask the question what and how, what do we need to do here, what are we going to the and how are we going to get it done. for some reason, he created a great deal of confidence in other democratic senators and he was elected democratic leader for a good long while. >> when i talked to senators, i would say, why harry reid, sometimes leadership comes from wherever the biggest

constituencies are for either party, for the democrats new york and california, everywhere the big money is, who can raise money. he understood you had to be with your state. and i think about, this is harry reid who got the nra endorsement back in the day. there was a pragmatic streak in him. and i'm ccurious, do you think e could have been leader today with that same pragmatic streak? >> don't know. today is a different day, obviously things have changed dramatically. you go back to when tom daschle was elected democratic leader, harry and i worked very hard to get that to happen. and then tom appointed harry as democratic -- chairman of the democratic policy committee, he appointed me as the assistant democratic floor leader. harry and i served in the

democratic leadership. what i watched with harry is almost every member of the senate understood something about what harry had done for them, caring about their constituency, about their issues that were important. he was quite extraordinary. but as i said, he wasn't someone who was loud. he wasn't a back slapper, hale fellow well-met. he just wasn't. >> what do you make of this current filibuster debate? >> i think the filibuster should change. i think we should keep the filibuster. what senator mcconnell did when taking it away for supreme court justices was unforgivable. senator mcconnell decided years ago he was going to filibuster every motion to proceed on virtually every judge, and that of course caused the first change harry made. but mcconnell went much, much further. i think the filibuster should be one in which rather than the 60 votes mattering, if you want to

stop something, then 40 votes will matter and you have to be on the floor with 40 votes. you have to be on the floor casting 40 votes in order to get something done. but you know, if i might just say quickly, as a senator, i could just call the cloak room and say, i'm opposed to senate bill "x," and all of a sudden that cloak room understands they're going to object to anything on that issue for me, that's a filibuster. that's just nuts, just crazy. that's not what the filibuster is supposed to be about. if you've got 40 people that want to stop something, they have to come to the floor of the senate. that's the way it ought to be, come to the floor of the senate and find a way to stop it. but they have to be there in person and they have to continue that debate. if not, then things go forward. >> any advice to president biden on how to do this, on how to try to sort of salve this wound? >> you know, he has to try to deal with it, especially with the election reform and other things. this issue of stolen election,

listen, the people that tried to steal the election were donald trump and those who were trying to send fraudulent certification petitions to washington, dc. that's where the stealing of an election occurred. i don't know what to advise joe on this. you've got to work on election reform. but it's also the case that most people care about covid and inflation and the economy. those are the center issues, it seems to me. and democrats need to stop fighting each other and start deciding what's important is for us to take on the republicans on some of these issues and move forward in a constructive way. >> it's not easy if you think one thing is an existential threat but the voters aren't there, do you meet the voters where they are? this is why politics is always an intriguing thing. >> and we won by a whisker. >> that's true, and you have to remember, if you barely won, maybe you need to figure out consensus.

>> absolutely. >> thanks, very much, senator, appreciate it. on the latest episode of the chuck todd cast, i'm speaking with another former colleague of harry reid, senator max baucus. we'll talk a little filibuster, a little china, a little world politics. we'll be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily." msnbc coverage continues with katy tur after this break. with with katy tur after this break. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur.

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