partisanship, who were afraid of going against the tide and their party. to stand up and say this is right, this is wrong because you know, they couldn't even get it to a vote. we're not talking about it just, it wouldn't even let them debate on it. it's heartbreaking. >> it is. at least we have the privilege to draw some attention to it. >> and shame. i'm a big proponent of shame. >> keli goff. thank you. "hardball," coming up right now. with again, charlie crist with chris matthews here. senate down, house to go. let's play "hardball." good evening i'm chris matthews in washington.

the big tax deal is just hit the 60-vote threshold. the magic number to hit a fill bester and head toward victory. can the democrats and republicans in that body deliver the 218 votes needed for that big package of cuts and income taxes, payroll taxes added to a 13-month extension of jobless benefits? part of that story is that show stopping appearance of president obama with bill clinton. in the presidential briefing room. how much bang will the scene of the big two have on fellow democrats? this is the most vital political alliance in the country and certainly rules the democratic party. will it keep the democrats together in this debate? plus, a shot across the bough of the health care bill. a federal district judge in virginia ruled that a key part of the bill, the part where we all buy insurance, is unconstitutional. if republicans get their way, it's certainly the beginning of the end and with the republican

right and democratic left making all the noise these days, what is the political middle have to say? could there be a movement there as well? midpoint between the tea party and the most activists progressives? we'll ask two center leaning republicans who were elbowed aside. and finally, some guy at yale has come up with the top five political quotes of the year. they're all pretty bad. we start with the tax bill. senator michael bennet is a democratic from colorado. you've just been voted in. tell me about this vote today. it looks like you've got to 60 votes to be filibustered to get cloture. looks like your going to get the vote. what put it together? >> thanks for having me back. i was home this weekend, shopping with one of my girls. we went to macy's. there was a democratic senior who runs a club there and said,

how you going to vote. i said for it. she said, i don't like these tax breaks. i said, if we don't pass this, 2 million coloradoians taxes are going up. i think people went home and heard that people reacted to that and said, you know what, that doesn't sound like a bad deal. >> i am actually amazed by this number. the new "washington post" abc poll finds that 69% of americans support the deal. here's the interesting thing among the parties. 68% of democrats, basically the national average, 68% of independe independents with a little support from republicans. everybody knows republicans got a little bit better in this deal, but not that big a difference here. >> obviously, hadn't seen the cross tabs on the poll, but i

bet there are two things animating on that. one is, doesn't make any sense to us. >> you mean go up. go down. >> we don't think it makes sense for taxes to go up for everybody. also, i think people are happy to see there's an instant in time in this county when people are willing to work together, which is what i heard for 22 months on the campaign trail. republican crowds, democratic crowds and inbetween, they're sick and tired of everybody screaming at each other. >> what do you make of the noise level? it does seem that the people at the points, at the poll, left and right starting with the party, but you have senator moynihan's theory. we know that happens, but it seems like the middle does get blanked out of the discussion. >> i think that's true. and i think what has to happen

is that we've got to elevate the policy discussion here. look, this is one vote. an important vote, but it's one vote. what we really need to be doing is casti ining our eyes forward the way of comprehensive tax reform, a compelling story for the american people and our trading partners around the world. i think if we do that hard work, what we're going to find is that the people polarizing on either side are going to have to come to grips with the stubborn facts that we're going to have to deal with and that's what the people in my town halls told me over and over again. >> i've got to get to this last point. it just broke that the federal judge in virginia, the lowest federal bench. has decreed that the individual mandate, the requirement that everyone buy health insurance,

is unconstitutional, according to to him. what do you think of -- that made the bill famous? >> we think it's constitutional. everything that my guys have looked at suggested it is. this basically turns on whether or not the federal government has within its power the ability to mandate people to buy private health insurance. we'll see as it gets litigated in the courts. i'm confident they'll say it's constitutional and to answer your question directly, i think what you'll hear is people who are opponents to the bill use this to try to repeal it. i don't think that had legs before and i don't think it does now. >> congratulations on your big victory this year. you were definitely going against the wind. >> i appreciate it. >> let's go to bob greenstein.

by the way, if you want to know who this guy is, he's the guy everybody goes to the for the duncan heinz sale of approval. you're a liberal, a progressive. where do you stand on this package of tax cuts, extending the tax cuts for two years, cutting the payroll tax by two points, a lot of other things as well as the exteng of jobless benefits? >> there's some very positive aspects in this package, but some really unsound aspects. clearly, extending unemployment benefits, critical in the absence of the package probably wouldn't have gotten an extension. also, this hasn't gotten enough attention. for the next two years of really important tax credits, tax reductions, for millions of low and moderate income working families with children. millions of kids out of poverty. >> refundable. that means you get a check from

the government. >> if it did like a minimum wage mother with two kids would have lost $1500 a year. on the unsound part, you know, here we are, we have a presidential deficit commission called for things like reducing social security benefits, medicare benefits, for elderly widows because of fiscal problems. we're talking about extending tax cuts that average $100,000 a year for millionaires and a change in the estate tax that would only benefit the estates of the one quarter of 1% richest people who die and this tax, additional tax cuts the republicans insisted on was worth an extra million dollars per estate for those top estates. now, what happened here, as i understand it, is the white house said we don't want to do

this additional es kate tax cut. the republicans said, fine, but then we will not agree to extending in of the refundable tax credits for working poor and working low income families. how do you add it up? >> this kind of horse trading that goes on behind the scenes, that was done by joe biden. mcconnell held him up. >> i think senator kyl was heavily involved in this as well, but how do you do a bottom line on this? to me, there are two tests. test number one. compared to what if the deal goes down now, what happens i think if the deal goes down, it gets relitigated in the next congress because no one in the middle of 9.8% unemployment wants the middle income tax cuts to die. if it gets relitigated in the next congress, i think all the adverse elements remain, maybe get worse and the positive

aspects of the package get the -- >> i've heard that argument. once they get control of the house and it looks like -- control the senate if you add the 47 seats they're going to win plus the four conservative seats they picked up on this issue, they had a majority in both houses. they were jammed through the tax cuts for the rich and gif the democrats nothing. which opens the big question, why did the republicans agree to this deal? >> well, the republicans obviously wanted to continue the high income tax cuts. they loved getting the further e vis ration of the estate tax. what both sides are looking at the 2012. if you ask me on balance how this plays out, part of my answer is in five years, we'll kind of know for sure. let's suppose at the end of two years, in 2012, president obama

says the economy is somewhat better now. wee doing budget cuts and all these other things. i will veto any extension of the high income tax cuts. taking it to the country and maybe wins on that. then we've got all the positive stuff for the next two years and this package will create over a million jobs. >> you're the best news this president's had. >> if the debt's made permanent, it's a problem. >> you're ruling is yes. >> yes. >> i have to tell you, this is the moral authority for people in the progress movement. thank you. coming up, bill clinton gave president obama's his tax deal his seal of approval in a remarkable appearance at the white house. let's talk about the coalition. we're looking at right there. the pure politics of this thing. you're watching "hardball," only on msnbc.

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are in and president obama is losing support in a new poll. and now, mitt romney would tweak him or beat him out by 46-44. president obama does better against the rest of the republican field. beat mike huckabee 47-43. that's a close one. still under 50%. he does the best against sarah palin, 52-40. the poll points out the trouble for the president. he's losing support among liberals, but he's not picking up the independents. my belief, it will take a few week, he'll come out much better. "hardball" back after this. your core competency... is competency. and you rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. and go. you can even take a full-size or above. and still pay the mid-size price. i'm getting an upgrade.

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i just had a terrific meeting with the former president. president bill clinton and i thought that given the fact that he presided over as good an economy as we've seen in our

lifetimes, that it might be useful for him to share some of his thoughts. >> what an understatement. that was president obama on friday after meeting the president clinton. here's president clinton at that press conference. >> so, in my opinion, this is a good bill and i hope that my fellow democrats will support it. i thank the republican leaders for agreeing to include things important to the president. there's never a perfect bipartisan bill, and we see this differently, but i really believe this will be a significant net plus for the country. i always think that in general, a lot of people are breathing a sigh of relief there's been an agreement on something. >> what a brilliant political

assessment. but wh does this tell us about the state of the obama and clinton coalition? chuck todd's the msnbc news chief white house correspondent. mark halperin, the senior political analyst for "time" magazine, msnbc. we think we're going to hear from the president any moment now, but your assessment of the senate vote. >> this was the easy hurdle to clear. they've got this and you heard dick durbin say because the president negotiated this with the senate. everything, his entire presidency has been about trying to get stuff through the senate. don't think dick durbin and reid were more looped in than house democrats. >> let me go to mark, the question of this clinton coalition. the most powerful reality in the country now is the democratic

parties united as never before despite this this week, they are united. 80% support for the president. how's it going? what we saw on friday, what's it tell us about bill clinton and president obama? >> the interpersonal drama, bill clinton was on friday, very supportive in public and private with the president. giving advice to people in the administration, having a lot of his people populating key jobs and in the press conference, people may talk about the strategy for 1994. he showed obama a lot of tactics that are going to be required to keep the support from the base, but get things done like he did in this case with the republicans. >> here's more of bill clinton giving advice to president obama. let's listen. >> mr. president, i get the feeling that you're happier to be here commenting and giving

advice than governing. >> i had quite a good time governing. i am happy to be here, i suppose when the bullets fired are less likely to hit me, i'm glad to be here because i -- i think the president made a good decision. and because i want my country to do well and after the '94 election, i said that the american people in their wisdom put us both in the same boat, so we're going to row or sink and i want us to row. >> so smart. he's basically in there it seems to me because a lot of the people who have been criticizing president obama were clinton supporters in the beginning. >> it is a pattern with that. particularly with some of the louder critiques of this. paul krugman is a loudest example, but there were some

others. let's not forget, it's sort of weird, everybody made a huge deal out of bill clinton supporting the president's deal. i think it would have been biller new ifs he had not. we didn't have anybody from the left, this way, wasn't as if -- i don't know. this does feel like one of those moments. i think we're enamored with it in the media. there's a lot of clinton kool-aid drinkers. >> you are getting so hard and sophisticated. >> this obsession. >> the fact that president obama walked out of the room, left bill clinton there, was that a sign of confidence that bill clinton was going to carry on his agenda for the next 20 minutes and that he didn't have to worry about showing up? >> he knew what was going to happen an he was a little bored

and didn't want to be a bystander. why i think it mattered, it sent everybody into the weernd, the supd shows, not about nancy pelosi, but the fact bill clinton has blessed this in a way. that was vital. the weekend would have been a lot different had it not occurred. >> you bring up a good point because let's remember what the picture, i joked with a white house staffer earlier that day, like, hey, you going to give us anything on this clinton-obama meeting because other than that, i got about eight hours of this tape. then bernie sanders, his show ended up -- >> here's president clinton on his party. let's listen.

>> we're hurting now and i get it. and you know, i did 133 events for them. i believe the congress in the last two years did a far better job than the american people thought. i went to extraordinary efforts to try to explain what i thought had been done in ways that i thought were most favorable to them, but we had an election. the results are what they are. the numbers will only get worse in january in terms of negotiating. >> it used to be anybody working in politics that was out for a few years couldn't write a speech, couldn't keep up. the old clinton, the former president, is tolely in tune. it's like he never left the music. >> he's been in the middle of it and part of it, i think at first he stayed because it was motivating to try to help hillary clinton's career, but i thought it was amazing how he

came in and says, you know, i spend an hour a day studying this economy. >> i believe it. >> probably also an hour a day on finding on on arkansas politics and florida politics. >> mark, your thoughts because i think his touch the perfect. i think he was off touch 2008. a very difficult time to have your spouse running. you can't be the candidate. you had to be the enforcer. >> a lot of times when i would run into him in 2008, he would say, i'm rusty. so much of the politics was not around when he was a candidate. as a rusty guy, he's still bet eer than everybody else and has clearly gotten really engaged in the politics of this. when he was helping for other democrats in the midterms. >> how does he connect with the net roots? does he help them support obama who are disappointed with the

president? is he going to bring them aboard? >> some, but not all. i think what he does really well is talks about all this with a sense of poise and sense of humor an a sense of pa-- the president's bigger than the net roots. sometimes he gets trapped into going head to head and down to this level. >> well said. thank you. up next, from second amendment remedies to witchcraft, we've got the best political, actually, the worst political quotes of the year and they belong in a "sideshow." i'm off to the post office... ok. uh, a little help... oh! you know shipping is a lot

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back to "hardball" to the "sideshow." first, open mike night in st. petersburg. former kgb boss wladimir putin showed his softer side. ♪ on blueberry hill a host of hollywood folks like sharon stone, kevin costner, fwaif the performance a standing o. he's out with his list of most notable quotations. here's a look at the top five. at number five, gourdon brown's

teachable moment. got into a heated change with a british subject. brown's more candid thoughts in his car were picked up by a live microphone. brown's party ended up losing in a landslide. only get in trouble for saying what you believe, bad as it is. four, a pitch on the left field. here's speaker pelosi speaking on the passage of health care. >> but we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it. >> wow, we have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it away from the fog of the controversy. that was her full quote, but the shortened sound bite was the one that became famous or infamous as you have it. sharron angle --

it's so lady like, as if she's not talking about gun play. comments like that helped bring harry reid back from the political grave. runner up, a twitter message from sarah palin -- don't retreat, instead, reload. i've still got to ask why do the right still keep talking about gun play? number one, christine o'donnell and that most memorable campaign ad of 2010. >> i'm not a witch. i'm nothing you've heard. i'm you. >> possible to dislike her, impossible to vote for her. there you have it, proving

whatever else you can say about american politics this year, it's definitely all scripted by consultants. we're waiting for the president to come out and make a statement. it's 80 votes yay to have debate on this, in other words, to move towards passage. the other votes and parts, ten votes against it in addition to his, are negative. we've got chris cillizza joining us right now. this looking like -- here's the president. >> at this hour, the united states senate is moving forward on a package tax cuts that has strong bipartisan support. and this proves that both parties can in fact work together to grow our economy and look out for the american people. once the senate completes action on this bill, it will move over to the house of representatives for its consideration. i've been talking with several

members of that body. i recognize that folks on both sides of the political spectrum are unhappy with certain parts of the package and i understand those concerns. i share some of them. but that's the nature of compromise. sacrificing something that each of us cares about to move forward on what matters to all of us. right now, that's growing the economy and creating jobs. and nearly every economist agrees that that is what this package will do. taken as a whole, the bill that the senate will allow does some very good things for america's economy oond the american people. first and foremost, it is a substantial victory for middle class families across the country who would no longer have to worry about a massive tax hike come january 1st. it would offer hope to millions of americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own by making sure they won't

suddenly find themselves out in the cold without unemployment insurance benefits they were counting on and it would offer real tax relief for americans paying for college, parents raising children and business owners looking to invest in their business. so, i urge the house of representatives to act quickly on this important matter. because if there's one thing we can agree on it's the urgent work of preking middle class families, removing uncertainty for america's businesses and giving our economy a boost as we head into the new year. thanks very much, everybody. >> let me go to chris cillizza. there's an overwhelming vote developing in the senate today. over 80 votes. chris? >> oh, i'm sorry. i was listening to the president. i'm not terribly surprised by this.

i think when you see like a person like al franken, pretty, a liberal. may not be bernie sanders, but he's a liberal. when you see him vote for it and he essentially echoes the president, i don't love these policies, but i don't want tacks to go up and middle class minnesota families. you seem to get a sense of the log is starting to roll downhill on these tax cuts. i think you saw chris van hol n hollen, we may change something here or there, but this is going through. they want to get to the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty. some of these other things. "the washington post" abc poll, 69% of people like this. >> devastating. >> politicians don't go against things that 70% of people favor. >> it told me that there's not a big difference in republicans

and democrats. both around 68%. you can't beat that. we have to go now, but thanks for that. stay with us. when we return, a federal judge in virginia rules the key provision in the obama health care bill is unconstitutional. republicans are loving it. he's going to run for try to make a comeback on this baby, but it's still not over. you're watching "hardball" only on msnbc. asked me if i wanted to change the world. i said "sure." "well, let's grow some algae." and that's what started it. exxonmobil and synthetic genomics have built a new facility to identify the most productive strains of algae. algae are amazing little critters. they secrete oil, which we could turn into biofuels. they also absorb co2. we're hoping to supplement the fuels that we use in our vehicles, and to do this at a large enough scale to someday help meet the world's energy demands.

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welcome back to "hardball." a federal judge in virginia has struck town a key part of president obama's health care law. the individual mandate which

requires us all to buy health insurance. two earlier case in federal court dealing with that portion of the health care law upheld that portion. so how damaging will this be to health care reform and how politically helpful to republicans will it be to those who want to kill it? chris cillizza and ken vogel. chris, i know that people like george allen, who lost to jim webb in virginia are just gloating over this thing. they're hoping they can say this was a disastrous vote and therefore the senators who voted for it acted unconstitutionally. >> one other name to throw out there, ken kuch nell, he's the one leading this. my guess is he's boosted by this in republican ranks.

three rules. there are 25 legal cases about this law. we've had three rulings. two from clinton appointed judges. this is proceeding larnlly along the partisan lines. obviously, the debate over health care e involved into a partisan fight. democrats supportive of it. this is going to the support. one step of many. one important thing that the judge today didn't say, he did not say that an injunction, the structures put in place to implement the bill should be stopped. some democrats said that's not the worst solution we could have gotten today. >> what do you make of the fact that this is a bush appointee and he has contacts with the consulting firm, campaign solutions. he's invested in a republican

political consulting outfit. will that diminish this vote by him? >> democrats certainly hope so, chris, and they're pointing to that, that this firm is not just a prominent firm, but it did work for the attorney general of virginia who brought the case and when that contact, that relationship came to light, it was cuccinelli who severed the relationship. meanwhile, liberals are saying this judge should have recused himself. this guy is no different. and applying chris's logic that we've seen democratic appointee judges rule in favor of upholding the health care and the first republican one ruling today. there's a potential where you

have a conservative majority that has leaned towards states rights and against government regulation that there's a real risk here for president obama and democrats that this supreme court could see it like this judge. >> and chris -- >> let me ask you about this political piece of this. i don't know many people who invest in political consulting firms as a lucrative operation. seems an odd thing for a federal judge to have his fingers. looks like he's making 15 a year. why would he want to be an investor in a political consulting firm advising people like sarah palin? why does he want to be involved in that if he's a federal judge? >> these are appointees. i'm sure he probably doesn't want to be affiliated with it at this point because the left has made such an issue of it, but these are people who at times, not always, but at times, dabble

in politics. i don't know that it's that surprising. to your political point, i think we have to separate it out. there's a legal track this is going to take. we don't know what's going to happen, but conservatives are semioptimistic. there's also a political track that relays to president obama in winning the issue politically. 43% support the bill. 52% oppose it. the white house believes as time goes on, people see that the scary things republicans talk about won't come true, but that political track is very important, too. they boent matter to the other, but they're not that influenced by the other. >> ken vogel, back in the great depression when roosevelt came to office, they declared some of his major legislation. i believe l the recovery act at one point unconstitutional.

this could be history making if the court goes all the way and anthony kennedy joins that majority and shoots down if major legislative achievement of the president. >> that's right. we've already seen a very adversarial relationship. we saw it on the campaign finance decision where the judges envoeking this idea of government regulation was impenlging on constitutional freedom, in that case, first amendment, ruled in way the obama administration disagreed with. >> wasn't that a terrible decision? >> had a huge effect on the 2010 midterms. >> international corporate money, everything thrown in to our politics. we have enough problems with corruption without bringing all that money pouring into campaigns on behalf of international trade that

benefits other countries. >> thanks for sticking with us. up next with both republicans and democrats moving further to the extremes, is there room for the center for a new centrist movement? we have two republicans that lost out to the right. they were at that big meeting in new york called no labels. when it comes to investing, no one person has all the answers. so td ameritrade doesn't give me just one person. questions about retirement? i talk to their retirement account specialists.

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bond and whitman, the latest members of the republican establishment's anybody but sarah club.

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mike bloomberg is one of many moderate politicians taking part in the no labels conference in new york. along with two others. charlie crist and bob english. this was leslie stall interviewing john boehner on 60 minutes last night. >> you're saying i want common

ground, but i'm not going to compromise. i don't understand that. >> when you say the word compromise, a lot of americans look up and go, oh, they're going to sell me out. so finding common ground, i think, makes more sense. >> you're afraid of the word. >> i reject the word. >> afraid of the word. why go to washington? just mail it in if you're going to pose everything. >> to have commonunbelievable. to have common sense means that you have to compromise. trying to do what's right for the people instead of the party. i think what you see is evidence of the fact that there are certain segments of both parents that view compromise as a dirty word. and if you say you're willing to compromise, in other words, use common sense try to do what's right for the people instead of the party, then you may get shunned by your political party and that's what no labels, me meeting that we attended today, is really all about. the ability to say look it's all

right to be a republican, a democrat or an independent but you should suppress your labeling in order to move america forward and do what's right for the country. >> congressman -- jack kennedy once said sometimes party loyalty asks too much. i wonder if you felt that, where there were certain things that you had to eat is that you said i can't believe that i have to agree to this today. but i have to do it to keep some my red hats happy. you have to go with the far right or the far left? >> i think that's -- what the governor's just talking about, this is what we're trying to do in new york here today is try to repopulate the discussion around -- really cooperation rather than this grudging compromise. what i'd rather see, really, is creative collaboration, rather than this grudging compromise, where we pull it out of each other. the reality is that conservatives, we've got a lot to aufner in country like wealth. if you hit both of those together and pull the best out

of both parties then we can move america forward and what no labels about is not left, not right, just forward. >> well, that sounds like msnbc. let me go to the governor christi, lean forward you know. let me ask you about this thing. it seems to me that you have a label, and i grew up in pennsylvania. you're an eisenhower republican. and so are you, mr. inglis, perhaps a more conservative version, and eisenhower republican was for free trade, fiscal responsibility. strong defense. i mean, why don't just say you're eisenhower republicans instead of pretending that you don't have a label? because all of you guys seem to be -- even bloomberg fits that category. >> i think that's true and say okay to stay republican or a democrat. >> rock feller. >> rockefeller, eisenhower and even republican reagan, i mean here was a guy. >> no, no, you're not a reagan republican. no you're not. >> he understood at least civility which is so important. he and tim o'neil who was speaker much of his term probably didn't agree on much of anything and yet they the common

sense, if you will, and the civility to be able to get together after hours, a couple of irishmen and have a cold one, and you know we have to get back to that point where there can be personal relationships where you know, some people in one party and those in another party are really treated as traitors if they actually you know dare to break bread with somebody else. i mean especially in in season, that's just not the right thing to do. we need to come together for the country and put the country ahead of the party in order for the people to be victorious in the end. >> you're talking about a book i'm going to write some day, it's all true by the way about those two guys. take a look at mike bloomberg. a lot of people are talking about bloomberg. i want you to watch what he said what he's asked by david gregory, the key question on "meet the press" yesterday. >> if came to you and said, you know, mr. may areare on -- >> no way, know how.

>> congressman inglis, i don't think that he's running. that's my assessment right now. what do you think? >> i don't really know. he doesn't share his thoughts with me, but you know it didn't sound much like today. what it sound like is he was committed to this concept no labels where we pull the best out of both parties and by the way, chris ijust defended something about reagan republicans. the difference between reagan and got going on now is reagan believed that the best day are still ahead, he was very optimist optimistic. i'm not sure that he could have won in this primary event that we faced in the midterms because the electorate was really, in the primaries, was much more down on america. reagan was this optimist who said -- >> you suref are sure right about that. thank you so much, congressman inglis. now escaped republican politics. and the same with you, governor crist. please come by anytime when you're in washington. let me finish with the remarkable return to the white house of bill clinton and what it means for barack obama. what a duo, what a duet. you're watching "hardball."

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let me finish tonight with that incredible american scene from late friday. bill clinton and barack obama, together in what i'm convinced is the most vital political alliance in the country today. obama and the clintons, hillary and bill both have forged a political bond that is work for the country, for the democratic party, and for them. it was forged initially in denver at the democratic

national convention in the summer of '08 that rousing festival of unity and excitement. it was upgraded with the high drama of obama asking hillary clinton to be his secretary of state. an offer backed up by bill clinton's strong endorsement. he wanted her to accept seeing both the opportunity, the duty and no doubt the global stature she would obtain. for 2012. florida, ohio and colorado. they asked bill clinton to hit those states and hit them hard. the former president spent his additional time on the stump traveling for candidates who helped hillary in 2008. then came this past friday. bill clinton arrived at the white house, met with the president from there the two headed to the presidential briefing room to meet the press. there, bill clinton gave a full-throated endorsement of the bipartisan compromise on taxes that president obama had struck. when president obama failed, he spent enough time make his points he