back again kaitlan collins, david chalian, nia-malika henderson.tlan, back over to you now because president biden got a lot more specific about his economic agenda. what's in it? what's out? what did we hear? >> yeah, don, our team has done great reporting what's going on behind closed doors in those negotiations but the president basically came out tonight and revealed a lot more specifics than we'd heard from democrats, the white house, from the president himself until tonight. a lot of things he confirmed is one, what he'd been reporting on is that his provision he really wanted in this bill, which is two or three years of free community college is out. and talking about the difficulty of getting senator sinema onboard. she said she has told him, period, she's opposed to doing that. they also talked about paid leave which they initially wanted 12 weeks, he did concede tonight it's going to be closer to 4 weeks. and one part he made a lot of news on is medicare expansion, the expansion of those benefits, which has been something the budget chair

of remarkable developments up on capitol hill, cnn's kaitlan collins, manu raju, dana bash and david chalian. manu, i want to speak with you. speaking in the east room, the flags behind him and the trashings of the presidency. this is a fait accompli. democrats have fundamentally agreed to rewrite the big social safety net and we're going to pass the big infrastructure plan. that's not done or even guaranteed and there's indications that members of his own party are saying not so fast. >> this is obviously tactical at this point by the president and clearly in consultation with the house democratic leadership meaning the speaker of the house to make this a fait accompli, to -- to -- for people to see the train leaving the station and say i better get on that train. but that is not how party politics tends to work in 2021, especially in the democratic party, and we've seen this over and over again, especially when the issues that a lot of people have been pushing for for decades are at stake right now, and bernie sanders who is kind of the godfather at this point of those issues told our coll

cnn political director david chalian is here. david, welcome to you. white house press secretary jen psaki admitted that they thought this would be done with several of these problems, that they'd have some of them off the list. just talk about the significance of the list growing and growing and the need for this president to get a political win. >> yeah. this is the toughness of the job. and as president biden always says, he understands that whole theory of the buck stopping there. now, some of the things on that list are within his control. some of the things on that list are not within his control. i don't think the public makes any differentiation, necessarily, between the two, and so this is what it is to be president of all this land on your plate. you know, the white house approach to this is sort of that once they believe that once congress and they do think they will do this, gets those big agenda items through, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan, this larger, maybe hovering around a $2 trillion social spending plan, once that

let's bring in political director david chalian. the race isn't just critical in virginia.has enormous ratifications for the democratic party. >> this is the first big test before voters about the biden agenda, the political landscape in the country and you know if terry mcauliffe loses this race in a state that has been trending more democratic in recent years, that's going to send real alarm bells inside the democratic party heading into next year's midterm elections. this should be a winnable race but the stalled agenda in washington is clearly of concern to mcauliffe in virginia. >> the whole notion, the whole notion of coronavirus clearly as a major political impact on the race in virginia and elsewhere as well. but how is it specifically playing out in virginia? >> we see it playing out in the two different approaches the candidates have. so mcauliffe, you may recall, gavin newsom in california leaned into vaccine mandates and mask mandates and that worked. those are very popular. they're popular in virginia as well. you see mcauliffe leaning into that. youngkin for h

. >>> let's bring in now the cnn political director, david chalian. david, good to see you.he party. we've got five members of her advisory board now who are quitting today because they're unhappy with what they call her stubbornness. "you have become one of the principal obstacles to progress. we shouldn't have to buy representation from you and your failure to stand by your people and see their urgent needs is alarming." that's before you get to what some of the house democrats are saying about her. what do you make of all this? >> these are volunteer folks, veterans who advise her on veterans issues. it's not good when members of your own team like that are abandoning you over a principled stance here. listen, kyrsten sinema has curved out this space of being opposed to certain things that democrats overall as a party have been running on for years now, and one of the issues being those taxes that you just talked about with lauren, so that inevitably opens up sinema to potential incoming from the left and from democrats in her party. we know she's not up for re-election,

let me go over to david chalian on this. d, what do you think of what we just heard from pete aguilar? >> i mean, basically you just heard the congressman put this in the hands of the house progressives. are you going to give your president a black eye publicly over his major agenda items in which he says his presidency rests? that's the question that house progressives need to answer. >> exactly right. thank you, david. here we go. president biden and vice president kamala harris. >> today i'm pleased to announce after months of tough and thoughtful negotiations i think we have an historic -- i know we have an historic economic framework. it's framework that will create millions of jobs, grow the economy, invest in our nation and our people, turn the climate crisis into an opportunity, put us on a path not only to compete but to win the economic competition for the 21st century against china and every other major country in the world. it's fiscally responsible, it's fully paid for. 17 nobel prize winners in economics said it

david chalian. let's start with mr. chalian. the idea of what people think right now, what people think right now, 25% of the country, only 25% of the country at this moment thinks that if the democrats pass something, they will be better off. they have a giant hill in front of them on the sales challenge. >> that number really jumped out at me. i thought it was stunningly low. it's a clear failure to date to actually sell what it is the democrats are trying to do to the american people broadly. there's been so much debate for months now. we've heard about top line numbers going back and forth, and you can hear the frustration in democratic leaders in congress. nancy pelosi says all the time, it's not about the top line, it's what's in it. that has not gotten past the beltway to actually start selling -- when you know you look at other polling, popular items are part of the substance of this. that is not getting through to the american people. >> what do they say when you ask about that at the biden white house? look, there's be

deeper right now, our chief political correspondent dana bash is with us, cnn political director david chaliannd our chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin is here as well. it looks -- are you at all surprised according to the "washington post" president trump urged them not to comply? >> no, not in the least. he did it in public effectively last night putting out a statement going after the january 6th committee, and that was his effective way of saying in a public way what it seems as though "the washington post" was reporting that he said in private. look, what the republican or the -- i should say the trump aides, the former aides' strategy clearly is here is to drag their feet and hope that this committee will go away after election day 2022 because they're hoping and praying that republicans take over. the long game that republicans played here at the behest of donald trump to oppose an independent bipartisan commission to look into this, then to oppose appointing republicans in a legitimate way for this bipartisan select committee, so far it's working to their benefit if you just look at ti

. >>> joining me now, political director david chalian. despite this wild leap that today is still yesterday on capitol hill because of how they're trying to keep the session open, don't worry about it, everyone, it's a hill joke. does the fact they had to push the vote yet again on infrastructure, does it kind of start shaking things loose, do you think? >> well, it seems to have, right, because it becomes a reality, right, which is that there wasn't a vote because it can't get done, so how do you move forward? you move forward by starting to shake some things loose. and so joe manchin put out that number in a more definitive way than he had before publicly yesterday, than we see the float from the house and the democratic leadership to bring it up a little bit. it did shake loose i think the parameters of a debate and negotiation where to circle around, but kate, it is still clear, i think, that inside this democratic party, there are just huge philosophical divides about how government should invest and for which americans should benefi

us with his analysis is cnn political direct and the host of the cnn political briefing podcast david chalian. this was quite a move by mitch mcconnell. >> it was quite a move. you don't normally see mitch mcconnell move off the dime. when he declares a position, he sticks with it. there are two things behind this move. one, the donor community, the business community that has strong relationships with mitch mcconnell and many of his republican members in his conference were applying pressure that this was -- this appeared to be careening out of hand and there was real danger to the economy. clearly those conversations were taking place and had some impact. but then as our colleague manu raju was reporting, the other piece of this is that whole debate over the filibuster that we have been seeing all year long that mcconnell was actually getting worried that manchin and sinema, the two democratic opponents to filibuster reform, might get a little weak kneed on this one issue and start chipping away at the filibuster which is a tool mitch mcconnell uses time and time again and had no desire to

our cnn political director david chalian is with us, and our cnn chief political analyst gloria borgerhey keep saying these are temporary, but this recovery is going a lot worse than the white house had thought it would. >> right, i think they felt that they had turned the corner on covid, and then came the delta variant. and there were problems. there is inflation, product shortages, labor shortages, and the administration now has to convince the american public that they're going to make it better. and that's what the president was trying to do today, to say look, we understand what's going on. your christmas gifts are going to arrive on time, but i think they have a long way to go because the public is feeling the pinch, particularly of inflation. >> and the political fallout is pretty significant. david, our new cnn poll, and you have been working it, explaining it, take a look at this. democrats are working for months to try to ease these issues, but look at this. would your family be better off if congress passes infrastructure and reconciliation? the two bills still pending in t

joining me is david chalian. on community college, joe biden ran on that. that was a proposal that candidate biden pushed hard. what does this tell you?. >> and early on, john. two years ago he was all over the country touting this proposal. you'll remember some of the more liberal democrats that he was running against, were saying more robust education. he said, no, this is what you should do. i will deliver two free years of community college. that is going to be a promise unfulfilled. biden is conceding that. so this is a huge concession here. i think it shows you a couple things. one, campaigning is very different than governing. and i think we learned that again and again as do occupants of the oval office. that's first and foremost. but also it's deal making time. this is now a president who feels the urgency of getting this done now. and there have been months of conversation, months of spwrer pa -- inter party battling. this is how we're going to get to yes and get done with this and get money and investment out to the american people. >> the last p

with me to share their expiers is cnn political reporter david chalian. say i don't want to be in the independent party. most people who say they are independent or not democrat or republican are actually run or the other, just don't want to say so, why? >> for a couple of reasons. we aspire to be independent. think of the word independent outside of the political context. we want our kids to be independent and want to live independently. there's something about being independent that seems very american before you even get to the party so there's just some desire for some people to say they are independent. of course there, are the, you know, the folks wearing the bluegers or the red jersey all day long but for others they want to aspire to think about it a little bit differently. at the same time they may still have some party allegiances when pushed and that's why as pollters we look at the pure undecided, the people who are truly undecided and those undecided and lean one way or another because they are for sure different. >> as you saw in the number,

meantime, let's bring in kon congressional correspondent, kaitlan collins and cnn political director david chalian. kaitlan, when the president came out and said he is pleased to announce a framework, we have a framework, what do we know about who is included in "we"? we just read fra manchin, he's not read it so he's not part of "we." who is in the group? >> yeah, the president was making this pitch from the white house, even though he does not have all 50 senate democrats he needs on board yet. of course, those two moderates we've been talking about for so long, senator manchin, and senator sinema have not said yes. framework is not a deal, it is not legislative text. it's the outline. things have been changing rapidly over the last several days of what's in here, how it's going to be paid for. i think that's where the skepticism comes from on capitol hill. i do think the fact the president gave that speech at all from the white house speaks to the level of urgency with which the white house is viewing this. they delayed his trip to rome by about four hours. he was supposed to leave this morning