rescue bill of my lifetime is now very likely to be signed into law. saturday after an all-night session, senate democrats passed the $1.9 trillion covid relief package in a strict party line vote. democrats all voted yes. republicans all voted no. because senators made some changes to the bill, it now has to go back to the democratic controlled house which is expected to pass the identical senate version this week, possibly as early as tomorrow. so the bill would then go to the president, president biden for his signature. take a step back. we're in the early part of march. right? we're not at the 100-day marker yet. this is an incredible victory for both the country, the biden administration, the democratic party, which held together. amid unified opposition from congressional republicans. they didn't get a vote in either house. they tried to break the party apart. that's republicans did. by forcing tough votes on amendments and arguing against the bill in public. but in the end it didn't work. democrats won. and as a result, a lot of people's lives are going to get better. >> by passing this plan we would have delivered real tangible results for the american people and their families. they'll be able to see and know and feel the change in their own lives. >> there is a lot in this bill. including for starters $350 billion for state and local governments that some of whom have been really hobbled by the pandemic with their tax revenue and added expenses. there's $130 billion for k-12 schools. $25 billion in relief for hard-hit restaurants. that's part of the bill we've been focused on here on this program for months now. there's tens of billions for covid testing, which by the way is still important. still vital even as we vaccinate. there's also a ton of money for vaccine distribution, other measures to fight and suppress the virus. and then that's the sort of programmatic money. then there's the money that's just going to go directly to americans. struggling americans. that includes an extension of the $300 weekly federal unemployment payment bonus that gets paid above what you would normally make for unemployment. there's also a tax break on unemployment benefits so people do not get some shocking surprise tax bill, which is key. $1,400 stimulus checks for low and middle income americans coupled with an additional $1,400 checks for their adult dependents and children and a child tax credit of either $3,000 or $3,600 per child depending on the child's age. the child tax credit alone for one year could benefit as many as 83 million children in this country. here's the impact. >> taken altogether, this plan is going to make it possible to cut child poverty in half. let me say it again. it's significant. historic. will cut child poverty in half. >> advances like this, this piece of legislation, they don't come along very often. and not only is it going to impact child poverty, let's look at the $1,400 check on top of the $600 passed in the last relief package. so let's say you are a married couple, makes less than $150,000 per year, you've got two kids along with an adult dependent, say, a child in college or a disabled adult who lives with you. you're looking at $7,000 in direct payments from the government? $1,400 for each person in the family. that's a real game changer after the year that all of us have had. the white house says many americans will get that money by the end of this month. so how did we get here? right? one thing that strikes me as i look at this, right? both parties have tons of corporate donors. there's k street lobbyists on both sides working over congress. there are ways in which both republicans and democrats are both overly influenced by big money, by corporate interests, by the rich. right? and yet look at the difference in the distributional priorities. when donald trump's republican party got elected they tried to gut the aca twice and then successfully passed a massive tax cut primarily for the rich and corporations. first thing out of the gate, biden and the democrats passed a bill in which the poorest 20% of americans are expected to see a 20% boost in income according to a new analysis while the richest 1% will receive an income boost of 0. 0%. and then take -- think about that. think about the difference in the distributional effects here and then think about the fact that republicans these days keep insisting in the words of josh hawley they are a working-class party. and the thing is it is true. the 2020 election suggested the gop is actually increasingly relying on less affluent voters while the democratic coalition is actually getting more professional and more affluent. but the republican rhetoric around standing for the working class is just not reflected in policy. i think that's why republicans would rather talk about dr. seuss. try to stoke culture wars. because they don't particularly seem to actually have a policy agenda to help the working class. republicans would rather enflame resentments in hopes of increasing their power. >> when i was elected, i said we were going to get the government out of the business of battling on twitter. and back in the business of delivering for the american people. of making a difference in their lives. giving everyone a chance, a fighting chance of showing the american people that their government can work for them. and passing the american rescue plan will do that. >> there is a notion, right? that the two parties are increasingly hopelessly polarized. each side has retreated to its corner. and while that's partly true it is not the whole truth. because what's happening is not symmetrical. it's true, not a single republican has backed the new covid relief bill. but just think back over the past year. when donald trump, the republican president, was president and the economy cratered and the republicans were essentially forced to pass stimulus bills, democrats backed that legislation. they voted for economic stimulus multiple times in an election year even though they had to know and it probably did help donald trump's re-election bid. even though donald trump literally put his name on the checks. democrats i guess if they wanted to play hardball, if they were psychos back in the spring and they thought, look, the better the economy's doing the better donald trump's going to do in re-election, they could have refused to back the stimulus. when trump was president. they could have acted the way republicans are acting now. but for a bunch of different complicated fascinating reasons democratic politicians really are committed to the project of using government as a means of helping people that are struggling. the proof is in the pudding in this bill. and republicans, well, let's just say they're making a very different calculation. why senate maisie hirono was part of the legislative session that led to the passage of the largest stimulus bill in history. and she joins me now. it was a rare all-nighter for the members of the united states senate. >> yes. >> but how are you feeling now that you've come out of it with a bill? >> at the end of the day, although the republicans tried, they spent many, many hours trying to weaken the bill and ultimately not a single one of them voted for it. at the end of the day we democrats knew we were going to get a bill that was going to help millions of people, and that's what our commitment was. and we -- it was worth it. >> was there any wavering? it was a long session, a back and forth. a vote held open. joe manchin on the phone with the white house. i guess inside the caucus, you've got the thinnest possible margin, a one-vote margin. >> yes. >> did everyone -- was there like a huddle? did you guys get together physically? i don't know if you can do that in covid times. does everyone know we have to do this and we are going to do this or are there moments where you're like this might go sideways? >> i had little doubt we were going to get this done because all of the democrats voted to use the reconciliation process. we all voted for the reconciliation bill. so that was a commitment to get things done and we did. it goes to show that we have a diverse caucus but at the end of the day we are here to help people. we believe government can do good for people. that's our belief and we act on that. >> are you surprised you didn't get a single republican vote? particularly because there's extended negotiations with ohio senator portman about adding changes to the bill that he wanted to see made. it i think is polling at between 65% and 75%. it's very popular. it's going to put money in people's pockets. are you surprised not one republican voted for it? >> i'm very disappointed that not one republican voted for it. and neither did any republican in the house. my hope is that the american people will hold them to account and that they'll have to go back to their constituents and explain to them why they did not, as you put it, lift a finger to get those checks into people's hands, to extend unemployment benefits, to help the state and counties get out of the economic crisis that they're in due to the pandemic. they should have to explain to their constituents why not a single one of them deserved their help and their vote. >> what lessons have democrats learned about legislating in this era of hyperpolarization, particularly in the wake of 2009, the last time democrats controlled both houses of congress and the white house? >> understanding that mitch mcconnell's goal is to retake the senate, which means that he is not going to be with us and pushing legislation that joe biden wants. and so that reality and recognition should hit us pretty soon, which means that we are going to need to do filibuster reform. >> i want to follow up on that but first to go back it is striking looking at the two big domestic priorities of the republican administration, right? when they came in in 2017. there were no democrats who voted their way on either the aca or tax cuts, right? but on spending, on the big omnibuses and things like that, it was a much more for lack of a better word normal legislative process. there were negotiations, bipartisan working groups that were sort of working out what was going to be in the big must-pass spending bills. it kind of rolled along in the background. do you think those days are dead now because there's a republican -- there's a democratic president and mitch mcconnell has the goals you say he does? >> i think it makes a huge difference in mitch mcconnell's calculation that we have the house, the senate, and the presidency. his goal is to take back everything. that makes him very ruthless and frankly he doesn't have a philosophy of helping people that guides him. his guidepost is we need to take back the power so that's what we're up against and sadly we're going to need to do voting rights bills. we're going to need to do infrastructure. there are a lot of bills that we need to do. and for the time that mcconnell was in power he did not bring a lot of legislation to the floor where the democrats were in the minority to exercise the vote powers. that's why he wants that filibuster to remain intact because we democrats are going to bring to the floor bills for debate that will help people and that's not where the republicans want to be, certainly not mitch mcconnell. but i believe the reality of not getting things done for the american people will hit us pretty soon and we're all going to be talking about filibuster reform. that's my hope. >> you know, you point to something, another important asymmetry here. we would remark all the time in the last four years during the trump administration when mcconnell controlled the senate that after those two big legislative priorities, one of which failed miserably, the aca repeal, and one of which succeeded in the corporate tax cut, right? mcconnell stopped legislating. there was just nothing left on the to-do list. you guys just confirmed judges all day. you'd come on my program and it was driving you all insane. >> yes. >> senate democrats have a very, very -- i mean, you can list eight to ten bills that you guys want in that body. >> yes. and mitch mcconnell wants to be able to be the guy that stops all of them. and that is why he's so intent on keeping filibuster intact and why in my view we're going to need to change that if we want to accomplish things. >> how active is that conversation inside the caucus? i've seen amy klobuchar. i've seen tina smith. you've been on this for a while. but i know a lot of senators worry about protecting the role of the minority in a sort of partisan sense in our hyperpolarized time. how much is that conversation developing inside the democratic caucus in the senate? >> it's very much developing. when you hear even joe manchin say that maybe we should do filibuster reform requiring anybody against a measure to come to the floor and have to talk all night and all day if possible, that is an opening on joe manchin's part for filibuster reform. >> yeah. he made those comments this week and it is true that we don't have any talking required. we saw ron johnson doing sort of a version of it with the objection to the reading. he had to kind of sit there. and as soon as he left chris van hollen was able to swoop in. there's only so long senators are willing to sit in that chamber, senator maisie hirono of hawaii. thank you so much for coming on the program. >> thank you. stay safe. be kind. the two georgia senate races, the ones that just happened the special election january 5th, right? that gave democrats control of the senate. they were the most expensive congressional races of all time. combined, $800 million spent on those two races. the truth is, though, democrats could have spent a lot more and it still would have been worth it. because those two wins basically paved the way for at least $1.5 trillion, conservatively estimated, more in aid for desperate americans. the lessons democrats have learned about going big, with paul krugman, who was there the last time around, next. st time t overspending on a retinol cream? just one jar of olay retinol24 hydrates better than the $100 retinol cream. for smooth, bright skin or your money back. olay. face anything. and try new retinol24 max. for skin that never holds you back don't settle for silver #1 for diabetic dry skin* #1 for psoriasis symptom relief* and #1 for eczema symptom relief* gold bond champion your skin when you switch to xfinity mobile, you're choosing to get connected to the most reliable network nationwide, now with 5g included. discover how to save up to $300 a year with shared data starting at $15 a month, or get the lowest price for one line of unlimited. come into your local xfinity store to make the most of your mobile experience. you can shop the latest phones, bring your own device, or trade in for extra savings. stop in or book an appointment to shop safely with peace of mind at your local xfinity store. the dangers of undershooting our response are far greater than overshooting. we should have learned the lesson, we should learn the lesson of 2008 and '09 when congress was too timid and it took years, years for the economy to get out of recession. >> the moment they took the senate majority this year democrats made it clear that one of the reasons why they were insisting on a big covid relief package is because of what happened during the last big crisis. right? the financial crisis around 12 years ago. that is the last crisis precipitated by a republican president that a democratic administration immediately had to try to get out of. despite having both houses of congress and the white house the rescue package from the obama administration was in retrospect i think it's quite clear simply too small to do what was needed. and one of the loudest voices calling for more stimulus back then was nobel prize-winning economist paul krugman. and professor krugman himself joins me now. i have been covering this since back then. i was writing about the debates over the recovery act back then and the stimulus. and now. what has changed? how do you account for the massive different between the approach this time around and last time? >> well, first of all, i think democrats have learned two things. one economic and one political. they have learned that when you're kind of at bottom, particularly when interest rates are already zero, there's a tremendous economic asymmetry. if you overshoot, okay, the federal reserve can raise interest rates and inflation can be contained. if you undershoot they can't cut interest rates which they're already zero, so there's a tremendous asymmetry there. but even more important, they've learned about the political. they've learned about the nature of their opposition. apparently according to accounts there were people in the obama inner circle who thought that if the first stimulus turned out not to be big enough they could go back for more. and that may have been true when everett dirksen was the leader of senate republicans but it's not true when mitch mcconnell is the leader. if it's not big enough the first time around then the other guys are going to say a-ha, see? your economic philosophy doesn't work. and so you don't get a second chance. and they learned that, you know, some of us did warn about the fact back then but now i think everybody gets it. >> yeah. i also think on the political level it was interesting to see the republican governor of west virginia -- again, this is a state trump carried by 40 points. jim justice. saying things like this, right? this sounds like paul krugman circa 2009. he says, "i just keep going back to the exact same thing. it's this. at the end of the day if we overdo it a little bit, down side risk is minimal. if we underdo it the down side risk is enormous." that really did sink in broadly past just like little -- you know, the corner of econ twitter where people debate this. it really did sink in. >> yeah. i have to say, i spent most of my career as a pundit, you know, making arguments that turn out -- i'm not always right but making arguments that turn out to be right and end up being vindicated in principle but never having a chance to get it right in real time. this time the democrats actually acted on it. people actually learned the lesson. and did the right thing. so i mean, it is -- i'm pinches myself wondering if this is a dream because we are responding more or less adequately to the crisis at hand. >> one thing i think about now as we watch the vaccinations which are right around 2.2 million a day, we conceive of a possibility of getting to some kind of herd immunity plus this rescue money. i'm certainly not an economic prognosticator but the second half of this year, particularly the last quarter, it could be really good. there's a lot of pent-up demand. we haven't lost -- it's not a natural disaster that took out huge amounts of physical capital like the airplanes are all there, the hotels are all there, broadway's still there. you've just got to -- you know, we could have a pretty good second half of this year. >> yeah, there isn't even the overhang of kind of bad debt that we had last time around. >> right. >> so we really are -- to coin a phrase, this could very well be morning in america. goldman sachs, and they have a very good team of economists, whatever else you may think of them, they are predicting that we really are going to have close to 8% growth this year, which is a morning in america level of growth, enough to get the economy more or less back to full employment by early next year. now, that's not the end of the story. you know, there's a tremendous amount of stuff we need to do down the line. but i'm expecting that you know, a year from now we're going to be looking and saying wow, incredible how much better things have gotten. >> you know, one of the points of contention the last time around that you were arguing against, right? was the case on the other side. it was made by very respected economists. ken rogoff comes to mind. as well as folks on cnbc and the business press that there's no such thing as a free lunch, you start throwing money around next thing you know you've got crazy inflation and you're like zimbabwe and it all gets wasted and -- you know. you're going to overshoot. the economy will overheat. remarkably, i'm seeing people make that argument again. now, in their defense, the scale of intervention really is much bigger this time. but how do you see that now? the threat of, quote, overheating. >> well, it's not a completely stupid thing to say. this is a very big package. the economy could be very strong by the end of the year. enough so that inflation kicks up a bit. but again, the federal reserve knows how to contain that. that's really not a problem. and for what it's worth, i just looked at the latest set of forecasts, business forecasters surveyed by bloomberg, and what they're all pretty much predicting is a goldilocks recovery. one that is not too hot, not too cold but just about right. just about gets us back to where we should be by early next year. now, they could be wrong, of course. a forecaster is always wrong one way or another. but it's not looking so bad. and i'm really struck by where have all the real crazies gone? i mean week, having a debate between fairly sensible people about whether this package is maybe a bit too big or not. but the people who were warning, you know, hyperinflation, collapse, frogs, boils, death of the first-born, all of that stuff back in 2009 seem to be all obsessed with dr. seuss instead. so i've been gratified to see that the really crazy people have been largely absent from the discussion this time around. >> it's such a good point because the contours of this debate have been so different precisely on that score. we noticed this here, that there hasn't been a lot of arguments against it presented in some cogent fashion by the republicans who basically just kind of stepped aside and, you know, fought it around the edges but never did the -- launched the full frontal assault on it rhetorically in the way they did against the recovery act. >> yeah. a situation where if you'd want to have a big debate about this plan the people you roll out is me and larry summers. that is not the world of 2009. and this is a very different world. i'm right and larry's wrong -- no. the point being that this is a vastly more sensible debate. republicans have just gone so far into their world of cultural grievances, whatever, that they completely failed to make any effective arguments against this policy. >> i mean, this is slightly nerdy but i'll say it anyway. i also think this marks a real change in 40 years of post-reagan thatcher intellectual and ideological control by the forces of, you know, the folks that were worried about supply siders and tax cuts at the top and sort of rolling back keynes and rolling back government intervention and worry about economies overheating and stagflation. this really feels to me like marking some break that this bill happened. >> sure, we've got a bill here that appears to be about to cut child poverty in half. with a stroke of a pen. and for the past 40 years anyone who proposed anything like that would have been oh, that's irresponsible, it's terrible, what about the welfare queens and all of a sudden we're about to just cut child poverty in half. that's an incredible change in the political discourse. >> paul krugman, who deals with awful these big issues in his recent book "arguing with zombies," many of whom appear to have been actually defeated. thank you for being here, paul. >> thanks for having me on. >> don't go anywhere. the cdc just released guidance literally we have all been waiting for. i certainly have. what can we do after we're vaccinated? what it means for you, for your family, and for the future. that's just ahead. each febreze car vent clip gives you up to 30 days of fresh air. so, you can have open window freshness... even with all the windows up. enjoy fresh, any time, with febreze. for the last year during this pandemic the data compiled by the folks at the covid tracking project has been a huge part of our coverage of covid. you may recognize this series of charts. we put them up all the time. the daily update. this is the data from last night. sunday march 7th. states reported 1.2 million tests. that's in purple. on the left side of your screen 41,000 new cases. that's the red chart there. 40,000 patients hospitalized. the blue one. the ones coming down really dramatically. and 839 deaths in gray on the far right. as you can see from that chart things are pretty much trending in the right direction although the daily drop in cases has flattened out a little bit, which is a little concerning. so many people besides us have come to rely on this data since last march. the amazing thing is that it's been basically a volunteer effort by a few hundred people that has now come to a close. last night's update was the final day of data collection for the covid tracking project. founded by alexis madrigal and robinson writers for the "the atlantic" along with -- what began as an effort to track testing in the u.s. and the early days of the pandemic which was really a disaster if you remember, it grew into this indispensable resource for journalists, researchers, even government officials all powered by a small army of volunteers who manually combed through data every day from every state and territory. thinking back to the many shocking, outrageous abdications of duty by the last administration on even the most basic work around the virus, one of the most critical was not keeping good current data. i mean, back in late february last year when as we now know the pandemic was about to explode in this country you had members of the administration that were tweeting about their frustration of the johns hopkins website tracking global cases going down. for many months data coming from the government was unreliable or just old. and when you're battling an invisible exponentially growing respiratory virus you need up-to-date numbers. and so into the breach stepped the good people at the covid tracking project. and thank goodness they did. providing this basic but crucial public service at a time we needed it most. it's also a reminder of how much we've all had to kind of fend for ourselves when coping with this once in a century pandemic because the leadership of the last administration just left us all on our own. so thank you to the leaders and the volunteers of the covid tracking project from the bottom of my heart. thank you, thank you, thank you. they're now stepping back because they believe that this should be a job for the federal government and that the new administration's actually capable of filling that leadership vacuum. today another example of the federal government stepping up to lead the way, the cdc putting up huge new guidance about what vaccinated americans can do. and it's good news on the crucial question of hugging of grandparents. that's next. ext. policy you no longer need? 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11th, exactly one year since the w.h.o. declared the coronavirus pandemic. we will be coming to you live from the lincoln memorial that night along with president biden's first prime-time national address to mark that date and acknowledge this incredible and awful year but also to look ahead as we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. case in point today, some great snuz news today from the cdc for anyone who's gotten the vaccine. new guidelines say that fully vaccinated people can go visit an unvaccinated low risk household without masks or distancing. so vaccinated grandparents who are fully protected can finally hug their unvaccinated grandkids or kids with the government's blessing. that's just huge for all of us. i say this first person that's gotten to do this actually out ahead of the cdc guidance if i have to be honest. it's even more encouraging given the vaccination rate for seniors. according to the white house, 30% of americans age 65 and older are now fully vaccinated including 39% of those over 75. almost 2/3 of all american seniors have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine. as a country we're averaging about 2.2 million shots per day right now, getting us all closer to hugging our loved ones. i want to bring in two people closely tracking what it will take to get us back to some kind of normal. kaitlyn rivers senior scholar at the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health. she's led the development of guidance on a phased reopening since last year. and dr. ashish jha the dean of the brown university skoofl public health. great to have you both. kaitlyn, let me start with you. there was back and forth about when this guidance was going to come out, if it was going to be -- if there were going to be very, very risk averse in what they told folks. what's your reaction to what the cdc unveiled today? >> i think it's really exciting for people to have a clear path forward, to get back to a normal life. it's a little bit on the conservative side, but i think that's good given the data we have available. and i think going forward we'll be able to have a lot more flexibility to do things that are important to us when fully vaccinated. >> dr. jha, one of the things i think is hard about this part of the conversation here, we talk about what the science says. and you know, there are some things that are very clear and black and white and a lot of things about a risk spectrum. everybody's been sort of dealing with that from the beginning. but it again even more complicated now in this period, right? because there's this like thawing happening. there's folks getting vaccinated. and there's worry too about going too fast. >> yeah, absolutely. it's a very complex and a bit confusing of a time. right? because on one hand people should be very optimistic about the future. and then you hear about things like the variants and the fact that we still have 60,000 cases happening every day. and that complex sort of set of facts makes it difficult to know what is safe and what is not safe to do. i thought the cdc guidance today was terrific. i agree with professor rivers. it's a touch on the conservative side. but overall i think it's really good. >> when you say touch on the conservative side, professor rivers, what do you mean? >> well, the cdc guidance really hinges on whether or not someone who is fully vaccinated is able to transmit the virus to someone else. we know the vaccines are very good at protecting the person who is vaccinated. it's not as clear yet whether someone who's vaccinated can pass on the virus. and so the cdc is recommending that if you are with people who are fully vaccinated then you can go ahead and live normally. if you are with someone who is at low risk, you can also socialize without masks or social distancing. but when you start to add on more risk factors, if you're with someone at high risk of severe illness, if you're in a group they're still recommending you that wear a mask and that you distance, and that's a recognition of the fact that we can't be confident yet that the vaccine is actually protecting other people. >> i want to -- let me zero in on this question because it's been a vexing one for a lot of folks. i'll go to you, dr. jha and then back to you, professor rivers. this is a situation in which we haven't run the clinical trials to test for transmission as the dependent variable. right? we haven't actually gone and run a study specifically about whether people are transmitting. but i think sometimes people hear that and they think there's like some kind of secret transmission happening we don't know about. we don't have biological or medical reason to think it is happening. we just haven't tested for it yet. is that a fair characterization, dr. jha? >> yeah. and i'd go even one step further, chris, and say look, all the evidence on these vaccines suggest that they do reduce transmission. now, 100%? probably not 100%. but a lot. 80%, 90%. a very large amount. we haven't nailed it down perfectly. but there's so much circumstantial evidence that these vaccines reduce transmission that i think we can feel comfortable that they do. we do need to nail it down a bit better in terms of exactly how much. >> and dr. rivers, one of the things that the cdc said today that i thought was interesting and relates in some ways to some things i've seen you write about and others is just the notion that giving people a sense the vaccine really does give them some protection, which is grounded in the data, is also a key part of incentiviing vaccination uptick. if the message is go get vaccinated and then you've got to go back to doing everything the way you were before, that's a tougher carrot than go get vaccinated and you can hug your grandkids. and the cdc actually acknowledges that in the guidance today. >> it's true that this uncertainty about what exactly the vaccines do as it relates to other people has been difficult. right now about 10% of people in the u.s. are fully vaccinated, which is an amazing achievement. but it means that 90% of people are not yet vaccinated. so we do need to take steps to protect everyone else. but for the people who are fully vaccinated it's good news. we have a lot more flexibility now to do things that are important to us. >> the trajectory here, dr. jha, is really impressive so far in terms of our vaccine rollout. we're doing a better job than all but maybe two countries in the world. arguably maybe even better than the uk at this point. how do you feel about where this is and how do you think about hesitancy and demand issues as we go forward? >> yeah, i think first and foremost we're doing an incredible job. we probably are doing a better job than any other certainly large country in the world. and i see the numbers, which are over 2 million a day, going up to 3 or even 4 million before very long. maybe by the time we're in april. we'll certainly have the vaccines to do it. i think we'll have the distribution to do it. but your point, chris, is exactly right. we're going to hit a point where we're going to stop, we're just not going to have enough arms to put vaccines into. i do think a lot of people on the fence are going to jump off the fence when they see people get vaccinated and do well. but there are other people who are going to be resistant and we're going to have to really help engage people to figure out what's holding them back and to try to address those. >> yeah. and dr. rivers, there's been? -- there's a bunch of different ways in which this hesitancy's been measured. there's some political -- there's political polarization around this issue. we're seeing among trump voters and republicans more hesitancy. we've seen hesitancy among other groups come down over time. i wonder -- part of the package passed today is targeted money to go out to states and localities to partner with community groups to do whatever you need to do to get inside the social networks of folks to give them a message. >> that's right. a lot of the public health power in this country is at the state and local level and that's because state and local officials know what works for their community and how to reach people in those communities. so i think empowering state and local officials to get out there and reach people i think will be really critical going forward. and i do agree with dr. jha that as more and more people get sacksnated people who aren't sure yet if it's right for them will become more confident and i think that will help a lot. >> i'm still not there but i'm just champing at the bit. can't wait. caitlyn rivers, ashish jha, thank you both. appreciate it. next can the republican party ever recover from its trump era conversion or could this be the end that practical sense of getting the job done combined with great staff and good legislative partners from both sides has advanced health research on cancer and alzheimer's and diseases you may only know about if someone in your family has it. it's made mental health more likely to be treated like all other health. i won't be a candidate for re-election to the united states senate next year. i want to thank my family and thank the great team that came together to help me work for you. most importantly, thanks to missourians. whether you voted for me or not, for the opportunity to work for you and a better future for our state and our country. >> that good-bye video today from senator roy blunt announcing his retirement caps a long political career for the missouri republican. despied siding with donald trump on basically almost everything, he still represents a wing of the republican party that was more focused on legislative accomplishments than dr. seuss books. blunt is just the latest of a handful of republican senators who no longer want to help steer the party through the post-trump era and perhaps because there's never been a clear vision for it beyond cruelty and resentment. in a new piece in the new yorker titled appropriately enough "what is happening to republicans," staff writer jelani cobb argues that one answer is "the combination of a base stoked by a sensationalist right-wing media and the emergence of kook-adjacent figures in the so-called gingrich revolution in 1984 and the tea party have redefined the party's temper and its ideological boundaries." and jelani cobb, staff writer for the "new yorker" joins me now. it's a great piece and i thought of it today when i saw that blunt video because it just felt like it was beamed from another dimension. i don't mean to say this to praise blunt who, you know, voted for the tax cuts and to kill off the aca and acquit the president twice and whose politics in my humble opinion are not great. but what he views as his role, the thing he thinks he's doing as a u.s. senator is so wildly different than what josh hawley and ted cruz or donald trump think they're doing. >> right. and he's not the only one. i mean, there's a whole list of people we talk about who come to similar conclusions. not all of whom are kind of well-known elected officials but many are the people who served in posts in previous republican administratio.÷) who are quietl leaving the party. i think the difference is culture war as kind of a means to win a position that allows you to legislate as opposed to culture war for culture war's sake, which is what seems to be the identity of the party now. >> you write in the piece about the fact that history -- that parties aren't permanent fixtures in american history and coalitions change, sometimes they die off. as a historian what do you see in this moment and how it echoes in american history? >> so it's interesting, you know, because we talk about the two party system as if it is permanent and as if it's invulnerable. our two-party system has collapsed twice before, after 1812 and spectacularly in 1854 after the kansas nebraska act. and you know, the second parties, the federalists and the whigs, both broke apart in the midst of really tumultuous political times. and you know, i was thinking about that and saying not predicting that the republican party would collapse but looking at how many of the dynamics that did result in collapse in previous times are present in our current politics. the demographic shortcomings, kind of painting yourself into a demographic corner. the internal incoherence. not exactly being able to articulate what it is that you stand for, where it is that you're trying to go in the near future. the concerns about their regionalization of the party. the hugely outsized degree of strength that the south has in the republican party and the way in which it's become a liability in recent years. and it really is quite a fix for the gop to navigate. >> yeah. and partly i think because there is this kind of, you know, way in which they are tied to donald trump whether they like it or not. there's a story today that he sent the cease and desist letter to the fund-raising committees that were fund-raising off his name and now they've come to an agreement, the rnc's going to go host something at mar-a-lago. you've got lindsey graham, this lindsey graham quote is very revealing and i think actually quite honest. lindsey graham's whole thing is like look, this is the best we got. okay? he may be a sociopath, he may destroy american democracy, i don't care about that. i care about the fact that he can motivate our voters. he basically says essentially that, or something close to it in this interview. take a listen. >> there's something about trump, there's a dark side and there's some magic there. and what i'm trying to do is just harness the magic. he could make the republican party something that nobody else i know. he could make it bigger. he could make it stronger. he could make it more diverse. and he also could destroy it. >> what did you think of that? >> well, i mean, i think that's probably the most honest we've seen lindsey graham in at least the last five years. but the fact is when he said it could make the party bigger and more diverse, it could also destroy it, the fact is that it's far more likely to be the latter than the former. everything that he did made the party more appealing to a smaller slice of the electorate. now looking at the republican party with an electorate that's 80% to 90% white. in 1996 white people were 85% of the vote. just about 85% of the electorate. they're now about 62%. and falling. and you know, kind of double down on the politics of white racial anxiety might bring out the fervor that we've seen. certainly donald trump never lacked for the ability to generate fervor. but numerically it doesn't make sense. it doesn't add up. not in national elections. and so i think that what lindsey graham said is true. >> well, there's also -- i mean, the bull case. right? the case for trump as a political figure. and again, this is not taking away the considerations the man directly i think through his leadership led hundreds of thousands of americans to die who shouldn't have and who brought us to the worst democratic crisis probably since the civil war. right? so just to be clear on that. but in sheer political terms the bull case is actually he can turn some kind of corner where if you look at the rio grande valley, you look at miami-dade and you look at some of the polling results that actually he has -- he can sort of build this republican party into some more multiracial working-class coalition that's bound by a general sense of cultural resentment against, quote unquote, elites and only donald trump can do that. >> sure. but the problem is the person we talked to in that story, jennifer horn, who was until recently part of the lincoln project, is that when you looked at it he brought out 74 million people in the last election. and joe biden brought out even more than that. 81, 82 million people, whatever it was. and so like that number -- those numbers don't quite add up. then when you look at the numbers, the percentages of people who think that the republican party is racist, which has skyrocketed since then, and all the growth communities being communities of color, it doesn't seem very likely. now, what could happen as a result of that scenario that you laid out is a party that is phenomenally strong regionally but not strong nationally, which is basically what the republican party was between 1932 and 1972. those four decades the almost entirety of which they spent in the congressional minority. >> that's right. and that's sort of the solid south and the new deal coalition that bound the democrats together in this very strange coalition that has been rent asunder. but again, like you say in the piece, and people should check it out, is none of this is foreordained. all of this is dynamic and things can change and we might be in one of those moments. jelani cobb, who's got that great piece in "the new yorker" you should check out, thanks for making time tonight. >> thank you. >> that is "all in" on this monday night. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. thank you, my friend. much appreciated. and thanks to you at home for joining usmonday. this weekend, the great state of new hampshire got 11,000-ish doses of the one-shot/one-dose johnson & johnson vaccine for covid, and they decided to use it all instantly, in one, big, mass vaccination blast. and they targeted an interesting group of people. everybody eligible for the vaccine in new hampshire who had already signed up to get a vaccine but had been put at the end of the line, had been told they couldn't get their shot until april or may, the state called all of those people in the state, everybody who had late appointments, and said, we know you're interested in getting a vaccine, how about this weekend instead? and in one weekend, they did a