Push the middle class tax cut message by spending time with an actual middle class family. The message that i got from tiffany and the message that i think we all want to send to members of congress is, this is a solvable problem. Im not going to sign any package that somehow prevents the top rate from going up for folks at the top 2 , but i do remain optimistic that we can get something done that is good for families like this ones. And this actually appears to be working. A new poll shows the president is running ahead of the boehnerled republican team. What about basketball you say . We go to charlotte last night, and the knicks treasury secretary, carmelo anthony, top paid and big star got hurt in this dive and had to leave the game. Then the at the end it came down to this. Looking for felton and finds smith. Two seconds, one second. Smith for the win. Game over. No overtime. Deal, end game, done. Is this meaningless nba game in charlotte lead us to how the fiscal fiesta ends . We have a man who we think knows the answer, the king of the last word here on msnbc and all seeing of things in washington, the great one and only lawrence odonnell. Lawrence, thank you for joining us. This is very early in the day for you. This is earlier than i normally wake up in the day. See, i do very late night tv show. Im familiar with it. Youve been there once in a while. Dont expect much from me at this hour. All right. Way to set the barlow. Very smart strategy there. No. I have a strategy for doing this show. Without a second of homework, okay . You told me that. I have no idea whats happening today, i have no idea what the news is. My strategy is simply this. I agree with krystal. Thats what im going to say. Thats because shes on your show and agrees with you. I wish every guest took that lesson to heart. Speaking of aagreeing with me, one thing that did happen in the news today im not sure youre aware of it. I have no idea. This is news to me right now. America and i are going to learn this right now live. Wait for it. Senator jim demint announcing hes going to resign from the senate to go lead Heritage Foundation. Now, i know this is brandnew to you, so you can take a moment to digest. Do you think that this changes the grounds of negotiations for the fiscal cliff, and do you think that hes in some way hes been aa very ardent tea party supporter, critic of john boehner even with his initial proposal. Is he going to wield actually more power at the Heritage Foundation than he does right now as a senator . Its always a joke when anybody talks about wielding more power out of Elective Office as a civilian than in Elective Office. Its a real help to the republicans in the senate because he has cost them the senate. He has done more damage to the senate and most especially to republicans in the senate than anyone else. He has backed these crazy, nutty tea parties who have gutted the republican nomination for senate in various states around the country, and then he went on to lose to democrats thereby preserving the democratic control of the senate, preserving harry he reed therei. He had become an absolute disaster within his own party. The big cheer today is in the Republican Caucus saying, finally, were getting rid of our absolute craziest nut. Very good. We congratulate them for that. Another thing, lawrence, that happened today is governor bobby jindal wrote an oped in politico and he said, at present any reading the headlines over the past week indicates that republicans are fighting to protect the rich and cut benefits for senior. It may be possible to have worse political positioning than that, but im not sure how. Certainly its true the democrats have the stronger hand and the republicans do. Republicans threaten to use the debt ceiling down the road to try to still get their way in some way. How would you advise the president it to sort of approach these negotiations right now . First of all, its worth noticing for the president and everyone else that there has become after this election a Competition Among possible future National Republican candidates to sound the most reasonable. Jindal is leading in that race so far. What hes just said is the most reasonable thing you could possibly say under the circumstances, and this is why the president is sitting back in if he can waiting for boehner to come to him. Hes allowing the pressure to build on boehner, to build on House Republicans and Senate Republicans from the outside and from the jindals and from tom cole in the house. These people are saying lets do the reasonable thing and vote on all the tax rates we agree on. Lets get that done and then lets reserve time in january and Going Forward to work on everything else. Lawrence, as you know, youre an extraordinary man and youve had an extraordinary career. This is scary. Working around extraordinary people. Of course, senator moynahan and on the west wing. I think you have insight into extraordinary people, being one yourself. I saw an extraordinary sentence in the New York Times this morning. Many House Republicans appear to view mr. Boehner with the same sort of respect that Adult Children award their parents for the sage counsel they ignored in their younger days, which is amazing and ive long thought of some of the republicans as children. So its interesting that now we call them Adult Children. How has Speaker Boehner corralled his caucus to respect him and work with him and be on board with him when we know its they like discipline over there, but its a raucous group as well. He had to do it the hard way. We havent seen a modern speaker have to do it this way. The way he had to do it was allow the nuts to run things for a couple of years and see where that got them. So he couldnt get any control over these kinds of people, you know, a year ago, two years ago, and he has got to show them, look. We did it your way. We allowed you Crazy Tea Party indulgences here and took all the votes on basically changing and ends medicare as we know it. We lost a bunch of elections because of it, including the presidency. So now lets try to do this the professional way, the way thats best for the longterm strength of that party in the house of representatives and in the senate and in the country. They are listening to him because the Tea Party People realize they dont have a better idea and the Tea Party People realize were really good at losing elections. Maybe theres another way. This was all just a brilliant strategy by john boehner . Its all he had. Look, the thing about being in the congressional leadership is it is not its herding cats. You cant get them to do things they dont want to do. So they have to have a collective wisdom. When you have a giant influx of not just freshmen members of the house but people who are antipolitics in a certain kind of way from the tea party, antigovernment, anticompromise, when they come in to your group, it is impossible to lead. By the way, imt not someone who at any point criticized John Boehners leadership skills. I believe all those criticisms were misplaced. He had a problem with who got elected under his party banner. Its not that previous speakers were better leaders than he was. Previous speakers didnt have as many crazy people in the room with him. Thats a good point. Lets see how much the republicans appreciate his sage counsel if he says guys, we have to hike rates. Im waiting for that. Speaking of that, lawrence, i know you were there in washington when the clinton rates that were all talking about now went into effect back in 1993. You probably remember the republicans saying there would be a second recession and millions of jobs lost and none of of that happened in the 1990s. Now were back at the point where democrats for a decade have fought the lower rates and saying we need clinton rates. If its going to happen, this is sort of the moment. The news at least today right now in terms of where these negotiations have gone is republicans seem to be putting out the word that the potential framework for compromise on this is 37 . Instead of going up to 39. 6, which was the top rate that clinton set, its down to 35 now. They move to 37, and republicans are a critical number of republicans in the house are able to say, well we didnt give if all the way. We got the best deal we could and held them to 37 . From the democrats standpoint after fighting it for a decade, do you think its good enough to get to 37 . Normally thats where a compromise is. Whenever you legislate numbers and tax rates are always just the legislation of numbers, the place to compromise actually is on what that number is. Now, there are two numbers that the obama side, the democrats want to change. There are two top rates. The 33 and the 35. Under the obama plan, the 33 would go to 36, the 35 would go to 39. 6. You know, if youre trying to negotiate a compromise, you can start to play with each one of those numbers and try to find something. The huge problem for the republicans on doing that is theyre opposed to any kind of tax increase on principle. So its very hard for them to go into the negotiations that way and say, well, we could live with 37. Well, if you do that, you have violated everything youve said about what you stand for prior to that. Min i mean, the easier way for boehner to handle this is to allow if not secretly encourage a vote to occur in the house on the senate bill. If boehner were to allow a couple of dozen of his people it to go sign the discharge petition so that that comes to a vote and it comes to a vote without boehner having his fingerprints on it, allowing some republicans to go over there and just vote for that, thats the cleanest way to get it done and violates the fewest principles of other republicans who otherwise had to cast a vote on something. At the same time, lawrence, we hear republicans saying, yes, we do have to increase revenue whether its on the Capital Gains tax. I think some are willing to listen to having to raise the tax rate and maybe this 37 , maybe its 38, maybe a cap on 500,000 instead of 200,000 for couples. My question to you is, once they get past that i actually believe they can come to some terms of aagreement. The way the the pathway for republicans is they have to get something back. So what could this administration what can the democrats who are also frayed who say we dont do anything on entitlement reeforms and more reasonable ones than we have to . What can they offer to republicans because thats a hard pill to swallow. The president offers it every time he lays this out, and i think that most of the world doesnt hear the second part of what he says. He always says i have to have the top rates go up. I have to have the rates go up in the top 2 p, and its worth noting he doesnt ever specifically say it has to be 36 and 39. 6. He never mentioning a specific number, but he always says, and were willing to do that accompanied by significant spending cuts in entitlements. He says that. He brings it up. He doesnt say the word medicare, but thats what hes talking about. You have paul ryan and you have boehner saying, we cant do anything without cuts in medicare. They specify. Theyre happy to say what they want to cut in Health Care Entitlements and so on and so forth. Theyre both saying theyre interested in doing that, and its absolutely true there are some democrats in both bodies that say absolutely not. I wont touch medicare in any way in relation to that. Remember, on this kind of package when its bipartisan you dont need every democratic vote, just as you dont need every republican vote. Right. What i hear more from democrats is no benefit cuts rather than you cant touch it at all. Thats what they say, to take all out of Health Care Providers and doctors fees that you cant do. So thats just a language thats been built up around medicare cuts. Look, the very first thing bill clinton did with medicare as president was cut it and was to, in fact, cut it more than any president had ever cut it before. There were no whimpers out of anyone in the democratic party. It was part of a 500 billion bill, 250 billion of it was tax increase we did, and 200 billion approximately was medicare cuts, also medicaid cuts that were in that bill. They were all done on the socalled provider side. Thats the way they tend to do that. Those are very difficult cuts to make because weve made so many of them in the past. So that side of the of the system is kind of cut to the bone at this point. All right. Lawrence odonnell, thanks for hanging with us. Will you hang out again sometime . This is a lot of fun. Nohomework tv is a lot of fun. Up next, forbess list of the most powerful people in the world is out. [ male announcer ] when ziggy the cat appeared at their door, he opened up jakes very private world. At first, jakes family thought they saved ziggy, but his connection with jake has been a lifesaver. For a love this strong, his family only feeds him iams. Compared to other leading brands, it has 50 more animal protein. 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Dont wait. Call now. Today forbes released the list of the 71 most powerful people in the world. Its compiled by evaluating four main factors, how many people you have power over, Financial Resources under your control, having influence in more than one area, and how actively you wield said power and influence. I just missed the cut. I was like 72. Next year will probably be it. Holding the number one spot is president barack obama. Hes followed in the top five by angela merkel, russian putin, bill gates and Pope Benedict xvi or at pontfx on twitter. Theres an interesting name at number 62 that jumped out, joaquin guzman, the biggest and baddest drug trafficker in the world. He heads the sinaloa cartel. Its interesting they notice the underground economy, and the guy is worth like a billion dollars. Hes a big reason for a lot of the cocaine, heroin and marijuana in america. Wields a lot of power. I wonder what else he does. Heroin, cocaine, marijuana. Multiple industries. Its proof to me, i think, that the war on drugs has xleecomple failed if an illegal drug trafficker is in the top 60. Hes been on the list since 2009, so theyve known about him. Its ridiculous this soort of person would be on the list, but then it calls into question the nature of power. Yes, he has this power in terms of the drug economy, but he cant just go anywhere. Hes in control of the space hes in, unless theres bodyguards around him. When he goes to restaurants he locks the door and takes the cell phones and pays for everybodys meal. If you cant control the space that you move through, how are you actually powerful . It calls into nature what power is. Thats why hes not 52. Hes the number one most wanted fugitive in the world. Hes seen a lot. Maybe that makes him powerful on the wanted posters. Lets move to something more positive, when we look at bill gates, number four and hes the second wealthiest man in the world. Hes number four for his charitable giving. Right now hes on path to prevent 8 Million Deaths by 2020 with his work and the money hes donating. I think thats really substantial, and just to counter the drug dealer, seeing him at number four is great. The drug dealer is a few spots higher than john boehner. Thats about right. 65 is where boehner checks in. We were talking about boehner in the last segment. What lawrence is saying is true. Its not boehners fault hes a weak speaker, but he is an incredibly weak speaker. Theres that thing in the times saying maybe theyre coming around. I dont think theyre coming around at all. The problem is the Republican Party is driven by this sort of conservative movement more now than ever before in the last couple of years. Boehner is a little more old school in that. He came to congress in 1990. He was sort of a reformer and teamed up with democrats, he was more pragmatic and climbed into the leadership and fell out and climbed back in. He was next in line for the leadership when the tea party thing happen. The story of his speakership is the Tea Party Conservatives are waiting for the minute he sells them out. He hasnt sold them out yet. Its like the tail wagging the dog. He doesnt exercise any p power. This is a test this month. Hes waiting this out and looking to have enough credibility with the right to make a deal. Well see what happens when it gets to that point. I dont think he has much power. I have to tell you, i looked at this list, and i guess i havent looked at this list closely in years past. I found it sort of depressing. Bill gates has done amazing things, but overall on this lists its heads of states, bankers, billionaires, not a lot of really inspirational leaders except number one, barack obama. There were only six women on it. It felt vechl like an old School Interpretation of what power is. Im not even sure i dont object to who they put on. I just found it sort of depressing that these are the people that control the levers of power. Is that a statement on the world today . I think