A special survey by nbc news and esquire magazine that maps out a very large america. Its called a new American Center. Meantime, left and right are trying to find the middle as harry reid and Mitch Mcconnell are edging closer to getting the senate to sign off on a deal to reopen the government and fund the government. But the fate in the house is uncertain. And ted cruz having a Public Private meeting with house leaders many the basement of a texmex restaurant. One of the colleagues is calling it the Senate Surrender Caucus on the front page of the new york times. Going to be a long 48 hours, folks. Good morning from new york. Its tuesday, object 15th, 2013. This is the daily rundown. We have much more on the new American Center throughout this special edition of the daily rundown. But we have to begin with the latest on the shutdown. First read begins now. If youre rooting for an end to the fiscal standoff, we have a senate deal at least in principle, kinda sorta. The bad news, no one is sure it can get through the republicancontrolled house. Last night harry reid and Mitch Mcconnell closed in on a plan that would raise the nations borrowing limb, reopen e the government, but temporarily. The legislative egg heads, as some call them, have been up all night writing the legislation even as theyre ironing out the final details. Weve made tremendous progress. We are not there yet but tremendous progress. Perhaps tomorrow will be a bright day. I think its safe to say weve made substantial progress and we look forward to making more progress in the near future. Clearly harry reid is an annie fan because the sun did come out this morning. It would fund the government through january 15th, that means through the holidays. Good news for consumer confidence. Frankly good news for everybody that works in washington whos sort of relieved that they can take the holiday they planned. It extend the Borrowing Limit on faper through february 7th, but you cant plan on that number. This debt ceiling were hitting about now, we thought we would hit it in may. This would give legislatures a december 13th deadline to hammer out a larger budget agreement, requiring a budget conference between the house and the senate to report out an agreement by that date. Whats the likelihood of that happening . Well see. This deal also gives agencies some flexibility to implement cuts from sequestration any way they would like to do it, possibly save pog tenial jobs. So democrats hope to renegotiate the spending levels in the larger deal and want to get rid of the sequester all together in the budget talks. The january 15th deadline comes before the second round of sequester effects coming into effect. Current overall spending is set at 998 billion. The new cuts if they went into effect next year would take that number down to 967 billion. Republicans have said changing spending caps is a nonstarter but overall republicans arent getting much out of this deal other than another bite at the apple down the road. A repeal or delay of a medical device tax, thats now off the table. The only Health Care Provisions in this Senate Agreement is a oneyear delay of whats called the reinsurance fee. Its a 63 fee that employers and unions pay, which is frankly traditionally passed on to you, the consumer. Organized labor has been campaigning against that one heavily. This deal would also tighten Income Verification rules for the exchanges, which were originally in the law, then the Obama Administration waived that issue. Lawmakers are still discussing a republican demand that would deny treasury secretary jack lew the use of the socalled extraordinary measures that extends treasurys Borrowing Authority past when it hits the debt limit. So in this time they would like to prevent him from doing that for the february 7th date. Thats something democrats have been against. Were guessing treasury and the white house would be against that as well. While the legislative egg heads are riding the law, the politicians are charged with selling it, and of course the toughest sales job will be to House Republicans. The house gop conference is meeting now as a group and im guessing theyre venting as a group. Its clear House Republicans dont like this deal. The question is how badly do they hate it . We believed that we could have worked with the president and then the president dropped us like a hot potato. Then he wanted to deal with the senators. The problem with Senate Republicans is they always want to have a fight the next time. They want to wait until the next time. If they continue to pussyfoot around like they do in these battles theyll never be able to take back the senate. You heard that. That was kinder language. Our friend at the national review, robert costa, is saying theres been some extra fourletter words already being used by some conservatives to describe the senate deal. The conference wreak breaks down into three groups in the house. Several dozen lawmakers will be automatic noes. I think Tim Huelskamp falls into that category. He said we have a name for it in the house. Its called the Senate Surrender Caucus. Anybody who would vote for that in the house as republican would virtually guarantee a primary challenger. Then there are about 60 to 80 republicans who would vote with john boehner on anything he asked them to do. The question is where will the guys in the middle go . There are lawmakers more willing to say on background or off the record theyre with boehner, they dont like the tea party, but they publicly embrace the tea party because theyre nervous about the tea party and primary challenge. Frankly they often vote against boehner on tough votes in the end to vote with the tea party. Where do they fall . Boehner and mcconnell met for about 25 minutes yesterday. Tom cole tells the washington post, mcconnell i dont think will deliberately put us in a bad position. If youre able to get some savings out of the entitlement portion of the budget, those are republican victories. Not insignificant that cole is trying to declare victory. One thing that could help baner is if the Senate Republican leader Mitch Mcconnell could deliver 25 republicans votes in the senate, more than half his conference. 40 republicans voted for the fiscal cliff deal, five of those no longer in the senate. Thats your ceiling. Theres 35 Senate Republicans who have voted with Mitch Mcconnell before. Would they vote with him again on a giant deal that gets us out of a cliff mess . Can they get anywhere close to the number . Mcconnell, who spoke to the president yesterday and reid, are now both racing the clock to sell the plan to lawmakers before the u. S. Borrowing authority runs out this weekend. The calendar is, of course, is enemy here. They may not be able to pass this bill because of procedural issues for a few days. A single senator can use procedural tactics to push the final vote past the october 17th deadline. And yesterday ted cruz deflected questions about whether he plans to try to delay a vote, saying we need to see what the details are. Roll call reports cruz met with 15 to 20 House Republicans to plot strategy for around two hours late last night. They did so in the basement of a capitol hill texmex restaurant. Of course the shutdown is exhibit a for washington polarization. While we often say d. C. Reflects the rest of country, a new survey by nbc news and esquire magazine shows thats not the case. Not only is the country more purple than you may have thought, the middle is a heck of a lot bigger than you youve been led to believe. According to our survey, more than half of americans are in the Political Center. Just 21 represent the hard left and 28 represent the hard right. Ill go into more detail here. The center itself of course is not one giant block itself, okay . It is there is sort of a spectrum of centrists if you will, but the spectrum is larger than that. We identified eight different groups to let you know. So heres the hard left base here. These people voted almost 991 for president obama. Heres the hard right. They voted about 937 for romney. This center here, president obama won with 56 of the vote. But this is your center. So i want to go into a little more detail here. Heres your left as i was telling you about. We had a little fun here saying what it represents. You had your bleeding hearts. Thats your lisa simpson type of democrat. You have your gospel left. Think the tyler perry. These are religious, culturally conservative but very democrat. Then you look at the right. You have your evangelical right. You get the picture where were going here. Then the talk radio heads we call them. Some could describe this as the tea party caucus. But its the very upset, angry conservatives if you will. All right. Lets look at the center. Its four different disparate groups of the center, and we put them essentially where they fall on the spectrum here. The most middle of the road is here. Somewhat left leaning are these minivan moderates. And, you know, ill get to turtle here and the whatever man in a second. But quickly, to run through, we have our little claire dumfy from modern family, don draper, duck dynasty from the richardson family, but clearly the main dude there, our pickup truck guys. Most of this group is women. Still a third of them that are men. These are highly educated, pretty affluent, more than a third have children at home. These folks are pro gay marriage, theyre prochoice, but theyre also pro groun control. They want lelsz government, though, and theyre very much in favor of a balanced Budget Amendment. Thats why you cant put them all the way to the left. Our nba middle. These were businessmen republicans a generation ago. They split exactly down the middle between obama and romney, 4949. So they were totally even split. Mostly white, mostly male, mostly over 50. Highly educated group, high earners, income earners, most making over 75,000 a year. And the big difference, big disparity is between the social and financial ideologies, and thats there. And 86 want more individual accountability. This is very much a personal responsibility, pick yourself up off the bootstraps kind of thing. Then your pickup truck populace. We told you for a long time, culturally conservative, the old reagan democrats, probably another way to put it. Predominantly white working class. 80 of them not graduated from college, bluecollar type folks, live in the rural south and the midwest, very pessimistic about the economy. This is the antiwashington and antiwall street group that sits in the middle here. Almost half of them say d. C. Doesnt represent their values. And 64 said government should be doing more. This is a big difference. Yes, culturally conservative, but they want government involved to sort of help create a level Playing Field if you remember some of those talking points in the 2012 campaign. Then theres our turtle group. We call them the whatever man. And well explain to you in a minute. These are mostly white, 1 in 3 are single. 75 of them are under the age of 50. Big social media users but not to talk politics. Theyre not very politically engaged. 28 say politics doesnt affect their life at all. Many of them have no opinion on major issues but they really did split down the middle, those that voted, split somewhat down the middle. So thats our journey to the center of the political universe. As you see, this is a very large it is diverse even in the middle but there is some commonality to them. Up next, the obama and romney pollster who is do this groundbreaking survey. Theyll talk about it and the fact that americans dont easily fit into the red and blue columns anymore. Our survey hopes to shake up the conventional wisdom act the gay marriage, Death Penalty issues. How does this change the way future fights are waged on the err issues . First, todays politics planner. Whats not on the schedule are all the extra meetings that we might or might not see in the afternoon. Should be an interesting day as were waiting for godot. [ male announcer ] this is brad. His day of coaching begins with knee pain, when. [ man ] hey, brad, want to trade the allday relief of two aleve for six tylenol . Whats the catch . Theres no catch. You want me to give up my two aleve for six tylenol . No. For my knee pain, nothing beats my aleve. So i should probably get the last roll. Yeah but i practiced my bassoon. [ mom ] and i listened. [ brother ] i can do this. [ imitates robot ] everyone deserves ooey, gooey, pillsbury cinnamon rolls. Make the weekend pop. So our new nbc news Esquire Survey shows its time perhaps to rethink some political definitions, specifically those weve come to think of as, quote, unquote, liberal or conservative. Weve seen a shift on gay marriage. Once seen as liberal, now most say samesex couples should be allowed to get married like anybody else. Balanced Budget Amendment only embraced by kefbs for years. Half of the Political Center supports that, too. Full results of the new survey are in the newest issue of esquire. Right now well do a little deeper dive with three of the men that made it happen. Robert blizzard was pollster for mitt romneys campaign and is a partner of Public Opinion strategy. He and Neil Newhouse represented the romney wing of our survey team. Tim pen netson, president and ceo of a strategy group. Obviously he represented the obama team in designing this survey. Richard dorman the Senior Editor with esquire magazine. Richard, give you guys credit. You had this idea, came to us thinking that maybe we agreed it was a good idea and i think this is already paying bigger dividends than we expected. The Biggest Surprise to you, before i get into we explain who had the groups were. Well talk about what they stand for. Big picture, what was the bigst surprise to you . I think you touched on it briefly in your introduction, which is the sense that for decades we thought of things like abortion rights, raising the minimum wage, it will Social Security net as liberal policy, just as we thought of people being wary of Government Spending and government regulation, people being for voter i. D. Laws and domestic drilling, conservative issues. Those are not liberal and conservative issues right now. They are centrist positions. I hit the it should redefine the way we not only think about the issues but the way we talk about them. Talk a little bit about this. Joel, i want to start with you because during the campaign you were actually one of these folks behind the scenes to us and reporters saying, hey, stop saying this is all about turning on our base. We are targeting swing voters. You guys did your own version of this. Explain. Well, we always concentrated on taking a deeper dive and looking at people who didnt fall into conventional boxes, as richard was just talking about. And while, you know, there were people who were very loyal democrats and republicans weve known for years through our political work there is a moderate majority in most places in america. And so we took a lot of time during the campaign, looking at their economic lives, their values, and understanding the things that are really important to them about their future. Robert, when you looked at this survey, was the center bigger than you thought it would be at the end of the day . Yeah, i think so, chuck. I think the key here is that for the most part you look at independent voters as being really the kind of swing group across the country that had been for years and years. As you mentioned earlier, we had always at the Romney Campaign talked about we win independents well do really well. I think the center of the country is bigger than independents and independents can no longer be looked at as this kind of Homogeneous Group across the board. Theyre a moderate center thats really the majority of the country. We put a breakdown of it. Whats interesting here, richard, is there are people in the center that believe theyre wearing a blue jersey or wearing a red jersey. A lott identify as independents but it wasnt as large of a group. I think whats interesting here is there are people who thought they were liberal or conservative but actually their positions fall in the middle. Maybe just their values and their gut instinct is theyre on one team or the other. Thats right. One of the driving forces behind this little study of ours is to try to figure out what affiliations like liberal and conservative mean at a time when 21st century politics are moving the ground beneath our feet. Youve got jeb bush saying hes not sure where his father, ronald reagan, would fit in in the Republican Party. You have the left dinging on everything to syria. Lifetime issues and people thinking about debt and gay marriage and the middle east. Those things are changing how we think about ourselves. Lets go through some of these issues. Guns and god, a group that doesnt own a lot of guns. Only 34 in the senate have guns, 45 want background checks. Joel, this isnt a very religious group. There is a large religious population on the left, mostly africanamerican, large religious base on the right, mostly evangelicals. But 60 of the center. If there is a bright line here, it was, hey, i may have my faith but i dont want to hear you talk about it, politician. Right. In fact, very strongly they say they do not believe, they disagree strongly with the notion that religion and churches should play a bigger role in politics, which is by the way completely at odds with tea party studies that have been done who are comprised of people who strongly believe there should be more religion in politics. So theres a political disconnect th