Government through february 8th. The deal extends the Childrens HealthInsurance Program for six years, but it did nothing on daca. For that, democrats got Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell to commit to a vote on the issue next month. But House Speaker paul ryan is making no such promises. Welcome to morning joe. Its tuesday, january 23rd, with us we have veteran columnist and msnbc contributor mike barnicle, associate editor of commentary magazine noah rothman and editor of the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host kasie dc on msnbc, kasie hunt. Joe, what was the president , the president s part in this way forward . And what is the way forward . It sounds like his part was to get out of the way. Most everybody says the reason they were able to get a deal at the end was the president and steven miller, who is obviously running the president s business were kept out of the way. And so the two sides could come together. Listen, there are a lot of democrats that arent happy, a lot of reasons for democratic activists to be concerned. It doesnt seem that the democrats have still learned how to fight a good political battle. A good political war. Legislatively. Are with the communications. But you know, this ended up just being a phony war this was to woro a phrase from the beginning of world war ii, this was a phony war, a threeday battle. Its not like they signed off for sixyear deal on, on keeping the government open. Mitch mcconnell has given his word, Mitch Mcconnell keeps his word. Or else. The democrats can do this again in february. And thats going to be up to them. I just hope for their sake that if they do this again in february, they will have actually planned the next move. I mean its one thing to shut down the government but if youre going to shut down the government, you got to know what youre doing, youve got to know what your communication strategy is and youve got to know what your next move is. Thats what people would always complain about Newt Gingrich, saying youve always got that great first idea. But you never assume that the other side is going to react. In a way that would not be advantageous to you. Whats the second act . And thats whats Chuck Schumer and nancy pelosi and a lot of democrats need to figure out. We find out, we dont have a parliamentary system. There is no opposition to leader to donald trump. Chuck schumer does what Chuck Schumer does very well in his bubble in the senate. Nancy pelosi does what she does very well in her bubble in the house. And that is their job. And thats a bigenough job. But there is no Opposition Leader. Youve got 60 democrats running around who all want to be president of the United States and that doesnt actually make things easier for Chuck Schumer and nancy pelosi, it makes it more difficult. Well the New York Times profiles the roughly two dozen centrist senators from both parties who broke the shutdown. Known as the commonsense coalition, the Bipartisan Group crammed into the office of republican Susan Collins for days in an effort to get the government up and running again. Eventually they won over their partys leadership. As the times notes, it fulfilled the rarely realized hope that a centrist contingent could bridge a deeply divided senate. But its still unclear if the same approach can also apply to other entrenched issues like the debt ceiling, disaster relief, and of course a more comprehensive immigration deal to address daca and Border Security. Kasie hunt, you, i dont know if youve ever left the capitol and this story, but watching this process, it seemed like something certainly worked in that room. But boy, did we get a sense of how the white house operates throughout all this. And i, i think, im still trying to piece together exactly what it is, that happened in that room that allowed us to get here. Everyone on both sides, i talked to many of the senators who were involved in these negotiations yesterday, they all say that they were able to build trust among themselves. That has been the word we have been talking about throughout this. No one has trusted anybody else. The leaders didnt trust each other, the rankandfile democrats didnt trust mcconnell. What seemed to happen is they decide they had were going to trust this bloc of 12 or so republicans who told them privately and repeatedly that they would have their back in the event that Mitch Mcconnell goes back on his promise. And i do think that the president plays a role. Because joe youve consistently, so many mornings weve woken up and you have asked the question when are Republican Leaders going to turn on the president . And ive come to conclude that the answer to that question may always be no. However, i do get the sense that the message that these republicans, these moderate republicans sent to these democrats was we see whats going on in this country. We think its wrong. And we want to Work Together to try and figure out if we can be a center of power that can make a real difference. And now theyre going to be tested in this immigration debate. Its been a frustration, willie geist, for years now, that senators get elected, house members get elected, they go up and two or three leaders on both sides making decisions. They do it behind closed doors, they send it to barack obama or before that, george w. Bush and now donald trump and they sign off on it. I something i think, i hope and it is just a hope very positive happened when the government got shut down. You saw that scene at midnight on friday night, going into saturday morning, and you saw a lot of senators talking to each other, i was actually very comforted by that fact. And i have noticed more positive, more positive working relationship between these senators over the past three days, last night, you had Louisiana Republican senator john kennedy starting his remarks on hardball, thanking Chuck Schumer for reopening the government. Saying i dont agree with him, but hey, were going to talk this through. Were going to get to a deal. Who knows, maybe peace breaks out when senators know they have to deal with senators and keep trump on the side. Dick durbin had that same tone on the floor. He thanked Mitch Mcconnell. I think its probably because both sides realize over the course of three days, this fight wasnt making either side look very good and they wanted to find a way out of it. I also think that you know, we show the picture of Susan Collins and joe manchin, both of whom i have Great Respect for, sort of toasting in that New York Times article, toasting a threeweek resolution, a threeweek continuing resolution to get to the next resolution on february 8th. Im not sure how much backpatting there should be going on. Im glad the government is open for people who need the government to be open. But lets not get too excited about it. I think this deal was predicated on trust which is why progressives are so upset about it. Because what you heard Mitch Mcconnell say right there is it is my intention to take up daca. Once we get this government open, its my intention. Progressives hear that as, okay, its your intention, maybe you will, maybe wont. Ant even if you do, theres no guarantee that youre going to support daca. Progressives and those who voted against it, camilla harris, cory booker wanted no less than protection for daca as part of this deal. I suppose if you think Mitch Mcconnell and other republicans have no incentive to pursue daca other than pressure, this is a win for you. This is an 80 20 proposition. I guess you push it up on the calendar a little bit. But otherwise, democrats in this process have sacrificed something very valuable i think. Which was their narrative on c. H. I. P. Funding. They had been successfully pursuing this idea that they were trying to preserve c. H. I. P. Funding, despite the fact that democrats in the house had voted against it on a variety of opportunities. Because they were protecting obamacares provisions. Now they shut down the government over it obamacare wasnt on the table, it was basically the quoteunquote clean c. H. I. P. Bill that they wanted. Its gone. Sixyear funding, they got it but they shut down the government over it and they had to vote to back off of it it wasnt as though there wasnt anything on the table that democrats sacrificed, they lost something. Again c. H. I. P. Funding, right . Yes. But they sacrificed the naturish that it was republicans who were trying to hold c. H. I. P. Funding hostage and then c. H. I. P. Fund something gone, its off the table and now were talking about daca. Daca is now the issue that was shutting down the government. We skipped a step there. But if im a democrat and of course im not, but god knows im sounding more like one every morning. If i went back to my and they said you backed down, i would say, i did what . I guaranteed by standing up to donald trump and making sure he was out of this process, i guaranteed c. H. I. P. Funding. I guaranteed by my fighting, youre telling me that a threeday shutdown wasnt worth guaranteeing health care for millions and millions of the truly disadvantaged children . Thats a win for democrats if they know how to spin it the right way. Thats the governing wing of the Democratic Partys message and it sounds so much like 2013 this is the governing wing of the Minority Party saying we got something out this. While the activist class and the majority and the president are saying they folded. That is going to fuel primary c challenges and its going to be something thats going to radicalize the Democratic Party. We saw it in the republicans in 2013. I want to go to gene for a second. Theres a point that ive made since 2013. If you look at the Government Shutdown, and you talk about how it may have radicalized the Republican Party. Actually what happened in the middle of the Government Shutdown, you had people like the u. S. Chamber, the kochs, other funders of republican interests saying wait, wait, hold on a second. This is not what we signed up for. And this is not what were writing our checks for. And the first thing they did was they went all in with bradley bern in alabama won. What you saw in to 20 14 was republicans doing well but if you could call it the more moderate wing. It was the lesscrazy wing of the Republican Party. After that Government Shutdown, that prevailed in just about every contest in 2014. I think would argue that it moderated it. And gene robinson, if democrats are smart enough, to know how to fight, and right now, that is a question, that we dont have an answer to. If theyre smart enough to fight, they will go home and say damn right i shut down the government for three days. And in those three days, republicans caved and now we have health care for little children who were, who didnt have health care before our Government Shutdown. We win, they lose. Well exactly. The six years of c. H. I. P. Funding is the one really big concrete thing democrats got out of this. Frankly, with all respect to say that they lost narrative while gaining the essential thing they were fighting for is kind of, kind of ridiculous. I mean they got, they got something, they had desperately sought. And they got it for six years. They certainly, look if they dont take that as a win from the shutdown, then theyre guilty of political malpractice. I think the point that, however when you shut down the government, you ought to have a step two, i think thats a totally valid point. I think there wasnt a step two. Theyre in the minority. They didnt have really, a way to sort of leverage much more out of, out of the shutdown. And so, they, you know, they had to go with Mitch Mcconnell promise. Were going to be back here on february 8th. Theyre not going to rewrite the entire u. S. Immigration policy in 16 days. At some point were going to have the debate and maybe Mitch Mcconnells promise is good. Maybe we will have the debate. Mike barnicle, President Trump tweeted late last night did he . Yes, he did. He said big win for republicans as democrats cave on shutdown. Now i want a big win for everyone, including republicans, democrats and daca, but especially for our great military and Border Security. Should be able to get there, see you at the negotiating table. Mike barnicle . Theres another view of all of this. It probably comes from well beyond washington and manhattan and its the view of i think a large part of the country. And it is basically, what are those people doing in washington, theyre so predictable. They do nothing. They dont know what theyre doing. But if you look at it from a point of view of Chuck Schumer and the democrats and not the Democratic Candidates for president , but the average democrat out there, heres what happened. Perhaps. They shut down the government on friday, by friday night they realized they made a horrific mistake. Spent the weekend trying to figure out how to get out of it. During the course of the weekend a couple of positive things happened. Maybe the most positive thing that happens is a group of senators, republicans and democrats, established a sanctuary city, a safe house, in Susan Collins office. Where they get together and talk to one another the way they havent spoken to one another, maybe in 30 years. I dont know. Okay . Among them, they decide one thing theyre going to do is take the car keys from the president of the United States. That they are United States senators, and theyre going to deal with this, apart from the craziness of the white house. Why did they do this . Because they finally recognized that theyre living in a city which just constantly spills out toxicity from every branch of government, and especially the white house and that toxicity has now reached new levels of contempt for institutions of government like the fbi. And that has bothered more than one United States senator. So on the whole, i think its a positive what happened over the weekend. Mike saw a lot of commentators during the Government Shutdown. Taking a predictively cynical tiresome view, whats, what are these people doing, you know, theyre such fools, theyre such clowns. No, you actually had democrats standing up, for what they believed in. And i remember we did it in 1995 and everybody hated us for it. But we stood up for what we believed in. Then it was trying to balance the budget. Trying to be responsible with taxpayers money, trying to get power, money and authority back to the communities. That was something to fight for. And we did it. No apologies. Democrats, democrats are fighting for something that 90 of americans believe in. And that is, that children who came here with their parents, through no fault of their own, should not be deported years later. That is a concept that nine out of ten americans believe in. Thats a concept that you cant get a straight up or down vote on in the senate or house. Thats a concept that the president of the United States has said repeat lid that he supports. That is a concept worth fighting for. Thats a concept worth shuttinging down the government three days for. And if somebody out there is not Strong Enough to hack that. Then you know what . Go to another country where theres a dictatorship. Sometimes it gets messy in washington, d. C. Guess what happened . Just like mike said, United States senators over the weekend, they began acting like United States senators again. And not like they were hand maidens to the president of the United States or steven miller. They began acting like elected United States senators. The second thing, for any liberal that wants to run for president that says nothing came out of this yeah, nothing came out of this. If you dont consider health care for the poorest and the most truly disadvantaged among us, and their children Getting Health Care if that Means Nothing to you, if you rate that as a loss, then you should not run in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Because that was a big, big win. And mika, we will be back here again, well be back here in february. And Mitch Mcconnell knows that, Mitch Mcconnell knows that his word, inside the senate chamber, is on the line, if he breaks his word that doesnt go to the detriment of the Democratic Party. That goes to the democratic of Mitch Mcconnell. This is a 90 10 issue. And by the way, were going to be talking about a