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Right now. at the end of the day, i think it really matters about the president pushing this thing and driving this discussion to the point, very much like you said before, that's more public, it's more open but the -- reid is stuck. he has nowhere to go. mcconnell's going you play your hand, i'll play mine, and therefore they keep banging the drum on nominations and there aren't any movements in the direction of getting it done. >> and what i wonder, talking about the d.c. circuit here, you talk about how it's a feeder for the supreme court traditionally, we haven't had in obama's second term...

First two years of reagan's presidency. the score is zero. you can look at '85, '86, second term, .069. george bush sr.'s first two years .0625. in the second two years of the president's terms, obstruction rose. from 0.1429 in reagan's first term up to .762 and .500 for bush sr. there is a lonlgic to this. the opposition party was more willing to put the team in place. after that the opposition party would be thinking to the next election and get picky. why let all of the other nominees go through if your party might win the white house? then came the clinton year. first term was normal, ligh...

Obstruction, obstruction crisis, where none exists. >> the fact of matter is there is no obstruction. >> in the majority leader suggested there was delay and obstruction. that word comes out automatically when sometimes some people wake up in the morning on that side of the aisle. >> so that leaves us with another he said/she said story. i don't know who to believe. actually, this is why god invented math. thanks to a post this week at greg sergeant's line, the index of obstruction and delay a form late created by a scientist at am hurst, it puts a numerical value on obstruction. compiling dat...

This is key. you had before this an established norm for opposition party behavior. republicans in clinton's term changed it. when bush 43 came in, democrats accepted that new norm. they're scores were high throughout the last decade. we get to obama, look, the norm changes again. high level of obstruction first two years followed by a near total blockade the next two. look at that score. .9524. that's close to 1.00 as we've ever been for the congress that ended after last year's election. it is the highest score record and its more jarring when you consider republicans have been the minority ...

And if he hasn't broken this obstruction by then, he won't be able to get a replacement through. so in one of the things that i tried to do in my book is give the history of the obstruction. where does this all come from? where does grover norquist come from? how did we get to this place? it's a contextual story i try to tell because we haven't had this level of partisan gridlock in washington in modern memory. so, yes, there's always been a lot of this going back 200 years but we're in a different place. some of it has to do with reaction to barack obama for a variety of different reasons tha...