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Making the case for voting rights act, that being covered on the national news, it will be hard for republicans to turn their back on someone like that. and i think there are people within the democratic caucus within the house who have the moral stature to get this done, to make it the legacy. to say 50 years we've made a lot of progress but we had 200 years of slavery, 100 years of jim crow. if we want to get to the post racial future we still need protections to go there. >> we have the issue of the supreme court which is what started all this this week. i want to talk about what sort of th...

Tough political way make gay rights an issue that they could be used -- used as a wedge issue against president clinton. this was an effort by bob dole, who was head of the republican party that year, to try to insert gay rights into the 1996 presidential election and to use it as a wedge issue against president clinton. >> right. so, the background on it was there was a case in hawaii that was suggesting that possibly hawaii would legalize same-sex marriage. a republican issue ated thing we'll have doma which says the federal government doesn't have to recognize hawaii's -- >> no, no, no. >> ...

Discrimination. there was a -- quite a extensive argument going on in the white house at the time, key veto it? what would that mean? could he allow it to become law without signing it? because you don't have to veto -- it's not your only option. you can just let it sit, a pocket veto. what were the other options? but, you know, at the time you've got to remember, there were -- there were only 14 members of the u.s. senate who voted against this bill. a veto would have been overridden. there was no state in this country where same-sex marriage was allowed so it affected nobody. there was less ...

Jurisdiction. as to whether there are five votes there or not i think that the five justices who joined the windsor opinion put language in that opinion and wrote an opinion that is i think a very strong opinion for gay rights and at least gives us clues as to how they might vote in the future. but it seems that they are not ready to do that right now because they decided to completely steer clear of that question in the hollingsworth case. >> do you think, amy, do you think that we're going to see the court take up same-sex marriage again maybe for nationwide to clarify this? >> i think that'...

Well, that's what the problem is. that you've been granted equal rights and then the federal government comes in and says, you don't have them anymore. so there's going to be a question of what this means when a state hasn't granted any rights at all. so the 38 or 37 states that haven't granted marriage equality, we're going to have to litigate that and see what happens going forward. >> and kenji, literally, writing a book on prop 8. >> i am indeed. >> so i want to get your analysis of this, and very interesting about the chief justice. >> yeah. i am not actually that surprised by that, given...