(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NORM COLEMAN, (R) FORMER MINNESOTA SENATOR: I just had a conversation with Al Franken, congratulating him on his victory. And I told him it's the best job that he will ever have, representing the people of the state of Minnesota in the United States Senate.
AL FRANKEN, (D) MINNESOTA SENATOR-ELECT: I received a very gracious call from Senator Coleman a little while ago. He wished me well. I wished him well, and we agreed that it is time to bring this state together.
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BAIER: He also received another call from President Obama about 4:30 this afternoon, the president calling now Senator-elect Al Franken to welcome him to the Democratic senatorial caucus and also talk about health care and energy and a host of topics.
What about this and how it plays in the U.S. Senate? We're back with the panel - Mort?
KONDRACKE: The important thing is 60 votes. The 60-vote mark has now been achieved.
BAIER: Filibuster -
KONDRACKE: Filibuster-proof, and theoretically, the Democrats could ram anything through they want without the Republicans.
But Senator Byrd, Robert Byrd, and Senator Kennedy have been absent much of the time. That brings it down to 58. And then you have on left-right issues, you have a whole bunch of senators, Senator Bayh, Senator Nelson of Nebraska -
BAIER: Senator Specter from Pennsylvania.
KONDRACKE: - maybe Senator Specter on labor issues, the two senators from Arkansas, Mary Landrieu from of Louisiana, all of them not reliable liberals who are going to vote the party line.
EASTON: That is absolutely right. But it is true the Democrats gain a key vote. But the Republicans gain a key punching bag.
If you need to put a face of the outrage on liberalism, Al Franken is your guy, you know, to add alongside Nancy Pelosi. You can't attack Hillary Clinton anymore. She has gained too much respectability, I think. But he was incredibly statesman like during the campaign, but there is the old Al Franken of old. Don't expect him to be quite that contained during his senate career.
And I think there will be lots of opportunities for Republicans to go out with direct mail starring Al Franken. And I think we will see a lot of that.
KRAUTHAMMER: I think it will be refreshing having at least one senator who admits he is a comedian.
(LAUGHTER)
As for the number 60, you know, the really important number is 50. That's a one-time majority. If you have the vice president, you get control of the Senate and control of the committees.
Sixty, as Mort indicated, is a floating number on different issues. You will have around 60. So it's incrementally a help to Democrats, but it's not in any way a fixed super majority.
BAIER: Democrats will need the votes, every single one of them, to pass climate change. That passed the house. It's a 1,300-page bill with a 300-page amendment that was added early in the morning.
Mort, Brian Wilson did a piece where he couldn't find a lawmaker who read the whole thing. There had been some developments this week.
KONDRACKE: Yes, well, whatever - the House bill is almost dead on arrival in the Senate. You know, it's got - it's got so many restrictions in it, so many things that nobody has read, as Brian pointed out, that it's going to be substantially changed. Even the concessions that were made in the House, there are going to have to be more concessions in the Senate.
And one major one is going to be that President Obama is going to embrace nuclear power. In fact, very shortly, they're going to give loan guarantees for the building of four new nuclear plants. That is a major outreach to Republicans, and that could help pass the bill.
BAIER: It's going to turn off some on the left, too.
KONDRACKE: It will.
EASTON: I think the big problem with the cap and trade bill is - - and if you're concerned about cap and trade and you think it's a tax on the economy and you think it's going to hurt the economy at a time of a fragile recovery, as I do, the big concern is less Al Franken than it is the EPA.
The Environmental Protection Agency is going to put out a directive that says that these emissions are dangerous, and it's going to act on its own in likely in a more draconian way than Congress is going to. So that's going to force a lot of these more centrist Democrats who are more concerned about cap and trade, that's going to push them in the direction of taking some kind of action.
BAIER: Despite some emails we didn't really see until they were reported back and forth on climate change from the EPA.
KRAUTHAMMER: This bill is length and complexity if not in elegance is the "War and Peace" of legislation.
And left and right agrees on this that it is corrupted at the core because almost all the permits which were intended to be auctioned off in a market have been given away in a bazaar of special interests, which makes it extremely uneconomical, inefficient.
It's a mess, and I think it's not going to pass in the end as a result of that.
BAIER: Not even close?
KRAUTHAMMER: Well, it will be close. But I guess I'm naive, but I think in the end sometimes rationality will prevail on Congress.