ANDREA MITCHELL: All the tea leaves so far have been that the oral arguments went very badly. Do you think there is still a chance the president might win a 6-3 victory and actually have health care sustained or do you think that this could be a divided court with some kept and perhaps the individual mandate thrown out?
DASCHLE: Well, Andrea, after hearing Justice Ginsburg's admonition, I’m one of those who will talk and don't know. But even though you don't know doesn't mean you don't talk. I think the bottom line is that everybody understands this is at best 50-50. No one, even the optimists can't predict the court is going to rule unanimously in favor of this decision. I think the conventional wisdom right now is that they won't. But we really won't know for at least now another week, so it's unclear. What we have to do is prepare for whatever option may be likely to unfold and there are four or five of those options available to us. So we've got to plan for each one of them, implement them as we get to know more.
MITCHELL: What can the president do politically, because if this is knocked out, you know already Republicans are saying this was the greatest achievement that he had heralded and doesn't it make him look as though he has wasted time, put the country through a ringer and some Democrats would even argue that the tea party would not have been born in that august debate if health care had not been the focus of his attention.
DASCHLE: Well, this is going to be a political issue over the next six months, regardless. I don't think you're going to see any action by congress. There won't be a consensus. but you're going to see a tremendous amount of rhetoric, depending on who wins and who loses. You're certainly going to see a good deal of attention given the issue. I think the real question is what do we do now. I think what the American people want is some consensus, some ability to be confident that we can go forward, and therein lies at least some possibility for common ground. Republicans and Democrats like a lot of what the ACA has already implemented, the elimination of annual limits, the elimination of the legal lifetime limits, the doughnut-hole closing, that is the end of the requirement that seniors pay for drug coverage. All of those things are very popular and many more, so I think the president is going to say, look, let's keep those things that we know have already worked and let's build on building a greater consensus after that.