>> i'm mark halperin. >> i'm john heilemann. "with all due respect" to snoop dogg who turns 43 today, this is the one where we bring out the jin and juice. >> here is the playlist for tonight's show, chicago's greatest hits and when you wish upon a czar. and carolina on my mind. the spread of ebola. here is our 42nd president in little rock, arkansas yesterday. a clinton classic tour due force and framing up the issue. >> i have been especially dismayed in the last few days

by the way people who don't own -- know a lick about it are frantically trying to fill certain elements in the media with this blame game over the ebola crisis. i don't think the republicans in congress would deny the world health organization the funds they did to organize emergencies or cut back on n.i.h.'s research budget. i'm not out here blaming them. >> at bill clinton would say, if you see a turtle on a fencepost, it didn't get there by itself. the president thinks this is a problem for democrats. my question to you is how big a problem is ebola for democratic candidates? >> it depends on what happens over the coming days. we have seen the 40 people who are physically in contact with michael eric duncan, the first ebola victim they have all been cleared now. if there are no other cases in the united states, this could fade right away.

another ebola case could last all the way to election day. >> democrats and republicans are picking up in polling. this is a problem for democrats. even if there are no more cases, it will string out we are not that far away from elections. >> 65% of americans think there is a high likelihood of a major outbreak of ebola in the united states. that is absurd. there is no chance of a major outbreak. >> you are calling the majority of the american people absurd. >> i'm saying they have been misled if they think there is a major outbreak in the united states. if they start to see the evidence this is true, there will recede as an issue. if something drives that fear bar higher it will be bad for democrats and everybody. >> katie bar the door. >> who is that? >> bar the door. two weeks until the midterms and president obama is back in chicago today, exercising his constitutional franchise and casting an early vote. after polling, the president visited the campaign office of incumbent illinois governor pat quin and brought along some doughnuts and juice.

>> doughnuts. >> having fun and looking loose. >> i want everybody to know that i just voted. diane was one of my volunteers when i was running for the u.s. senate back in the day. you just keep on working now. don't get distracted. we got stuff to do. you passed the bill? congratulations. campaign fever going on. >> you would think that is a shot from the 2012 election day or 2008, it is 2014. the president is not a popular figure in america. there is some polling that suggests he is less of a factor than he was a month ago. how much of an albatross do you think he is personally for democrats at this point? >> he is a big problem. he is out campaigning some. i think the white house is going to have to explain how in the home stretch he is not going to target these races. i'm not sure the polling is right that he is less of a

factor. he is still the biggest factor. >> it is a little more confiscated -- more complicated. the republicans have done a very good job of bundling in the secret service and isis and ebola and whipping up the sense that america is going to hell in a handbasket. stocks fell last week. the president is the biggest symbol for that. it's not getting better. >> it is not on the playing field in the key races. >> any of them. >> democrats have an advantage, leaving it up to the individual candidates. right now a lot of him on the defensive because the president is not getting a lot of upside of the democratic policy. >> that's why you see a lot of democrats embracing the travel ban. it is a good way to distance themselves from obama without having to push him too far away and worrying about the depending turnout among the minority voters and other voters they need to get out on election day. >> and embracing bill clinton and in some places hillary clinton. >> on friday the president

named ron k can lain his ebola czar. republicans made him a political piñata. >> he is a spinmeister. >> a democrat political hack. >> inside crony democrat. >> white house political operative. >> this is a chump. he is a political hack. >> thanks for the shout-out, giraldo. >> with all due respect he is a competent guy. was this politically the smart choice for the president to name this guy as the ebola czar? >> this is one of these places where the politics have to be function to -->> what we know about him, really smart on policy, really smart on politics. it is optically the best choice. he is a good choice on the substance of the job. >> here are the three things that he is challenged from. can he go up to the hill and calm the waters. i don't think he can because he is a partisan figure, that is not his strength. can he go before the public and

be commanding in a way that will calm people. it's not what he has done historically. he does not have the science ballgame. it's great substantively for the president. naming him as the lead czar of the thing was not necessarily the bethe president could do because of those deficiencies that he has got. >> by choosing someone who didn't have a public health background, it made him a target for a bunch of people who don't have public health backgrounds to criticize. he is not norman schwarzkopf. he didn't want to do this. he was going to do some flashy thing, pick someone who is comfortable with or does the job that needs to be done. >> he will do a good job organizing it. not one democrat has criticized him. that is a great sign for the white house. if democrats are piling on it will be a real problem. so far democrats are at least quietly supportive of the choice, not critical of it. as you said before, if this goes away and ron can manage the end game of it, he is a

very smart choice. >> the anybody can be the chief of staff for both al gore and joe biden is a guy who knows how to take on some tough problems. >> no question. >> north carolina is our senate race to watch today. democratic incumbent hagen has held a small but persistent league in polling. things may be turning beginning her as al hunt wrote in his column the race will be decided whether voters are thinking about their distaste for obama in washington or the negative feelings for republicans in raleigh. is kay hagen now as endangered as any other at risk democrat? >> at the end, you want momentum. maybe he'll be peeking too early. this race has tens of millions of dollars spent on it. she has been battered and now republicans have the feeling that tillis has gotten up to the level where he deserves to be supported financially. it's much more equal down the homestretch. >> it's the highest per capita spending race this year.

people are projecting that. her weakness now in addition to the things that are thrown at her on a cyst and ebola and the unraveling of america, the key voting groups she needs to win with ones where the president is having problems with. he can't get there to help her with african-american voters. he is not going to north carolina. women voters, he is suddenly doing really badly with women voters. those are the pillars of her winning in this race. they are eroded underneath it. >> we'll talk more about this race a little later in the show. >> our next guest is such a big deal that we made him our honored guest. andrew cuomo takes our questions until he runs out of time when we come back.

>> we both wanted to interview andrew cuomo, the governor of new york for quite a while. he talked on tv to charlie rose and david letterman. that was pretty much it.

we did two things this morning that we rarely do. we attended an event about infrastructure and we went to queens. we asked him about the political impact of the ebola crisis and how he thinks the obama administration has handled things. >> governor, do you have a sense of how ebola has affected the electorate, how the midterms to be affected by it? >> you have a schizophrenia right now or you have two competing tensions lack of confidence in government, lack of police in government, washington is grilt locked. they can't get anything done. they can't pass a budget. oh, my gosh, ebola which now calls for a superior level of

confidence. by the way isis, terrorism superior level of confidence and i think what you're seeing is that lack of confidence is now running into a real anxiety about a problem that only government can handle. we don't need government. we don't need government how do we handle ebola? how do we handle terrorism? how do we rebuild airports? >> do you think the federal response has been handled well? >> it's not my field. i'm a lawyer and i kind of like to stay within what i know or stay far away from something that i have no idea about. i have been doing the work for new york prepared for ebola. i can tell you we have never been here before. they make it sound easy on the television, just follow the protocol and everything is fine. these are very specific and

strict protocol, much more specific and strict than most of the preparation thus far. you only get one slip and one mistake. remember even if you do everything right from the point of identification, you're then left with the issue of everyone who was in contact with that person up until then, so you then have a whole detective game of a manhunt person hunt where whether we touched them, who did they see. it really is a phenomenal challenging situation. i do not see any part for political divide or common areas about it. i don't get that. >> he was at an event with joe biden before he came to talk to the press. yeah, when i asked him how the federal government was doing,

he said i'm a lawyer. it's not my field, i'm a lawyer. he also spent a long time not saying the following words. ibaka is doing a great job managing this federal government. it's obviously disturbing that we had a couple of cases in the united states, by and large what i have seen from the federal government is excellent and done a great job. i could have answered that question just face -- >> he is cruising to election in a blue state. just spent the morning with joe biden. it shows you his fingertip feels a lot of democrats which is right now the president doing a great job, the polls is not thinking the president is doing a great job. >> i don't think there is a political issue in new york on this i'm going to tap dance around it in the most neutralizing way possible. >> we're going to listen to more of our talk with governor cuomo here. >> can you talk about the context when the public doesn't have trust in governments, these are expensive projects you are talking about. how do you build the broad-based support to spent

taxes on these things? >> if you look at new york, you have to say they really love to build. they are old aggressive people the longest bridge, the longest underground subway, water tunnels that go from new york city to the hudson valley to bring down water. then something happened where it just all stops and you're not building. i think it comes back to the confidence of government. you know what happens on government builds. it's going to be overtime, it's going to be overbudget, waste and fraud. i don't believe in our government. i do not believe in our government's capacity to build. >> how does it get restored? >> not with a speech or words, but by showing confidence. proving confidence. show them that you can do it.

show them that you can stop this political bickering and the gridlock and the democrats and the republicans and all this nonsense. that makes zero difference in their life by the way and show that you actually competent, that you value a dollar. you are not going to waste their money. you are efficient, you're effective, get it done. >> from a personal and political point of view, how would you judge your success on election day? >> 51. >> you would be totally happy with 51? >> 51. these are complicated times. there are a lot of issues on the ballot that have nothing to do with the personalities on that ballot. we have tracking on the ballot. we have common core on the ballot. there is no doubt that there is a washington overlay to all of this.

there is a lot beyond -- most elections are about people. it's a competition between two people. i think this is a far more complex election than that. 51 is 51. margins and i defy even you, political genius, a year after an election to remember what the margin was. i don't remember my margin as governor or as attorney general. it doesn't matter. 51 and then do the job. >> i don't want to put you in a position of calling the governor a liar, he doesn't really know what the margins are? you think he would be happy with 51? >> i think there's a reasonable chance he could remember what his father's margin number was four numbers right to the decimal place. that is what i think. >> what is interesting about that -- >> 51 would be bad for him, he would be crushed. >> he doesn't talk to national

reporters very much, particularly on tv. you heard both poetry and prose there. he is very proud of his record as governor. he likes to reach for the lofty rhetoric, what kind of governor he has been. >> and he is making this case as very neoliberal. i believe in government, but government must work for people. the competence and there is a dukakis thing to it. if he runs for president this is the platform he is building. i made in new york work and that served the liberal goals of my father and forbearers of the party. >> exactly. >> coming up, how frantically are those democrats scrambling in north carolina? we dispatched the great al hunt jr. on a boondoggle to the tarheel state to find out.

>> al hunt joins us now. there is no baseball, and

certainly no nationals baseball to watch today. he has plenty of time to wow us with his wit and wisdom. tell us what you think is going on in that north carolina senate race. >> i think the north carolina senate race is one of the great negative races in the country in a year full of negative races. whether you hate raleigh more or hate washington more. really what i think kay hagan has done fairly effectively, hey, you may not like washington, look what we did in raleigh. the last couple weeks, the last couple days in particular, the last couple days of the campaign is that isis and ebola, they're not in the forefront of people's minds down there will just make people think how dysfunctional and incompetent washington is. right now slight edge to kay hagan. >> al, do you agree that tillis is the one that has the momentum now, is that because of circumstances or is he run age better campaign than he was before? >> the republicans say that he has the momentum.

the democrats say their private polling does not show that. it's been a steady three-point advantage. i have talked to some republicans who actually say tillis has moved not only even, but a point or two ahead. i think he has gotten his act together a little bit better. he was really disadvantaged mark, for so long because that state assembly had to stay in office through much of the summer. i think that was a real problem for him. he has certainly gotten better the last couple of weeks. still it's going to be tough. 95% of their people have made up their minds. >> we have talked how expensive the race is and a ton of money is spent in contested races. this might be the most expensive per capita. why this race among the dozen or so big races, why was this the focus for so much money? >> i think early on the republicans saw a tremendous advantage. tillis could win the primary, he was much stronger than the right-wingers, he beat in that primary. second, they had a party infrastructure down there and kay hagan was vulnerable, not a

particularly renowned senator and they could beat her. she has been more resilient and tougher than they thought and raised a heck of a lot of money. money will not decide this race. >> al, as we have discussed, one of the most distinctive thing about this race is education, one that the hagan folks have elevated talking about tillis spending on education when he was speaker. is that what hagan is still trying to drive? >> she has talked more in the last couple of days about women's issues and pay equity and defunding planned parenthood. they all have a piece in the sense it's all against what the republicans did in raleigh. tillis, of course, claims they really didn't cut education and if you look at the figures, they didn't keep pace with population growth and inflation so it really was a cut. it probably resonates more of an issue in that state than any other state this year. >> you mentioned about senator

hagan has been leaning on the women's issues, it seems natural she would given what we have started to see in the polling the last few days about how president obama, the gender gap seemed to narrow, you see president obama's numbers with women and subsets of women starting not to collapse, but certainly ebb. is this feeling that in a direct way, she needs them to win the race is she starting to see a deterioration there? >> john, i saw her in charlotte on friday and she didn't at that point. there is obviously a worry about obama. she doesn't talk about the president a great deal, no great surprise. what they calculate is that they know they're going to turn out the africa vote they need. they feel very confident of that in large part because of negativity towards republicans. they are worried about getting that percentage of the vote in the high 30's that they need. that goes to the issue just raised. as of friday, they were confident they could achieve that. the other thing to point is she

doesn't need 50. she probably needs 47 or 48. there is a libertarian candidate who is a pizza delivery guy and he is polling as high as 6 7% in the polls. >> we need more pizza delivery people in the congress. the president in the last few weeks, we don't know his full schedule, but today josh was saying there is a lot going on in the world, it's not surprising the president is off the trail. as we get down to the last week, will it be more of a problem for democrats to have to dole with him not on the trail and the symbolism of that or more of the problem he is on the trail in the contested and less contested races and becoming more of the news cycle? >> i don't think in georgia or north carolina are going to lament the fact in a he can't be there mark. they will be making calls to africa voters. go to illinois maryland, not very many places. >> are they looking for opportunities to say, hey,

there is a crisis, he has to stay home at the white house? >> sure, sure, i think that's a good reason to do that because i don't think he is welcome in a lot of places. look, in north carolina which he only lost by a little bit last time to kerry in 2008, his popularity is about 35%. if you're kay hagan, you don't want someone in there who had 35%, particularly when your opponent links everything to you and obama. >> a few seconds left. who do you got in the world series? >> i think your giants are probably going to win it john. >> short series, long series? >> i think it will go six games. >> you're on record. >> al hunt, thanks very much. >> thank you, mark and john. >> we'll be right back.

>> we are only on the hour a half hour today, we are live 24/7 on bloomberg"money and

politics".com. go out and check out the website. see what elizabeth warren is up to in her campaigning efforts. >> we will be back tomorrow and "taking stock" is coming up now on bl

>> i am pimm fox and this is what i am "taking stock" of on monday october 20 2014. the tech giant reports results from the stock gains more than 3% in trading today. apple says it sold over 39 million iphones. the first time the new phone was available. apple payday debuted with some 220,000 shops and restaurants accepting the electronic money transfer network. with more than 500 banks to support the service, chief executive of consumer banking says he is a fan of the new payment system. >> apple pay is a big deal. our