john: i'm john heilemann. mark: and i'm mark halperin. and with all due respect to donald trump, your chance of winning the miss congeniality pageant is not very good. ♪ mark: on the show tonight, boom goes the supreme court. who is your winner and loser in the scotus ruling in favor of obamacare? john: my winner is barack obama. barack hossain obama -- hussein obama who has had two successful supreme court challenges to his signature law -- both of which

could have destroyed it. he has a clear sailing to the end of his term. it will still be contested. every day it passes it will be in green in the fabric of american life and less likely to -- ingrained in the fabric of american life and less likely to go anywhere. mark: i agree he is the big winner. republicans are underestimating the extent to challenge their nominee is going to have to describe a world in which something is better than the affordable care act. the republicans are on but -- our rights -- it is still unpopular but the old system was unpopular. anything they proposed immigrants are going to pick apart. this is going to be more and more ingrained. it is going to be harder for a republican to run against it. john: there is no such thing as a perfect law. we are still arguing about medicare and social security. mark: who's your biggest loser? john: mine are the people who saw barack obama making a confident assertion about the law and predicted that he knew that it was going to go down today, they have been reading

the tea leaves, and the only reason he was coming out so aggressively is they knew it was heading for defeat, what it really reflected was confidence. mark: the biggest losers are the republican presidential candidates who can't paint a picture of a different health care plan. it is a complicated thing to do in the context of a campaign with the nomination fight and the general election. some people, like jeb bush, can explain a world with a better health care plan but pity the republicans who can't. republicans want a nominee who has a better plan than the republican goal -- then the affordable care act. it is hard to do. john: they want more -- they are going to want more chaos, more confusion, more change. that is why this will survive. mark: and it would take with parts of the plan that are super popular. john: in polls conducted simultaneously in new hampshire, we dug into the democratic race and came up with findings in -- strikingly similar findings in each state about the battle

between hillary clinton and bernie sanders. sanders is gaining ground on clinton but she leads by a 2-1 margin. clinton does better on foreign policy. on others, like authenticity and fighting wall street, sanders does better. on these twin polls, what are you seeing as sanders' potential and clinton 's vulnerabilities? mark: sanders can still grow. clinton is still doing incredibly well with women. the fact that he is doing well with independents, and i still believe that attacking him is going to be difficult. if the client inside it comes after him, this is an expectations game. right now if the caucus is the primary and he got half the vote of hers, she would be in a five. -- a fight. john: we are going to talk about this later on the show with senator sanders, but today when senator mccaskill attacked him

the issue she attacked him was on being a socialist where he is much closer to the mainstream and democratic party then claire mccaskill is. call me a socialist if you want but this is where the party is on issues like medicare -- mark: i will give you a new example on that. you think hillary clinton would take single-payer if she could have it? she said as much on a few occasions. with claire says bernie sanders is a socialist because he wants single-payer, that is where hillary clinton's heart is. the worst thing for a politician to do is not say what they actually believe. clinton is bad at that. john: the strength she has with women is going to be hard to -- hard for bernie sanders to dent that. the strength she has with african-americans is going to be hard for him to dent that. there is a feeling on his support. he still has room to grow. but she has such strength with some of those people it is going to be hard for him. mark: people should go to

bloomberg politics.com and look at the whole thing. we've polled iowa and new hampshire at the same time. the numbers on almost every question are identical. john: these are the places where people are paying most attention. mark: coming up, we talked to bernie sanders who response to -- response to us about claire mccaskill. next up, more on the ruling about -- more on the supreme court ruling from this word from our sponsors. ♪

john: we are joined now by greg store. some are casting this as a bad day for john roberts. you say this is a good day for the chief justice. why? greg: this was always going to be a tough case for john roberts. either he makes conservatives mad at him or he runs a risk the court undercuts obamacare in a decision heavily criticized for being partisan. he cares about the institutional legitimacy of the court.

he went with the decision that backed obamacare. the reason it is a good day for him, unlike three years ago he is not alone. he has kennedy in the majority. secondly, this is a ruling he chose to write himself. he could have easily handed it off to ginsburg. it is a ruling he is proud of. i suspect he is feeling good about himself today. john: thank you. our second guest tonight is the legendary bob woodward of the washington post. he is an author of a great book about the supreme court. thank you for joining us. bob: thank you. john: at the last line of the book, the brethren, the center was in control. for a lot of people on the left when john roberts became chief justice they thought the center was not going to be in control. tell us about how you think john roberts became a man of the center and in some ways the hero of the left.

bob he is smart about the : politics of the court. people like to say there are no politics in the supreme court but there always is. what happened 36 years ago is warren burger lost control because he lets the center justices really dictate the rulings. what roberts has done is he has outflanked the left and right, and in a way is a swing vote. if you read this opinion it is a very subtle one. can i tell a story of a couple years ago, running into justice scalia, who dissented in this case, and he said to me in his pleasant way, how come you always write about presidents and i said because presidents have the most power. he said wrong, wrong, wrong.

he gave me a little quiz. what is the first article of the constitution? i said, the legislature. he said, see? if you look at his opinions, he argues for the preeminence of the legislature. what roberts has done in this opinion is argued for the preeminence of the legislature , saying his interpretation of obamacare is its context, its structure, and what its intent was, and they clearly meant -- he says we are not going to destroy obamacare. its judo -- you use the leverage of your opponent against himself. mark: to put this in historical context, we have had plenty of cases in the last century of presidents picking justices who end up not being the kind of justices they like.

is it too soon to say that george bush may have made a mistake from his own point of view in elevating john roberts? bob: no. i don't think so. roberts is playing a subtle game here about being in control and not letting the center -- there are not too many center justices -- maybe kennedy -- take control. they do to a certain extent. roberts is a conservative. if you had former president george w. bush on truth serum and said, "do you think this decision makes sense"?" i think he would say yes. no one wanted to blow up the health care system, and in a sense that is what roberts is saying here. john: he is taking grief from his old friends on the right. my question to you, there are

many more where justices have ended up being different than people expected them to be. sometimes the presidents regret it. do these justices change? does the court change them or is it just the times that change around them? bob: both, obviously. look what has happened here. roberts may be getting some grief from the right wing on this, but his argument is wait a minute, we are letting the legislature decide. he dug into the law in a rather sophisticated way and said, this is what they meant. he quotes an old 1939 decision saying it is risky to get into this area of interpreting the law because it then becomes the law. but you have to do it.

he cites mayberry versus madison and say we decide what the law is. he is not going to being -- not going to be seriously criticized by any conservative constitutionalist. mark: you've seen your share of big washington news dates. put today's decision in context for the obama administration supreme court administrations, how big of stories will this be for history? bob: it would be a bigger story if they overturned the law. it lets things go along as they are. if you look at enough supreme court activity, and the state of mind of the justices and so forth, they are not going to do anything radical unless it is unanimous. that is when they do something really different. there was no way anyway anybody could find unanimity in this.

in terms of overturning it. roberts moved to the center i think temperamentally that is where he fits in the spectrum. john: given that analysis and everything you know about the court, i know you don't like predictions, do you have any doubt tomorrow or monday the court is going to come down in favor of gay marriage? bob: you can't tell. unfortunately there aren't leaks out of the supreme court. it would be nice if there are. let's leave our phone numbers and e-mails here. maybe somebody will give us a clue. john: i'm sure they already have bob. bob: i certainly don't. everyone thinks they know. people thought they knew in this case that it was going to be 5-4 and it sure isn't. john: thank you so much for being with us. when we come back, the man that

everyone is talking about -- not channing tatum -- bernie sanders -- after the break. ♪

donald trump: i will just make a brief comment. -- bernie sanders: i will just make a brief comment. i don't have an endless amount of time. mark: we'll have endless amount of time but we hope bernie sanders takes a few questions from us. thank you for joining us on capitol hill. senator sanders: my pleasure. mark: i want to ask about the decision in favor of upholding the affordable care act. what would you say in response to john roberts and your colleagues who want to oppose

the law? bernie sanders: i think it was the right decision, consistent with the way we voted in what we intended to vote for in the affordable care act. i would also say that we are the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care. 35 million people still don't have health insurance. the idea of throwing 6.4 million people off of health insurance would be totally absurd and disruptive. i'm happy with the decision. john: you did a press conference today in which you unveiled a plan with the estate tax. there's a variety of things involved there including tax breaks for dynasty trust and billionaire surtax. i'm curious whether the objective is deficit reduction or primarily about income inequality. what is the driving ambition? senator sanders we have massive : and grotesque levels of income inequality. the top 10th of 1% owns as much wealth as the bottom 90%. we have got to address that issue.

one of the fairest and most straightforward ways of doing it is through a progressive estate tax. it can raise significant sums of money. i can't tell you exactly how much, but it will be significant sums and some of the money has got to go to be invested in rebuilding our infrastructure, expanding and supporting our child care system, making college affordable for all kids. the rest can go to deficit reduction. mark: this is not the first time you have proposed an estate tax bill. 2010 and 2014 -- neither time did that go anywhere. what is different this time in terms of the political environment you are in or the strategy of how to actually get it passed? senator sanders: i don't think it is going to get past with the republican control house and senate. i have never suggested that. but i think it is becoming more and more apparent to the american people that something is fundamentally wrong in this country when so few have so much and so many have so little.

mark: we did a pair of polls in iowa and new hampshire to get a sense of how voters are thinking about you. you have a quarter of the vote in iowa and new hampshire, up from a previous polls. independents are being supportive of you. this morning i asked senator mccaskill about your chances. i want you to listen to what she said. senator mccaskill: the media is giving bernie a pass. i very rarely read that he is a socialist. i think he would like to see medicare for all in this country. he would like to see expansion of entitlements. he would like to see -- he is not worried about debt at all. he is somebody who i think is frankly against trade. he's against a lot of things. mark: i know you like to stay away from personality. on the issues, part of your -- senator mccaskill suggested

your socialist believes make you unelectable -- guilty as charged? bernie sanders: i find it surprising that she says the media does refer to me as a socialist. there is no article that i have seen that hasn't referred to me as a democratic socialist. i am. do i believe in single-payer -- a single-payer system? absolutely. do i believe we need trade policies that are fair to the american worker and not just benefit ceos of large corporations? i plead guilty. i think we need to change our trade policies. mark: we couldn't think of another instance of your colleagues speaking out against you and that way. have you heard people speak out against you that way? why do you think senator mccaskill is now? center sanders: -- senator sanders: to the best my knowledge this is the first time a colleague has attacked me. you will have to ask senator mccaskill. it's unfortunate. i bore you guys to death but i'm trying to run an issue oriented campaign and not one of personal attacks.

john: to be clear, you never bore us. you are 100% delightful. i want to ask you more about this poll. we will stick with the issues. you have gained ground in iowa and new hampshire in our poll and others. we dug a little deeper and looked at some of the underlying data. there are places where you are clearly behind her. one of them is with women. she dominates you 59% to 19% in iowa. i'm going to ask you to make the case to female voters as to why they should support you in particular over hillary clinton especially given that she would be a historic figure for that gender. senator sanders: i do understand that. you are right. there are millions of women are excited about the possibility of a woman for the first time becoming president. i fully understand that and appreciate that. i think on the other hand, if you look at my economic agenda

that says two women workers, you can't keep working for 10-12 dollars an hour, we have to to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. we're going to unveil universal pre-k which will make families excited. what we have now is a disaster. mark: you are doing well compared to secretary clinton on the issue of who is more authentic, who would take on wall street. i want to talk about another one. you said before you feel passionately about your state tax proposal, but republicans control congress. we asked people in both states who can get things done better in d.c. as president. republicans will control the republicans will control the house in january of 2017. they may well control the senate if you are elected president. make the case you can get more done given the reality of

republicans controlling the house. senator sanders: that is a very important question. what i say is that given the power of the billionaire class corporate america, wall street and heavy-duty campaign contributors nothing is going to benefit working families unless millions of people around the country begin to stand up and say enough is enough. what i have said is that if elected president, i will be part of a mass movement, which will be strongly organized and very dynamic, which says to congress we know what is going on, we are following what is going on, vote to raise the minimum wage, make college affordable, deal with climate change, deal with income and wealth inequality. nobody is going to deal with the

needs of the disappearing middle class unless we have a new political movement in this country that stands up and fights against the billionaire class. john: senator sanders, i am going to ask you another question on an issue area where you are trailing senator clinton. in this area you are being shellacked in our poll. foreign-policy experience. in iowa, 84-3 hillary clinton leaving. -- leading. in new hampshire, 84-8. you are to her left in terms of national security and foreign policy. explain why you think you're being shellacked and what your case is that you would be a better foreign policy president. senator sanders: fair question. the answer is it goes without saying that when you are the secretary of state for four years, by definition you have an enormous amount of experience in foreign-policy. no one can debate that. i was not secretary of state.

i'm not on the foreign relations committee or the armed forces committee. this is what i will tell you. hillary clinton back in and i 2003 both had the same information with regard to the wisdom of going into iraq. not only did i vote against the war but i helped lead the opposition. i looked hard at the most important foreign-policy issue of the last several decades, the war in iraq. i was right on that issue. hillary clinton was wrong. mark: democratic socialist and proud of it. senator, thank you so much. senator sanders: thank you. mark: we'll be right back. ♪

john: we are always on bloomberg politics icon. tomorrow we will -- bloomberg politics.com. tomorrow we will have a live

stream of president obama's remarks in charleston. mark: we're on twice a day at 5:00 and 8:00. thanks for watching. sayonara. ♪ this is a great place to work. not because they have yoga meetings and a juice bar. because they're getting comcast business internet. comcast business offers convenient installation appointments that work around your schedule. and it takes- done. - about an hour. get reliable internet that's up to five times faster than dsl from the phone company. call 800-501-6000 to switch today.

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