♪ john: secretary clinton, if she makes one error, that will be a huge story. >> she is in a position to have a pretty good lead. it has always been the case. >> she can't go into the debate with that mindset. to the extent she has not done as well as people hoped, it is the result of excessive caution. mark: mistake or no mistake, there was one big winner tonight, that is you. because we are on for an extra half hour for the debate and we begin in right now as democrats in las vegas get ready to tear each other apart or maybe play nice with each other. who knows? we will see. we are here with former los angeles mayor and hillary clinton mega supporter antonio villaraigosa and clinton super

pac money person in chief guy cecil. for: who we just met today the first time. >> yes, we did. john you both are watching this : with great interest. mr. mayor, has bernie sanders made any mistakes in his campaign so far and if so, what , are they? mr. villaraigosa: i have not spent a whole lot of time watching bernie sanders. i'm supporting hillary clinton. i think he has done a lot of things right, clearly. he certainly speaks with an authentic voice that has generated a lot of support for him. i think what distinguishes her, frankly, is her track record. her track record is second to none. and although the democratic candidates are people i have a for, ieal of respect have worked with some of them, but too girly governor o'malley when he was mayor and governor, i think at the end of the day, that is what distinguishes her. it will be a long campaign. i think she will do well in the debate tonight, but ultimately, it is about voter contact, slogging through these next few months.

and i expect she will do that really well. john: guy, what do you think the biggest pitfall is that hillary clinton needs to avoid tonight? what is the biggest potential problem? guy: the thing she needs to do is make sure she addresses the things she wants to address. you know she spent the last four , months rolling out policy proposal after policy proposal, and yet almost none of them get that attention. and so, she needs to make sure she is sharing her vision, showing her policy, sharing her proposals, and not getting bogged down with overly long answers about e-mails or things that anderson cooper and others want to talk about. john: is that the pitfall? guy: getting too involved in process questions and not being -- taking the opportunities that she will be given to lay out her vision for the country and why she is the only candidate who has the strength to get these things done in washington. mark: she is doing pretty well by most measures. what would you like to see her do better? mr. villaraigosa: you know, she is very warm very generous , a person. you get that one-on-one. you don't always get it on tv.

and i hope she will be able to project that because those of us who know her know her to be a very warm person who really cares about people who are struggling right now. and i think her candidacy is about that, about the notion we ought to reward work, that when you work hard and play by the rules, stagnant wages for decades, at least since her husband was in office, isn't good for america, and making those investments is what she has been about her whole life, and i think talking about that, about real people, is what i would like to see tonight. john: guy, you worked for secretary clinton back in 2008. barack obama has huge crowds in that came into the point where people in your world looked up and said that is a movement, not a campaign, and the movement was

enough to make him president of the united states. why is what bernie sanders is doing right now, why is that not the same thing? why is that not a movement to be afraid of? guy: sure, well, look. crowds are easy to generate. howard dean had big crowds. his inauguration did not go as planned. i do not think crowds are indicative of who has the ground game, who has the infrastructure to build a long-term campaign to build in the states that matter? i mean at the end of the day, i , agree with mark's column today. hillary clinton after the past effort you are months is still isafter the past four months still the person with the highest likelihood of being the next president of the united states and she needs to stay focused on communicate her vision and answer questions directly with voters in town halls like she is doing. mark: how do you meet this challenge? she wants to be the democratic president after one who has been in office for eight years.

guy: she has said that this president has taken us from one of the worst economic crises in the history of the country and we have made enormous progress on a whole range of issues. we saved the auto industry, we turned the economy around in many ways. but there are still too many markets were not feeling the benefits of that and she has a plan to move us not just from recovery but helping real americans not just eke out a living for themselves but to make a life for their families and her kids and take care of their parents. as long as she stays focused on that, everything is not always in reference to this president. it is about looking forward and how we continue to make this country better for the people that haven't felt the economic success we have seen. john: mr. mayor, pretend we live for months in the future, the middle of february, and by whatever circumstance, hillary clinton has lost the iowa caucus to bernie sanders and loses the new hampshire primary. what then? mr. villaraigosa: she will win south carolina and nevada and every state after that. i don't expect that will happen. look. nobody wins every state. but i expect she will be the

democratic nominee, for the reasons i said. i think guy is right. when he says that, you know -- the fact that senator sanders gets big crowds is a good thing and nobody is pooh-poohing that. president obama had great crowds but he also had a great organization in iowa. we have a great organization in iowa. we have a great organization in nevada. we have contacted some 320,000 voters here. i expect this isn't just about debates. it is about the hard trench work of making a compelling case with everyday voters, and she is going to do that. mark: ask you both of the same question and then we have got to go so yes-no, are you a capitalist? guy: yes. mr. villaraigosa: yes. mark: all right, that is two yeses. thank you for joining us. we appreciate it. we have got to get the hillary supporters out of your because it is bernie time.

the upper echelon top command is here, right after this. ♪

♪ john: what is your one piece of advice to bernie sanders? >> keep staying positive. >> don't attack. not that i love hillary -- nobody is above attack. but part of why he is catching fire is he is not an insult comic. he is running really powerful ideas. john: it is bernie mania. feel the bern, berning man, the howard bern show. with us are two of his top advisers, jeff weaver and tad devine. i will ask you to fill in the blank.

bernie sanders accomplishes blank tonight, it will be a win. >> if he introduces himself to the 35-40% in polls who don't have enough information to make an opinion, that is a big win for us. the more people know bernie sanders, the more they like him. this is an introduction to millions of people who don't know who he is. john: is that a recitation of his believes, or him as a human being? >> both. both. people want to know the biography, where he stands on issues, his stance on income inequality and the corrupt system. john: he doesn't talk about his directly much in public, at least in my experience. is that different tonight? >> he is more of an issues kind of guy. >> he grew up in a log cabin. [laughter] mark: you guys are spending time with him, prepping a little bit. is he nervous at all? it is a big deal. jeff: i don't think he is nervous. he has been speaking to lots of

people in auditoriums. listen. this is his first presidential debate, obviously. it is a new experience but once he gets out there -- mark: tell us something funny that happened in the debate prep. >> something funny in the debate prep? mark: anything. come on. i will ask you a question i'm asking everybody -- are you a capitalist? >> yes. mark: are you a capitalist? >> no. mark: no. all right, so there is division in the high command. a lot of people in the clinton world think his answers are problematic. >> what do you mean by that? people in capital to run the government? no. >> we have a democracy -- voters, the people. mark: bill clinton says that democratic voters will eventually say this. >> that is my definition.

mark: they will say he is too liberal to be our nominee and will lose in the election. what do you think about that? >> look, bernie sanders has great cross-appeal. this is a guy who is going to expand the base of the democratic party and bring back the blue-collar reagan democrats to the democratic party. i have worked with him for over 30 years. you go to rural, conservative, republican parts of vermont, those people love bernie sanders because even though they don't agree with him on guns or abortion or gay rights, they say he is down there fighting for me. he is an honest guy and he fights for my economic interests. i've seen it. it is incredible. john: every candidate who goes through the first presidential debate -- what are the things you have told him not to do? definitely avoid this, make sure you don't do that? >> the podium is very close --

this is probably not the best gesture. mechanical things like that. in terms of what he is going to say -- john: pitfalls he has to avoid? >> bernie has to just be bernie. he has a powerful message. the pitfall would be not delivering that message. ok? so he is going to try to do it. mark: i'm going to count -- how many times is he going to smile on camera? >> 4. mark: i'm going to count. unlike some reporters, we are not super impatient to say why are you ahead in all 50 states? you are ahead by the right kind of poll in iowa. is it possible to stay behind in the other 48 as you are now and win those first two and revolutionize the field, or do you have to get ahead in other places before february? >> can i answer that? i worked for walter mondale in 1984 and i saw what happened when gary hart won new hampshire. i don't think we will be up behind in 48 states. john: you think you will go

before new year's or february, it will go ahead? >> i think it is possible. i saw a field poll with 35 in california. there is a poll in connecticut today -- 12 points. >> oregon was four points a while ago. >> there are places where bernie is catching on and we could succeed. in iowa we have people on the ground and have a real campaign there. that is where we expect him to have the most success most quickly. >> today on tv there was a national poll done and they showed the obama-clinton poll from the same day in 2007, and bernie is closer to secretary clinton and obama was on this same day. john: a lot of discussion on this debate, yesterday and today, about joe biden. very acutely in the last 24 hours -- is he going to show up at the last minute? kind of crazy talk. but the question of biden does hover over this race. so, first of all would you , rather see joe biden in the

race or stay out of it? >> my view -- i don't want to make that decision for him. i respect him so much. i think if he gets in, it will pull votes away from secretary clinton. if he gets in, he can win, and that is something else we have got to beat. ok? that is my honest calculation. it will not change our campaign at all if he gets in. it is not going to change our campaign at all if he gets in. mark: what about you? >> the campaign we have been running -- there has not been a lot of give-and-take between the candidates. bernie has been talking about his vision for the country. if the vice president gets in, we will talk about our vision for the country. i mean it is the same game. , john: you don't think you will lose a lot of votes -- the votes for bernie are not "i want an alternative to hillary" votes? they are "i like bernie" votes? >> absolutely. john: you are not worried they will go off to biden? if biden comes in. >> no, no, no. mark: tell me one thing the

campaign has done wrong. >> one thing he has done wrong? work too much. mark: stop it. >> he works too much. john: he is too honest? mark: have you made mistakes or have you run a flawless campaign? >> i would not call it a mistake, but when you start a campaign like this, you don't know how much money is going to come through the door. it is not like he fundraised for two years through a super pac. if i had a time machine and could go back in time, i might ramp up staffing earlier. >> let me answer again and maybe you will believe it this time. we have overscheduled the candidate, honestly, and i think that is a mistake we have made. mark: does he think he will be the next president of the united states? >> he thinks he can be, for sure. mark: does he talk about what he will do as president? >> no, we haven't gotten there yet.

john: i know you guys are focused on bernie sanders and i know you are political professionals and spend some time each day thinking about hillary clinton, what she is doing and how to compete with her. how much time a day do you spend thinking about martin o'malley? >> as much as we spend thinking about hillary clinton, zero. ok? i know this is unbelievable, but i have been saying this from the beginning. if we run a campaign against her or anybody, we are going to lose. if we run a campaign focused on him and what he says and how he says it, we have a chance of winning. that is the campaign we're going to run. we don't think a lot about her. >> obviously, when we are attacked, we correct the record and we spend time dealing with that. that kind of political infighting. so we raised 1.2 million. mark: opposition researcher? >> we have a researcher -- mark: research on hillary clinton? >> we are very familiar with her record. john: the researcher would be doing opposition research -- >> no, we have the debate tonight. people are going to say things.

we have people's old quotes. john: don't think there is anything wrong -- >> no, we don't, either. mark: have either of you talked to ken starr lately? kidding. [laughter] john: jeff weaver, tad devine, a television first -- we will do this every week, maybe every day, who knows? we want more. more from las vegas straight ahead. it will be like "the hangover" minus mike tyson. after this. ♪

♪ >> welcome to las vegas! >> come on to vegas. adventure never ends, baby. >> do you want to have fun? >> come and see the show! >> we would like to send a message to somebody that everybody loves, mr. joe biden. >> please, joe, come to vegas! >> come to vegas, joe. we need you, baby.

>> cnn says you can still get in even if you declare on the day of the debate. >> need to get this debate all shook up. >> i hope you jump in, man. >> mr. joe, i know your favorite meal is pasta. seven different types of pasta. come to las vegas. >> it's the greatest city in the world. hope to see you soon, joe. mark: it would be cool if that were real, but it wasn't. it was made by our resident filmmaker and resident troublemaker. they made what should be the next las vegas tourism video, but it is not. we are joined by 2 of our colleagues, jennifer epstein and sahil kapur. they both have pieces up now on the freshly redesigned bloomberg politics website. thanks for joining us. we talked earlier in the program that we have a shared sense - clinton folks seem remarkably

not on edge on the eve of a high-pressure thing. you spend more time with them than we do. do they seem pretty calm? why do you think that is? jennifer: they are calm because they know we will read however they are behaving so they are going to try as much as possible to come off as calm. her team did a walkthrough and she didn't join them. it speaks to how she is an unusual candidate -- mark: walk-through, shmalk-through. she doesn't need to see it. jennifer: she has been on stages more than once or twice. there is a sense of confidence and calm and they want her to go in and be solid, if nothing else. john: i'm still trying to get over that little mark halperin-lady gaga thing. that has got me a little rattled. the sanders campaign, we asked those guys what they would consider a win. what do you think the real answer to that question is? sahil: i think 2 things --

taking his message to a broader audience, improving name recognition, not nearly as much as hillary clinton. the bigger issue for him is appealing to nonwhite voters. he is behind about 50 points with blacks, he does not do well with hispanics, either, and the clinton name is known with minority voters. he has to offer a message that will appeal to them as well. john: talk about immigration? what is the issue that breaks through to them? sahil: the fight to an institutional racism, criminal justice reform, and he is not a known quantity like the clintons are and he has to persuade them that he is serious about issues and he will fight harder than hillary clinton. mark: obviously, the debate is a big deal, but i like to look to the next thing, her testimony before the benghazi committee. what do you know about preparing for that? jennifer: that i don't know a whole lot about.

some of it is she has done this before. what is different is that the e-mail questions will be a big part of it. they will use kevin mccarthy's comments -- mark: my theory, she will bring an ipad with her with a video clip of kevin mccarthy's sound bites and hold it up every time -- jennifer: right, reminder. it is different because they will go into questions about benghazi and the committee members realize they have to make a short talking about benghazi -- mark: it is not called the e-mail committee. jennifer: at the same time, the e-mail questions are endlessly fascinating and she has not been an open book on them. john: instead of having a month to prepare for a debate and another month -- she is in 2 successive things in the course of a week. what do you know about both of those? who was -- talk about debate prep and -- who is playing gowdy? who's playing sanders? jennifer: i don't know who is

playing gowdy. i will find out in the next few days. she had to offer top people playing sanders, she had a jake sullivan playing o'malley. a longtime policy aide. there was no mock joe biden, as much as the people at cnn seem to be hopeful he will get into the debate. john: you know how many hours, roughly how many hours of debate prep? jennifer: not yet. they have been very guarded about the prep. i am assure we will -- sahil: 2 people they are not doing in mock sessions, jim webb and lincoln chafee. jennifer: ouch. mark: what are you thinking about in terms of sanders, the metric that you are looking at to say after tonight, what is he needed to do to move up? sahil: one thing he needs to do is improve his standing with

democratic voters, who do not identify as very liberal. he is strong with them and leads according the latest quinnipiac poll, but down considerably among moderate democrats and somewhat liberal democrats and conservative democrats. and the other thing is, as the advisors were talking to you about them he does very well with white working-class voters. if he can bring more of them into the tent, they can change the equation. mark: you think him not saying he is not a cap to list will hurt him? sahil: to an extent. but he is not the socialist with the buzz word, the alarm that kind of triggers, he is not that kind of socialist. mark: thank you both for joining us. we appreciate it. check out our website, bloombergpolitics.com for their stories and a lot of other great stuff on the debate. a lot of analysis and five things to watch for tonight. jen will have a piece on how hillary clinton did on the big stage, and we will be right back. ♪

♪

john: mark and i, we will have some pizzas tonight when the debate ends, bloombergpolitics.com. who lost, who won. thanks for watching. from all of us in vegas, sayonara. ♪

♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: dr. abdullah abdullah is here. he holds the title of chief executive of afghanistan. he was sent to post. afghan security forces are largely operated on their own after most u.s. troops were withdrawn. some units were remaining to advise and train. on monday, the militant group sees the city of kunduz. efforts to retake it failed despite government reinforces and support the nato airstrikes. it is the taliban's biggest military gainc