mark: i mark halperin. and: and i'm john heilemann with all due respect to halloween, we are too tired to go trick-or-treating because we have been working our fingers to the bone. [organ playing] john: oooh! ooh! ok. night,appy cabbage sports fans. in our haunted house

tonight -- a hunt for trump and carson, jeb, and our potion making poster. but first, the thing. marco rubio. supporters are happy that he was trick-or-treating in the part of town where the king size baby ruths reside. swagger, a memo today saying that marco is only candidates who can win the nomination. who was left out of that? john ellis bush bush. it is the rubio stock currently overpriced? mark: it is hot. it is rising in a lot of metrics, but until he rises in the polls and shows that he can turn just a fortune into money, he is overvalued. but in the site ops war between

rubio and bush, rubio is winning. it is intentional -- john: provocative. mark: it is meant to crush bush's spirit. bush'sot just to crush spirit. him tont him to attack attack them over the voting records because they think it makes bush look small and pathetic. mark: the other thing that rubio socialng for him, the media on the conservative side are becoming pro-marco. they love him a lot more than they love jeb bush. john: a democratic pollster says to smart people, insiders -- a lot of republicans are not too -- 71% say that the nominee will be marco rubio. that's not overvalued stock.

national.'s only we will see a much he rises. you think he is going to rise, i think, more than i do. if he rises in the polls, momentum will get supercharged. and everyone will have to figure out what to do about it. john: it tells you how inside the beltway establishment is pro-rubio, not just because of the debate performance. but they look at him and say, young, hispanic -- mark: democrats are not as afraid of marco rubio as some people think. all right, jeb bush's campaign in a tough place. the latest sign of trouble for bush, his chief operating officer abruptly left the campaign with no explanation as to why. bush is still trying to assuage donator concerns after that poor debate performance. he is launching a jeb can fix it

ise? is this a deathwatch or he going to come back? john: im still checking the polls. i have not seen him do anything except promise donors he would get better in some undone fundable -- undefinable way. i have not seen them do anything that made me think they are turning the corner. mark: the reason he will be coming back is there is a lot of money. message, message, message. the problem for bush is everybody is on death watch. he needs some good news. the super pac went on tv with ads. that did not raise his numbers. he needs rising poll numbers, a strong debate or performance milwaukee, or something else. enough. is probably not he has to turn around so he can go after rubio. john: all of those things are fair enough. it is still the case he does not

have, on the basis of everything jointly listed in early states, he does not have voters, human being saying i want to vote for this guy. mark: a problem. campaignnie sanders's has received contributions from more than senator 50,000 people -- 750,000 people. that's a lot of. people. and hillary clinton is not releasing e-mails with present obama citing executive privilege. and in atlanta, clinton was interrupted by protesters from the black lives matter movement. what is the state of the democratic race? mark: bernie sanders needs another debate to get the national conversation going. he continues to raise money. hillary clinton still sees problems, as you just saw in the ink you were talking about.

the next debate is key for bernie. the next debate is key for jeb. is flummoxed about whether he can go after marco, bernie is flummoxed about whether he can go after hillary. about the i wrote did about 15 hours of debate prep and they said they needed 150. they will focus on getting bernie sanders ready, and try to contrast on the issues only -- not personal, not about character, but on the issues only. there is baloney. the issues really contrast of the goto character. but can sanders execute? the other thing, there is so much confidence in the clinton campaign. if you ask republicans who the democratic nominee is going to be, they almost all say hillary clinton. the other thing sanders has to do is get back to convincing

people he can win. joe biden's departure mathematically makes that a taller order for him. we all know it is all about new hampshire. he has to convince people in those states that he can beat her in the states. all looking like an iowa race. if hillary clinton wins in iowa, she probably will be the nominee, pending somewhere thing. if sanders wins iowa, he could win new hampshire and then it's all crazy. the question is, what is sanders' iowa operation like? what do reliable polls say? sanders has to show some life out there. he's got to look like he has closed. mark: big news from the white house. american special ops forces, fewer than 50 according to beat ministrations, will be on the ground in syria for the first rebels.help fight isis press secretary josh earnest plated down, saying it is not part of a new -- played it down,

saying it is not part of a new strategy. paul ryan in lindsey graham already questioning this decision. why is he putting the troops on the ground when he said there would be non-? because the situation is deteriorating. onis trying to get a handle a deteriorating situation. i think republicans who claim it is too little, it's not part of a conference of strategy, they got a strong point. i think the pentagon probably told the white house they needed this to make sure the airstrikes were coordinated. the white house needs to figure out with these discussions going on with john kerry -- can they live with an interim government? i think the u.s. is headed toward that and that will make the military certificate.ss the president, john kerry has said there is no military solution. john: there is only a political solution. i think you and i have seen in syria there is more openness in , assad has totion

go. let's get the stabilized and we can figure out the political in game later on. more specialust be ops people going in that her secret. 50 -- the price you pay for doing it versus the 50 -- the pentagon must have pushed hard to say, we cannot do what you're asking unless -- john: so you say 50 when you're sending 500. mark: i doubt it is 500. but a larger force. john: i think you are right. who will crawl out of our wadr crypt when we come back? stay with us. we will be right back. ♪

[organ playing] mark: our guest tonight is not the least of it spooky. an seltzer, who joins us on a pilgrimage from the mecca right now. jump in carson are ahead in the iowa poll. they are counting on bringing a lot of first-time voters. how does your polling pass the question of whether they can be successful? is it possible your polling would understate how they were doing because you are oversampling regular voters? i am notally oversampling regular voters. my poll is designed to show the science of rolling, everyone who shows up at caucus night has an being contacted by my poll. all i can do is whether you are registered to vote right now. does that lose some people? there are people who register on

caucus night. but it is a pretty small sampled frame for the universe. mark: but in the universe that trump and carson are going for, like obama did, trying to bring in new people, many of those people are not registered. boehner just show up on caucus night. is there a way to capture that? not a way with my method to do that. i don't like feeling uncomfortable about my method. it is a small universe of people who show up on caucus night and if suddenly there was an influx, that would be problematic, but the campaigns are getting them registered ahead of caucus night. they don't want a big line of the door. list alle updating our of the time -- in 2008 when you are really close and accurate on tracking barack obama from progress, if you had called in 2007,o poll them they may not have said they were a voter and you would have skipped them.

but later on -- ann: later on caught them. our polls show that 50% of the voters to show up on the democratic side were first time. that was an alarmingly large number. mark: what are they now? for both parties. as it gets closer, things get more exciting. best in the candidates' interest to have those people registered before -- mark:a as soon as possible. nn: if it is their first time -- it is their first time, there is a big long line, they go home. john: there's a lot of talk about various lanes. the protest candidates, the grievance candidates, whatever you want to call them. right now in iowa pretty consistently you see that group, what ever you want to call them, over 50% -- carson, trump, fiorina.

the establishment candidates get way less than 50% right now, 18%, 70%, under 20%. where is the establishment vote right now? are they undecided? or has the electorate shifted? an: it is a little bit of misnomer to decide you have two or three units. anestablishment candidate, outsider. we asked is there a greater risk to have an outsider who does not know what they are doing question mark if you break those apart more, republicans, 60% said it is a greater risk to keep doing the same thing. in that since they wanted an outsider. trump and carson lead in that group and they lead with those is thinks a greater risk having people who do not know what they are doing. people are not lining up the way that you might wish them to. iowa is trying on trump and

carson. that is not to say they won't change. john: sure, but have you thought about that segment of the electorate that is undecided right now? who are they? ann: it's not that big a group. 15%, 12%. who are they question mark they tend to be people who are not paying as much attention. they tend to be younger. john voters seemishment to decided between bush, christie, who that group is. ann: i don't have perfect data for you, john. earlier thated marco rubio is the hot candidate. according to a reporter he has not built much of an organization in iowa. has iowa changed question mark is it possible to do well on caucuses without building an organization -- has iowa change? possible to do well on

caucuses without building an organization? steve forbes tried to do that. he thought money would curate all. we saw a rick santorum who had a pickup truck and spent a lot of time and he did not have a lot of county chairs, did not have a lot of people who were, in the traditional way, organized. there are lots of ways to win the iowa caucuses. it's a more secure that if you have a good organization that has a dignified people, that is a persuasion events, that you are now committed to show up on that night in support that person, you will have more people show up on the night and support you. john: normally there's a relatively clear divergence between the iowa polls -- especially on the republican side, different electric. this year it has been pretty close tracking between the two. do you think they will diverge, the national and what we see and i will, or will iowa reflect the national mood of the republican party?

predict howi could that is going to go. more candidates are spending are in iowa, the more they advertising in iowa -- and that is much less expensive than doing it nationally -- you will see who gets traction first. we had our poll that showed carson leading and it took a while before national polls began to reflect that. influential in a lot of ways. it is the first place to win. they will be spending their time there. i would not be surprised if national polls follow iowa. john: what about the democratic side? people can't understand how sanders and clinton are so close -- it's interesting that the democratic polls are much tighter in iowa than nationally. ann: the morning i would have on the sanders side of the equation

he has very concentrated clusters of supporters that only get the same number of delegates. it might look like he has more delegates than he will end up having. think youelzer, are much. when we come back, craig shirley, author of a new book. after this word from our sponsors. ♪

[organ playing] wait until we used what we do for arbor day. you might get a sense that the candidates for president really, really like ronald reagan. were visited by one of the most prolific reaganites on the planet, craig

shirley. his latest book is "last act," ronaldmany books about reagan. you have written many books about president reagan. what is different about this book? craig: it is about the end of his life. a previousng on book. my 11-year-old son mitchell was highlighting all of these binders -- binders of news clips and materials for the reagan library and he was supposed to go through it and every time reagan's name came up he was supposed to highlight it. my books of always been family affairs. my wife does all of my editing and creative input. my boys have done research and my girls have done fact checking , things like that. everys, dad, has anybody done a book about reagan after he was president? and i thought, no. i looked into it. he lived for 16 years after he left the white house. there was a lot of living that went on in the 16 years.

that.talk about there are presidents now where the post-presidency matters a lot. bill clinton, big post-presidency's. what were the highlights of reagan's post-presidency? the wordagan never use retirement. but i think he was tired. he was the oldest president. he was tired. there was no doubt about it. he needed to get back to california, get back to the ranch, recharge his batteries. he was active, too. he did not worry about his legacy the way carter did and others did because he left so popular and successful. lou cannon once told me he interviewed reagan many times, but reagan never used the word legacy. his sense was the american people think i did a good job and that will be good enough for me. a presidential library. he did have tiga books afterward. queen.knighted by the

-- he did have two books afterward. he went to moscow a number of times. he was always active. he went white water rafting, blimp writing. but he also -- i think the way he compartmentalized his time in washington and put that aside, and his diary entry, his last "going home tos california, start of a new life." he was going to do something else. mark: one of the things that gets most discussed about this time in his life with the illness. craig: yes. been debatehas about that, the trajectory of that, the timing of that. talk about the debate and what you see is the truth. aides came and saw him from years. there are is his diary. to a person, all of the key

people who were there, all eight years or part of the eight years or the end of the eight years say that reagan was just as vital and active in january of 1989 as in january 1981. there was no sign of the alzheimer's. he went to the mayo clinic every year for an annual medical checkup, physiological, psychological, and he passed every year with flying colors. mark: when do you think it started to show? the firsto says detection of alzheimer's was in the spring of 1984 -- 1994, which would have been six years after leaving the white house. handlede way that they the illness, right, also became a milestone in a way, right? had gottenesidents ill, they could feel their illnesses, nobody knew they were sick until they were dead. talk about the way that decision was made to bring the illness

into the public. made that decision himself. he wrote about it. nancy, breast cancer, surgeries, his own bout with colon cancer and thinks like that. they decided almost to the day he was told by the doctors, he sat down and wrote the letter to the american people. i think now the modern standard is always -- disclosure, absolutely. i don't think you can keep things from the american people. rightour thanks to author surely. his book "the last act" out now. we will be back with our thoughts from the iowa state fairgrounds and mr. donald trump after this. ♪

john: we are live tweet for on bloombergpolitics.c

om. starting monday, we will be on for one full hour -- that's right. you asked for it. you will have to deal with it. mark: until next week -- the luck, met. sayonara.

cory: shares of solar city collapsed 20% during what happened? we explain the solar city nburn, next. i'm cory johnson in for my work wife emily chang and this is "bloomberg west." bids left and right about who came out on top. is better than one. -- hp is