john: i am john heilemann. mark: i am mark halperin. with all due respect to those conspiracy theorists who think that hillary clinton has a body double, who would ever do that? john: thanks, guys. we will take it from here. ♪ john: welcome to this edition of the best of with all due respect. this week was all about health, the health of the candidates and the health of the campaign. let's take you back to where it all started. mark: democrats today are dealing with the fallout from a medical incident that caused hillary clinton to leave a 9/11 commemoration ceremony here in gotham city earlier yesterday. hours after this appeared on social media, she appeared to be stumbling and was taken into a black van. she has been diagnosed with pneumonia.

on friday, then she got dehydrated at the event and a little bit overheated. her campaign aides were all over tv explaining and insisting that clinton has no other illnesses besides pneumonia. and they acknowledge though that the campaign should not have kept the media in the dark. >> i think that in retrospect, we could have handled it better in terms of providing more information more quickly. it is our intention in the next couple of days we are going to be releasing more medical information about hillary clinton. there is no other undisclosed condition. pneumonia is the extent of it. this is the hillary clinton that as secretary of state logged all those miles on behalf of representing us abroad. this is somebody who's impulse and instinct was always to press

forward. that was her instinct on friday even after she was told she had pneumonia. she was always be trying to squeeze more into a day and push ahead. that is how she is. that is how she is wired. mark: members of clinton's team refused to answer and live television interviews when they were pressed on whether they were in the loop about her pneumonia diagnosis. >> did you know on friday, robbie, that she was ill? did you know that she had the diagnosis of pneumonia, and if so, what did you advise her to do? >> she obviously saw the doctor on friday, got the diagnosis of pneumonia. in consultation with her doctor, and she decided to power through that. >> did you know about it? >> i am not going to get into details about who knew her medical information. i will just say the first time i talked to hillary -- i don't want to get into the character of communications. but i reached out to her as soon as the incident happened on sunday. we had a good dialogue there. other than that, that was the first time we talked about this. mark: so, john, what are the implications of this clinton health story and the way the

clinton campaign has handled it? john: i want to make a couple of points. the first is, how long, how important this story comes out is what her actual health situation is. we have an account of what it is. i have had pneumonia, walking pneumonia, and a similar thing happened to me. if that is all this is, this story will subside and not be of any real consequence. but that is an open question. the second thing is that -- it seems to me, that the one thing that comes out of this, the pressure builds for both of them to be more transparent about their health, that would be a good thing. because the country deserves to know more people about this age in terms of their physical condition is as they are about to be president of the united states. mark: the clinton campaign once again hurt itself with the press as the watch guards of public interest in terms of their being transparent. the trump campaign is not transparent about many things either, but i do believe this -- it has exposed to the extent where she is isolated from her team. not a surprise either.

her campaign manager seems to be telling kate snow he did not know she had pneumonia. she is a very private person. i worry if she is elected president she will on a regular basis at her own desire for privacy, understand on a human level, but if you want to be professional, you want to be president, unfortunately, you have got to give up a little bit of privacy. john: the reality is, we interviewed kellyanne conway on the morning show, and you asked her who the doctor, she did not know the answer either. there is similar regard with clinton sort of exceptional status on how to deal of the press, and how they deal with senior teams. that is not always talked about. we'll get to the other big story. the clinton campaign is still trying to clean up her comments she made on friday night when she declared it a fundraiser that half of donald trump supporters were "a basket of deplorables." clinton expressed regret for those remarks a day later, but trump is trying to get behind it

with $2 million in this new ad in ohio, pennsylvania, north carolina, and florida. >> speaking to wealthy donors, hillary clinton called tens of millions of americans deplorable. hillary clinton: you could put half of trump supporters into what i call a basket of deplorables. they are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic, you name it. >> people like you, you and you deplorable. you know what is deplorable? hillary clinton viciously demonizing hard-working people like you. mark: trump continued that line of attack during his speech to the national guard association this afternoon. donald trump: our support comes from every part of america and every walk of life. these were the people hillary clinton so viciously demonized. she called these patriotic men and women every vile name in the book. she called them racist, sexist, xenophobic, islamophobic. she called half of our

supporters a basket of deplorables. john: so mark, what do you think over the long-term political implications of this basket weaving story? mark: unlike the health saying which will be gone soon, this will go all the way to election day. democrats need to be pressed on what they think of it just like what republicans were pressed about what mitt romney said about 47%. i think that is a double standard right now that should not exist. they should be asked of what they think she said. i think she reflected to a large extent what she actually believes, and i think that the big controversy of overusing the word half will stick with her. you will see a lot of trump supporters energized by what she said, and the press will side with trump, which is these days, rare.

john: i want to be clear about a few things here. it is clear donald trump has traded in racist, bigoted, nativist, xenophobic tropes. she was 100% when she nailed that on top of the head. the old right makes up 100% of the support. i do not think it was a wise thing to have done. politically or otherwise to cast a blanket dispersion on what could end up being the next 30 million american voters. if you get the number of votes roughly that mitt romney got in 2012. so i think this will give trump a talking point. it will jam up, rev up the republican base. if she had to do it over again, she would go back and not say. and her apology recognizes that she got a little out of her feet on this. mark: they realized the mistake. you don't attack the voters and you don't question their motives. and they were disadvantaged and pitiable is basically what she

sort of suggested. this is a bigger threat than the health story. do you agree with that? john: yeah, i go back to my very first answer. assuming that this was a garden-variety more or less case of walking pneumonia, other than that she is in fine health, assuming that is true -- i have no reason not to assume that, assuming it is true -- yes, this has longer political weight. if by some reason she has other health complications or health issues, those could be much more significant than this gaffe. mark: i watched bill clinton in 1992, 1991 campaign, he was sick, sick as a dog. it was hard. it rendered him a less effective candidate. she, i think you have seen over the last week, i have coughed so hard with allergies i have got pneumonia. but she better not get sick

again. the effect will be keeping her out of traveling but more likely to make mistakes. john: i had walking pneumonia with it. i went down with it. i was on vacation, and i spent the better part of the week really depleted. i'm 20 years younger than and hillary clinton is. so a couple days off the trail will help her, but i don't think she will be back to full strength by thursday. there is not many days before election day. when clinton left ground zero, the ground zero ceremony earlier, there was mass confusion for reporters covering the event after clinton's team failed to give the media timely information about the candidate, her whereabouts, what was going on. traveling press for both campaigns have long complained neither followed the presidential nominees when it comes to transparency and protected pool. protected pool is that reporters should be able to observe, a small subset anyway, all of the public events in case major news

breaks or, let's be frank, something threatening happens to either of the candidates. there is a reason of course why the protected pool is the body watch. so mark, we agree that presidential nominees should have protected pool like the president of the united states does. in the wake of what happened, there will be more pressure on these campaigns to adhere to the norms. will either succumb or both succumb to this pressure? mark: i don't think they will. they have gotten past the conventions, past labor day. i don't think either of them wants a full-time protected pool. neither of them needs it for the coverage. this is not about the media, this is about public interest. these are people who might be president in january. it is a horrible development. my colleagues that cover this the full-time, it would be much, much better including the candidates to get used to the notion that if you want to be a major party nominee, you have got to let the press be with you. i don't think it is going to happen. i hope i am wrong. john: there are people out there

complaining that we want press conferences because we want to strut and preen and not because we are trying to hold candidates accountable on camera for the public interest. this is the same thing. it is not for convenience. stuff can happen. and reporters are trying to do their jobs. in the interest of the public to allow them to try to do their jobs as best they can by creating these situations where they can be with a candidate all the time. i agree with you though. the leverage with these two candidates, leverage seems to be less than it ever has. even if we bang our hands. mark: there is a lot of hypotheticals. a lot of hypotheticals. all right, up next, we role in electoral college map. we have the numbers behind donald trumps most likely path to victory, narrow as they are, when we come back. ♪

♪ john: welcome back. there has been a lot of focus lately on donald trump's narrow path to winning the white house this november. based on our many discussions with strategists both inside the campaign and outside the campaign, we have seen his victory scenario runs through what we like to call the big four. if he keeps the traditionally red states in this column, he will have to win florida, ohio, pennsylvania and north carolina to cross the 270 electoral college threshold. these four states would give him 273 and make him the next president of these united states. mark: all right, but then when you play with the other possibility after what that one, you look at the map and see just how much of a tough road trump has. pennsylvania, a democratic state the past two decades, it is an

obstacle. if he loses the keystone state, the next path is not simple. in addition to winning the next three of the big four, florida, ohio, north carolina, he would have to win two additional tossup states, iowa and nevada. then he would also have to win new hampshire, which the associated press has in the lean democratic column. and even if he did all that, and that is tough to do, it would be 269-269. and the thing would be thrown to the haves. maybe trump would win, but it has been complicated. for me, the big four, the reason, there is a reason why they are focusing on those four states right now. iowa right now, a lot of polls show him ahead. by winning new hampshire and what i call the silver state because i can never remember how to say nevada, that is tough. so these two scenarios are the most likely. but you can see one has got no margin of error and the other

has got tied. john: new hampshire has been a blue state for a long time. nevada, the demographics of the state plays for hillary clinton because of the number of hispanic votes. that is why you look at pennsylvania, which is much more in line with the kind of voter trump is trying to get at. i understand why are they are trying to do it, but you look at what the vote, the win number is in pennsylvania, the registration the democrats have, why the democrats have won pennsylvania for these past two cycles -- there is strong reasons to believe pennsylvania will be fool's gold. mark: you put the second scenario up. you say, how does trump get over 269? one place is maine. there could be one electoral vote. that would make it 270-268. the ones he would have a chance, wisconsin, colorado, he could have a chance. but you just see again, trump has to do a lot of recruiting in

the blue states where he is not currently that strong. on the other hand, if he can win three of the big four, a big if, a big gap but states that are somewhat competitive, he has got a chance. john: this is why i don't think this strategy will work. i think the only way trump can win if there becomes such a wave on his side towards the end that places like, that are currently in reach with virginia, normally a high swing state, it becomes a place like colorado. when we come back, two super strategists, democrat bill burton and republican ed rogers, in a second. ♪

♪ john: welcome back. it is time to talk strategy. we are going to be joined in a minute by a democratic strategist and former press secretary during the obama

administration bill burton. he will be with us momentarily from santa barbara. first, who is with us from washington dc is republican strategist and columnist from the washington post ed rogers. ed, just to clarify, you are never trump, or you are not trump right now but maybe trump by election day? ed: i call myself a non-supporter. i am not never trump. i have been waiting on trump. the clock is ticking, but i am a firm nonsupporter. john: at the moment. as a non-trump supporter, but you are also doggedly not a supporter of hillary clinton, you are sort of neutral. how much do you think that the basket of deplorables plays to donald trump's advantage? ed: it has been a real gift for him. to the degree to which he needs something to talk about and he needs something from hillary from time to time. it rallies his people, is a focal point for people that

don't like hillary anyway. it has been really good. it is hard to quantify in terms of what it means for him. you know, that said, the race is sort of bogged down with deplorables and pneumonia and disclosures of this and that. it is not about the economy and what is going to drive votes, and that is probably better for hillary clinton than it is for trump. nicolle: ed, riddle me this. why is it hard to answer this question, is david duke deplorable? ed: good question. [laughter] i mean, the press wants to give a word -- give a word in his case. nicolle: isn't he in a category of his own, though? why is this hard? ed: he has never had a foothold in the republican party. the guy has been totally accomplished, yet the media fixates on him.

i am sure governor pence did not want to go there, but give the people what they want and move on. ignore david duke all you can, and this was sort of the opposite of it. just go ahead and say it. yes, deplorable. not deplorable, this guy is. let them have that. let's let them have that. john: let me ask you a question of something i'm sure you find deplorable. knowing you the way that i do, which is that donald trump's embrace of vladimir putin, the sort of man crush he has had on display. what is that about, ed, and how -- and do you think it is electorally conscienable? will voters not care about this? ed: it will be revealed what on earth it was all about, but there was some kind of diplomatic moment with russia to be the serious policy stage. it could be the policy of some component of a stump speech, but this admiration and borderline

fawning is just weird. is there a connection or something potential down the road? is there some sort of social benefit? i don't know, but it is weird, and it is unprecedented. i can't think of anything close to this. i can't think of what good is coming from it. it is bizarre. among other things that are bizarre with the trump movement. john: there is no doubt about that. let's bring in bill burton. we finally located him and corralled him up in santa barbara. you are on the trail today. we have been looking at the polling for the last week or so, thinking about why this race is tightening. one is that number crunchers have come up with this notion that a lot of the obama coalition is still not totally

jazzed up for hillary clinton. do you think your boss, even with his name on the ballot, can help her with those groups? bill: oh yeah, absolutely. as an incumbent president who had such high numbers, his push across demographics, he will be helpful in a lot of places. but just like you mentioned, it is the obama coalition that really needs to get brought on board in a serious way. and not a lot of people can do that like the president. she is lucky to have a surrogate like that. donald trump does not even approach that. john: it is the case. as you point out, barack obama's approval ratings are super high. he is so beloved by his voters. and yet, and not many people don't know barack obama is for hillary clinton, but it is still the case with african-american voters and hispanic voters. she is not seeing the enthusiasm. what can he do for her to actually close the sale with those voters and get them riled up? bill: i have worked for four different presidential candidates and one president.

i have seen a lot of campaigns. i am not as old as you, but i have seen a lot. john: thanks, bill. bill: when i learned the most was john kerry's campaign and i was just a regional press secretary. we would put surrogates into different media markets. depending on the strength of your surrogate, put somebody in milwaukee or des moines or minneapolis, you could see a bump in the numbers after they came. hillary clinton has a stable of awesome surrogates led by president obama who can go into a market and specifically target that geography and get people jazzed up. people may know president obama supports hillary clinton, but that is different from him coming to town, doing an event, getting people fired up, being on the front page of the newspaper, leading a local newscasts and getting that appreciable bounce in the polls. nicolle: you are speaking my language. you and i were both on that campaign of 2004. how, if all those things are true, those are how we used to do things in the republican party.

you had to make the state turn in your favor. every -- your buses and mine used across each other on the highways in wisconsin and ohio. trump is not playing that game. are you completely confident that hillary clinton has adapted to his asymmetrical warfare? it does not look like the polls reflect this obvious advantage in strategy and infrastructure. bill: one of my favorite memories of the crisscross on the campaign trail was when both president bush and john kerry were in davenport, iowa, and there were like six bank robberies because the cops were all tied up. nicolle: we all got bumped off the news because of it. i remember that. bill: no, she is not adapting to his asymmetrical warfare. sometimes because the media covers this in a different way because voters consume it and voters participate, i don't know she has to even though it may look clunky up against the warfare donald trump is employing. she is working county by county, she has got her surrogates out

there doing it. that is the path to winning. it is not donald trump leading us around by the nose, the press around by the twitter feed, something more outlandish every single day. it is how you talk to voters, be in the places that matter, move swing states into your column. nicolle: really quick, ed, i think i am in your basket of republican angst. what do you feel more stressed about, waking up and having hillary clinton has won, or waking up and having donald trump has won? ed: well, i wake up finding republicans have lost the senate. that is my number one stress level. i am more anxious about anything else. hillary is certainly not building a wave campaign that is going to sweep out a bunch of republicans, look like the floor is falling out from beneath donald trump. i am sort of dodging your question on that. john: thank you, both.

bill, you are never coming back to the show again. the campaign needs to win the battleground state. right after this. ♪

♪ nicolle: if donald has any path to the white house, it probably run through the rust belt states like ohio and pennsylvania where manufacturing decline could make voters ripe for the america first message. but when it comes to winning any of these states, the clinton and trump campaigns seem to be using the same basic voter formula. >> campaign strategists divide up voters into three main groups. there is the base, party loyalists who will turn out on november 8 matter what. then what campaigns call gotv targets, get out the vote, people who will probably back you but are unreliable voters and need some extra encouragement to use the polls. in pennsylvania, democrats have

such an advantage that if hillary clinton runs a perfect turnout operation, she could win the state without a single vote from independents. but in ohio where both trump and clinton start with similarly sized bases, it is all about persuadables, the undecided voters campaigners are trying to woo from tv ads. from there, if your base, gotv's and share of persuadables adds up to the estimated win number, well, you win. nicolle: joining us are two guys who will be crunching the numbers on battleground states, they started in the rust belt, ohio and michigan and what it would take for trump to cross the finish line in each state. sasha issenberg is author of the book "the victory lap." justine is a reporter for bloomberg politics and one of our producers. let's start with you. you are the person who gets me

through these hours. you are the star of the show. that was amazing. and i guess in 2000 and 2004, it was florida, florida, florida, and now it is ohio, ohio, ohio. why? >> a lot of people know ohio close, but they don't know why. hillary clinton and donald trump start with very similar bases. they have similar gotv targets they are trying to get to the polls, and the group of persuadables is very large, it is about 500,000 persuadable voters. and whoever gets the larger share of those will win. obama lost the independent vote in the state of ohio, 10 points and yet he still won because he was able to turn out more of his gotv, but hillary clinton does not have that advantage. if she lost by the same margin obama did in 2012, she would have to run the ground game of a lifetime.

nicolle: the reality is the barrage of messages is for people to do this. most of the target ads are for this. >> that is why the clinton campaign is spending so much on ohio, behind florida. that is the second most state they are spending in. nicolle: ohio, ohio, ohio, my question is, for republicans is, what are you doing in pennsylvania, it is always a giant headache. what are we doing in pennsylvania as republicans? is there something happening there? sasha: what we tried to do was look at heart of the democratic coalition in those states where trump would have to eat into the democratic base. where would he look for defections? so we mapped in each of those states white men without college education who are historically democratic, likely to be voting, and living communities directly affected by factory or plant closings. in the three states, we found

pennsylvania has by far the most, about 300,000 of them, a little over 200,000 in ohio and a little under 200,000 in michigan. so hillary clinton -- sorry, donald trump has to eat into hillary clinton's base, but that is where he would go to do it. noncollege white men. you can see where they are. they are clustered around the pittsburgh media market and a smaller degree around erie and scranton. >> i cut you off -- >> it is a totally different situation than ohio. if you add those up, she could win without winning any persuadable voters in the persuadable universe in pennsylvania. it is so much smaller than it is in neighboring ohio, about three times larger in ohio. trump could do everything he could to turn on his base and his gotv's. he could win persuadables and it would not be enough for him. that is why people say it is such an uphill climb. but it is still a really important state for him to win.

he has to appeal to democrats and these are the ones we think are the most vulnerable for him to convert. john: sasha, talk to me about michigan. if pennsylvania is hard for him, michigan must be well out of his reach. sasha: we see similar economic dynamics across these states, but the electorate dynamic is really difficult for him there. there are about 189,000 we found of these working-class white democrat men who live in communities hit by localized plant closures. 70% of them are in the detroit media market. that may be one reason why trump is spending money in michigan, and i think it is the seventh highest state by his ad spending even though clinton and her outside super pacs are not there at all. when you look at the other states on the electoral college map colorado or virginia where there is a difficult challenge holding historically republican states, that is where he think he can pick them off. john: when we come back our

brand-new, news-making, blockbuster poll for the great state of ohio. ♪

♪ donny: bloomberg politics has a new ohio state poll and it shows donald trump. he has a five point lead on hillary clinton int eh -- in the buckeye state. he is up 48% to 43% in a head-to-head race among likely voters. that did not change much with third-party candidates. the bad news for clinton, her unfavorability rating is at 57%. that is not pretty considering 52% of ohio likely voters had an unfair review of trump. we will look at the guts of the poll later in the show. is this a crucial state for trump and his path? how important is this? mark: trump has to win ohio. people say, maybe, but he has to win ohio to win. this poll hit big today that cnn

has another poll that says the same thing. this is a big deal because if trump wins ohio, doesn't guarantee he will win the white house, gives him a chance. it changes the whole psychology of the race, and every person i told this to today gasped or shook their heads in a meaningful way. if ohio goes to trump, it is a huge deal. ohio is ohio. and it puts him in a position -- the other argument is we have a ground game in ohio that will make up gaps in the poll, but five points is a big deal. and in the senate race, the republican incumbent is up big in public polling and that would keep the republican party together. if their down ballot candidates are doing well. that is another big deal because it would keep the republican party down together. donny: i had the same reaction. let's say that every person elected since 1964, and let's also qualify that hillary

clinton's probably worst 72 hours with basket of deplorables and cbs had her up by a poll of or seven. we have to qualify. trump?this huge for if you go back to the primaries, trump's club, nobody does winning, other than charlie sheen, better than trump. if you watch the debates, every time somebody would challenge trump on something, he would say, it is because he is in the lead. he has this club, anytime anybody says something, donald trump, you want to build a wall. look, they will say whatever they will want to say because i -- i am up in ohio, and i am winning. he owns that brilliantly compared to any other candidate. he has not had that tool over the past four or five weeks and is number one with an choice is -- weapon of choice is i am winning and you are not. matt: you can take a look at the poll was taken during her weak period. during basket of deplorables and pneumonia.

you can say that will hurt, but will they hurt in a sustained way? we will have to see what that is going forward. but there is no doubt a candidate that is up and ohio with that big of a lead has bragging rights. ohio, as i said before, is ohio. donny: we are about 10 days away from the debate. if he has polls in his favor, that is such a weapon. anytime she comes at him, hillary you were only saying that -- mark: we are talking about our new poll. voters in ohio had donald trump 48% to 43% lead over hillary clinton. and also down ballot, rob portman is ahead of his democratic challenger 53% to 36%. with us now, the person who did the poll for us, and joining us from des moines. let's talk implicit who is going to vote in ohio.

this sample shows an electorate that looks more like 2004 when george bush famously beat john kerry in ohio rather than president obama's two wins. talk about why that is and what that may be with the electorate looks like. ann: the reason we think that is what the electorate looks like is because that is what people are telling us. people read into our polls that we must be deciding what we want that split to be of republican, democrat, and independent and in fact our message is that party idea is a floating and mushy variable and is not fixed. so we let our respondents tell us, if they pass our likely voter screen, and a higher proportion of republicans pass through than democrats, then we are going to trust that is indicative of what happened in the states. mark: when we say it looks more like 2004, it is more republican, but what else? ann: it is more republican than

democrat, but it is more republican than what we saw in 2008 or 2012, and a lot of people are saying, 2008 was eight years ago, and things should look the same. 2008 changed the way we understand the way elections can be won, and i wanted to go back when we saw what the data was showing us to see what happened before that, and we uncovered that it looks like 2004. there is a misconception that we created in our poll to look like 2004. donny: great to talk to you, it is donny. i want to talk about the basic -- kasich factor in ohio and brought it out. i think he has a 59% approval rating and one could say the endorsement does not matter. is it fair to say as you go to state by state, because each of these candidates has awareness that this endorsement factor is a non-issue everywhere? ann: i think there is a role john kasich may be playing in ohio, and that is he is virtually as popular with democrats as he is with republicans.

but is almost unheard of in this age where everybody wants to hate everybody from the other party. the fact that he scored so well in ohio across the board has created an atmosphere where it is ok to like republicans in ohio. and i cannot say that that would have been true for the past two elections before he really came to prominence and certainly national prominence. i think there is a kasich effect. his distance from trump does not seem to be hurting trump at all. donnie: one number caught my eye in the poll, i wanted to know how unusual it is. union households in ohio, clinton wins within the margin of error 48% to 45% for trump. do republicans normally do that well with union households in ohio generally? ann: normally union households are a stronghold for democrats, although in recent elections that has been narrowing a bit.

it is a group where hillary clinton wins with, so she overcomes the 5% deficit and gets three points. i think it is offset by a great concern in ohio with trade. we asked a question about nafta and whether it has on more for ohio in terms of more exports and therefore more jobs or more to hurt by losing companies and losing jobs and a majority people say in fact it has hurt ohio. and that includes a plurality of democrats. jobs being by far the most important issue, there is an economic basis that suggests trump's approach is winning. mark: of the four candidates we talked about the one who has been the most pro-trade is rob portman, and he is winning overwhelmingly. he is defying the sentiment reflected in that nafta question against free trade. ann: that may well be. portman is doing well and has

really sort of blown out the race at least as it stands today. we know that he gets 20% of hillary clinton supporters. there is some cross voting going on there with people who like his stance. donny: an interesting sidebar. hillary with her young voters, when you put the third and fourth party candidates in loses a lot more of the youth to that candidate. very interesting. ann: that is right. when we do a two-way test, those are the numbers we have shown you before. in a four-way test, her number is decreased because 22% of people under age 35 say they are supporting gary johnson, which is a huge number, and for her to lose that many to that candidate, i mean, that is a signal to her constituency that she relies on, that young group of voters, they are not very solid. mark: we all know not to overreact to any single poll, but are we right to look at this and think it is a big deal for

trump up by five in ohio? ann: at the time it was released in ohio there was not another poll that showed him up by that many points. that is a moment where you double check protocol as we go through the data to make sure that there is nothing that is bothering us. this afternoon, cnn released a poll showing donald trump up by 5% in ohio. so i don't know, do we exhale? who knows. both polls could be wrong, of course, but there seems to be a trend. mark: based on my talks with the campaign, i do not think it is wrong. ann, great job, thank you. cnn also has trump up by three in ohio and three in florida. donny: we will have more from the best of all due respect right after this. ♪

♪ donny: tonight's democrats

hearts are going thump because a new poll suggests a dead heat. a national poll has hillary clinton essentially tied with donald trump, up 46% to 44% which is of course within the margin of error. and another university poll has donald trump beating hillary clinton in nevada. that is right, nevada, the state where president obama won by six points in 2012. hillary clinton returned to the campaign trail flying to north carolina, a swing state, and taking the stage to the familiar chorus of "i feel good." hillary, we knew that you would. afterwards, clinton took some questions from the press including a reporter who asked exactly when she informed tim kaine about her pneumonia diagnosis. mrs. clinton: i communicated with tim. i talked to him last night. he has been a great partner and he is going to be a great vice president. we communicated. i have communicated, but i am not going to go into our personal conversations, and i

feel comfortable and confident about our relationship, and i really look forward to working with him closely. donny: has she put the health event further behind her, and where does she go from here? john: there is a whole lot to cover in this topic. a lot will focus on her, a lot of scrutiny in the wake of this health incident that she had. if she continues to look as she did today, if she looks strong, if she looks stable, no other incidents that take place or relate to her health, i think this thing is now in the rearview mirror for her. she is looking at a whole, not a whole new race, a lot of people will say it will always be close, but she has a very different environment right now that she is dealing with. months ago, you had democrats rubbing their hands together and thinking you could have a landslide coming. now democrats broadly are

freaking out about how close the race is. donny: the health is obviously about her campaign. here is what has changed. i have always said the campaign is about, which is a going to be, do you choose which is worse? the untrustworthy, unlikable, competent, establishment candidate or the new, unbalanced, potentially dangerous, racist candidate and what is happening is basically on the clinton side the untrustworthy stuff and the unlikable stuff is going up, and by trump going to mexico and not causing a riot and going to african-american communities and giving speeches where there have been no horrible negatives, acting normal, the scary part unhinged and scary part has gone down, and that is what you see in these polls right now. john: somebody asked the question yesterday to our pollster about what was going on in ohio and the poll we put out yesterday that caused a lot of people to get freaked out on the democratic side, whether it was

that trump was gaining strength or hillary clinton was fading, and it seems like what is happening is the clinton support has faded a little bit. that is bad news in that it suggests the campaign is not going as well as it should. it is good news is that it is reflecting this health issue, and if clinton puts that behind her and moves forward and starts making both an aggressive case against donald trump and putting forward a positive vision on her side, she could probably get some of that fading support to whatever the opposite of fade is. to put herself in a better position. donny: let's not forget they were taken friday through monday, the worst two cases of -- days in terms of deplorable baskets and her health issues. the other scary thing is the enthusiasm numbers are leaning very, very heavily toward trump, and as you know better than anybody, it is where are the polls, where is the excitement and the enthusiasm? her backers are still much more begrudging than his are.

watch, thethe health interview donald trump did with dr. oz finally aired today, revealing a summary of trump's latest physical exam. we know he takes a drug that lowers cholesterol, and -- this is the important one -- his testosterone level is a whopping 441, and the 6'3" inch republican nominee is a little bit overweight, and that is a little too heavy for trump's liking. mr. trump: i think i could lose a little weight. i have always been a little bit this way. i have sort of always been that. i was probably a good swimmer. i was always able to swim. if i had one thing, i would like to lose weight. it is tough because of the way i live, but the one thing i would like to do is to be able to drop 15 or 20 pounds. it would be good. donny: trump's campaign released a brief summary of health and there are some details about blood pressure and the last time he had a colonoscopy, it is less than what was expected when his

campaign said weeks ago that trump was going to publicize his medical records and less information than what hillary's team revealed. he remains the least transparent candidate. will there be a time when he pays a price for this opaqueness? john: what is your testosterone level? donny: you know, i am afraid to take it. i just don't think it will be very good. that is a whole other discussion. i talked to my therapist about today, but we don't need to talk about that today. john: i think you would break the scale. it would be like 500, 600, something way up there. it is the case he is the least transparent candidate in our lifetime. and one of the things over the last few weeks we are finally starting to see is reporters and others turn to their scrutiny toward trump and trying to hold him accountable to a greater degree than he has been so far. whether that will stick or not -- there are people all over the country that think that if we

reporters just do our jobs and talk about the many areas where areas ofengaged in huge concern, that if we focus our fire on them that will change the calculus for voters in the electorate, and i am not 100% sure that is true. does not mean we should not do it. we should do it. all of our colleagues, we should do it. but that will not necessarily mean there will be a huge drop-off in his support. donny: there is an advertising term called permission to believe. if you want to buy into a consumer product, you have got to give permission to believe. trump supporters want to believe in him regardless. you say you took it under someone else's name and profited, well, he is kind of a business man. they are so distraught by the status quo, that unless he goes rogue and start saying terrifically hateful and bigoted things, it will not stick. the hateful things stick, the lies do not stick, they hateful

and scary stuff sticks, this stuff does not stick. john: look, i think part of the problem with this discussion for a lot of us is there is a whole, people like you and me, donny, a whole lot of other people, our lives have gotten better over the last 20 or 25 years. there are a lot of people who have seen nothing but stasis and in some places degradation in terms of economics of their lives over decades, and they candidatesablishment on the left and right. clinton, bush, obama and nothing has gotten better. and some of them who do not agree with the things donald trump has said or done, they are still willing to roll the dice because they think it could not get worse and that points to a strategic imperative for the clinton campaign which is to make people understand that it could, in fact, get a lot worse. donny: they call him a snake oil salesman. what a snake oil salesman does, when you say it will not cure it, they have to believe it. that is what is going on here.

john: thanks for watching the best of "with all due respect." you can get all of your news on the 2016 race at bloomberg.com. we will see you on monday. until then, sayonara. ♪

♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: maureen dowd is here, she is a pulitzer prize winning columnist for the "new york times." she joined the paper in 1983 as a metro reporter. her career covering politics spans nine presidential campaigns. she describes this election as the most epic battle of the sexes. she describes it in a new book, the book is called "the year of voting dangerously: the derangement of american politics." jim, co-founder, writes dowd surely captures the theater of politics better than anyone else. i am pleased to have her back at this table. welcome. maureen: thank y