one month to election day and president obama makes it personal. >> i'm not on the ballot of this one. me these policies are on the ballot. >> big frustration. he gets little boost from a stronger economy. >> the result of the american people's drive and the result of sound decisions made by my administration. >> but in the biggest 2014 races when the president comes up, it's rarely a compliment. >> orman would vote with obama on amnesty. >> plus, class of 2016 is already a busy bunch. and hillary clinton offers

advice to her new granddaughter and maybe herself. >> find something that you're passionate about that you love to do and do it. >> sourced by the best reporters now. welcome to "inside politics" i'm john king. 30 days to election day. they share their reporting and insights. jonathan martin at "the new york times," cnn's peter hamby and molly ball. president obama is making his midterm pitch and he's more than a little frustrated. >> the united states has put more people back to work than europe, japan, and every other advanced economy combined. >> now, just friday, for example, the labor department announced the economy created 248,000 jobs in september. and get, this the unemployment

rate is now below 6% for the first time since 2008. but many of you don't feel it or you don't buy it so the president gets very little credit. take a look at this. first, this is the nation's unemployment rate from january 2010 until now. look at that steady drop from shy of 10% to 5.9% last month. usually when that happens, a president goes up. but look again, here's president obama's approval rating over that same period. mostly a rough ride for the president and he's currently at 44%, not where you'd want to be one month from election day. he wants more credit on the economy but in trying to get it he nationalized the election. he said i'm not on the ballot but my reviews are. >> he's happy to be out there talking about the economy. you probably wish he hadn't made the comment about his policies being on the ballot to that effect. it's so striking, john, because it captures just how hungry the republicans are to make

president obama the centerpiece of their election. he's not in colorado. he's not in arkansas. he's in chicago or the north shore of chicago in evanston there where the democrats wanted him to stay. governor pat quinn said come on back any time. and even then, you see the republicans seizing on this. >> consultants were saying within hours they were cutting new ads. the chamber of commerce is, some of the republican campaigns, too. president obama will not campaign in kentucky but mitch mcconnell was quick to bring him home. >> obama himself says a vote for alison is a vote for his policies. >> i'm not on the ballot but make no mistake, these policies are on the ballot. >> obama needs grimes and kentucky needs mitch mcconnell. >> the republicans are pretty universal, peter. this was a gift from the president. is it?

>> part of this is that -- and democrats say this over and over again. you can sense the president's frustration. the economy is betting better but people are not feeling it. a new poll came out showing that the unemployment rate is 5 or 6 points higher than it actually is. i spoke with the governor of maryland, martin o'malley, and he said the same thing. people just don't think this country is in a better place than it was four years ago. so that's what republicans are seizing on. >> and a lot of that is factually based. the overwhelming percentage of those gains have gone to the top 5% of the earners and the unemployment rate hasn't gone down because people are p droing out of the workforce. if you travel around the country the way we all do talking to these campaigns, it is

incredibly repetitive and a legal bit boring the way that they are running the exact same campaign. they are running against president obama. the the reason they are doing that, if everybody votes like they did in 2012 against president obama -- >> gallup did some interesting time sentiments about obama and the impact on the midterm. what they found is that the negative associations with obama sort of drive behavior much more than the positive associations and they look at obama's numbers the second time around and they are really compare rabl. >> the second time for bush was in 2006, which was the huge sweep year. the president doesn't hide it. listen to him hearsay, republicans have stopped

bad-mouthing him on economic issues, to a degree, and the president wishes democrats would say this. >> there's a reason fewer republicans are preaching doom on the deficits. it's because the deficits have come down at almost a record's pace and they are now manageable. there's a reason that you see few republicans run around and talk about obamacare because while good, affordable health care might seem like a threat to the freedom of the american people on fox news, it turns out it's working pretty well in the real world. >> that's what he wishes democrats would say but he's dreaming, right? house races it's a little different. it tends to be in more urban areas but in the ski senakey se races, it's not going to happen. >> i was there in evanston. it was about 50-plus minutes long. he went at length talking about how things are going to get

better and spent less time talking about minimum wage increase, family leave, and equal pay, the three issues that democrats want him to talk about. i spoke about a prominent senator who said, look, he's talking about the things that he's going to do. >> molly made the point that the republicans running this is the same thing obama in competitive states, red states and blue states and these senate races, democrats are running on these tv ads. you see it in almost every democratic race. >> and they are not going to invite the president in. many have invited hillary clinton to come into their states. look at her travel schedule. cnn has confirmed this. she's going to be in a lot of these battleground states where the president is not welcomed and democrats have made the

conclusion, whether they are right or wrong, if they talk about the women issues, that's their best hope of getting a higher turnout. >> this is what hillary has been talking about and it's a casting forward for hillary of the message that she's made clear is going to be her opening message of her potential campaign in 2016. you know, she gave a speech about women's empowerment in washington a couple of weeks ago and this is a theme she's hitting very hard. so it's sort of a win-win. it enables hillary to mold this message, which is the first substantive message she's had in this candidate phase. other than that, it's been nothingness and also gives democrats something that they really, really need, which is a high-profile credible spokesperson for this message that they want to send to. women. >> we were in iowa and she didn't really talk about these things when she last ran for president. when she mentioned contraception and paid sick leave in her speech in iowa, she got the

loudest applause in that whole speech. it was a standing ovation. >> yeah, the only standing ovation that i can recall, these issues are so central to the democratic coalition, you look at a place like colorado, they look at the raw. ins. the fact is, the republicans can't win these elections if the gender gap hits a certain level. i was talking to one senator today who said, look, guess what, it works. >> 30 days out, republicans end the week feeling better. we'll see if the democrats can close strongly, including with the hillary factor. up next, the 2016 contenders are crowding the 2014 stage. the new clinton granddaughter has a role as does a former president who thinks it is his brother's turn. first, joe biden who says politicians say the darnest thing with the most interesting

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welcome back. the 2016 presidential race will begin in earnest the morning after the to 14 midterms. but what i guess we'll have to call the preseason, if you've been watching every sunday, it's already pretty busy. let's look in the last week. 2016 contenders on the road. hillary clinton had a couple of stops.

bernie sanders is in iowa this weekend. he may run against hillary clinton in 2016. rick perry also back in iowa as he looks at round two. rand paul was in both of the carolinas. he's most likely running for president. look at this guy. chris christie is campaigning for republicans and maybe for himself. and then there's this guy. wait a minute. romney, 2016? we'll look at that. certainly, last but not least, jeb bush. he's in kansas. he's thinking about 2014, is what he says. but listen to what his brother george said about 2016. >> i think he'd be a great president and i think he wants to be president. he understands what it's like to be president. he's seen his dad, he's seen his brother. he's a very thoughtful man and he's weighing his options. >> he's a very thoughtful man. he's weighing his options. george w. bush ran for president

twice. he knows that saying that is going to have to make jeb answer the question. is that just a nudge or is that a hint? >> i think it's a little bit of both, i think. what was interesting to me about that is, yes, jeb certainly wants to be in the conversation and we're seeing his political travels step up. he's going to south carolina for a fund-raiser which is showing a little more leg than he has been. you showed mitt romney up there. there is such an opening in that sort of establishment lane of the republican party, you know, the donor and professional class of the republican party aren't really sure where to go. >> with all of this jeb talk, i called around and has anyone gotten a call from jeb? the birthday cards or calling about a new baby. i'll give you this one for the space in the middle. former new york governor george pataki.

is this an open question or can we put this one to rest? in the middle of the week, mitt romney actually says, i might take a look at 2016 if the rest of the field doesn't come up to it. then in kentucky, he felt compelled to say this. >> i'm not running. i'm not planning on running. i expect to be supporting one of the many people who i think are being looking at this race. we have a number of different voices within our party that have different views about where america should go and i look forward to supporting one of them. >> are we done with this? can we just be done with this or are we going to have to come back to it? >> of course we're not done. mitt romney is going to continue to be out there in the public eye and although it's early, you have a potential 2016 field where the conservatives are very, very fractured and there are a lot of different candidates vying for the conservative pie, which is a larger pie but then the establishment lane looks relatively open. i think the hunger for romney is

a candidate that will represent the establishment republican party. >> and i talked to one person who talks to romney a lot in the middle of this boomlet that we're in and asked him about this. he said that, you know, he probably won't run but he sees the field -- the republican field being a lot weaker than it was a year ago or two years ago. remember, we thought the 2016 field was going to be filled with a bunch of studs and everyone is a little scuffed. romney has a lot of loyalty among money people and in a delicious bit of irony, christie could be in the race and mitt romney could be on the sidelines waiting. >> they all have legacy to write. you know, jeb is trying to prove that his brother wasn't the only guy that could be president. chris christie is trying to be vindicated after bridgegate and move on. mitt romney hated the way it all went down and if all they get out of this extended play is to fix their image and make it feel

better, that alone will be worth it. >> nobody picked up on george pataki. jump in on this point for me. rand paul has made no secret to the fact that the republican party needs to expand its base and rebrand its image if it wants to succeed at the presidential level. he said he doesn't oppose birth control or even plan b which many say is tantamount to abortion. rand paul says he opposes same-sex marriage but says one day he could evolve. >> i believe in old-fashion traditional government but i don't think the government needs to be too involved with this and i think the republican party can have people on both sides of the issue. >> and you could rethink it at some point, too? >> oh, my gosh. iowa, new hampshire, north carolina. christian conservatives.

committee compete for president when, i'm okay with plan b and may change my mind on same-sex marriage? >> there's a chunk in new hampshire and iowa. but the discomfort on that issue, he was ready to talk about anything else in the world. ebola. anything else. break my legs. not this. that depends on how much the republicans want the issue to go away. have the courts figure it out and then we can never ask about it again. all right? >> well, most republicans want this to go away but there's a noisy faction who do not. and as he becomes more of a contender, he's going to get more scrutiny on this stuff. he's been saying for more than a year thousand that we should leave same-sex marriage up to the states and now that people are starting to notice the things he's saying, he's not going to get away with this any longer. the other thing that is interesting here, paul has been trying to build a coalition with

conservatives in iowa and some of his strategists think that's a mistake, that it's not the right kind of partnership for him to build because it's too awkward. >> a lost social conservatives don't think -- democrats are happy. >> at some point we'll figure out what coalition. >> right. >> we'll call it a truce for the moment but that's why the debates will be so interesting. up next, who did lindsey graham call after he dismissed marco rubio as not ready to be president?

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. let's ask our great reporters and get you out ahead of the big political news to come. jonathan martin? >> we talked about the idea of lindsey graham running for president in 2016 and in that same interview he took a dig at marco rubio to suggest that rubio wasn't ready to run for president and sort of mocking rubio for not being able to confront the right for being scared of the right. it's my understanding that after that story went up online, that senator graham actually called the rubio world and suggested that he got a little bit over his skis and wasn't trying to dist senator rubio and he was taken out of context there. so i think if one of those examples, john, you say something to a reporter and see it in print and then take that

one back. >> not ready, not willing to stand up for the right. yeah, he was taken out of context. got it. margaret? >> things maybe that you wish you could take back, i think we'll see president obama in the coming week really back on the defensive about his foreign policy. a couple of interesting books coming out, leon panetta's book, these titles like "outpost" and "worthy fights" honing in on the fact that they had disagreements and with hillary clinton about how to proceed in iraq. this is all happening at a time when president obama is dealing with a nightmare on the ebola crisis and does not want his staff pulled off to the staff to deal with this but it really has a potential to hurt midterm. >> listen to the conservative talk radio, they are driving it and trying to use that to drive

out turnout. >> peter hamby? >> hamby cast is a weekly digital series i'm doing. every week i'm going somewhere. i'm meeting the characters and places. some of know, some you don't. it's short and hopefully informing. cnn.com/hambycast. >> molly. >> in arkansas, a woman named leslie rutledge was kicked off the voting rules because she was also running in washington, d.c.. i mention this because there's a voter i.d. law in arkansas going into effect this year. democrats are starting to worry. they've put so much emphasis on the ground game and trying to bring in new voters this midterm

year but in a lot of states there are new laws going into effect. kansas, north carolina, the voter i.d. got thrown out of court but they still had restricted the voting hours so democrats are really starting to worry that in these elections that are going to be real close, it's going to be a problem for them. >> coincidence or not that many of the states happen to be the big battleground states. i'll close with this one. maybe it's a conspiracy theory, maybe it's hardball politics, an issue is the republican candidate in new hampshire second congressional district. ten days ago, john boehner helped her raise money and then she did a radio interview in which she refused to commit to voting for boehner if he ran for speaker in january. now they are being told that there won't be any more money coming up to that district in the final 30 days of the campaign. maybe that's hardball politics.

maybe it's a misunderstanding. suffice is to say, the speaker was not happy after making that trip. we'll see you soon. state of the union with candy crowley starts right now. one man in texas comes down with ebola and the country comes down with a case of the jitters. today, ebola in the u.s., low risk is not no risk. >> our number one priority is the safety of americans. >> the top doc for the cdc with the latest facts and fears about the ebola virus. plus, a reality check on the readiness of u.s. emergency rooms. then, another murder in the desert takes a second british life. >> what we see with this organization is that there is no level of dep paragraph tea so which they will not sink. >> senators lindsey graham and jack reed on whether the u.s.