senator and the end of michele bachmann's political career. could spell trouble for somebody who's at the center of what is probably the most important congressional race in the country right now. because the guy who was jay leno is here to tell us about the interview he just did with president obama.

>> so over the last few weeks i've been visiting towns all across the country. >> president obama is on the road again. >> talking about what we need to do to secure a better bargain for the middle class. >> president obama just touched down in phoenix. >> hello, phoenix! >> greeting the president at the airport will be arizona governor jan brewer. >> the same jan brewer who last year greeted the president -- >> you can never -- >> with a now infamous finger wag. >> today is part of a summer push by the white house. >> billing it as a major policy speech. >> trying to tout the recovery of the u.s. housing market. >> our housing market is beginning to heal. >> the housing plan has something for everyone. >> let's invest in affordable rental housing. >> something for renters and new buyers. >> he's going to propose something that has bipartisan support. >> private lending should be the backbone of the housing market. >> reducing the government risk in fannie and freddie. >> i know that sounds confusing to folks who call me a socialist. >> the other thing he's doing tonight is leno. >> he will travel to los angeles to appear with jay leno. >> the 44th president of the united states, barack obama.

[ cheers and applause ] >> what is the real picture? reducing the government risk. >> to make it easier to refinance a current mortgage. >> the idea of reasonable rental rates. >> the president has got his work cut out for him. >> and as long as i've got the privilege to serve as your president, that's what i'm going to be fighting for. thank you very much, everybody. god bless you. just a short time ago here on the nbc campus in burbank president obama sat down with the big man on campus for an interview. >> you and hillary had lunch last week. who invited who to lunch? i'm curious. >> i invited her. >> okay. >> and we had a great time. she had that post-administration glow. >> yeah. >> you know, when folks leave the white house, two weeks later they look great. >> president obama is the first sitting president to appear on "the tonight show," but he is one of many presidential candidates who appeared on the show before winning the presidency.

here is senator barack obama's first appearance on "the tonight show" in 2006. >> you admit to smoking pot in the book. >> not recently. [ laughter ] when i -- this is when i was in high school. thank you, jay. i just want to -- >> senator. >> -- to clarify. >> now, i have to ask, i have to ask this question. remember, senator, you are under oath. did you inhale? [ laughter ] >> well, i was telling -- somebody asked this question. i said that was the point. [ applause ] but you know, i don't -- i don't mean to make light of it. but i do think that one of the things that hopefully you try to do when you're in public life is to acknowledge, look, i'm not perfect and i've made mistakes. and the question is do you learn from your mistakes, do you grow from your mistakes? and hopefully, you know, i have. >> here's more of what president

obama told jay tonight. >> you spoke very eloquently about the trayvon martin case. and i could tell that you were speaking from the heart. tell me about that. >> well, i think all of us were troubled by what happened. and any of us who are parents can imagine the heartache that those parents went through. it doesn't mean that trayvon was a perfect kid. none of us were. we were talking off stage, you know, when you're a teenager, especially teenage boy, you're going to mess up. and you won't always have the best judgment. but what i think all of us agree to is we should have a criminal justice system that's fair, that's just, and what i wanted to try to explain was why this was a particularly sensitive topic for african-american families, because a lot of people who have sons know the

experience they had of being followed or -- >> sure. >> -- being viewed suspiciously. we all know that young african-american men disproportionately have involvement in criminal activities and violence. for a lot of reasons. a lot of it having to do with poverty. a lot of it having to do with disruptions in their neighborhoods and their communities, failing schools and all those things. and that's no excuse. but what we also believe in is that people, everybody should be treated fairly and the system should work for everyone. and so what i'm trying to do is -- [ applause ] -- just make sure that we have a conversation and that we're all asking ourselves or there are some things that we can do to foster better understanding and to make sure that we don't have laws in place that encourage the kind of violent encounter that we saw there that resulted in tragedy.

>> joining me now, jay leno, nbc's interviewer in chief. >> why, thank you. i like it you call it the nbc campus. campus implies that learning is going on. >> but you had to walk across a little campus. not a lot of trees -- >> walk across an abandoned field with -- that 20 years ago had a lot of life to it. >> you're in now the old building where you used to do "the tonight show." before they built this palace for you over there. >> yeah. palace. >> you made news tonight. president obama confirming to jay leno that -- which is the normal way of making news in this country. >> sure. >> that he is going to attend the g-20 summit. and yeah, he did say. he made it official. so that was kind of interesting. >> what else for you was the most interesting part of being in that conversation with him tonight? >> i talked to him about how eloquent i thought he was on the trayvon martin story. you know, to speak off the cuff i think took tremendous courage because i'm not sure he knew what he was going to say when he said it but you could tell he

was speaking from the heart. and it was nice to hear him say that when he said it. i mean, he put i think every american in the shoes of the average black teenage man or teenage boy and what it was like to be in that circumstance. and i thought he did it eloquently, and i thought he really got the point across. >> i mean, certainly he thought about it and said he'd been thinking about it before going out there. but there is that thing that you can tell as an interviewer i think when someone is sitting there and it's like oh, they've worked this, they've figured out this story -- >> no, i didn't get that sense. that's what i like. because i can tell when you see his speeches there's a cadence to it because you know what's coming so consequently you can get in that cadence. and when he spoke that day you can see oh, yeah, the door locks, the clicking, he was recounting in his own mind experiences he has had without alienating half the population, you know. and i thought he did a wonderful job of it. >> okay. so how do you do it? how do you get the first

president ever to sit for an interview on a show like this? and now -- this is the fourth time? >> sixth time. >> but as president. >> fourth time as president. i think it's because i don't have an agenda. i don't go in there with -- there's no gotcha questions. it's not a-ha, well, let me ask you about that. i mean, i think the real trick is to let him answer the question, wait till they finish talking even though people can occasionally get a little verbose but that's okay. but at least they finished and then you move on to the next question and then you try and find i think -- i think a lot of people are confused about obama care and the economy, they don't quite understand it. but they do understand trayvon martin. they do understand a story that has just shocked me and i'm surprised it's not bigger, is russia literally rounding up homosexuals. >> yes. >> i mean, to me this is germany in 1933. i mean, i think you and i are of that generation when i was in school, they never told you how did that happen. well, okay. hitler becomes dictator, and he

rounds up all the jews. yeah, but how did -- this is how it starts. you go for the homosexuals. oh, and then you go for the jews. and then pretty soon they come for you. and i asked him about that. and how he thought that would affect the olympics and the upcoming g-20 summit. >> when you get an interview like this, is it -- do you have like the greatest booker in the world who just calls the white house every day or does the white house say hey, we're coming your way, do you have any time for us? >> well, you know, there's a little bit of both. because you do benefits. you do things. you nurture candidates as they come along. i mean, everybody that has run for president has been through, you know, from -- i forgot his name. >> that guy. >> the little guy. >> oh, ross perot. >> ross perot. i'm sorry. ross perot. i mean, every single candidate has come through. even christine o'donnell. you give them all -- i'm not here to judge. you tell us, you know, you can hang by your own rope if you

want to. so consequently you nurture those relationships. >> when they sit down, when a george w. bush sits down as a candidate for the first time with you, do you get a feeling -- have you had feelings once in a while where you're sitting there going i think he's the one who's going to make it all the way? did you have that feeling with -- >> i don't know if i can say who's going to make it all the way. there are some i don't think they're ever going to make it. i never quite got the rick perry thing. that one -- >> you never fell for that? >> no. it didn't -- i never got that sense of gravitas, you know. >> because all the pros, all the great political analysts thought oh, when rick perry gets in there look out, here he comes. >> no, i never thought that. it was just too narrow-minded for me. whether it was on gays or women's issues or whatever it might be. you know, people like bill clinton, like hillary clinton, you realize these are great minds at work and they go and they think through their answers. and sometimes they're very good at evading it.

and you get the sense, okay, they're trying to evade me, okay, we'll move on because i'm not going to get any more out of this. and there are others that just kind of go -- fred thompson i never quite got. one minute you're president, next minute it's reverse mortgages. wait a minute. >> well, he did "law & order" in between. >> oh, "law & order." yeah. there are some i didn't quite get. >> barack obama has been sitting in your guest chair over a span of seven years now. we showed the clip where you went right for the gold, the pot smoking in high school. and it's fascinating to watch because you look at that and you say okay, i'm not sure exactly how he would have answered that if bill clinton hadn't gone through the obviously phony i didn't inhale thing long before that -- >> the interesting thing you bring it up, as i watch it now, don't forget this was way back when. and i think a lot of candidates would have brushed it off or laughed it off. but he said that's the point, to inhale. he owned it, i did it, i'm not perfect. thank you.

and i think people appreciate that honesty. i think a lot of other candidates would have said, oh, there's a lot of talk but not really. you know, and sidestepped the issue. so i think that was quite telling, actually. >> and what you see in a moment like that i think is you see he has a confidence about the country he's living in. or at least about 55% of the voters of the country he's living in, that they're going to get that. >> the thing i like about him, he thinks the way i think. people are basically decent. i mean, if people didn't want to do the right thing, you couldn't have a country because there's not enough police. so people want to do the right thing. and if you can convince them and tell them from your heart, it's like a lot of people i find don't necessarily agree with president obama's obama care, whatever, but they like the man and they sense that he's trying to do -- he's not getting anything out of this himself. he seems to be doing it for the right reasons. so that's why i think it goes along and that's why it passes. >> we're going to be back with more with jay leno.

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rick perry's presidential campaign is best remembered for his failure to remember. his inability to remember the three departments of the federal government that he wanted to close down. and his memory problem apparently continues. here he is not remembering where he is. >> there are many other states that embrace those conservative values, the approach that we've taken over the years. i'm in one today in florida. you look at south carolina. you look at florida -- >> you're in louisiana. >> i know. i said that. i'm in one of those states that reflect those today, in louisiana. [ laughter ] yeah. i got that. >> that's rick perry in louisiana when he got he was in florida. a mistake that you've probably

never made. up next, more with jay leno after his interview tonight with president obama. [ male announcer ] the wind's constant force should have disrupted man. instead, man raised a sail. and made "farther" his battle cry. the new ram 1500 -- motor trend's 2013 truck of the year -- the most fuel-efficient half-ton truck on the road -- achieving best-in-class 25 highway miles per gallon. guts. glory. ram. and then another. and another. and if you do it. and your friends do it. and their friends do it... soon we'll be walking our way to awareness, support and an end to alzheimer's disease. and that? that would be big.

grab your friends and family and start a team today. register at alz.org last week president obama told a group of school children that broccoli was his favorite food. which the kids seemed to believe. they believed him. then he told them obama care would reduce the deficit. and the kids all burst out laughing. >> i want to ask you about political comedy and the way you do it. and you've been at it longer than anybody. when you took over "the tonight show" 20 years ago, 21 -- >> yeah, 22. >> 22 years ago. johnny carson before you did some. you know, but it would be rare if he would do more than three

political jokes in a night. very, very rare. you amped it up. you built much more political comedy into the monologue. and just in terms of political comedy mileage over the years, probably no one has done more since you've been at it -- >> i don't know about that. certainly jon stewart and all these guys, they do political shows. my thing is to sort of go down the center. i remember we had a comedian on the show one time, and his opening line was "i'm a democrat" and i said to him just do your act. believe me, they will figure out you're a democrat. but why lose half the audience when you walk out there? just -- you're a comedian for -- you know, the real trick is to put the joke first and if you have a little message or something you're trying to get across, stick it -- believe me, they will figure out your affiliation. and that's the real -- you always put the joke first. but a lot of comics you get that sense of importance, well, i want people to know how i feel on this. and then no, you're -- you know, this is what happens. you start off as a comedian. then you're a humorist. then you're a satirist.

then you're out of show business. that's how it works. stay a comedian. forget humorist and satirist. the others you get that self-important, i want people to know how i feel. i don't care how you feel. >> now, you say that we will figure it out. i've been watching you a long time. i cannot figure out -- >> what do you figure? tell me what you think. >> i don't know. listen, i have a pretty good idea how dave votes. i heard the way he talked about romney. there's no way he -- you know, i can get it. right? i watch you and i'm -- my bet is that you get e-mail, tweets, all this stuff saying you awful republican -- >> right. and awful democrat. >> and the next night you awful liberal, i hate you, you conservative, you liberal. you're constantly getting it back and forth. >> see, like romney. i think romney is a decent guy. i never thought he was a crook. i never thought he was an evil person. i think he's a very nice, decent man who chose to pay as little tax as possible and the republicans beat him up for it. i don't understand it. that's your whole platform. what are you doing? why are you going after this guy

for not paying any taxes? but i brought him on and i treated him as i would anybody else. and he was fine. he was a terrific guest. i mean, i think that's the key. you have to have an open mind. you can't go in thinking, oh, this person's in this party, that person's in that party. >> but the comic who came out and said i'm a democrat and you told him bad idea, is it your mission to keep your politics -- >> no, it is my mission to make people laugh. >> but keep your politics hidden in the process. your personal politics and voting preferences. >> well, i think if you ask me about gay rights or anything like this, i think it's fairly obvious what my politics are. i like equality for everybody. i mean, that's -- whatever that makes you. but i'm one of those people, i'm conservative fiscally and i'm probably liberal socially. which i think the way most americans are. you know, it's like with the gay issue most people go -- like eddie. most people are like that. they're against it until they know someone who's that way. oh, he's okay.

then it's all fine. it seems like to me racial things, anti-gay things, it seems like the most ridiculous issue. my attitude is there are 1,400 seats in there. i want to sell a ticket to everybody. if a third is black and a third is gay and white, male, female, fine. i've sold out the room, thank you. that's my job, to bring it all together. there's nothing worse as a comedian than to play to one group. i don't like playing all-male shows because then you wind up just doing filthy material. i don't like all-female shows. i like something that's a cross-section that represents what america is. and that's the best audience that there is. plus it keeps you honest. because when you only work to one type of crowd you wind up pandering and then you wonder why you're not popular enough. >> on the politicians who've come through the show, in terms of white house correspondents, performance anyway, my personal judgment, barack obama best stand-up of all of them so far. >> oh, yeah.

the white house correspondents dinners have become -- >> which you've done maybe more than anybody. four or five times. >> actually, it's become more of a roast. >> yes. >> i remember doing it with reagan and doing it through the '80s and '90s and it was fun. and now i see comedians who i thought were quite funny being vilified because they didn't slam the president, they didn't nail george bush, they didn't nail -- whatever it might be. i go, well, that's not your job. it's supposed to be -- >> it also, by the way, tends not to work in that room. as you know having been in the room. >> but i've seen people die in the room and get rave reviews from the left or the right. >> yes. >> which doesn't make any sense. >> no, i've had friends of mine, comedians do it, and i've tried to say to them, well, you know, there's a line. i can't describe it to you over the phone. you're going to have to show me joke by joke. and i'll tell you. but it's an invisible line. i can identify it for you. >> exactly. >> but jay, thank you very much. >> thanks for having me on. >> congratulations on the endless string of big scoops of getting the president of the united states on the show. >> thank you for having me.

i enjoy your show very much. and i love your promos. it's an added value. but i love that. and i believe that as well. i am the son of immigrants. and to me, you know, there's nothing more fun than when i go jaywalking. knock on people's doors. we did this the other day. kid opens the door. totally american. he's got a simpson t-shirt and he's got some kind of crazy hat on. and his father's spanish and american, speaks both. and then the grandparents speak no english at all. and you see the fight that goes on in this house, this little culture barrier. and that's what i love about america. everybody eventually becomes american when you stay here long enough. and that's the fun thing to me. my grandfather never spoke english, spoke italian. my dad spoke both. i -- and yet it's fun to watch each generation grow like that. so that's why i like your promo. >> jay leno, you're going to hang around and do my next promo of the show. >> big giant cup of coffee. >> thank you, sir. >> you can see jay leno's

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a little different from her last greeting at that same airport. we all remember that. the president's first stop in phoenix was a home construction site. he then made his way to give a speech at a local high school where he outlined his plan to help the housing market. joining me now, are msnbc's krystal ball and ari melber. krystal ball, who can ever forget the last time the president was greeted by that governor at that -- at that airport? a lot has changed since then. >> absolutely. and this visit for jan brewer is sort of a mixed bag because on the one hand the president is really touting the housing recovery that's happened in arizona. so i'm sure jan brewer wants to take some credit for that. on the other hand, obviously, she has been a very vocal and outspoken critic of the president, particularly aggressive anti-immigrant policies in arizona, but she also has been surprising in the past year deciding to take the

medicare dollars. things are a lot different from that last memorable greeting we saw. >> ari, they are just stunning. you put those pictures beside each other, which i hope you can do right now. if the control room can put the old picture of jan and barack together with the new picture of jan and barack, and there she is having, as krystal says, you know, worked really hard to push through that medicaid expansion that the republican governors who want to position themselves for running for president have kind of lined up against. >> yeah. i think there's a lot of political benefit to some of these folks locally being really aggressive against president obama including sometimes with style over substance. as krystal was pointing out, the substance doesn't always work out for them. and it's a contrast. in the speech today, you know, you had the president in a magnanimous moment singling out the fact that senators flake and mccain have worked with him on immigration, that it's up to the house, that the republicans are

now a minority of a minority on immigration, which of course he linked to housing. and that's a big contrast i think to brewer's tone historically. >> let's listen to what the president was saying today about the housing market. >> lay a rock solid foundation and make sure the kind of crisis we went through never happens again. we've got to make sure it doesn't happen again. [ applause ] and one of the key things to make sure it doesn't happen again is to wind down these companies that are not really government but not really private sector, they're known as freddie mac and fannie mae. you know, for too long these companies were allowed to make huge profits buying mortgages, knowing that if their bets went bad taxpayers would be left holding the bag. it was heads we win, tails you lose. and it was wrong.

private capital should take a bigger role in the mortgage market. i know that sounds confusing to folks who call me a socialist. i think i saw some posters there on the way in. but i actually believe in the free market. and just like the health care law that we put in place, obama care, which -- [ cheers and applause ] which by the way -- which by the way, if you don't have health insurance or you're buying it at exorbitant rates on individual markets, starting october 1st you can join a marketplace and be part of a pool that gives you much lower premiums, saves you a lot of money. but in the same way that what we did with health care was to set up clear rules for insurance companies, to protect consumers, make it more affordable, but still built on the private marketplace, i believe that our housing system should operate where there's a limited government role and private

lending should be the backbone of the housing market. >> krystal ball, there is now, using the obama care model, simply to serve as an example, to try to help explain something that was a little complicated i think for any political audience what his thoughts were on the housing market. >> and i'm not sure he totally succeeded in making it less complicated because i think a lot of people still feel obama care is fairly complicated and hard for them to understand. but i do think he did an effective job selling obama care and addressing housing, which is really long overdue. it's one of the things that even people who are supportive of the president have said he hasn't done enough to alleviate the mortgage crisis. so this is a long overdue speech, and i think he strikes the appropriate balance of saying we can't have the government taking all the risk, we need a role for the private sector, and really asking them to be held accountable. >> but ari, one of the things it strikes me politically about going out there and saying here's what i want to do about

the mortgage market is it's hard to make that interesting to anyone who isn't in the mortgage market at this particular moment, meaning people who have a mortgage that is working for them, they don't want to thinking about their mortgage. it's one of those subjects that's just so narrow cast to go out on the road like this in that kind of speech is a little surprising. >> yeah, totally. if you're shopping for a car you notice all the car commercials. if not you have to have a car buff, which is very few people. i think what he's speaking to, though, to the point about health care, is the fact that he's always been a humanitarian capitalist, that he thinks capitalism is the solution to many of our problems. that's what makes the dishonest attacks on him as a socialist so especially frustrating to people who follow the facts. the health care reform was ultimately a market reform that injected money and new rules to make sure people got covered. it did not add a whole lot of government programs. it was not a public option even as some people wanted. and the mortgage approach is actually similar.

he's saying look, real simple, government take a step back because we have a moral hazard when we insure everything, and let's create rules so the folks who are funding this aren't oversecuritizing it or anonymizing what's going on when you look at sort of the assets that go into a pack of securities. >> well there, you go. ari succeeded in not making it boring and complicated. >> sorry. >> was that sarcastic? >> krystal, i was a little surprised in that sure, arizona, ground zero for the collapse of the mortgage market and all that. it was also ground zero for the republican intraparty fight over obama care and the expansion of medicaid. and i was a little surprised he didn't make more of that today. >> and that may have been a strategic decision to sort of stay out of those local politics and keep it at a higher level. and back to your point about home ownership and mortgages being sort of a boring topic, it is. but there is a great american love of home ownership.

it's part of the american dream. it's part of what we think of once we've made it into the middle class, you've worked your way up and you own your own home. now, there are some economics saying that maybe ultimately high rates of home ownership are not that great a thing, but it is something we feel a very sentimental attachment to. >> krystal ball and ari melber, thank you both for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, cory booker participated in his first new jersey senate candidate debate last night, and he is way ahead in the polls in an election that seems almost inevitable for him at this point. it's coming up. this day calls you.

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a possible sentence now of only, if you can call it that, 90 years, down from the original potential maximum of 136 years. the judge agreed with defense attorneys who said the government had taken the single acts and split them into several separate violations, thereby multiplying the sentence. manning was found guilty of 20 of the 22 counts he faced for leaking 700,000 documents to wikileaks. the sentencing hearing actually continues and will probably continue for about two more weeks. and so the financial sentence remains unsettled. both sides will continue to call witnesses in this very peculiar and very long sentencing hearing. liz cheney is in the rewrite next. she is under investigation in wyoming. it's about her fishing license.

hi. i'm liz cheney. over the last several years citizens across our great state have urged me to consider running for the senate in 2014. today i am launching my candidacy for the united states senate. >> and so "the new york times" sent a reporter and a camera crew to wyoming to find those people who were urging liz cheney to run for senate. starting with friends of her father. that seemed like the easy way to go. >> it creates some acrimony in the politics here. and senator enzi has done a marvelous job for a long time. and i'd like to see her there, but i'd like to see him stay

there. if she asks me, i'd say i wish you'd waited. >> and then they made the mistake of interviewing relatives of mine. >> i couldn't name one thing that she's done besides was born a cheney. >> actually, i don't know that particular o'donnell, but i'm sure we are probably related if we dug out the genealogical records and looked back far enough. it would be hard for liz cheney to be doing much worse in the polls than she is now, but she might have found a way. she is trailing republican senator mike enzi by 28 points. and less than a third of the state's registered voters actually think she is one of them. and they really don't like the idea that she may be claimed to be one of them for ten years when she applied for a fishing license last year. now, let me just say, everything i am about to talk about i do not take seriously. but then i'm not a wyoming

voter. and the "new york times" report on this assures us that wyoming voters do take this seriously. on liz cheney's application for a fishing license it says that she was a resident of the state for ten years when she had actually been a resident of the state for exactly 72 days. she applied for a resident fishing license, which requires that you have lived in wyoming for at least a year. a resident fishing license costs $24. a non-resident fishing license, which liz cheney would have certainly qualified for, costs $92. there is a possible defrauding of the state of wyoming for the amount of $68 right there. which let me repeat, i do not take seriously at all. but i'm not a wyoming voter with a fishing license. wyoming takes this seriously

enough that liz cheney is currently under investigation by the wyoming game and fish department for exactly how she obtained a resident fishing license. one wyoming republican strategist told the "times," "it's a serious misstep, allegedly poaching in a state where being a resident sportsman is by law an earned privilege. wyoming people will take this very seriously." now, imagine you're liz cheney and your senate campaign damage control unit comes to you with a multiple choice set of responses for this. which one do you think? a, i lied about how long i've lived here in order to get a resident fishing license. b, i've lived in wyoming in my heart forever, so i didn't think of this as a legal residence question. and c, the clerk must have made a mistake. i never claimed to be a ten-year resident.

now, a is out of the question because admitting to lying is just not how the cheneys roll. b is a real problem for a lawyer like liz cheney who's running for a job where legal details matter. and c is exactly word for word what liz cheney chose to say to the "star tribune" of casper, wyoming. she blamed the clerk who accepted her application. the kid born to privilege, who has enjoyed a life of entitlement at the highest levels of american society, is blaming the clerk. after discovering the one thing she is not entitled to is a wyoming resident fishing license. who do you think wyoming believes, the rich lawyer from out of town or the clerk, who's

handled an awful lot of fishing licenses without any controversy? you know what? maybe there is something there to take seriously. mine was earned in djibouti, africa. 2004. vietnam in 1972. [ all ] fort benning, georgia in 1999. [ male announcer ] usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation.

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the time to think about a security system isn't after something bad happens -- it's before. [ male announcer ] call now and get adt installed for just $99. you could save a lot more than money. hurry, and take advantage of these savings. adt. always there. a week from tonight at this hour we will probably have a winner in the democratic primary for the nomination for senate in new jersey in the special election to replace the late senator frank lautenberg. a recent poll shows new york mayor cory booker with a commanding lead over the other democrats in the race with 49% of the vote. congressman frank pallone is next in the poll at 12%. new jersey has not elected a republican to the united states senate in 41 years. so the winner of the democratic primary is likely to be the next senator from new jersey. last night was the first time

all four democratic senate candidates met for a debate. cory booker missed the first two debates. during the last debate mayor booker was at a fund-raiser for his campaign hosted by oprah winfrey. last night's debate was all about cory booker. even when he wasn't speaking. >> i should level at the beginning by saying i've never run into a burning building. i'm not friends with mark zuckerberg. i have fewer than a million twitter followers. >> congressman frank pallone went after cory booker on substance for his support for school vouchers. >> mayor booker has been very supportive of governor christie's plans with education, which means vouchers, which means privatization of schools. which you have to be extremely wary of. i'm very concerned about the fact that vouchers, which he supports, will take away funding from public schools. i believe in public schools. >> new jersey general assembly speaker sheila oliver played it

local and went after cory booker for his friends outside of the state. >> i worked in new york's municipal government probably when its mayor was still in high school. i have sat at every desk at every level of government. it doesn't matter that you have fraternization with people from california or new york or some other oblivious state. this campaign is about new jersey, no place else on the planet. >> joining me now are the huffington post's ryan grimm and msnbc contributor nia-malika henderson, national political reporter for the "washington post." nia, did you see any movement in the race last night as a result of that debate? >> absolutely not. i mean, i'm still stunned at those numbers. 49%. i think it's 12% and 8%. no movement. i mean, this guy is going to win. i think the question is what kind of senator he's going to be. it looks like his opponents

there are trying to say that he's not quite progressive enough. but i think on some issues he will be in terms of coming to the senate. he really wants to focus, for instance, on poverty. i interviewed him a couple months ago. he said that would be his focus, he wants to use that platform to shine a light on poverty, something democrats haven't done for many years now, and also that he'd want to move to southeast d.c., anacostia, which is a neighborhood here that has long struggled with joblessness and high crime. so i think we're going to see him shake up the senate a little bit. >> ryan, he certainly ran the classic way ahead front-runner campaign in this thing so far, which is you can ignore these debates. but i think it seemed like a smart move for him to jump into that last debate so he could claim that he did engage with the other candidates. >> that might be the only knock they could have had against him, that he's aloof and if he's aloof now what's he going to be like as a senator. but you're right. this thing is pretty much

wrapped up unless something cataclysmic happens before the primary. and like you said, he's going to cruise into the senate, and then i'm sure he'll probably cruise into re-election pretty quickly. he's good at building a following. but the question is what kind of following is he going to bring to the senate? because his experience in newark has been interesting. you know, he has experienced real poverty, like as an adult he has been living in public housing and his pledge to live east of the river in washington is admirable. you know, at the same time a lot of his friends and the people he associates with are the moguls from private equity, from hollywood, from hedge funds. you know, mark zuckerberg, those kind of folks. and they have a particular ideology that he can't help but to have absorbed. you know, there's going to be a lot of tension between his talk about poverty and the friends that he's going to, you know, still be talking to while he's the senator.

>> nia, there's been some speculation about what kind of senator will he be, even some speculation suggesting that he would be the democrats' version of ted cruz, say, this kind of bomb tosser from the left and troublemaker from the left in the senate. do you think there's a possibility of him handling the senate that way? >> i think on some issues maybe so. maybe in terms of poverty. maybe in terms of drone warfare and things like that. but again, i think he does in some ways look like a new democrat. remember, cory booker was the one who was defending mitt romney in his private equity past. and you've got sort of some backlash from the obama campaign because of that. but you can imagine that maybe he would partner with somebody like rand paul, who is -- who put forward a bill around mandatory sentencing. so i think he is going to really carve out his own way. he's got this huge social media

following. i think he's really going to take the senate by storm. the question is whether or not he's going to be making many friends or he's going to just be trying to carve a path to 2016 or 2020. >> we just had a little piece of video there showing bill bradley on the stage with cory booker. my sense is he's going to follow something like the bradley model in the senate. bill bradley arrived in the senate the way cory booker will, as a very big star, very famous before he entered the senate, which is rare for senators. but he was both serious and deliberate about the causes he believed in and was willing to push as hard as he could on certain causes. but he's also very careful because it was always in the back of his mind that he was running for president. he eventually did. and the people who go into the senate serious about running for president ultimately play within fairly careful boundaries, ryan. that's what i expect to see him do. >> i think he'll be very tactical about it. and i think that you'll see him

behave differently than senators in the way that he uses social media. but he'll do it in a very tactful kind of way that doesn't offend his -- you know, the rest of his colleagues. he's a very smart actor, very smart, and i think that will continue. and i think you're more likely to see him probably anger folks on the left by working with republicans on issues like pharmaceutical issues or -- and sticking with the white house rather than annoying the white house and sticking with, say, the elizabeth warren, jeff merkley camp. so i think that's where you're going to see him operating a little bit differently than a traditional democratic senator from a deep blue state. >> and nia, that's where the bradley model becomes difficult today, because bill bradley was engaged in an awful lot of bipartisan negotiations in his time in the senate, which included the '80s and the '90s, where that was much more common. nowadays those kinds of moves do

sometimes provoke real criticisms from your side. if you're seeing fraternizing with the other side too much. >> i think booker has essentially predicted that's what he's going to do. but i'd submit -- we'll discuss that tonight. but first did anything reince priebus declares war again. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this. reince priebus is on the warpath again. the rnc chairman who has made bones trying to suppress african-american votes now has a plan to suppress the free media.