we have msnbc senior politiis, mark halpern and the cohost of "need to know," jon meacham. good morning. willie is coming in but he's being mobbed. >> 49th street is blocked. >> will he be okay? >> we drove down 49th street the morning of justin biever -- >> sort of like that. >> screaming kids, great. >> somebody had a sign that said not since newtonburg. >> you can find it at a store, good luck. >> you can't do it, can you? >> he will not make it. >> that's not what i meant. >> there he is, slow clap. slow clap. >> no, no. >> i didn't expect it. >> that's great. >> he's wearing a tie for "american freak show." >> it's awesome. >> congratulations. >> thanks. >> there was a blurb in the back of the book, he compare mess to carrot top, i really appreciate. >> that's exciting. are you all right? >> great. >> a big boy, you wrote a book. >> it reminds he -- >> who wins that argument between johnson and feingold? >> probably neither. they'd both be better off talking about the economy than who's paying for which ads. >> feingold wanted to tell him to drop citizens united? >> no

there's a great unknown out there, jon meacham. i saw you -- >> that's exactly -- >> we've all heard it repeatedly. >> the phrase you hear, also, there can be a private sector stimulus here. there's a lot of cash that's holding back because of the unknown, particularly on the taxes i think. people just don't know what they're going to do. >> we have companies like mcdonald's -- remind me to tell you the story. we'll pull it up. 30,000 employees you mentioned, for example, i think they're considering getting rid of health care for their employees because they don't like the way the plan looks as they look ahead. we'll pull it up. that's stunning given their contribution. >> no, that's not stunning actually, mika. that is quite predictable because we heard while everybody was trying to jam health care down the throats of americans, barack obama's health care plan last year, the media wasn't picking this up. i heard one corporate leader after another say, you know what, if he passes this thing, he's going to put us in a position to dr

jon meacham made a good point.rg does run for president, and remember people don't elect a president, the electoral college elects a president. say he wins plurality it goes to the house of representatives, there's no independent party within the house of representatives, it's democrats, republicans. and so you have mike bloomberg, for instance, who runs for president, but noose ohas no on vote for him as president. >> mike bloomberg is a very smart guy. he understands to run as a viable third party presidential candidate, you and to get on the ballot and getting on the ballot in each individual state is a horrific problem but not impock. >> in addition to money it takes infrastructure, a ground game, troops on the ground, signatures to get on the ballots and that's the problem with a third party challenge is that they don't have the sort of national or even local infrastructure you need for the mechanics of running. >> thank you very much. i want to let people know, dan is the host of "dan rather reports" an hour-