let's talk about this with maria cardona.can primary voters choose trump over the rest of the field by a mar join handle the military. does it play into bush's hand. >> if you're bush you have to do something different. right now you are stagnated in the polls. and people are starting to worry maybe they shouldn't be writing you the next big checks to keep your campaign going with the war chest he currently has. i don't think it's a bad play. will it affect those that already support donald trump? realistically probably not at all, if any. they don't care what you put out about donald trump. you say rip on him, attack him, we like him, trust him, we think he's the best guy for the job. we don't care what you say about him. we'll see if it has an impact on stealing votes from another candidate. >> maria, purely as a strateg s strategies. is this the time that jeb bush should start to be a little more critical of the campaign or the super pac should the ad go negative. you have about 100 days until iowa. 113 until new hampshire

maria cardona, buck sexton both back with me.s probably an issue that does not get enough attention in these elections. >> it doesn't get enough attention. i think testing is, honestly, a secondary issue to the broader and more important issue of choice within schools. hs a place where republicans are the disrupters in the sense they have innovatived whys, means to increase options, primarily, by the way, having the greatest income on low income and minority communities, charter schools, school choice, trying to do things that would actually help, because the tests are just evaluating what's being done and we haven't seen test scores go up since the 1970s in a meaningful way, despite the fact in this country we spend over $600 billion a year on public school. the idea you're going to just change the testing, okay, maybe this is nibbling around the edges of the problem. the real problem is the democratic party has an unholy alliance with teachers unions than actually help kids and a lot are in difficult urban communities. >> i thi

angela ry, and maria cardona, welcome both of you. >> thank you. >> thanks for being here. so i'm going to run through four challenges for the contenders. first up, can hillary clinton flip-flop gracefully. same-sex marriage, trade and immigration. maria? >> i think the opportunity for hillary tonight is going to be explained -- to explain those policy positions and why perhaps they have changed. for example when she talked about the trade agreement, let's remember that the last time that she talked about it when she was secretary of state, that was two years before the deal was done. and i think it will also give her an opportunity to talk about her history with trade agreements. she's never been a rubber stamp for free trade. she's actually voted against some trade agreements. and again, this will be her opportunity to explain and give the background as to why she now believes that this is not a trade agreement that will boost american wages, that will focus on protections for the environment. and i think that is an important point because it could be an issue that others

. >> maria cardona, thank you for waking up with us. you all need to stay with cnn for big coverage of the first democratic presidential debate. tune in tonight. coverage begins at 8:30 p.m. eastern time here on cnn. there's a lot before that. 15 more hours of exciting analysis. christine romans. >> we won't miss a single second. pre game and post game. it is fodder most of the week. you can expect to hear from hillary clinton and bernie sanders on income inequality and making college more affordable. here is where they stand. the minimum wage. clinton wants to raise it to $12 an hour. sanders wants to raise it to $15 an hour. on taxes, clinton will close a loophole for the wealthy. she wants to crackdown on the loophole to let hedge fund managers to carry interest instead of income. those have a tax rate of 20% instead of 40%. sanders wants all income above $250,000 to be subject to the payroll tax. he wants to slap a 10% sur tax on billionaires. and affordable college. a cornerstone of the agendas. a play for the millennial vote. clin

. >> joining me, maria cardona and katie packer, republican strategist and former deputy campaign manager for mitt romney 2012. >> hillary trying to distance herself from president obama. she was secretary of state for four years. that's perhaps easier said than done. >> well, i don't think that should surprise many people. as you know, she was his opponent in 2008. two very different people. that's not to say she wasn't the team player when she came on board as secretary of state. they're very close friends. i think what we hear her say on the campaign trail, how much she thinks that he has been an extraordinary leader in very difficult time for the united states. part of her argument for continuing her presidency, if she wins, is to make sure that his big legacy items like obamacare, continuing to focus on jobs and making sure there's a level playing field for middle class families that's what she's focused on. i don't think people should be surprised as she tries to fine room. as she looks at and listens to people what their concerns are. >> you think their close friends? >> i do, jash

let's talk about it with cnn commentator, ben ferguson, and maria cardona. n is the host of the ben ferguson show and maria is a democratic strategist. so what do you make of what donald trump said in that bloomberg interview? >> i think it was a really bad move. and i think his silence last night proved that he even realized that he probably went too far here. to imply that 9/11 was the fault of george bush is just flat-out bad for his voting -- >> let's be careful. let's just be careful with the wording there. >> i'll say it this way. i feel like he implied it. and i think a lot of other people very much feel like he was implying that it was his fault, that he didn't stop it from happening or that he wasn't paying attention. however you want to describe it, but that's what the controversy is about. and so, from a trump perspective here, him being quiet last night may have actually been his best play, because i don't know how on earth you would explain this away. you implied that it was george bush's fault or he wasn't paying attention. that is not going to

with anna navarro a bush supporter, friend of marco rubio and van jones and democratic strategist maria cardonatrump with impressive double digit leads over ben carson in south carolina, the third state to vote, nevada the fourth, he's ahead in all of these states right now, very impressively in iowa, new hampshire, south caroli carolina, nevada. if he wins all four, he's well on his way to being the republican nominee. >> reporter: he is well on his way, wolf and up until now, most of the pun dants, analysts and republicans have hoped that he was just a blip. i think that ever since he announced his campaign, people have thought that it was going to be just a blip, but frankly, what we've seen is he has staying power. the kinds of leads the margins he has in these early states should worry every single other republican if they think that they have the time to catch up to him. i think republicans really need to guard themselves for the very real possibility that donald trump could be the republican nominee, wolf. >> more and more people are beginning to actually think that. anna, our poll also

let's talk more with cnn political commentators, maria cardona and tara setmayor. you can read a lot into the poll numbers and i want to put these up for viewers. what you do make of trump and clinton leading and by fairly large margins in all three states? >> it's interesting. it doesn't surprise me hillary clinton is leading because i think she has very strong fundamentals. she has really come into this race. you know, she had come in as a front runner but she has never taken anything for granted. she is really working to earn every single vote and that is what she's going to continue to do. on the republican side it is interesting because yes, trump does continue to lead. but that race seems to be still very much up in the air. i mean if you talk to a lot of republican strategists, and i don't know if this is hope more than anything else, but they still think they don't think trump is going to be the nominee. what struck me in the polls most is on the democratic side clinton and biden are seen was ones as the best temperament to handle a national crisis. and on

so, let's talk, we have democratic strategist maria cardona and republican strategist, lisa bucca.the criticism that he's receiving. more of that comment that we heard, he talked not about just oregon in his times as governor of florida. he said stuff happens. is this is a huge gaffe for his campaign or is this something else? >> well, i think he actually should have said something. i mean, this is absolutely a horrif horrific tragedy and our hearts are with the people in roseburg, oregon. i think there's something to point out here, president obama is having an intellectual dishonest conversation with the american people. and i think it's wrong for him to score political points at the time of tragedy. he went out and made comments before learning the circumstances of the shooting. let's look at the facts right now, as far as guns in america. the fbi has 22 million background checks we have over 20,000 federal and state laws on the books. and these comphns gun proposal laws that president obama and other democrats are talking about would have done nothing to prevent the shooting. a