[King:] Now one reason so many Republicans want to run for president in 2016 is history. It's very rare for the party ending a two-term presidency to keep the White House. So Hillary Clinton has to hope that President Obama, well, has a little Ronald Reagan in him. Hillary Clinton wants the President to have mojo at the end because it could help her. So she probably liked this moment at the State of the Union.
[Obama:] I have no more campaigns to run. My only agenda I know because I won both of them.
[King:] Now we didn't hear that from President Reagan in his seventh-year State of the Union address. He didn't say anything like that, but a President standing at the end of his term could impact the next election. Look at Ronald Reagan's numbers. These are the ones that matter most. In 1988 heading into 1989, look, this is sort of late in the election year. Ronald Reagan starts to go up. He was very popular at the end. That's not the only reason. A lot of Democrats were saying don't give George H.W. Bush a third Reagan term. Reagan's numbers were going up George H.W. Bush won the White House that hasn't happened in a long time. So the question is where will President Obama be at the end? You see his numbers starting to go up now but it's only early 2015. Watch his numbers as we head into 2016. It is possible if President Obama stays up above 50 that it helps Hillary Clinton. No disrespect intended with the seesaw. We're just having a little fun here. Julie Davis among all those watching the State of the Union, you have to think Hillary Clinton is thinking I want this president maybe I need this president to be moving that way.
[Hirschfeld-davis:] Well, absolutely. And I mean she has to have been very happy with the message that he laid out in the State of the Union very aggressive, kind of setting the distinctions between the two parties. Here's what we would do here's what I would do for the middle class. Let's hear Republicans step up and say what they're going to do. We heard that message coming out of the State of the Union as he
[Martin:] The biggest political story of the last month has nothing to do with Iowa, fundraising, or who's hiring which campaign manager. It has to do with the fact that Barack Obama's numbers are creeping back up. And if he gets to 50 percent or higher on 2016 Election Day and the economy is coming back and gas prices are at $1.75 a gallon, that is the election right there because to your point just now, so many of these elections are about the incumbent. It doesn't matter if the incumbent is on the ballot or not. If President Obama is coming back and the economy is roaring back, it's going to be very tough for the Democrats to lose this one.
[King:] You hear a lot of Republicans saying, you know, she would be the third Obama term. I remember a lot of Democrats in '87 being out in Iowa as Michael Dukakis [inaudible] in that class of Democrats saying George H.W. Bush would be a third term Reagan. They said it scornfully at the time. By the time you got around to November 1988 they weren't saying that as much. So we watch it going forward. You were about to make a point.
[O'keefe:] I was just going to say that when he made that line, two things. I was in the room. The first person to clap was the first lady because she's done with campaigning. She thought it's great
[King:] Are you sure about that?
[O'keefe:] "You're done, great." But the Democrats loved that line. And it's that confidence. What others would see as cockiness that they've been really starving to see from them. And a lot of them made the point to me this week. They say, we may have lost the election in November but why is it now that everyone's talking about our issues, the one we started? Income inequality. The way they see it The President references the one percent in his State of the Union address. That was unthinkable a few years ago. Mitt Romney and other Republicans are running around talking about income inequality. The way they see it, you know, they're winning the argument and the President helped them do that this week.
[King:] If his numbers stay up, not only does it help Hillary Clinton. It may force the Republicans to negotiate.
[Martin:] Absolutely.
[King:] Right now they're saying, "No, no, no, no, no." It was interesting Molly, we had not seen Hillary Clinton in more than a month. She came out the day after the State of the Union. Here she is in Canada. Again I think I've said this before. I'm not sure how many electoral votes Winnipeg, Canada gets in our presidential election. But that's where she was scheduled to be. And here she is essentially embracing the President's middle class message. I'll add the "but" after.
[Clinton:] There's so much more to do to bring security and possibility to families struggling with stagnant wages and sinking hopes, to restore comedy and cooperation to our politics, to restore committee and cooperation to our politics, to reform our broken immigration system, to restitch the fraying fabric of American life.
[King:] A lot to talk about here. But let's start with this. A lot of people had said during this month off. Is she working on her rationale to be president? Is she working on making a case that I'm not the past but I have experience that can lead us into the future?
[Ball:] And we still need to hear I think from Hillary Clinton, a coherent case to that end. And she has been in this tough position where because she's not officially a candidate it's been hard for her to make that pitch. I was actually surprised by how sort of noncommittal she was in talking directly about the State of the Union. She sort of said the middle class is a good thing and I'm glad Obama is talking about it, which is like as non endorsement an endorsement as you can get. One of our writers, David Fromm had a perceptive piece saying that he thinks Obama is trying to box Hillary in. That by taking a very aggressively liberal platform in his last couple of years in office, he's trying to push her to the left and make sure that she can't do the Clinton thing and sort of triangulate, and run to the center and get all of her corporate cronies on board in her election. Particularly if she doesn't have any competition in the Democratic field, any meaningful competition, who else is going to do that? Who else can make her say the kinds of things that like an Elizabeth Warren potentially or the Democratic base would want her to say in terms of actually making commitments on the issues the left cares about.
[King:] It's interesting you make that point because in a tweet on State of the Union night and then in that speech she said nice things as you know about what the President said, but she also said, now it's time to deliver. That was her message in 2008 that this young senator, Barack Obama talks a good game, but can he deliver. Was she poking him?
[Hirschfeld-davis:] Well, it was striking it's unclear to me whether she was poking him directly but I think she is leaving herself a very clear avenue to if she runs and is being portrayed as a third Obama term and that's seen as a bad thing, to get some distance from him. She's going to need some distance from him. She was his secretary of state after all. She's going to need a way of making a distinction between what she would do as president and the kind of president she would be. And I know Barack Obama and I think, you know, in those very carefully worded ways she's preserving that option for herself and that's a smart move I think for her.
[O'keefe:] And we saw very little of that attack line against her in Iowa on Saturday. It was only Carly Fiorina who really said, "I've flown around the world as a corporate executive and done things, she was only flying around the world and didn't really get anything done." That part of her career she's going to have to explain at some point, but on everything else you're right. She's probably trying to put some distance.
[Martin:] The party out there in Iowa yesterday the candidates were more focused on going after each other than on Hillary
[O'keefe:] Yes.
[Martin:] which tells you the party right now is really engaged in an intense conversation about its future and sort of what it stands for right.
[King:] Republicans are still debating who they are
[O'keefe:] Their identity.
[King:] they can get to the next one over. But they'll get to her. I don't think she'll have
[Martin:] They haven't forgotten Hillary.
[Ball:] They're going to have to have that conversation, too right. It's just not clear where the venue is going to be if she gets coronated.
[King:] That's a great point to make. Democrats will have what does the post-Obama Democratic Party look even if we have ahead of it before we have a competition? Everybody sit tight. Tomorrow's news today is next as we ask our great reporters to get you out ahead of the big political stories just ahead including what Marco Rubio and Joe Biden are thinking about 2016.