in the ramp-up to this, wants to kind of cast his optimism and contrast to donald trump s pessimism and some of the pessimism of the republican party. but this speech, unlike previous speeches, i don t expect it to be about, you know, here s what i want to get done this year, and more about, here s what i want the country to become in the years to come. john, can i just john, jump in here. because let s turn the clock back a year ago. and we said it was going to be an awful year for obama. he had a pretty darned good 2016. if he gets criminal justice reform, congress passes that, and the biggest trade pac in the last 40 years, and maybe something, as margaret said, on poverty, that s a heck of an eighth-year achievement for a president. i m not sure he ll get that, but, boy, that would be a that would really be a package for his final year. al, less than a minute, but i m desperate to hear your reaction to the interesting comments from joe biden and the extraordinary comments t
they re real nervous. they think that bernie could well win iowa and new hampshire. may not change the outcome, but it s going to give them fits for at least months to come. and i think joe s having a great deal of trouble stirring up the pot a great deal of fun, rather, stirring up the pot. all right. al hunt, margaret talev, thank you very much for coming on. when we come back, we ll talk to two very wise men, bob shrum and fred davis. remember, if you re watching us from washington, d.c., you can now listen to us too on bloomberg 99.1 f.m. i like to ths more of a control. enthusiast. mmm, a perfect 177-degrees. and that s why this road warrior rents from national. i can bypass the counter and go straight to my car. and i don t have to talk to any humans, unless i want to. and i don t. and national lets me choose any car in the aisle. control. it s so, what s the word?.
could be a missing piece for you. see if you re eligible for 12 months free at mybreo.com. joining us now from our washington bureau to preview tonight s state of the union address and a whole lot more are bloomberg view columnist al hunt and bloomberg white house correspondent, margaret tlif. great to have you here. let me start with you, al. you re the dean on the scene. we ve heard all the ways this state of the union will be different. i would like to hear from you whether all the ways in which it s going to be different, is it going to matter at all for barack obama in 2016? not a great deal, john. that last state of the union given by any president at this stage doesn t matter a whole lot. minimal effect on the election. they re trying to frame whether it s reagan or bush or clinton and now obama. they re trying to frame their place in history. this will be an upbeat speech tonight. look at the great things we ve done. the great just conundrum that he faces tonight, john is,
critics otherwise. al, the president, obviously, exhibiting a lot of emotion, as mark and margaret were just talking about. do you think that there is any way, beyond what he has done today, that he can achieve anything substantial over the course of the next year, his last year in office? no, with i don t. and i think normally when a president or a political candidate cries, it s bad. that s not what people want to see. but when you re crying, when tears come to your eyes because of little children who have been killed, i think that s quite different. i think the politics, as we ve seen time and time and time again, after they passed the brady bill in 1993, 19 democrats certifiably got defeated on that issue in the next election. there s still that fear. i don t know if he ll change the dialogue a bit over the next year and a half, but he won t get anything done. i don t understand why they keep say they re doing this, which
you know what momentum looks like, late momentum. when you look at this rain, hillary clinton and bernie sanders in iowa, do you see momentum in either case or on both cases? i do, but you don t see quite the same dynamic that you did with obama, where he was so invested in drawing out younger voters and first-time voters and there was that kind of spark and enthusiasm. you do see that with sanders campaign, but you don t see the organization to quite at the same level to back up that play. and that was something that was really phenomenal about what barack obama was doing in 2008. al, just to clarify, you said sanders wouldn t go away even if he didn t win the first two. will he be enough of a threat and a force to her in some of those states that she won t be able to turn to focus on a general election? oh, i think so. i don t know how long it goes, mark, but look at the money. the money is extraordinary pip mean, he s almost matched her. and i think the passion is there. i do