There seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that im surprised arent used on mtv. All in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. A shocking new poll shows the democratic president ial nomination is more up for grabs than its been at any point since the candidates declared. And with the Iowa Caucuses now just three weeks away the gloves are coming off. A new nbc news wall street journal marist poll of likely voters in iowa Shows Hillary clinton and Bernie Sanders in a statistical dead heat with clinton ahead by just three points within the margin of error. Its the first time clinton has seen her lead in the Hawkeye State challenged since the fall, when sanders was able to parlay his summer momentum into a brief iowa surge. Meanwhile, sanders seems to be narrowly maintaining his edge in New Hampshire, beating Hillary Clinton 50 to 46 among likely primary voters. Likewise within the margin of error. In that same polling from iowa and New Hampshire sanders even manages to outperform clinton in general election matchups, beating out the republican candidates by wider margins. All of which raises a possibility that until now has been ruled out by everyone but the most fervent Bernie Sanders fans. Hillary clinton could actually lose the first two nominating contests of 2016 to the democratic socialist from vermont. And if that were to happen, it is hard to overstate how much it would upend Democratic Party politics in this country. With the race tightening, clinton has stepped up her attacks on sanders policies, slamming his position on gun safety. President obama and i and senator sanders were all in the senate at the same time. Two of us voted against what the nra says was the most important piece of legislation in 20 years for the gun lobby. Senator sanders voted with them and through this morning has been unwilling to join the president and me in saying that this should be repealed. Campaigning today in iowa, clinton unveiled a new line of attack on sanders over his health care plan. I dont believe, number one, we should be starting over. We had enough of a fight just to get to the Affordable Care act. So i dont want to rip it up and start over. But i sure dont want to turn over health care to republican governors, for heavens sakes. I dont think that is a good deal for america. I think its a risky deal and it could hurt more than help a lot of families. Sanders campaign responded in a statement, secretary clinton is inaccurate in suggesting republican governors will be able to circumvent the law and deny implementation in their states, referring to sanders bill that would create national universal health care. On a Campaign Stop in iowa today sanders himself offered an explanation for clintons criticism. Secretary clinton and her campaign now know that she is in serious trouble. So obviously, in that scenario what people do is start attacking. Suddenly Bernie Sanders is no longer a nice guy and hes wrong on this and hes wrong on that and hes wrong on that. That is not surprising when you have a Clinton Campaign that is now in trouble and now understands that they can lose. Hillary clinton is expanding her efforts to challenge Bernie Sanders on his signature issue. That would be economic inequality. Rolling in a brand new plan to impose what shes calling a fair share surcharge. A 4 tax on people making over 5 million a year. I got a chance to speak earlier with secretary clinton, who joined me by phone from iowa. We discussed everything from the electability question to what Bernie Sanders said today about her campaign. But i started by asking about her proposed tax hikes for the highest earners. You know, chris, right now the super wealthy and big corporations are using every trick in the book to game the system to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes. And thats just not right. So today i am proposing adding what im calling a new fair share surcharge on multimillionaires and closing loopholes to make it harder to game the system. Im also pushing for the buffett rule, which sets a minimum rate for those at the top and other reforms like closing the carried interest loophole that allows some Hedge Fund Managers to pay a lower rate than teachers or nurses. Im proposing every idea i can, finally to make those at the top actually pay their fair share. And thats going to be a big difference in this campaign. When you compare what the republicans are proposing, its unbelievable. They want trillions of dollars in new tax breaks for those at the top. Its trickledown economics on steroids and im going to sit idly by and let them make these claims. And on the democratic side im the only one whos committed to raising middleclass income, not middleclass taxes. Secretary clinton, let me ask you this. You said youre sort of thinking of every idea you can to get at those higher earners. My sense from the reporting in the New York Times that opened a lot of peoples eyes to the low rates, effective rates those earners are payings a lot of it has to do with what the Capital Gains rate is. Your husband quite famously cut Capital Gains tax rates from 28 to i think 20 . Should we be doing things more broadly like raising Capital Gains rates, raising the top marginal rates, adding another bracket . Well, chris, i think that weve got to do a lot of different things. Ive also proposed a different Capital Gains structure. You would pay ordinary income tax for holding an asset for less than two years, and then it would drop until on the sixth year it would be 20 . Back when it dropped from 28 to 20 that was part of the budget deal and there were tradeoffs made. So middleclass folks, poor people got something for it. And then when the Bush Administration came in obviously, you know, they lowered the top rates and thankfully that expired. So we are now in a position i think where we can go after some of these schemes that you did read about, the kind of misclassifying of income, trying to make it look like its a capital gain when its really ordinary income. Going ahead and routing income through the bahamas or the Cayman Islands or wherever. So i want to have a surcharge so wherever the income comes from, whatever the income is, it would be on the adjusted gross income and it would give us a chance to try to get around and end some of these abuses that are taking place in the tax system. You talked about not growing middleclass incomes, not taxes, raising taxes on the middle class. And theres a little bit of a debate right now on what the definition of middle class is. My understanding is your campaign is essentially saying no taxes on households earning less than 250,000. But thats still that gets people all the way up to if im not mistaken the 90th, 95th percentile of income. Isnt middle class a narrower category than the category of people youre pledging not to raise taxes on . Well, in fact, this was the pledge that president obama made, that my husband made. And it is based on a lot of the expenses and costs that people face. Clearly, the Median Income is much less than that. But a lot of the people who are in the, say, 50,000 to 250,000 bracket are twoincome families. Theyre working at jobs that are not, you know, jobs that produce great wealth. They might produce a comfortable middle class lifestyle or upper middleclass lifestyle. But when we talk about people who are really doing well, a Million Dollars or more, and the surcharge on 5 million or more, thats a relatively small number of families but their wealth has increased so much that holding them accountable with this surcharge would bring a lot of revenues into the treasury. And i think we should be focused on the people who are really at the top. Because if you look at a lot of the work that progressive economists, that the Obama Administration and before that the Clinton Administration did, ending up there makes a lot of sense when youre looking at all the other costs people are facing. Let me ask you about politics for a moment. It relates to this. Theres new polling out showing essentially a statistical dead heat in iowa. Senator sanders today said your candidacy is in trouble. And theres a perception, and its been pushed by that campaign a bit i think, that some of the attacks, which have been substantive, theyve been policy attacks on senator sanders, whether its been on guns, whether its single payer, whether its todays proposal about taxing high income, is being motivated out of a concern that this is a very, very tight race, youre attempting to distinguish yourself from him. Is that an accurate perception . No, its really not, chris, for two reasons. I always thought this would be a close race p ive been around the track a few times, as you know. And it always closes. Iowas famously unpredictable. So i am very pleased with my organization, where we are in planning for the caucuses, which are three weeks from tonight. But the other part of that is i have been laying out specific proposals over the course of my campaign. And i always said i was going to be laying out additional elements of my tax proposal, which i have. Now, its interesting because senator sanders promised to be providing his tax plan before the iowa caucus. And yet i dont think weve seen those. So i think im telling the voters what i will do, where i will get the revenues from. You can see, you know, what im proposing, how much it will cost. I think thats what voters deserve to have before they make their decision. All right. Final question. You know, i had someone whos an adviser of yours, a friend, david brock, on this program. It must have been a few months ago. And we talked about electability, which has become something you and senator sanders have been talking about on the trail. And i asked him is Bernie Sanders electable in a general election . And he paused and said no, i dont think he is. Do you agree with him . Well, im not going to speak for anybody but myself. I will leave that to the voters to decide about who is or who isnt. But i can tell you this. Im battle tested. I know how to go up against the republicans. Theres hardly anything you and the voters dont know about me. So there wont be a lot of new information coming out or new labeling coming out. I think thats a big advantage. I think going up against the republicans this year, where there is so much at stake, where every one of them is literally wanting to turn the clock back to trickledown economics, to repeal the Affordable Care act, to go after a womans right to make her health care decisions, defund planned parenthood, try to do what they can to derail marriage equality, on and on and on, i think its important for voters to understand that if they dont want to see a republican going back into the white house then i think its fair to say im the most prepared and ready person not only to win the election but to be president. All right. Democratic president ial candidate Hillary Clinton, great pleasure. Come back again soon. Thanks a lot. Good to talk to you. All right. Byebye. Im joined now by jeff weaver, Campaign Manager for democratic president ial candidate Bernie Sanders. Jeff, let me start with the last thing Hillary Clinton said about electability. And the case as far as i can understand it is Hillary Clinton is probably the most scrutinized and vetted figure in American Public life and thats almost certainly true or shes in the top tier of that. Absolutely. Whats that . I said absolutely. Go ahead. And that with Bernie Sanders there might be you know, with Bernie Sanders you might get some surprises, that theres a long voting record. She talked about labels coming up. What do you think of that . Look, senator sanders has been in public life now for decades. He is a wellknown person in washington, d. C. Hes been a United States senator since 2006. Hes been in the house since 1991. He was mayor of burlington before that. He has been in many very, very difficult campaigns against republicans. And he has really been through the sort of been put through the ringer. So if theres a suggestion people dont know who senator sanders is i think is really not fair. The truth of the matter about electability is if democrats want to win you have to be able to win democrats and you have to be able to win the lions share of independence. And the truth of matter is if we look at the polls, im not just making this up, if you look at polling he consistently does better with independents than secretary clinton does. If you look at the recent polls coming out of iowa and New Hampshire, in headtoheads against the republicans he does far better than secretary clinton than every single one of them. In ham these ahead of trump by 19 points. Shes only ahead by one point. Do you think democrats want to be spending money in a general election to defend New Hampshire . Do you think honestly now. Do you think headtohead polling this far out from the election i mean, i remember six weeks ago ben carson was going to beat everyone in the field in headtohead polling. That seems like pretty shaky data. Look, thats one proof point. Right . His strength with independence is consistent and has been consistent throughout this campaign and thats something you cant deny. And democrats are not going to win. The number of people who selfidentify as independents is far greater than republicans or democrats. I think you have to acknowledge a democrat cant win a federal election without winning independents. He definitely does better with independents. I will say this about electability. The truth of the matter democrats win when you have large voter turnouts. We saw that with president obama. When he won states that democrats never thought they had a shot in like indiana, north carolina. Because he expanded the base of the party. He brought out young people. He excited a lot of people who dont traditionally vote. And thats, if you look at senator Sanders Campaign and whats going on on the ground in iowa and New Hampshire thats exactly whats going on here. Hes exciting a lot of young people, a lot of people who dont traditionally vote, and if you look at secretary clintons campaign, im not with all due respect i think youll find theres a lot less enthusiasm in that campaign. Theyre not sort of motivating the same type of voters that senator sanders is. I think for democrats to win not only the white house, because we dont just want to win the white house, we also want to make gains in the congress and the state houses, weve got to bring out a large number of people who dont traditionally come out. That means young people, nontraditional voters. And those people are being energized and excited by senator Sanders Campaign. Let me ask you about the substance of todays announcement. I recognize youre running this campaign and not an Economic Policy adviser to the senator. But i wonder, on the point of releasing a tax plan, are we going to see a sort of fully formed tax plan from the senator before iowa . Absolutely. Hes made that pledge and he certainly will. I will say hes already released a number of components of his tax plan. For instance he wants to put a tax on wall street speculation to fund his program to create tuitionfree public colleges and universities and to lower student debt. Hes released a plan to tax income thats hidden in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens in order to fund his plan to rebuild the infrastructure of america and create 2 million jobs. He plans to lift the cap on Social Security starting at 250,000 so we can extend the life of Social Security for 50 years, expand benefits for seniors many of whom are trying to get by on 12,000 or 13,000 a year. So he has offered major pieces of his tax plan. He will be offering up the part that deals with individual income taxes before the Iowa Caucuses. Okay. And do you think that senator sanders i mean, what is the game plan here . Obviously things have tightened quite a bit in iowa. Theyre very tight in New Hampshire. You guys have a lot of money. So the question now becomes what are you going to do with all that money in the next three weeks . Well, look, you know, were very gratified to have the resources that we have. I mean, one of the things thats different about senator sanders insurgent campaign thats different than many other such campaigns in the past is that we have the resources to go the distance. We have over a million individual contributors, 2. 5 million contributions. Average contribution 27. This is a Campaign Funded at the grassroots. And these donors are available to give to us again if they choose. None of our donors are maxed out. We will have the resources to go all the way. We are obviously running ads on television and radio. We have Digital Advertising running. But were also running a very, very aggressive grassroots campaign, knocking on doortodoor. We have thousands of volunteers in iowa. Literally hundreds of thousands of volunteers nationwide. On any given weekend theres over 1,000 bernie events a