Morning Joe - Morning Joe 11/6/24

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Donald Trump defeats Kamala Harris to become the next U.S. president, NBC News projects

This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before. And frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There's never been anything like this in this country and maybe beyond. And now it's going to reach a new level of importance because we're going to help our country heal. We're going to help our country heal. We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We're going to fix our borders. We're going to fix everything about our country. And we made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that. We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible,

and it is now clear that we've achieved the most incredible political thing. Look what happened. Is this crazy? But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before. Nothing like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. It's time to put the divisions of the past four years behind us. It's time to unite. And we're going to try, we're going to try, we have to try and it's going to happen.

Success will bring us together. I've seen that, I've seen that. I saw that in the first term when we became more and more successful. People started coming together. Success is going to bring us together. We are going to start by all putting America first. We have to put our country first for at least a period of time. We have to fix it. Because together we can truly make America great again for all Americans. So I want to just tell you what a great honor this is.

I want to thank you. I will not let you down. America's future will be bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer, and stronger than it has ever been before. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you. This morning, Donald Trump has secured

a second presidential term. Moments ago, NBC News projected he won the state of Wisconsin, giving him the electoral votes needed for victory. He's also leading the popular vote as well. It is the third battleground state he flipped after winning Georgia and Pennsylvania. The races in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada are still too close to call.

Vice President Kamala Harris has not yet made a statement about the race. The crowd at her Howard University watch party was asked to go home shortly before 1 a.m. Cedric Richmond, who is a co-chair of the Harris-Waltz campaign, told attendees the vice president would not speak until later today. A lot to go through, a lot of questions this morning.

Joe, we'll start with your take. Well, I mean, so much to go through, so many questions. I came onto the set and Willie said, hey, by the way, because we were talking about the historic nature of this suite. And Willie said, do you know, he only lost Illinois by four points. Four points, New Jersey.

New Jersey by five. I mean, you talk about a... We had talked about a red wave two years ago that never materialized. This is the... I've got to say, this is the biggest red wave I've seen since Ronald Reagan's 49-state victory in 1984. Every, it seems every Republican across the country improved. Donald Trump is on track to sweep the seven battleground states. We saw three outstanding.

We'll see how those go. But he did better almost everywhere. In every county where the hope from the Harris campaign was that she would make up ground on Joe Biden's suburbs, Donald Trump actually did better. We'll break down some of these numbers, but the gender gap was not nearly as wide as the Harris campaign needed to be. And Latino men came out in force for Donald Trump. Boy, what a huge difference that made.

And you know, that was really just part of the stunning outcome. I mean, America, first of all, is far more to the right than any time in our lifetimes, even going back to the Reagan years. And Donald Trump won in dominating fashion, but he did that along with other Republican candidates in the Senate races and the House races. They're likely to dominate all branches of government for the next several years.

Donald Trump not only broke out through that sort of hard ceiling of 47-48 percent, think about this. He became only the second Republican to win a majority of the popular vote since 1988, in 36 years. And he did so after a week of polls, most notably, Ann Seltzer's revered Des Moines Register poll showed Harris making remarkable inroads among the type of voters who would swing the margin for Harris in the Blue Wall states. The opposite actually ended up being true. Donald Trump won in a rout across Big Ten country, taking Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin without a serious

fight. And now with expectations rising in the Harris camp in the final days of the campaign and a historic ground game, when you look at the depth of it and the reach of it, this race still ended up being over before it began. And Jonathan Lemire, I mean, it is, again, the scope and scale of this victory is sweeping. And we can focus, by the way, we can focus on Donald Trump if we would like, but this goes far beyond Donald Trump.

Make no mistake, his victory, again, historic, but you look at Republicans across the nation, you look at Handley, how handily they're winning states. As Willie said, you look at Illinois, a four-point margin. Illinois, a five-point margin in New Jersey? This is a Democratic Party that has been just wiped out this morning.

Yeah, Republicans steamrolled. They will cap. They have captured the Senate. The House still up for grabs, but those close to Speaker Johnson think the Republicans are on track to have that as well, potentially handing Donald Trump a united, unified Republican Washington, D.C., when he takes office. It was stunning. We thought this election could take days to be counted.

It was over late last night, early this morning now, with the official call. You mentioned the Iowa poll, that so many Democrats had hung so much hope on in recent days that had Harris up three points. Right now, the margin for Trump in Iowa is about 14 or 15 points. This is a 16 or 17-point miss.

Unbelievable. A 16- or 17-point miss there. There was not this surge of voters breaking late to Harris as it turned. And for Donald Trump, it must be said, this is a person, this is a president, he was impeached twice, he botched the handling of the pandemic,

he faced four criminal cases, he inspired January 6th, and he won anyway. And now he will return to office with few guardrails internally, encouragement from Moscow and other foreign adversaries, and a Supreme Court that has said that his power is largely unchecked. Well, I've got to say, historians will look back at those trials over the past summer,

John Heilman, where he was sitting in there, sitting, and it certainly fed into his victimhood. And that will be seen, those trials where he's sitting in court all day will be seen as an as kind contribution for Donald Trump because there is no doubt those trials this summer were a defining moment in this campaign. And defining not in the way that obviously a lot of opponents of Donald Trump hope they would be. There will still be, I think historians will be grappling with a lot of questions going forward, including the question of how someone who is a convicted, first ever convicted, criminal convictions against a former president could win in this fashion.

I think we've all sat here and talked about the extraordinarily, for a lot of people, extraordinarily offensive performance of Donald Trump in his last two weeks. The things that he did and said seemed like he was...we literally just sitting here the last few days, I'm like, how can this man, the way he's performing in the final, the closing days of this campaign, how can this guy get elected? He seems like he doesn't want to get elected. The things, performing, miming oral sex on a microphone stand and all the rest of it, the enemy within, the various things that provoked John Kelly to come stand and all the rest of it, the enemy within, the various things that

provoked John Kelly to come out and say the things he said, all of that stuff in the end didn't matter. And I think one of the things that didn't matter enough to keep him from performing better in this election than he has performed in any of the prior ones. That would be a question for psychologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists for a long time. Because I think for a lot of people in the country, it is unthinkable that Donald Trump, this could be the one that he could improve his performance from the past.

But he did. And I think the other question we now are going to be grappling with that's quite clear is we have had consistent polling that has had this race effectively at time. I'm looking here at the polling, the end polling averages were, Donald Trump in a lot of these states was at 47, 48, consistent with the notion that he had this ceiling, that he had never been above 47% before. It looks like there's going to be in these battleground states about a three-point polling miss in aggregate, again, as there was a four-point polling miss in aggregate in 2020, and there was a three-and-a-half point polling miss in aggregate again, as there was a four point polling miss in aggregate in 2020, and there was

a three and a half point polling miss in 2016. The polling industry right now, public and private, has now in three successive elections missed Donald Trump's support in America by substantial numbers. And I will say finally, the thing that you heard from people in the Harris campaign, in the battleground states, particularly in those blue wall states, was if the numbers are right, meaning the numbers we were seeing in public and their own numbers, if those numbers were right, it's really a tie, they would say. We think our ground game will help us win. It turned out those numbers were in fact wrong.

And there were people who said all along, along hey We could be looking at another 2020 and 2016 right Trump support is Understated and if that's the case he could win all these states by two or three points That is exactly what's happening. This was the third time these were the this was I'm sorry This was the third time in a row as you said that Donald Trump's support was understated Especially in the upper Midwest states Donald Trump's support was understated, especially in the upper Midwest states. They just just not working. But Mika, again, you go through it. You look at the final weeks of the campaign. It was not only the public polling, which most campaigns dismiss, but it was actually the polling inside the Harris camp. They the They, the last week, were going more confident

because the numbers that they were seeing, the only people who had polls that ended up being right from the beginning were the Trump people. Remember what we kept saying? They just had this confidence. They were overconfident. Their numbers weren't matching the private numbers of Harris. They weren't matching the public numbers.

They had the right numbers all along because they were saying, we're getting more votes from Hispanic men. We're getting more votes from black men. We are going to do better. And they were never internally, they were never worried. I think until the Ann Seltzer poll came out, and then they said, could we be that wrong? And it ended up they were not that wrong.

Yeah. And then in terms of the issue of abortion, it's so interesting. Florida obviously was different, They came out and then they said, could we be that wrong? And it ended up they were not that wrong. Yeah. And then in terms of the issue of abortion, it's so interesting. Florida obviously was different, but there are some states that voted against these bans, but then voted for the person who is the reason for them. Even Florida was 57% for abortion rights. That's right. Just need to get 60.

So, Claire McCaskill, your thoughts this morning? Well, first I think we have to acknowledge that Donald Trump knows our country better than we do. I think he figured out that anger and frankly fear were way more powerful than appealing to people's better angels, that anger and fear were going to work in this election. Whether you're afraid of immigrants or afraid of people who are trans, he figured that out. And I think we all thought everyone's better angels would prevail.

Turns out the better angels went on vacation when Donald Trump came down the escalator and they haven't returned. And I listen credit to Susie Wiles and Chris Savita credit and by the way, his persecution and the majority of America believes he was persecuted, not prosecuted. And there's no question that our grip on hey, we've got to make sure those same rules apply to everyone. We've got to make sure the rule of law applies to every American, no matter who you are or how powerful you are. Turns out that's not true.

America believed, the majority of Americans believed, that he was a victim in those prosecutions, not a perpetrator. And I think that is something that will be talked about for a long time. Books will be written about it. His assassination attempt helped. But keep in mind where he made the most ground, where he made up the most ground, was first with Hispanic voters, knowing how he's talked about Hispanic people in this campaign, let that sit for a moment. The second one was, in fact, in urban areas. He did much better.

That was the second area he did much better. And the last one was with young voters. I think the Democratic Party was so cocksure that young people would reject this guy because they see a different America than he does, turns out he appealed to their grievance and their anger and their fear just as much as he was appealing to white folks in rural America that aren't college educated. Yeah. And you went through so many things there that happened, including an assassination attempt,

a tragic assassination attempt, where he actually got up, waved to the crowd, and made people think at the Wisconsin, at the Milwaukee convention the next week, hey, that's our guy. He's tougher, he's stronger, he got shot at, he's still standing up and, you know, holding his fist to the crowd. And time and time again, in less dramatic ways, even in the courthouse. He'd walk out of the courthouse, he'd hold a press conference, he'd say it's a witch hunt. And again, you talk to Republicans who are going to run against him, like Nikki Haley and other people, they would say, you know, these trials are just making him stronger.

Yeah, and it appears they did. His voters believe that he is a victim, and they believe that he carries their grievance with him. And now back to the White House, whether it's generals coming out calling him a fascist, whether it's a long line of elite celebrities coming out for Kamala Harris, a largely adversarial news media against Donald Trump, he withstood it all. And they didn't like that. They didn't like that it was him against the world.

And he said to them, it's us against the world too. And that's an argument that they believe. And a word we haven't spoken yet a few minutes into the show is the economy. The economy was the number one issue for Trump voters. So for all the noise and everything we've talked about, all these important issues, voters said, groceries cost too much, gas costs too much, my rent is too high. I believe Donald Trump is going to do something to change that. Whether he does remains to be seen.

But that was the number one issue for Trump voters last night. Let's bring in the conversation, the president of the National Action Network, the host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, the Reverend Al Sharpton. Rev, good morning. I know you were with the Harris campaign last night. Obviously, as the night went on, things became more and more grim for them, ending with shock probably this morning as this race was called for Donald Trump. No, probably shock would be the word for many that were

at the Howard University party. And then disbelief. I think also what we've got to deal with, you're correct when you say the economy was weighed on a lot of the voters around the country and a distorted view of the economy. Let's remember Donald Trump is a expert promoter and he was able to get a lot of myths across the table that really were not true, but it was not well

promoted on the other side. I think that we also have to deal with the issue of race and gender. There was a lot of gender bias in this. There was a lot of race bias in this. And I think that we thought a lot of voters were more progressive in those areas than they were. When you have the Dobbs decision and you see this kind of vote anyway with the person that put the three justices on the Supreme Court, you have to ask yourself,

are we fooling ourselves saying that Americans are further down the road toward dealing with gender bias and race bias than we thought? So I would say this though, Donald Trump, I've known a long time, he will self-destruct. The problem that I see is not Trump. The problem is that those that can be appealed to in this way and how we've got to bring this country together. And we cannot do it by being like January 6th ourselves.

There would not be a January 6th on our side. We will deal with this in a dignified way and try to put the pieces together. So we've lost, but we lost a battle. The war is not over. Well, Rev, let's talk about, you're talking not over. Well Rev let's talk about you talking about gender and race let's talk about race. Donald Trump fared very well with Hispanic voters especially Hispanic men the numbers are coming in still a little early but I think he did better with black men than was expected in the past.

And what do you think pushed that, especially with the Hispanic voters going for Donald Trump as much as they did, because that made a big difference? I think that a lot of it was he was able to sell a lot of Hispanic voters that immigration was a threat to them, that some of the people coming across the border

was a threat to them. I think that we've got to be honest, among Hispanic men and black men, there's a lot of misogyny. And I think that we've got to deal with the reality that he appealed to this whole false macho thing that some black men and some Latino men went for. I think that we cannot sit around just bedwetting.

We've got to deal with the reality, and we've got to deal with the situation as it is in our own communities. Well, bedwetting gets you, political bedwetting gets you exactly this. You don't want to do that. At some point, Democrats are going to have to confront some realities that they haven't wanted to confront in the past. They didn't want to confront the past issues on the border.

It took them too long to confront that. We talked about a transgender inmate ad that ran 30,000 times that the Democrats refused to respond to despite the fact it was Donald Trump's own policy because I guess some people in the campaign, and we talked about this before, thought it might be, you know, maybe they were too woke to actually respond to a false ad,

and maybe they were afraid that they would be attacked by their own base. There are so many questions for the Democrats to answer, but one of them, the one that I just saw that's going to be staring them in the face for some time, if they don't do something about it, is that 45% of Hispanics voted for Donald Trump. 45%. That is George W. Bush. I remember when George W. Bush got 44% of the vote in 2004.

It sent shock waves. This also, if you look at this, if you look at younger voters, you look at all these different... We've all been talking about a new Republican party. There needs to be a new Republican party. This morning, this is about as bleak as any time for Democrats since the so-called 1984 San Francisco Democrats. It's time for the Democrats to take a good, long, hard look at how this happened.

And if they just say Trump bad, Democrats virtuous, they're going to keep losing because this, again, is so widespread. This is not about just Donald Trump. This is about the Democratic Party and being radically disconnected from the rest of the country. Look at the map. Yeah, as we as we talk about how Donald Trump won it, we had a number up there. It's important to point out Donald Trump did the same with black men as he did in 2020. So really look toward Latino men, where that number has gone way up for Donald in his favor. And we're just talking about New Jersey, a state that Kamala Harris won by only five points, and Steve Kornacki was just breaking down how exactly it was that close.

You go inside places like Hudson County, these are cities, heavy Latino populations, and they went for Donald Trump. And that's something that this party, the Democratic Party, really needs to take a long look at. Let's bring in from Washington, NBC News, Chief White House correspondent Pia Alexander. He's covering the Harris campaign. And from West Palm Beach, Florida, NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hilliard with the Trump campaign.

Vaughn, we will begin with you. Donald Trump returning to the White House. What are we hearing from him? This is for Donald Trump, a Republican party and now a country that has given him a mandate to go and execute on the policies that he was quite explicit he intends to bring to Washington come 2025. That's tariffs of 20 to 30 percent on all goods. That's installing Robert F. Kennedy,

Jr. to oversee health care policy. That is a mass deportation program. Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he learned from his first administration and that he brought on the likes of James Mattis and John Kelly and Rex Tillerson, folks that he didn't actually know before the transition period, but this time around, he said that he will not make the same mistake again. Instead, he will look for loyal allies to install in the top capacities in his White House here. I'm told by a source who is with the campaign in the now soon-to-be transition

that they're already eyeing a potential rally, quote, soon, for Donald Trump to go back on the road, because you guys said it here. For nine years, we have covered the MAGA movement. And for nine years, we have traveled around this country watching millions of Americans buy into the idea of fake press, of stolen elections, of the deep states in the Justice Department. And now we have watched Donald Trump expressly

over the last month, make the case that Donald Trump was right about everything and that Donald Trump will fix it. And now we have heard from voters time and again that they have suggested that they believe that Donald Trump is the best person to go inside of the White House and use the executive authority

to make good for their lives. And now the transition process will begin here in Palm Beach imminently. All right, Vaughn, thank you. Let's go to Peter Alexander, who's in Washington, D.C. Standing by on Vice President Harris. When do we expect to hear from her, Peter? Well, Mika, we do anticipate we're going to hear from her at some point later today. No indication exactly when that will happen. I'm getting going to hear from her at some point later today. No indication exactly when that will happen.

I'm getting some indications it could happen at some point this afternoon. She's expected to speak at Howard University where several thousand of her supporters had arrived last night. They were joyful and optimistic in the conversations I've been having with people in and around the campaign. They felt like they really had the trajectory on their side in the course of the last several days, a week ago, they said things seemed pretty tight, but now yesterday they felt pretty they really had the trajectory on their side in the course of the last several days a week ago they said things seem pretty tight but now yesterday they

felt pretty optimistic going into the night that quickly evaporated as the returns came in one return after another one state after another falling into Donald Trump's category and you can really to see the emotion in the eyes these these blank stares these look some people embracing what another and appearing to share some prayers at the time to give you a sense of sort of the feel there. There was a party for donors in Washington, D.C., Harris donors. It was described to us by a Democrat in attendance as

being like a funeral during the, as the returns came in last night at Howard University. They ultimately muted the screen and turned music on to try to cheer folks up there but there's going to be a real reckoning for the Democrats right now for a variety of reasons clearly she underperformed with key demographics under performance of the so many of the critical counties across the country and she faced some real headwinds to be very clear right now 2 thirds of Americans according to exit polls saying that they

believe that the state of the country right now if they're dissatisfied with it or angry about it. Donald Trump won by a large margin the two-thirds of Americans who said that the economy was either not so good or that it was poor. Right now, so a real frustration not just about Kamala Harris, but about the Biden-Harris administration and sort of the direction of the economy as they went to bed last evening we did hear from the campaign chairman Jenna Malley-Dillan saying that the Blue Wall state had always remained their clearest path. They said they liked what they were saying but as they wake up

this morning, obviously it's a very different situation back to you. All right, thank you very much, Peter Alexander. By the way, I just looked at that Iowa poll again. I mean the Iowa number. Yeah. And 13 points. It's staggering.

13 points. She's off 10 points. I mean, it's crazy. And again, polls is, John, you said polls are broken. And, you know, I've got to say two quick things right here before we get too far into this. I think Kamala Harris hit her marks. I think most everybody that saw her campaign thought that she far exceeded expectations and that the loss was less about the campaign she ran and more about where Americans were

and what they wanted in their leadership. There were, you know, there are one or two stumbles on, we talked about an ad, but she out debated him. She went everywhere on shows she should have gone on. So this is one of these things that people start like second guessing, commulatory, oh, you know what, if she had used this verb instead of that pronoun, I mean, no. It's-

She left it all on the stage. She left it all on the stage. She worked hard. She, you know, by the way, let's, I remember in 2012, one of her, I'm the top person calling me, Joe, Joe, the last event in Pennsylvania. We got 30,000 people it's

gonna be a landslide we saw the we saw her crowds and then we saw his crowds at the end let us here forth and if we can put it in stone if we can hear for it discount crowd sizes as an indicator on who's going to win a presidential election, because this year it didn't matter at all. Yeah, for sure. There are a lot of things to say and packed into that. To start with, you know, I remember that Romney event in 2012. At the end of the 2012 election, Republicans were absolutely convinced, including Mitt

Romney, they thought there was no question that Romney was going to beat Barack Obama. To the point where Karl Rove was on Fox News at 11 o'clock saying, we've got to reverse these calls, they were that deluded. And I'm making that point only to say, in 2016, Democrats were in exactly the same place when it came to Hillary Clinton. And at the end of this campaign, Democrats got to that place with Kamala Harris. But it's not a partisan phenomenon. Republicans have been in a close, at the end of 2012, we're just as deluded.

There's the things that happen at the end of races where you think you have the win of your back, turns out you're wrong. And that was the case for Republicans in 2012, Democrats in 2016, Democrats this time. Here's the thing that I think we're going to, to your point about Kamala Harris. This has been obvious throughout, but it will be more obvious as we get further away from it. The degree of difficulty of the situation she was put in was higher than anything I've ever seen in my entire time in politics.

From Joe Biden. She was dropped into the presidential race in August of the election year and asked to become the nominee when she was still a broadly unknown figure. She did not have the benefit of running a primary, of getting known, of getting the reps in, of doing multiple televised debates, doing any of those things, right? She had to do two things in three months that, while Donald Trump had to do one. It was like they were running a foot race against each other, and she, Trump just had to run to the finish line, and she had to run to the finish line while she was baking a cake or something at the same time

or trying to do a crossword puzzle. Or being in a boxing ring where you're also trying to fight your opponent and do a crossword puzzle at the same time. This is the period, the close of these races is when you just need to be in the race and she was trying to introduce herself to America while beating Donald Trump. So that is, you know, what did she do? She raised an insane amount of money. Her introduction to the country went well.

The convention was a success. Her convention speech was a success. And she crushed him in the debate and she closed stronger than he did. To your point, she hit her marks. Did she make some mistakes? Every candidate makes mistakes. And Trump's mistakes were way bigger than her mistakes, which brings you back to the fundamental question, which is she was the sitting vice president

for a president who had been, his approval rating had been hovering at between 38 and 40% for two years. No one in the history of the country has overcome those kind of headwinds. Or the wrong track. The wrong track is 75. Whether you say that, I can argue all day that Americans have misassessed the American

economy, but Americans think the economy under Biden has sucked. They think the country's on the wrong track and they thought they did not approve of the Biden years. She had all of that weight hanging on her. And I think when we talk about this, the debate in the party is now going to be, there are gonna be people in Joe Biden's world, and this is about to start in 3, 2, 1,

there are gonna be people around Joe Biden who say, who will say he should never have quit, he would have beaten Donald Trump, and there are gonna be people who say this is all his fault, he should have gotten out after the mid to be and they're going to be people who say this is all his fault he should have gotten out after the midterms in 2022 given his party a chance to have a primary that that's what historians are going to get out about it. But we have a fierce debate about that that

was Joe's you people battle for what the future Democratic Party is we have to go to break and we have to go to break because Steve Kornach he's not just Jim Javan like we are he's standing by with data spent at the big board. And to break down the biggest takeaways from 90 has been up all night so this can be very interesting plus we're tracking how Wall Street's reacting to Donald Trump's White House victory. I think pretty well we'll be right

back. Lot of questions about what went down in this presidential election and also the House and the Senate. Joining us now, NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki at the big board. Steve, where to begin? Yeah, where to begin? Well, I happen to be in Pennsylvania right now. You can see here Trump winning this thing by two points in Pennsylvania. What keyed this? A couple things jump out at me here that kind of spill over to the national storyline.

First of all, you talk about the suburbs. We have spent so much time talking about the suburbs in the Trump era, how they've become more democratic, especially suburbs with high concentrations of college degrees, with higher incomes, especially suburbs like the color counties around Philadelphia. So take a look, this is part of what happened for Trump

in Pennsylvania and in other key battleground states tonight. Take a look, Actually, I want to show you Montgomery County. We got a little bit more in in Montgomery County, and this is the biggest of the Philadelphia collar counties. It fits the demographic description I was just giving you. This is a place where Democrats have been driving up bigger and bigger margins. And they came into tonight thinking and banking that that would continue. And so

you take a look here in 2020. Trump won Montgomery, excuse me, Trump won Biden won Montgomery County by 26 points. Harris wins it tonight. The margin comes down by four points. Again, Democrats were looking at this saying it's gonna go north. Maybe it'll get close to 30% something like that. We saw this in Montgomery. We saw this in Chester. We saw this in Delaware County, other color counties. We saw this in other states. These big suburban areas that have gotten bluer and bluer. They generally stayed blue like this,

but they didn't get bluer this time around. Trump stopped the slide in places like that. And meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, something else too. I've been saying, I think the coalition Trump assembled here, the winning coalition, it's a blue collar coalition. We talk about that. We've been talking about that for a while. Tonight, or I say tonight, last night,

it became a much more diverse blue collar coalition. So what am I talking about there? You're talking about a place like Luzerne County. This is where Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania is. This is where Hazelton, Pennsylvania is. Hazelton has one of the fastest growing Hispanic populations in the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania at the turn of the century. Hazleton was 5% Hispanic.

Now it's nearly 70% Hispanic, a largely Dominican American. Trump carried the city of Hazleton and Trump in Luzerne County improved over what he did in 2020. So you see it and we see there's a sort of a network of counties, really cities in this region of Pennsylvania here, small mid-sized cities with substantial Hispanic populations. And again, a lot of them there are big blue counties. They got less blue.

A lot of them, Kamala Harris actually still won, but Trump made progress. He made progress in all of these counties here. And then to cap it off for Trump, there was this one, Lackawanna County, Scranton, Biden's, you know, originally from Scranton. And then just look at this story, because I think you see this throughout, you know,

Pennsylvania and the Midwest, a big blue collar county, not as big of a Hispanic population as some of the others I'm talking about. But look, this was just, this was a core Democratic county right through Obama's second election in 2012, almost a 30 point Obama margin in Lackawanna. Trump comes along in 2016, he cuts that down to just over three points. Then Biden from Scranton comes along in 2020,

and the Democrats get, they don't get all this back, but they get it close to double digits. And we were saying coming into the night, would it look like 20? That would be bad coming into the night would it look like 20? That would be bad news for Trump would it look like 16 that would be good news It looks better for him in the end than it did in 16 He's gonna lose this by just under three points and again you just compare that to where this was You know back as recently as the Obama era and you compare it to when Joe Biden ran four years ago Trump

Clawing back lost support in blue- blue collar places like Lackawanna County and even exceeding what he did in 2016. You see that here and you see that in a lot of these battleground states, especially in the northern tier. So Steve, give us the headline for the night, not just in Pennsylvania, but across the country. Is it the 45% Hispanic voters going for a Republican candidate going for Donald Trump? Was the gender gap not as big as was expected? What are your big two or three takeaways that explain the redness of the map from coast to coast? Yeah, no, I mean, I think first of all, the gender gap one, yeah, absolutely. We're looking at, it looks like about a 20-point gender gap, which that's a big gender gap.

It's about 10 points for Harris among women. It's about 10 points for Trump among men. But in the context of polls that show this might be a 30, 35-point gender gap, and especially in the context of, I think you mentioned it in that last segment, the Iowa poll the weekend before the election that was suggesting, here's this deep, thought to be deep red state suddenly in play

because of this seismic move of women, especially senior women against Trump. That got everybody thinking, boy, is that gonna be the story in Iowa? Is that gonna be the story everywhere? Yeah, and we just don't see that. That's not popping up on this map. I showed you those suburbs of Philadelphia.

That's exactly the kind of place you would have looked for that. So I think that's part of it. And the Hispanic vote, I'm giving it to you in the context of Pennsylvania, but I think more broadly, the Hispanic vote in this working class, you know, sort of multi-ethnic coalition that really is what this looks like for Trump that he pulled together here, the implications for that extend far beyond the battleground.

And just take you through some of these. I think Willie mentioned it in New Jersey. This is a five point race in a state that Joe Biden won by 16 points. If this holds, this will be the closest New Jersey has been in 32 years. Check this out, this county here, Passaic County, the city of Patterson, New Jersey is there,

Passaic, New Jersey. You're talking about a 45 or so percent Hispanic county. Democrats just automatically win this in New Jersey. Look, it's red tonight. Donald Trump looks like he's gonna carry Passaic County. I think Willie mentioned Hudson County. This is a massive, massive county. You've got cities here like Union City, New Jersey

that's 80% Hispanic. This was a 46 point win for Biden that comes down to 28 points. New York, New York State, again, just about a 12 point, 11 point margin there for Harris in New York. That's cut in half from where Biden was. These New York City gains for Donald Trump, double digit gains. Some of those boroughs even bigger than that, even getting close to 20 point Trump gains there. Look at Illinois right now with 91% of the vote in.

Harris is winning Illinois by four points. Compare that to four years ago when Biden won it by 17 points. This is what this sort of multi-ethnic working class coalition has helped Trump do in these states. It doesn't give him a single extra electoral vote. He still loses all of these states, but what it does do is look at the national popular vote where it stands right now. That is a better than five million vote advantage for Donald Trump. And if you're thinking, you know, as in the past, California is going to come in late, it's going to be a huge massive Democratic landslide there that's going to overturn all of this.

When Trump starts racking up, you know, the kinds of improvements he has in huge blue states like New York and New Jersey and Illinois, I'll give you another one. Look at Maryland. Okay, 23 points. Landslide for the Democrats. Well, four years ago, it was 33 points. Again, Trump, that's a pretty big-sized state there. That's a double-digit gain for Trump right there. Those kinds of gains,

without even gaining an actual electoral vote, have given Trump a kind of advantage here so far in the popular vote that eclipses anything he got before in 2016 and 2020 enough to withstand California. I think if you're the Trump folks and you want to win the national popular vote, you're feeling very good that you'll withstand California. You'll end up with the popular vote and we could talk. Did he get an outright majority? That won't be decided for a while, too.

He could easily win it without getting a majority, but totally different than four years ago when we're talking about, you know, seven million vote gap nationally, four and a half points, all of that. This is a, the effects of the coalition Trump has have been felt well outside of the core battleground. Yeah, running up big totals in states he didn't even win.

Steve, can I ask you about the Senate? I think Republicans surprised even by their margin there what it looks like it might end up being in the clip closely watch races shared Brown lost his seat in the state of Ohio was terribly close honestly by about 200,000 votes that closely watch race in Texas where some people had hoped in the Democratic Party that Colin already might knock off Ted Cruz lost by about a million votes what you seeing in the Democratic Party that Colin Allred might knock off Ted Cruz, lost by about a million votes.

What are you seeing on the Senate side? Yeah, so we'll take a look here. As you mentioned, West Virginia, we always, I'll put the Senate map up. How about we do that? West Virginia, we always said, you know, that was basically the automatic Republican pick up. Ohio, Sherrod Brown going down to defeat there.

Just the combination of Republicans getting Ohio, West Virginia now Trump getting the presidency, JD Vance would break break anytime the Senate that that's more than enough to give Republicans control you take a look at Montana John Tester here with more than 80 percent of the vote in that's a it's quite a mountain for Tester to climb there in Montana again Trump's coattails at the top of the ticket he's winning this by a much bigger margin in Montana very helpful to Tim Sheehy the Republican there now where it gets interesting in the Senate though, right now, is these three states here of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

I'm gonna start in Wisconsin because take a look here. Actually, and this is almost all the vote in Wisconsin is in now. About an hour ago, we got the bulk of what was left in Milwaukee and Racine. Tammy Baldwin is ahead by almost 30,000 votes. When those final votes that caused Wisconsin to be called officially for Trump an hour ago

and the presidency, when those came in, they also lifted Tammy Baldwin ahead of Hovde in this race. So there's the disparity between a Senate race in Wisconsin that Baldwin is leading by 30,000 in, in the presidential that Trump's been declared is leading by 30,000 in, and the presidential that Trump's been declared the winner by 30,000 in. And frankly, when you look at what's left, there is very, very little left in Wisconsin. So Baldwin is in very good position actually here.

It's amazing how close these two races are, and they may have different results here from a partisan standpoint. Also, that's a possibility over here in Michigan right now. Again, 95% of the vote, Mike Rogers, the Republican, is leading. The margin's only 13,000 votes for Rogers. Now, let me show you the presidential race in Michigan. Not been called yet, but look at that difference.

113,000 votes is Trump's margin right now in Michigan. And most of the action in Michigan that's left is right here in Wayne County. This is Detroit and it's in virons. Harris here is leading, you see, by 232,000 votes. That's a full 100,000 votes less than Biden won Wayne County by four years ago. There is still probably about 100,000 votes,

like about 100,000 votes left to come in Wayne County. So this is gonna get a little bit tighter here. In terms of Harris overtaking Trump in Michigan, if you won't do it from Wayne County, it doesn't look like, and there are still some Republican areas that are left. So that may not be enough to lift Harris over Trump in Michigan. But when you go back to that Senate race, that hundred thousand votes in Wayne County

could absolutely be enough to lift Alyssa Slotkin over Mike Rogers. So again, the possibility of a divergent result there in Michigan is very much alive. And then let's take a look over here at Pennsylvania, where you got Dave McCormick, the Republican, about 65,000 votes ahead here of Bob Casey. Now again, compare that 65,000, really about 66,000 votes to the presidential race in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, 169,000. Again, there's a gap there of a hundred thousand votes and what's left in

Pennsylvania, there's a couple things here but the biggest one is gonna be Philadelphia. Okay, you see 84% there. What they've told us in Philadelphia is sometime this morning there's gonna be another release of a big batch of vote by mail. Pennsylvania gets a lot, Philadelphia gets a lot of it. It takes them a long time to count it. That vote by mail is extremely democratic. So, you know, you can look for Democrats in that vote and in what is still to come in Philadelphia,

Democrats are gonna gain ground. Harris is gonna gain ground. She's gonna add to that margin in Philadelphia. This will tighten up some statewide in Pennsylvania. Not enough obviously to put her anywhere in the game. The state has been called but again in the context of a Senate race that 65,000 votes that could make it very interesting with the twist being in Pennsylvania that there's provisionals gonna be provisional ballots numbering in the tens of thousands we expect out

of Philadelphia and again that we expect to be heavily democratic. So the combination of that vote by mail, that provisional, anything else remaining in Philadelphia, could that be enough to lift Casey over McCormick? That starts to get interesting. It's not just Philadelphia that's left in Pennsylvania. There are some other Republican areas that could balance this out a little bit. Overall, though, you expect you expect Casey and Harris to tighten those races. Again, Harris won't come anywhere near winning it, obviously. Could Casey? It's not nearly as steep for him there. So it's interesting. We talked about it in 16 and 20. There's only one state in those two elections where the

Senate and presidential had a different outcome. Maine, Susan Collins, 2020. There's three where that's possible here, and we haven't even gotten to Nevada and Arizona. Wow. Wow. NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki. Well done. Thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. A lot to go over, John. You wanted to talk, though, before we went to Steve, I think, about Joe Biden?

Yeah, there's a couple things here. First of all, just the sheer volume of this victory. There are 1,300 counties in the United States. Donald Trump improved his performance in over 90% of them than where he was. This was just a staggering number up and down the board. Every geography, virtually in every demographic, he did better this time around. Yeah, I think I was talking to some Democrats in the wee hours this morning, and they sort of pointed to two as they start to pick up the pieces here two sliding doors moments one is Hollman sort of mentioned earlier this idea that had President Biden decided earlier that he was not going to run for reelection that could have

either given the vice president by the way when you say sliding door moments is this the Gwyneth Paltrow 1998 movie you're the one who usually has the dated pop culture references this is my turn that is a deep reference on election I was there with you by the way a great a great great movie great movie and appropriate here that's not because that's that's the number one so it's going to walk into that sliding door. We have a primary system. Yes, it's an either gives the vice president more time or we have a primary but the other of course is just what happened in February of 2021 at a month

post January 6 even the Republican Party was ready to move on most of them from from Donald Trump. And yet he was acquitted in the Senate. That was his second impeachment trial. That one connected to January 6th. Mitch McConnell decided not to whip the votes to try to get a conviction. We don't know that he'd been successful, but there wasn't even an effort. Had he been convicted, Trump would not have been allowed to run for office again. He chose not to. Trump was able to begin his slow comeback. And the other thing that some of the Biden administration have been saying for months, even before we knew

the results last night, that if the attorney general had appointed a special counsel sooner, perhaps those federal cases would have been further along and changed the narrative of this race as well. Claire. Yeah, I think it's really important for us to remember that maybe his mistakes weren't mistakes. We were all really Trump's.

Trump's mistakes. Yeah, we talked about his mistakes. Maybe they weren't mistakes. I agree. And we talk about the abortion issue, for example. If you look at what happened on the abortion issue yesterday, really nine of the 10 states by a majority, Florida didn't get far enough, but it was like 57%. The majority of Florida voted to protect abortion rights.

They voted to protect abortion rights in Missouri, Montana, Nebraska. The only place that defeated it was South Dakota. So there's now only been one state in the union where the majority of people didn't vote in favor of abortion rights, where it's been put up, no matter how red it is. And Trump kept, he muddied the waters enough to say, well, the states are gonna vote. And so people went in that booth in Montana, for example, he won by 20, okay? And abortion rights won.

And then you look at my Senate colleagues. I think, and Steve can probably say I'm wrong eventually, but I believe based on the numbers yet to come in, that we're only going to lose two incumbents besides West Virginia, and that is Sherrod and John. And once again, look in those states. Trump won by 20 in Montana. Tester right now is only down by seven.

In Ohio, Trump won by 12. Sherrod is only down by six. So the moral of the story is you can overcome Trump, but not by that much. And the other moral of the story is, listen, we spent a lot of time talking about abortion rights. America decided not to blame Donald Trump. America decided, okay, I can vote to protect abortion rights and also vote for him, and we're not going to have these immigrants' maraudiness, and we're not going to have our

kids turning trans when they go to school. It raises a question, and it's a good question for you, for all the panel. If you look at the numbers right now in Nevada, as they're great, we don't have the full vote in Nevada, Arizona, and all of these states, as Steve just went through in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, The Democratic Senate candidates overperformed Kamala Harris in pretty much all of them as far as at this point, it looks like Jackie Rose could win that race, overperformed Kamala Harris. Gallego in Arizona is going to be the winner. Way overperformed Kamala Harris.

What explains that? I don't know that I've ever seen a situation where consistently a party's Senate candidates have overperformed their presidential nominee. Somebody will correct me if there's a past example of that. I can't think of one, but it's pretty much across the board in these competitive Senate races. What explains that? What explains it to you? Well, I think...

Would you like me to say it or think what I mean to say I think what I say it Well, if she if she were six foot four white man from from Arkansas or from you know, Florida And she ran a good Middle-of-the-road campaign talking about reaching out. Do you think she would be losing by that much? I think she if she could like chew tobacco and carry a shotgun and talk about football and be a guy's guy. I mean, you tell me. Well, let's combine that, though, and I don't discount those questions of race and gender,

but I also think we should combine that with the thing we talked about earlier, which is unlike all those Senate candidates who were campaigning for two years and are very well known, some of them are Senate incumbents who are very well known in their states. If you asked on the day that Kamala Harris got in the race, if you went to Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Pennsylvania, and asked voters in a focus group how much they knew about the vice president versus how much they knew about their sitting senator, a lot of them will know way more about their sitting senator than they did about Kamala Harris. They were not introducing themselves to their electorates.

And by the way, most people that know a vice president don't think much of a vice president. George H.W. Bush was a laughing stock. He had a year, year and a half to run to get elected president of the United States. That happens time and time again. I will say, though Claire, even in my small congressional race, the first time I ran, in your larger Senate race, you know, I ran a year and a half. He was like, why did you run so long? I said, because it took me six years, I mean six months of screwing up to figure out what was connecting with people. It took me nine months to figure out what stump speech I wanted to carry in, whether it was VFW halls or churches or wherever I was going. It takes time. And

that's for, again, a small congressional race. You're parachuted down with three months to go in a presidential race. Americans don't have a lot of time to get familiar with you. Yeah, no question about that. And it turns out that, you know, fear and anger. Fear and anger were the most powerful political tools right now in America. And we all believed, I think, to a person, and I think the vast majority of people

who voted for Kamala Harris, believed that fear and anger were not the answer. But clearly fear and anger is what he was marketing and it worked. And we got to come to grips with that. This isn't as much about Donald Trump as it is about America. Rev, this picking up the pieces and the postmortem will begin this morning in the Democratic Party and may go on for years to come. This is a generational,

defining election where they're going to have to ask some hard questions of themselves inside the party. So in these early hours after Donald Trump has declared the winner, what's your assessment of what happened and where the party needs to go from here? Well, I think a serious assessment must be made to really understand the fear that Donald Trump was able to play on people. And to really, rather than just finger pointing a name call, really understand what drove a lot of voters to not go where, in my opinion, logic should have brought them and whether the messaging was right.

But I also go back to the point I made earlier, and Joe raised, we cannot ignore, there is still a lot of racism and gender bias in this country. And I think for us to ignore that and not try to bring that front and center so we can heal that would mean that we would end up in the same place.

Kamala Harris is a woman of color in an interracial marriage, and running as a woman to be the head of state. That is something a lot of Americans are not ready to deal with. How we move that forward, we need to face it and deal with it. And I hope we do it in a way that shows that we will be more mature than when they lost. There will be no January 6th insurrection from our side. It must be the maturing of America. Well, I just say really quickly too,

Democrats need to be mature and they need to be honest. And they need to say, yes, there is misogyny. But it's not just misogyny from white men. It's misogyny from Hispanic men. It's misogyny from black men, things we've all been talking about, who do not want a woman leading them. Might be race issues with Hispanics. They don't want a black woman as President of the United States.

You know, the Democratic Party, I've always found when you're sitting around talking, they love to just sort of balkanize everybody into these separate groups and say, oh, white people don't like women and black people. No, it is time for the Democrats to say, OK, and you and I have talked about this before a Lot of Hispanic voters have problems with black candidates

Right a lot of with other Spanish Don't like each other and some of the most misogynist things I've heard going on There's get out the vote tour came from black men. I mean massaging this thing so you're absolutely right it's not simplistic and we've got to have real honest conversations about real honest conversations. Before we go to break I just want to say a word about Kamala Harris the vice president because she really put herself out there over the past few months at great risk and peril to herself and her family. She was thrown into the deep end of the pool politically and hit all her marks and

then some and showed up for America pushing back against negative forces from all sides and from those you couldn't even see the ones we were just talking about. It's really difficult to describe what she did, what she tried to do, and the history that she did make, I'm very grateful for. And perhaps we will learn from it. So I'm very grateful for the effort, and I think we'll be asking a lot of questions about ourselves and about the nature of how this all played out

in the coming days and weeks. Well, and listen, and America is a story, and I'm not being, I'm not being Pollyanna-ish here. America is a story, and it continues to be written every day. In 1966, or 1964, after Barry Goldwater got defeated, boy, you should go back and look at the headlines about the end of the Republican Party. And two years later, what happened? Ronald Reagan started the Reagan Revolution in California. You could say the same thing after Watergate,

and then Reagan wins in 1980. In 1984, Ronald Reagan wins 49 states, and everybody's talking about the San Francisco Democrats. They're going to be in a hole for the next generation. 1986, Democrats shock the world. They take control of the United States Senate. We could do this over and over again. In 2004, you had George W. Bush's team talking about a permanent Republican majority in 2004.

In 2006, Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House. In 2008, Barack Obama gets elected and we hear about a rising ascendancy. This is going to be the Democrats in control for the next 30 years. Two years later, the Tea Party wins, saying, we're finished with Washington, and the way they do business there, we're here for good. Two years later, Barack Obama is elected president of the United States.

Again, so yes, Democrats, independents, Republicans will learn from this, and they will look at what Kamala Harris did and as they look back at this year they're not going to be able to say oh there was a flawed candidate here who missed this mark in the debate and missed that mark on the 60 minutes interview. They're going to look back and they're going to learn from this.