republicans have been so -- it's changing because republicans have been so hard hearted and stiff armed, against latino and hispanic communities. >> raul reyes from usa today. thank you, that is all in this evening. we will see you back here tomorrow 8:00 eastern, the rachel maddow show starts now. it is now 9:00 p.m. eastern time here in new york, we are continuing our coverage of what has been a truly startling development in the world of american politics. some people are saying it is the biggest political upset in their lifetimes. eric cantor has lost his seat in congress, he was widely expected to be next in line to be speaker of the house, there was much speculation as to the exact timing of when john boehner would step down and give eric cantor the speaker job, that speculation is now moot because eric can'ter appears to be out of congress all together.

polls closed at 7:00 in the commonwealth of virginia, in a little less than an hour ago, the race was officially called by the associated press for eric cantor's tee party challenger. eric cantor has served in the house since 2001. he was first elected in 2000, was sworn in in 2001. number two republican since republicans took control of the house in 2011. tonight it appears eric cantor's career will be over. really, nobody expected this result coming into tonight, but he did concede the race with shock on his face. just a short time ago. >> thank you. thank you. obviously, we came up short. serving as the seventh district congressman and then having the majority to be leader has been one of the highest hoppers of my

life. i know there's a lot of long faces tonight, and it's disappointing, sure, but i believe in this country. i believe there's opportunity around the next corner for all of us. so i look forward to continuing to fight with all of us for the things we believe in, for the conservative cause, because those are the answers to the problems so many of us are facing. thank you all, very, very much 37. >> eric cantor represents a very conservative, very republican district in virginia, and aside from this little primary issue, the seat had been considered to be very safe heading into november at least. in the closing weeks of this campaign, he started to fight increasingly hard against this insurgent campaign from a first-time candidate, a local economists professor named david brat.

he waged a one issue campaign against eric cantor, and his issue was immigration. he accused cantor of supporting immigration reform. he called it amnesty. he said it was amnesty, that president obama was helping get amnesty, whether it was that or other dynamics at work, chuck todd earlier this evening, highlighted the roll of very low turnout maybe deciding this race tonight. regardless, this was a one-issue campaign. eric cantor spent somewhere in neighborhood of $1 million. dave brat just addressed his supporters a short time ago saying this is the happiest moment of his life, but again, the big news, the news that has landed like a political bombshell is eric cantor of virginia has lost his seat in congress. just an amazing development. joining us now is chuck todd.

nbc news political director and host of the daily rundown here on msnbc. as you surveyed a national response to this so far, who is declaring themselves the winner here? >> the winner are those fighting a major immigration reform. that is the crowd that feels they have made the loudest statement with this win. there's going to be a lot of this is a tea party victory. this isn't like mississippi. there was this professional tea party crowd. there's a difference. he tapped to the immigration issue which is a much more organic movement inside the republican base. a little separate from the tea party world. sometimes we conflate it because anyone that's not establishment gets labeled as the tea party. you didn't have professional groups in there and we had this perfect storm of what is in the

news at the moment. dave brat, what was his proof that eric cantor was quote/unquote for amnesty. i think he used it about every fourth word when i interviewed him. he was supporting the treme act, the american version of the dream act. it's about children brought across the border illegally. unaccompanied minors or minors, but people, it wasn't their fault. what's the current crisis the border is dealing. it's been lighting up talk radio. you have an urgency to the issue if you're running this truly more grassroots than some ort this other stuff. when you're not spending $100,000, that's grassroots party. >> how does the republican leadership thread between these sort of competing imperatives? obviously, in a single district,

somebody can unseat somebody like eric cantor who has been there for seven years, specifically on immigration. we saw national polling showing even republican voters like the idea of immigration reform. republican voters even broadly won't support against someone because they supported immigration reform. it's working in these microcosmic ways. doesn't reflect in the national polling and numbers on the issue. how does somebody like cantor ever do both of those things, win at home and help the party win nationally? >> he couldn't figure it out and he tried. there have been some who e-mailed me said and don't declare it as dead. eric cantor was helping but he

didn't know how to back it. he was trying to have it both ways, where look at lindsay graham. he's unapologetic about immigration reform and he's doing fine tonight. i think ultimately, again, you had everything come together. one candidate channeling that outrage, and it's in the rural south, in these places i think you're seeing where immigration has more of a bite. why doesn't it show up in the national polls? because the south -- that's why it doesn't show up in the national polls? if you look at it regionally, you'll see the south is on a different place on immigration than anywhere else in the country, particularly the west and northeast. we have been watching it in the primaries, primarily, immigration is the most

animating issue in order to at least talk to the base or have a conversation the base of the republican party. >> can i ask you about the way eric cantor has done his job as majority leader. he's done his job trying to wrangle different factions of the party. deciding who is allowed to vote yes or no when it is difficult for those members. how did he do in terms of managing factions in congress. is that a thing that people need outs on? is that something that hurt him with this insurgency at home? >> it certainly made it easy for mr. brat to say this guy is the establishment. look what he's doing. he's a wheeler-dealer. and that was eric cantor's job, and he did a better job than anybody else in leadership in figuring out how to straddle the establishment on the fence. he had a better relationship with the committee than john boehner did.

he was able to make the deals when nissary. keep things at bay, particularly, i would argue, over the last 18 months. it was a difficult job for these guys in 2011 and 2012. you saw them licking their wounds for losing the presidency in '12. you saw them become more cooperative with eric cantor and the republican leadership specifically. when it comes to cantor specifically, he did lose contract. he couldn't get his candidate elected chairman of enrico county seventh congressional district convention. he lost to dave brat's candidate. that was sign number one. there's one reporter who said over the last year, eric cantor would have to send a press

release to let people know he was coming, he didn't come at often because he was traveling the country, helping other raise money. doing the things keeping him in power and racking up chips so he could become speaker. the money was on boehner retiring in spring. there was nobody else who was going to have the votes to topple cantor. now it throws it wide open. unless paul ryan wants this thing, and he may be too close to the immigration issue. unless he wants it, there's a huge vacuum for those of us republicans. >> for those of us who very much enjoy reporting on interrepublican chaos, the world just got a loss -- >> i was just going to say, you don't have to look hard for news stories over the next six months. >> thank you, my friend. all right, i want to bring in larry sab adough, director of the center for politics at the

university of virginia. whenever anybody thinks virginia politics, we want to know what larry is going to say to explain it. thanks for being with us. >> sure, rachel. >> let me ask you about the seventh district and whether they should have seen this, whether it shouldn't have been such a shock. should eric cantor have been seen as more vulnerable as he was? >> it's a 57% republican district, at least judging by the 2012 presidential election. it's not overwhelmingly surprising. if i could focus on something chuck pointed out, we look at issues like immigration to draw the straws together, whether it's mississippi senator or this eric cantor race, but chuck pointed out something important. eric cantor not only lost touch with some of his district and because of his travel, but he had a machine. this was a real machine, and the canter machine in seventh like all political machines over time

steps on toes. when you step on enough toes and create enough enemies, you create conditions for a tremendous upset which is in virginia, the biggest upset in primaries since 1966. >> in terms of machine politics. one of the great advantages is supposed to be turnout. you have your tendrils into so many of the institutions that you're able to use the existing infrastructure in your congressional district or your city or state to get people to turn out even when they don't particularly look enthusiastic about you. watching at these as the last votes come in, seems like a small turnout.

35,000 something votes for david brat. 28,000 for cantor. the turnout overall wasn't there. is that the mathematical key to why he didn't win? >> obviously, it's who did turn out. actually, rachel in virginia, for primary turnouts, that's really impressive. >> really? >> that's a high turnout. so no i don't think this can be blamed on low turnout, it was the fact that david brat's people were really charged up. we did see evidence of that. chuck mentioned the reicho county convention where the chair, the longtime chairman of the seventh district who was a cantor ally was tossed out on his ear, and cantor himself was booed in front of his family, by many of the delegates. this is unhurt of. he had run that district like a personal preserve. i think he and his people fooled themselves into believing they could do what you said. use that machine that always worked, at least since 2011, and generate enough to overcome the

brat forces, the tea party forces. i've got to say, though, this is -- in this state, as we have seen in mississippi and a lot of other places, this is a party at war with itself. it really is at war with itself. i'm old enough to remember when the democratic party was at war with itself in the '60s and '70s. >> let me ask you one question that seems maybe slightly beside the point at this point, but the democrats when it looked like eric cantor had a tight hold on the seat, didn't necessarily say they were going to run somebody against cantor in november. just a couple days ago, they picked a professor at the same university where david brat is a professor. again, this is sort of beside the point, but is david brat, the dragon slayer, going to be able to walk into the seat, or is this a fight between two unknown professors from the same

college fighting it out in the general? >> brat is certainly the favorite because it's a 57% republican district, but it is amusing this small college is going to have its own congressman. and all i can say is i'm glad i'm not there because the faculty wars are bad enough when you don't have two faculty members running against each other. >> thank you so much for being with us tonight. i really appreciate it. >> thank you, rachel. >> just an absolute political stunner tonight. one of the biggest upsets in modern history. the seventh district, which you would never think was the big thing, except it was the perch for eric cantor for the last seven years, and tonight, he lost his seat. he lost to a tea party challenger named dave brat. there's some question whether he could run a write-in campaign to

hold on to his seat. whether it's possible, they gave no impression he was going to do that. amazing. this is an omg day in american politics, much more to come, stay with us. all o mission a for a final go. this is for real this time. step seven point two one two. verify and lock. command is locked. five seconds. three, two, one. standing by for capture. the most innovative software on the planet... dragon is captured. is connecting today's leading companies to places beyond it. siemens. answers. [ female announcer ] we eased your back pain, you turned up the fun.

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the house majority leader eric cantor has lost his seat in the house of representatives tonight in an absolute stunner out of virginia. we overuse the words "stunning" and "shocking" in political coverage, but tonight, we have earned both of those words. we're going to have much more ahead on the story tonight including what this does immediately to the republican power structure in washington, and that's next. are you're wrong. what's on the outside and what's on the inside

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they can keep yours safe, too. make it matter. political ads are forever. they are forever even when the candidates themselves wish they would go away. they're an indelible record of what politicians say and promise and allege and screw up. so for example, this year in kentucky's senate race, senator mitch mcconnell tried to disappear a screwed-up ad where he showed players from duke university celebrating a championship instead of players from the university of kentucky. he convinced youtube to block just about the only record of the embarrassing mistake of an ad, but a kentucky blogger yanked that clip out of the memory hole and now mitch mcconnell is stuck with everybody being able to see the campaign ad that he tried to hides. video is forever. in politics, it's the closest thing we have to a permanent record.

the time you called some guy macaca when you got annoyed with him at a campaign event. that's forever. that time you were just trying to flip pancakes, and whoops, there he is, that's forever. that time you were mitch mcconnell running for senate in kentucky and you shows duke celebrating their win instead of kentucky, that's forever. that time you were a congressional wig shot used to getting things your own way for your district, but you go to your own district, and they boo you and heckle you like crazy, that's all on tape. that's forever. >> when i sit here and i listen to mr. brat speak, i hear the inaccuracies of families here -- [ booing ] >> we are about a country of free speech, so decency is also part of this.

>> that was congressman, incumbent congressman eric cantor last month, running to try to hold on to his congressional seat in the seventh district of virginia. he won seven terms in a row in that district. he's the house majority leader in line to become speaker after john boehner, and we learned after the race he couldn't go home to his local republicans in his district without getting booed. while congressman cantor was working away at the top tiers of republicans in washington, this is what his challenger dave brat was telling people at home. this is what dave brat called on the doorstep of cantor's home office in virginia. you'll see this was a true shoestring operation by brat. you'll see that in part by the way they have to flip the camera around midstream so it will come out okay when they post it on youtube. >> eric cantor's promise of citizenship for illegal immigrants has opened the floodgates on our border. he has repeatedly over and over

again promised citizenship for those who enter our country illegally. he continues to demand citizenship for illegal candidates and continues to erase our borders. >> heading into tonight's primary, brat had been blasting away at cantor over immigration. amnesty and immigration over and over again. and eric cantor responded to him. responded to this tea party challenge in his home district that was about eric cantor being soft on immigrants. eric cantor, and i think this is important, he responded to this challenge in a two-track way. the first way was in his political ads. the video. the videotaped evidence of the campaign that eric cantor is smart enough to know would be his legacy forever. and in a way, it would be the legacy forever for the republican party as a whole since he is their majority

leader in congress. he got very risk-averse when it came to putting things on video. the ads eric cantor ran in the race were the most milquetoast things you have seen in your life. >> most new jobs are created by small business, but too many in washington want to raise their taxes. let's empower people, not government, and we'll kick our economy into gear again. this is eric cantor and i approve this message. >> that's the ad equivalent of pleated chinos. you see it and it disappears immediately. i want good things, not bad things. join me. you run for office, you pick where you're going to take a risk. eric cantor chose not to take a risk on tape. his campaign videos and campaign ads were the political equivalent of have a nice daise. i'm already a congressman. i look like a congressman, send me back there, no harm done. that's one track of how he tried to handle his tea party challenger.

the tea party challenger had no money to run his own ads, but when cantor was running them, that's what they looked like. he was killing him press conference after press conference even after they learned how to hold the iphone the right way. and he ran this race as a smiley faced emoticon that says nothing, but here is the other track he ran simultaneously. over the past few weeks eric cantor has been mailing out these flyers in his district. he's not posting them on youtube for the national media to chew over. he only did this as direct mail. he quietly, proverbially blowing up your mail box with the message no matter what you might have heard, eric cantor is against immigration reform. eric cantor is torching immigration reform. eric cantor is burning immigration reform to the ground. eric cantor is rejecting president obama's latest immigration scheme. quote, eric cantor is the number one guy standing between them and the american people on immigration reform. he would like you to know that. that has been the character of his campaign, at least as far as he mailed it to his constituents' mailboxes.

he didn't put it on the internet where it would end up on the interwebs and tvs. no, what you might find online is, ah, he seems like a nice man, but the way he was actually trying to campaign for office at home was much more hard core. immigration reform over my dead party. polls closed in virginia at 7:00 p.m. eastern tonight. it was basically just over an hour later when we got the absolutely shocking news. eric cantor, how majority leader. seven-term incumbent lost his seat, the republican nomination to tea party challenger again, who hit him over and over again on the idea of immigration. the polls closed at 7:00. the announcement an hour later. theoretically, he could run as a write-in, but in his concession speech, he gave no indication he would try that. this seems like the end of the road for him. eric cantor's fate as a member

of congress as a consequential story because he's the leader of the republicans in the house of representatives, and they're in charge of the house of representatives, but there's this question of how we extrapolate from the story. it's an important story in its own right, but watching this unfold in the last few weeks, watching how cantor was trying to publicly campaign one way and secretly campaign in another, there's been questions whether this primary campaign in his home district should be seen as just its own thing. right? was it possible that eric cantor going hard-core anti-immigration in the mailers and campaign is what he needed to say and look like for the primary, but we shouldn't see it as indication of a radical shift on immigration for the republicans in washington.

maybe it was just its own thing and the politics on immigration in washington are a separate thing. we get back to those normal politics on immigration after eric cantor comfortably defeated his challenger and went on to win the general election. that's not how it worked out. and maybe it still is an open question. the polls say nationally immigration reform continues to be popular, even among republicans. supporting immigration reform will at least not doom a politician's chances at the polls, according to the public polling. but then tonight happened. and this political shocker in virginia tonight legitimately is shocking. ups is a global company, but most of our employees

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my wife and two of my kids are here, my mother and mother-in-law. they hear the falsehoods but of course, i'm tempted to fight fire with fire. but instead, let me just leave you with some thoughts.

thank you. you know, first of all, it is easy to sit in the rarefied environs of academia, in the ivory towers of a college campus with no accountability and no consequence. when you throw stones -- [ booing ] >> when you throw stones at those of us working every day to make a difference. >> that was congressman eric cantor getting heckled last month at a meeting of the republican party local organization in his home district. after mr. cantor was booed and heckled by the republican activists from his own district, they took a vote for who would be the republican party chairman in his district.

mr. cantor already had his own guy, an eric cantor loyalalist whose chair of the seventh district party of virginia. he pulled out all the stops to keep his guy in the chairmanship. they sent out mailers to support the eric cantor guy. they sent out personalized trinkets to party loyalists. on the day of the convention, they reported that team cantor bought up all the conference rooms in the hotel where the convention was being held in order to deny their opponents any place to meet. they went so far as to provide daycare to the kids of their own cantor supporters. mr. cantor himself hosted a breakfast. vote for my guy to be chairman of this local party. he did everything he could, but his guy lost that convention last month in eric cantor's home district. specifically, he lost to this tea party guy who made a big show at a previous tea party event in virginia by beerating a picture of an empty chair that had a picture of an empty suit on it labeled eric cantor.

he made a big show out of calling him he would only call him mr. cantor. he would not call him representative cantor because eric cantor, according to him, doesn't really represent anyone. empty chair. maybe eric cantor knew then that tonight was coming, that a month later his congressional career in all likelihood would be ended by a tea party challenger right there in his home district. maybe we should have all known then when we heard him basically get booed off the podium, but we didn't see it coming then. if we had, everybody's jaws would not be hanging open all over washington and all over the country. joining us is john stanton, washington bureau chief for buzz feed. nice to see you. >> nice to see you. >> eric cantor is obviously not just a huge player in congress. he's the guy who runs the show on the republican side. he makes decisions about what they do and what they don't as

much as john boehner does. what does this do to republicans in congress for him to have poofed unexpectedly tonight? >> i think that's the biggest news out of this thing, frankly, other than him losing. you know, immigration was a big issue at the end of this thing. i'm not sure that he lost to immigration. i think it may have been he took it not that seriously to the last second, but what it has to do with immigration and any other bill that barack obama might be supporting or might be signed by barack obama will have long-term repercussions for the last couple years because he's no longer going to be able to marshal the troops to vote for spending bills potentially, certainly for things like immigration, any major reforms to federal law or new policies that either side might want to do, because i think all of his members are going to look at his election and say this is terrifying. we do not want to be eric cantor. if he can lose, the guy that everyone sort of looked to as one of the most politically acumen members of the house, they're not going to want to do anything. remember, he started the young guns with kevin mccarthy which

brought the republicans back into power. i think all of those members are going to look at this and say if the guy who got me here can lose, why can't i? >> in terms of what happened to the republican leadership, most of the reporting and wondering is focused on how long john boehner is going to stay speaker. when is he going to step down so cantor can get the job, that's moot at this point, but in terms of how the leadership gets rearranged, do you think the dynamics in washington right now are something like we should be looking for somebody who is kind of like eric cantor to get that job or should we expect a more revolutionary change within the republican party where they try to get somebody who is smutch more hard core, much more tea party, into the leadership to reflect this election result? >> you know, i'll be honest. i'm not positive. this actually could have bigger

repercussions than that. if eric cantor is no longer there because his voters said no to him, that is going to embolden a lot of the conservatives in the party when they go into their leadership elections after the november general elections, and they're going to say, maybe we don't want john boehner. maybe we can in fact get rid of him. maybe this will send a signal. if i was in leadership and i was kevin mccarthy or john boehner or anyone associated with leadership, i would be very worried, not just about who gets his job but all of their jobs because this is the kind of thing that will get people riled up. >> john, thanks very much for being here. i appreciate it. it's going to be a big night. just how big a deal is it that house majority leader eric cantor lost his seat in a primary election? a congressional leader not even making it to the general election?

it appears there's a new chapter in the history books tonight. on my count. the one where you step up and save the day? make it happen. (crowd) oh no... introducing verizon xlte. hey guys, i got it right here! we've doubled our 4g lte bandwidth in cities coast to coast. so take on more. with xlte. for best results, use verizon.

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to prove to you that aleve is the better choice for him, he's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with him all day as he goes back to taking tylenol. i was okay, but after lunch my knee started to hurt again. and now i've got to take more pills. ♪ yup. another pill stop. can i get my aleve back yet? ♪ for my pain, i want my aleve. ♪ [ male announcer ] look for the easy-open red arthritis cap. we're back with the breaking news tonight that virginia congressman eric cantor, the republican majority leader in the house, has lost his primary race tonight to tea party challenger dave brat. eric cantor is out of congress. but the specific part of the story tonight about a tea party challenger ousting a republican incumbent in a primary, that ought to sound a little familiar. in the 2012 election, richard mourdock defeated richard lugar in the senate primary in indiana.

in 2010, tea party challengers defeated incumbents in utah. mike lee defeating bob bennett in utah and i am not a witch tea partier christine o'donnell defeating mike cassell in delaware. this sort of thing has happened in recent years. this sort of thing. but not in any of those instances or any other instance that we could find has a challenger, tea party or otherwise, even come close to ousting a member of the leadership in congress. these were the top three republicans in congress. before about an hour ago, one of them was eric cantor. that is no longer the case. based on what we know right now about this breaking news story, it seems unprecedented for a leader in congress to lead their seat. there is precedent for leadership losing in the general election. they have been able to win their party's nomination and went on to lose to the other party in the general election. it's still rare, but it has happened occasionally. it happened in 2004 to the

democratic leader of the senate, tom daschle. he had been a senator for 18 years, but he lost his seat to the republican candidate in a surprising election upset in 2004. that was a big shock that year. ten years before that, it was tom foley, democratic congressman from washington state, and speaker of the house. he lost his seat in the general election in 1994. 1994 was a big landslide year for republicans, but winning tom foley's seat that year, ousting the sitting house speaker in his home district, that was perhaps the republicans' single biggest victory in 1994, but it took somebody from the opposite party to do it. when speaker foley lost his seat in 2004, he became the first speaker in a century to be defeated for re-election.

before foley, you would have to go back to the '50s, 1952, when a democratic leader in the senate lost his seat to barry goldwater in the general election in arizona. members of the leadership in congress losing their seats in the general election, losing their seats to the other party, that is a rare thing. but it is a thing for which we do have some modern examples in history. also run of the mill incumbents losing their primary races. we have modern examples of that in recent years, but a leader in congress? one of the top members of congress, one of the most powerful leaders of the majority party in a chamber of congress failing to win his party's nomination for another term, what happened tonight seems to us so far in reading history an unprecedented thing, at least as far as we can tell in the midst of this news story. this is the biggest thing that has happened in modern times. joining us now, steve kornacki. thanks for coming in. i really appreciate it. you said this was the largest political upset in your political lifetime when we spoke

earlier. upon reflection, does it feel that way and how consequential is this going to be for what the republican party is and stands for? >> in my lifetime, yes. i was born in 1979, so that's the era we're talking about. for the closest parallel we can come up with, the closest parallel would be 1974. in 1974, the dean of the united states house of representatives, the longest serving representative in the entire house, a man named emanuel seller from new york, had been there 50 years -- 1972, i got the year wrong, he was elected in '22. in '72, he lost in a democratic primary. he was the chairman of the judiciary committee. he would have, had he not been upset by a woman named liz holtzman, he would have gone on to chair the watergate hearings in the '70s. we know about emanuel seller and the watergate hearings, but he lost because he was not for the equal rights movement. he was against it.

liz holtzman who was about 30 years old, shocked him in the primary by a margin of about 600 or 700 votes. other than that, when you talk about primaries and senior leadership in congress, i can't find a case. >> and even in that case, it's a guy in a leadership role -- it's not the majority leader. >> right. >> just intense. well, how much should this be seen, and this is an inherently subjective question. how much should this be seen as a referendum on the house leadership and a fight of the tea party republicans verses the establishment versus an eric cantor specific thing? >> there's three things, first we have to stipulate there's what happens in an election and then how the political world interprets this. it's clear immigration plays a role here. but there are two other things to look at here. one is the idea of entrenchment, the idea of eric cantor being a republican leader, the face of washington in his district. you look at who has been felled by the tea party in the last

couple years. these are people who are the creatures of the potomac of washington. dick luger, 36 years in the senate. there was an issue of when was the last time he was back in indiana. thad cochran, 36 years. bob bennett in utah, 18 years. part of the tea party energy in the tea party is to fight entrenchment, people who go to washington and get potomac fever. that's one thing that affected cantor, and this i don't know about, but we might see reporting on it, there were democrats in that district, including a democrat who ran against cantor once, known as ben jones, former -- >> from "dukes of hazzard." >> he was in that district, and he tried to start a movement among democrats saying it's an open primary.

if you're a democrat, you can vote in the republican primary. you want to make eric cantor's life miserable, vote for his opponent. i don't know what degree that plays a role. >> that will be fascinating to watch. i was talking to larry and said, look how terrible those primary numbers are. that turnout is awful. he said, that's pretty good. it will be worth seeing how many are democrats. >> because they don't have primaries in virginia, it's always conventions. john warner the republican senator for a long time, was going to lose a convention. his tool to save himself was the primary, yet, that's going to be the thing to take eric cantor out. >> amazing. steve kornacki, thanks for being here. i appreciate it. we've got still a lot more to come on this, including information about who the democrat is who is going to be running against david brat for what we thought was eric cantor's congressional seat.

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that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. and yet, there's someone around the office who hasn't had a performance review in a while. someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. i'm looking at you phone company dsl. check your speed. see how fast your internet can be. switch now and add voice and tv for $34.90. comcast business built for business. this is great. the tea party republican who beat eric cantor, the republican nominee for the congressional seat which eric cantor held for seven terms. here's the thing though, his

democratic opponent in november is also a professor at randolph macon college in virginia. the democrat's name is jack trammel. nominated for the spot on the november ballot by virginia democrats. mr. brat is an economics professor. mr. trammel is a sociology professor. the author of a 2012 book on slavery in the old confederacy. and he is not a politician. but, very unexpectedly, virginians in the seventh district are going to have a choice between the sociology professor and economics professor, both from the same school, both who they are likely to never have heard of ever. ever before tonight. joining us is a reporter for the "virginian pilot" newspaper. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> i have to ask you about the seventh district. the lay of the land there, obviously jack trammel, the

democrat in the race thought he would be running against eric cantor essentially as a sacrificial lamb. should be expect this might be a more interesting general election race than it would have been before the upset in the primary? >> it is the rumble at randy mac, this is still the 7th district. still a heavily republican district. the districts in virginia, as are the districts in many other states, are, are gerrymandered. so this is a republican centered district. so still an uphill climb for mr. trammel. but, fact that he is not running against an incumbent, running against an insurgent tea party candidate, in mr. brat, makes this more of a wide open contest than it would have been if the nominee had now been departing. >> in terms of mr. brat and his wider significance, obviously, i said this earlier tonight. i don't mean to be overstating it.

he is a bit of a dragon slayer having taken out the house majority leader after being outspent 5-1 here. what extent has mr. brat been embraced by tea party factions or larger republican interest groups, or conservative interest groups in virginia. has he been kind of a stand-alone guy, running a stand-alone campaign or part of a larger movement that has embraced him against the republican establishment. >> he has been embraced by the tea party movement. what's interesting about this is that up until today, every publicly available poll suggested dave brat was going to draw 40%. everybody was saying that that in and of itself would be a victory if he was able to deny eric cantor from the threshold. we have the stunning outcome. not only does he get over 40%. he topples eric cantor by a margin. he has been embraced by the tea

party. there were signs this might happen. though any body projecting this ahead of today. was selling you fool's gold at this point. there were signs a month ago in eric cantor's long term party boss was knocked out at the local convention for the district. knocked out by a tea party activist. so there were some signs of the discontent with the so-called establishment candidates embodied, personified by eric cantor this outcome left everybody flat-footed. >> hindsight on this is crystal here clear. always is. nobody saw this, the reporter for the virginian pilot. nice to have you back. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> back in just a minute with more on just a crazy upset night in high, high stakes american politics. stay with us. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on

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>> one republican party invention that has a question mark in its future is the eric cantor invention called the young guns. the young guns were suppose to represent the young, hip future of the republican party. paul ryan, kevin mccarthy, and eric cantor radiating with youthful vigor. pretty much since the beginning of his career in the house, eric cantor on the fast track, won a second term in '03, given the post of deputy republican whip. doesn't sound like much. went on to become number two in the house, majority leader, eric cantor on the short list for vice president on john mccain's ticket. imagine if he picked eric cantor instead of sarah palin. he didn't. eric cantor was poised to succeed john boehner as speaker of the house. expectation and speculation come to an abrupt sudden end tonight within the last few hours with the shocking new that eric

cantor's congressional career has been terminated by a heretofore unknown economics professor in his district, tea party candidate, dave brat. i'm ari melber in for lawrence o'donnell. covering breaking news tonight that sent shock waves through the political world, eric cantor, number two republican in the house, member of gop leadership most associated with tea party strategy on the economy and 14-year incumbent, congressman cantor lost his primary to night. the big winner not only dave brat, little known professor who beat cantor, the tea party, anti-immigration activist who powered brat's underfunded campaign.