well, good evening once again we're covering these dual stories at this hour. both of them will change life in our country, though in different ways. while covering a spreading pandemic we are also tonight covering three state primaries in arizona, illinois and florida. first to the urgent health crisis. we have now entered a new stage in this nation's battle against coronavirus. the virus has spread now to all 50 states and the district of columbia. death toll has crossed north of 100. tonight there are over 6,000

confirmed cases in these united states. there's now the possibility that new york city, the largest urban center in our country, may soon see more severe measures to contain this virus. >> this is moving very fast. we should all be very concerned about how we find a way to slow down the trajectory of this virus. the idea of shelter in place has to be considered now. it has to be done between our cases the city and state working together, respecting the state's role. what i was trying to say to new yorkers this is reality we're facing now. get ready for the possibility because it's not so distant an idea at this point. >> what a series of events. that was mayor de blasio here in this studio not long ago. also tonight let's look to the west. the governor of kansas has announced all public schools will be shut for the remanldind of the school year.

governor of california warns most schools in that state will likely face that same fate. in washington the trump white house grappling with the economic foul ought of a nation forced to shutdown to fight a pandemic. the government may start by spending a trillion dollars. that includes giving money directly to americans. >> i will tell you what we've heard from many people and the president has said we could consider this. the payroll tax holiday would get people money over the next 6 to 8 months. we're looking at sending checks to americans immediately. and what we've heard from hardworking americans, many companies have now shutdown, whether it's bars or restaurants. americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now. and i mean now in the next two week. >> and the following made people snap to attention tonight. nbc news has confirmed that same man the treasury secretary told republican senators on the hill unemployment could reach 20% if congress fails to enact the stimulus measures.

we already know we are looking at a huge hit to gdp. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell says his chamber won't leave washington until it passes a coronavirus aid bill that was already passed by the house even if of his republican colleagues are not fully onboard. >> a number of my members think there are considerable shortcomings in the house bill. my counsel to them is to gag and vote for it anyway even if they think it has some shortcomings. >> news of potential federal intervention did help stocks recover some of the ground lost after monday's brutal sell-off. even so there's still a lot of uncertainty tonight about how long we'll be in this new kind of normal. let's instead turn to the results in the three races of this night. arizona, too early to call.

illinois, the joe biden the projected winner. and in florida joe biden the projected winner. steve kornacki over at the big board. and steve, as you've been pointing out all evening long part of the story here is how the delegate math changes in a rather dramatic way. >> yeah, i mean it's a huge night for joe biden in terms of the delegates just based on that massive lane slide he had in florida he will net get more than a hundred delegates more than bernie sanders. illinois he's going to win by probably a couple of dozen there and we're waiting on arizona. if i look like i'm nervously darting my eyes here and because what we're seeing happen in arizona right now is that all of the counties around the state, their polls closed an hour ago. there is a state law that prevents them from reporting any results for an hour after polls close. that hour just passed. they're filling in right now. here we go. this is what i was waiting for.

this is the ball game. this is maricopa county, and just right now three quarters of the vote from maricopa county which is well over half the state, this is phoenix and the suburbs just all reported in, and joe biden is leading this by double digits. you see this is biden 42, sanders 30 -- >> hey, steve, something that often happens, i have to interrupt you and that is for this. an election alert from nbc news. we are projecting that when all the votes are counted in the state steve was just walking us through in arizona joe biden will indeed make it a clean sweep 3 for 0 tonight and be declared the winner of the arizona democratic primary. steve kornacki, as you were saying. >> well, that was it. the decision desk was waiting on exactly what i was waiting on here and it was just a question of maricopa county. this is about 60% of the vote in the state of arizona.

it is phoenix. it is the phoenix suburbs. it is population dense, massive, sprawling, all these things. and what happened is you've got weeks here of mail in voting coming in, early voting in arizona. the bulk of the vote like three quarters of the vote in arizona was cast before election day. and so what happens is they're getting it in, they're tal yg it, they're getting it ready to release as soon as the polls close. i say as soon as the polls close, they have to wait an hour. so the polls closed at 10:00 p.m. eastern, 7:00 p.m. local. and the state law in arizona says okay you've got to wait an hour now to release it. basically all these counties now around the state have a vast majority of their vote tabulated and ready to go, and they're just looking at their clocks waiting for that one hour. about 62 minutes after polls closed you saw maricopa come in. a double digit lead here with still a little bit more to come in for biden. if you're leading in double digits in maricopa county,

you're going to be winning the state of arizona. again, this was sanders and his campaign, this was their best shot today. this is a state where you have a large hispanic population where sanders has done with hispanic voters in other states. our poll tonight, our phone poll shows sanders and biden basically tying with hispanic voters. that's good for sanders but he needed better than that by hispanic voters. and it adds up. as you say this is another biden win. the delegate halt tonight is probably going to push him to an advantage. it's sitting at over 300 right now. the national delegate race joe biden has gone over 1,100. that is lead of more than 300 over bernie sanders. you pick your adective, and that is daunting. but the common thread there, biden's winning them all. >> and steve a potentially

unfair question from me. i'll accept ballpark i'll accept top of your head. how many of those blue biden states did he win every county in? i know this was going to be hard. >> mississippi, alabama -- i'll tell you illinois we're waiting on. this is the one county in the state where sanders has got a shot. it's 100% now. sanders is going to win, 48, ha. this is the university of illinois. this was sanders by 32. it's going to be sanders by 3. he'll avoid the shutout in illinois. he got shout out in michigan, missouri, mississippi, all those states but not illinois. >> clar mccaskill, happens to be in the great state of missouri tonight, such is the nature of social distancing. claire, what i'd like to do with you is because we're taking part in this coverage during a

national emergency, which is the fault of a pandemic can we just take a second and talk about the scope of the turn around in the campaign and the fortunes of joe biden? >> yeah, there are so many things that have contributed to this. certainly jim clyburn and what happened with the african-american vote in south carolina will be looked at as a pivotal moment. but tonight i was reminded how presidents are supposed to acts in a crisis. we have a president right now who lies and hits the microphone and lies again and then hits the twitter thing and lies again. and when you're in a crisis americans want to be reassured.

and it's hard to get reassurance from a liar. joe biden tonight was calm, reassuring. i thought it was the best speech of his campaign, and that is because of the times we find ourselves in. and i think you're going to see him opening up bigger and bigger margins. and i think you're going to see more separation between him than the liar in chief that is in the oval office right now as this crisis rolls along and americans want clear direction and clear information and the facts. >> claire, the president today and he said this with a straight face -- said i always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. as if none of his campaign of diminishment had ever happened. >> yeah, and it's so unbelievably sick. because it's like he thinks none of us notice that he's lying.

like he thinks we're all too stupid to know that when he says stuff like this we're going, no, no, you're lying. and i with just want to mention briefly what's going on in the senate tonight. i've been talking to some of my former colleagues and rand paul is up to his tricks again. the house passed what was the first i think of several measures to try to help americans at this time, and it came over from the house. they passed it last week. and, you know, mitch didn't get around to calling the senate into session, and monday passed and now tuesday has passed because rand paul wants to vote on ending the war in afghanistan. it is so outrageous that rand paul is being allowed to hijack the senate tonight, and the bill that will include more testing which we've all talked about all night as being so important is going to languish for another day to try to get rand paul to

behave like a grownup. so it is not a good moment for the united states senate, and it'll be interesting to see how the stimulus package is being talked about is handled in the senate because they can't even do this, much less the giant package that mnuchin rolled out today. >> and claire, one more thing i just have to ask -- i keep thinking of all the hourly, the service employees, the people in the city where you are, places like lecleeds landing in st. louis where it's kind of a smaller scale new orleans with food and music, and that's what life is about there. it's the backbone of the economy in more than one st. louis neighborhood. what happens when all those incomes are stopped, cut off? >> you know, i feel personally about this. i worked my way through college and law school as a waitress. i spent years waiting tables, and i understand what this means

to millions of americans just in the restaurant and bar industry to say nothing of all the other small businesses that are travel related, tourist related, that are going to shrivel up if we do not get help to them first. you know, let's focus on the workers not focus on big corporations that have squandered their tax cut on stock buy backs. but let's focus on the workers and get them help and tell rand paul to sit down so we can get to it. >> senator claire mccaskill in saint lewis and let's change our focus all the way to the west. more cities are taking these unprecedented steps to try to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. monterey county, california, shelter in place order goes into effect tonight at midnight. further north san francisco as you know became the first and largest city to impose such a mandate early this morning.

almost 7 million people are now under orders to stay home for at least the next 3 weeks. people are prohibited from leaving unless for essential needs. essential government services including transit, police, fire along with health care services, grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, gas stations, they will remain open. people can leave their homes to go on walks, to exercise and take a pet outside, but they must maintain what's now become common, this 6 feet of buffer area in social distancing. nbc correspondent jake ward lives in the bay area, restricted area. he's with us once again tonight from his home. jake, it is -- it's almost dark disney movie creepy to have a report that you're allowed to go outside, you're allowed to take the family dog for necessary relief, but while outside at least maintain the spacing

called for. >> that's right. it's sort of an awkward social dynamic that's unfolding here where you talk to people from a great distance, you don't congregate, you certainly don't hug anybody. all of that is there. there's sort of an inconvenience that comes with all of that. but when i think about how other countries have had to take steps to lock off national borders, in the case of china shutdown whole cities not just in the way we are experiencing now, this sort of inconvenience of staying home, but shutting down highways, bringing out military rule to shutoff any kind of transit among people. it is amazing to imagine, wow, that stuff is just starting to begin to trickle into our lives here in the united states. at this point this is an inconvenience, but really not that much more than that when i think back across all the examples we've seen from across the world in terms of dealing with the need to really lock life down in order to slow down this pandemic. >> i know you're the parent of

little ones. we talked about it earlier this evening, and on social media i keep coming across various ideas to help parents with this new notion of home schooling. somebody in the last couple of hours asked if pbs wouldn't be perfect for this kind of role, and i'm guessing there would be an hour per grade going on through the day. but of course no two classrooms even in the same grade, no two schools, no two school districts are going to be on the same lesson plan. but to prevent slide in learning, which normally happens just in summertime, happens disproportionate toly income kids, to prevent that slide i suppose any assist would be welcome by parents. >> i think that's right, brian. i us, our children just went to beds moments ago in the room next to where i'm standing here. and, you know, they're thrilled. they're out of school. they get to hang with us, but it's suddenly on us to try to

keep their minds moving, right, to keep it all happening. but for me to greater concern i think is the conversation i had earlier today with one of the big outreach programs in san francisco that deals with homelessness there, a program called glide. and they were pointing ow that the hundreds if not thousands of children across california that are homeless on a day-to-day basis depend on the school system not just for the child care which makes this situation inconvenient for a family like mine, but the need to get food and shelter and the rest of it. >> as a fellow parent i just realized you should try to keep it down if you're trying to get those two little ones down for the night. jake, thank you very much for being so accommodating and welcoming in the confines of your home starting tonight for a good long while. we appreciate it. we are very fortunate to be joined now by the mayor of the city of san francisco, london breed. and mayor breed, i watched your announcement and i watched you

come to a critical part of it. when you asked people, you warned people not to panic. and i'm so curious tonight to get your assessment of compliance. what is in effect the end of day one. >> well, it looks like so many people have rosen to the occasion and are complying with the order. you see people walking around a lot more, but they are exercising social distancing. there are still challenges in our grocery stores and in other places. but for the most part the streets were pretty empty except for people walking around, walking their dogs, riding their bikes, on buses. our buses were fairly empty, so i think for the most part people are complying. they realize the importance of this, how significant it is, and we are adjusting. >> there's reporting that it took the aides around the president to kind of make him

concentrate on a worse case scenario, loss of life in a study to get him to take this more seriously. for you as the mayor of an important and large sprawling city and financial center, was there a moment, was there a presentation where you left the room and said we've got to do this? >> well, back in february -- february 25th to be exact, when my team came to me with some of the information they had because we had already operated our emergency operations center back in january to prepare for this. and so we were getting daily updates. we were provided with information, and when i declared a state of emergency on february 25th i knew then we were in for a major challenge. and people were wondering what are you doing? we don't even have a case yet in san francisco. the fact is we knew that it was only a matter of time, and if we didn't alert the public, provide

the most accurate scientific data necessary to make sure people were prepare, then we were going to be in for a real challenge with our public health system here in the city. and so everything that we've done has been in collaboration with our public health officers? of the best i think in the country to try and prevent the spread. and so we have taken steps that are i know unprecedented, but they are necessary. and i think that it's important for other cities throughout this country because this is not just stran, it's not just the bay area, it's not just california. we need to take drastic steps now in order to avoid, you know, the increase in the number of people who end up with the coronavirus. and that's what this is about. we want to slow the spread. we don't want it to get out of control where we can't handle the capacity in our hospitals. >> how often every day do you talk to the governor?

>> the governor and i communicate somewhat on a regular basis, but i probably talk to my hubble health director more throughout the day than anybody else. >> mayor london breed, thanks for being patient with us, and we wish you the very best with the enormous challenge you've been handed, and please stay well. >> thank you. we're going to take a break in our coverage. when we come back we're going to talk about other aspects of this crisis we're covering, other aspects of tonight's political ramifications following the primary vote in three cities. the dire warnings in this country about hospital shortfalls, what we need and by how much will it fall short of what we've got. y how much will it fall short of what we've got ay? [thunder] (son) no. (burke) seen it. covered it. at farmers insurance, we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. so call 1-800 farmers to get a quote. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

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i'm really sorry to tell you this because the number's gone up literally over 100 cases in the course of the day. we're at 923 cases at this hour tonight with 10 people who have passed away. >> 923 cases in the city. >> in the city alone, rachel. it's unbelievable how rapidly this crisis is growing right now. >> as coronavirus cases surge in new york state, new york city, across the country there's growing concern over the availability of hospital beds and medical equipment. tonight "the washington post" reporting the defense department offering health and human

services up to 5 million single-use face masks, 2,000 ventilators and 14 testing labs. with us for more dr. caveata patel. she served as a senior aide to valery jarrett in the white house, and also happens to be a practicing primary care doc at john hopkins. and dr. natalie aczar who's joining us via skype. dr. patel, i'd like to begin with you with a very simple reminder and this is often unpleasant to hear. for the folks watching it's coming up on 11:30 eastern time, 8:30 out west. what's life going to look like in our country? let's give 2 to 3 weeks from now. where are these numbers that seem astronomical?

new york city has fully one sixth of all the known cases in this country. where are these numbers going to be? >> brian, these numbers are going to elevate at least 20-fold, so we're talking and you've already heard the guv r governor of new york really try to give people a stark reminder. 18 million new yorkers, anywhere from 40% to 60%. remember a lot of those people will be completely asymptomatic but we're talking about just in the state of new york alone potentially 9 million people. so these numbers will absolutely go up unless many of the measures of the governors and mayors who really are truly the heroes out of this story are taking right now to shelter in place and do that kind of proverbial flatten the curve. >> dr. patel, we're starting to hear the term "herd immunity." we're starting to hear arguments, well, if everybody gets it, that's the only way we

can arrest its growth. can you explain this term to a lay audience including me? >> sure and it's certainly not something even for a lot of medical professionals easy to get. but herd immunity to be very simplistic about it is the concept almost like the flu or like the common cold, brian, that the more people that get it, then the more people who have either through a vaccine or actually having the disease can actually spread kind of person to person immunity. and so that's the concept of herd immunity. and really this happens through having kind of passive -- it's something that we see with infectious diseases. and it's something that you saw the u.k. up until recently was advocating for by keeping schools open. i think the real issue is we don't know enough about this virus to make that prediction.

you've had guests that talked about that. the second thing is we actually are not sure what the fatality rate is, and it's way too early to think about how we could potentially without a vaccine, without any sort of treatments safely and responsibly encourage herd immunity. and i think you've had guests within the last two hours that have talked about the fast changing nature of this virus. the virus we see today is not going to be the virus that we see in 6 months. and that's because it's a very different type of organism. >> and dr. azar, you know because you've been experiencing it for the last couple of days what the front lines are like here in new york working in a big company in new york city in a building known around the planet which markets itself as a magnet to tourists, we keep a skating rink out back in the winter. and that makes us kind of a target within a target in the

city of new york. are you confident that your charges, the folks you've been advising inside this network, this company have done all they can to arrest the spread and fortify themselves? >> you mean here at nbc? >> yeah. >> yeah. i think -- i think they really, really, really acted appropriately. i mean we use the term out of an abundance of caution a lot, but i really believe that they did in this case. as far as we know the exposure that we all had was truly minimal. and i had, you know, conversations with my hospital colleagues about whether or not my exposure at nbc would have qualified for quarantine as a medical professional. and in fact it probably wouldn't have. so i theoretically could have,

you know, gone and worked this week and seen my patients based on the level of exposure that i had, which i think is interesting. so i think that nbc, again, i think nbc was very, you know, very quick to say you know what we're reporting on how to do this, we have to do this right. and, yeah, so you know i'm -- you can never be too careful with something like this. and there's no monday morning quarterbacking. we know just how contagious this virus is. we're learning more and more just how contagious it is in the asymptomatic period, so, yeah, i think they did everything right. and i'll be back in both offices hopefully next week. you know, interesting you bring that up, brian, because we're making adjustments on the hospital side, too, every single day. we're trying to get our telemedicine, our virtual care up and running by thursday, which is kind of unprecedented because most of us don't have that already, you know,

implemented in our practices. some of the younger, newer practices do. we didn't. so just everything is being modified literally on a daily basis as much as we're hearing the news changing on a daily basis. >> doctors, i want to thank you very much for first of all staying up late with us after a long day and for helping us understand this and pass it along to our audience. dr. patel, dr. natalie azar, we greatly appreciate it. when we come back we're going to switchover to our political coverage, talk about what happened tonight in 3 of our 50 states. the dramatic come around of the campaign of joe biden and voter turn out, what we've learned. bi turn out, what we've learned ca, i appreciate what makes each person unique. that's why i like liberty mutual. they get that no two people are alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. almost done. what do you think?

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welcome back, and let's speak candidly, shall we? a funny thing happened to this guy on super tuesday. he started winning and he has never looked back since. in florida, nbc news projects biden the winner tonight. in illinois, nbc news projects biden the winner tonight. in arizona, in the desert southwest, nbc news projecting joe biden, making it 3-0. not a bad tuesday night. the unknown, of course, was supposed to be our fourth state. that's ohio. we won't find out there until june, but steve kornacki already knows a lot at the big board. hey, steve.

>> hey, brian. yeah, a couple things we can tell you here. first on the delegate count, the national delegate count, you see that lead for biden there. still adding them all up tonight, but over 300 now. 315 the margin. if you look at this same combination of states, this same point in the race, in the pledged delegate count in 2016, biden -- excuse me -- sanders running against hillary clinton, hillary clinton did not get a lead like this in the pledged delegate count over bernie sanders. he never got ahead of her, but he didn't fall this far behind in the pledged delegate count. so i think that's significant, the distance biden is starting to open up here. the other thing we've been keeping in mind is the question of turnout. the coronavirus. was that going to affect it? the answer here is yes but in an interesting way. let's start in arizona where again we just got a bunch of the vote in, the early vote out there. that's the key to this.

how much early voting there is in the state of arizona. so two-thirds of the vote is now counted. this adds up to about 471,000 votes that have been cast so far, counted so far, with more to be tallied. look at this. that is significantly ahead of the 2016 primary turnout in arizona. they're at 471 now. they're still counting them. that number is probably going to be north of 500,000. you look, it was barely 400,000 in 2016, so they're going to be up, and they're going to be up significantly in arizona. i said, remember, that's a heave mail-in voting state, a heavy early voting state. take a look at florida. florida is also a pretty heavy early mail-in voting state. you can see with 93% in here, it's a little over 1.7 million. it is now past the 2016 level. it's going to rise a little bit more. it's going to be a modest increase in florida over the 2016 level. if you can remember, a couple hours earlier when we were starting to look at the florida results, our decision desk had a higher estimate for what the

total turnout was going to be in florida. what happened was that early vote, that mail-in vote was a very big number. the same-day vote there in florida, comparatively microscopic. so you're not going to see more than 2 million. you're going to see an increase because of the early and the mail-in voting, but it's going to be a modest increase. then you get to the third state tonight, and that is illinois. illinois is not the heavy early, mail-in state that these other two are. we're up to 84% of the vote here in illinois. right now, that adds up to about 1.2 million votes that have been counted. look at what it was in 2016. it was over 2 million. so that number, about 1.2 million, is going to rise. it's not going to rise a ton because what we're seeing here is what we saw in florida in a lot of these counties. that same-day vote today, it was a trickle in terms of people going out to the polls. you're just seeing here across the state of illinois for different reasons, if you look down here in little egypt,

southern illinois, you're seeing 40% reductions in turnout. some of that is rural voters who just aren't interested in the democratic party anymore. but even in these suburbs, these densely populated suburbs outside chicago where you saw huge democratic surges in 2018, you're seeing here turnout actually down from 2016 in places like that. in these college counties where of course school has been canceled for the last week or so because of the coronavirus, you're seeing turnout reductions as well. so illinois, unlike arizona and unlike florida, when they count these all up, you're going to see a pretty significant decline, probably like 20% in the turnout in illinois, and that is a coronavirus effect. there's no question about it. >> steve, a nonpartisan question about process. tell me why all 50 secretaries of state in all 50 states shouldn't begin a martial plan as of now to move their elections to a lock cinch even if people are not allowed out, not allowed to congregate.

>> i got to think for the general election, just in this climate we're in right now, that's where the conversation is going to move rapidly, at least for states to put the option on the table so that if you get to the summer, if you get to the fall and it looks like we're going to be in any situation like we are right now, that they have the option to go to some kind of mail-in. i suspect the conversation is going to be moving there rapidly and a lot of people are going to point to exactly what we're seeing tonight in terms of these turnout patterns as the reason why. >> all right. steve kornacki, as always worth his weight in gold. thank you so much. joy reid is back with us, host of a.m. joy, well known around here, as is former obama campaign manager david plouffe, who happens to be in the bay area tonight of all places, probably made up the excuse of walking the dog as a way of making it to a television studio and looking essential. joy reid, i'd like to start with you. we have a front-runner, joy. i think you've seen the map.

i think by now you know the shade of biden blue i'm talking about. two-part question. what do you think should happen in the democratic party tomorrow morning? what do you think will happen in the democratic party tomorrow morning? >> well, you know, i hate to tell the party what to do, but i think what is going to happen, what you're going to start to see are democrats start to move on from the primary. i think that the biden campaign, what they must do is find a way to bring down the bernie sanders, you know, supporters, his hard core supporters are going to be heartbroken. i worked an election where we lost. it is very difficult to walk away. and in the case of what we were doing in '04, it wasn't that the people i was working with had some great attachment to john kerry. it was a great attachment to ending the war in iraq and to

defeating george w. bush. and when we lost, i can remember that election night having an older woman sort of crying into my arms, you know. she couldn't believe that it wasn't possible to defeat a president who in the minds of the people in that room had lied us into a war in which a lot of people died, you know, in a lot of people's minds for something that didn't make any sense. so, you know, it isn't easy. and the sanders supporters are going to have a difficult walk now. and i think for the biden team, they've got to think about are there issues and ideas that sanders has put forward that he can adopt in a way that might bring some of those -- at least some of them or most of them in, and can he with the pick of his vice presidential running mate bring them in and excite some of those younger voters? a lot of them are younger voters of color. they're people who are excited, you know, as lawrence said earlier, some of them are first-time voters. so he has to think about that. i don't expect bernie sanders to necessarily walk away from the campaign in the near future.

but, you know, i wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot less active campaigning. but if i could just say, you know, just on a kind of a bigger picture sense, brian, i think a lot of voters today and just people i've been talking to and really spent a lot of time talking to people in florida. people are really coming to grips with the incredible cost of having elected a man like donald trump to be president. i think what's helping and what's driving this biden surge is that people are reckoning with that cost. you know, people sort of felt with barack obama as the backdrop, that they sort of had all of these options, you know, that you could sort of make all these choices about going to iconoclasm or do you really want hillary? i don't think she's good enough for me. and people made those choices with obama as the backdrop. with trump here, this was like hiring william shatner to be an airline pilot because he was james t. kirk and he piloted the enterprise. this man has no capacity to lead this country.

he fired the pandemic office and then lied and said he didn't. now the video is out showing, yes, he did. he doesn't understand government. he's got a guy working for him like steve mnuchin, who thinks you can do a payroll tax cut. folks i'm talking to in the restaurant industry, they're going to have to lay their people off. if you aren't getting a paycheck, a payroll tax cut does absolutely nothing for you. what's the point of that? i think the republican party has to start to rethink. if you don't believe in government, you cannot govern. and someone like donald trump as president is absurd in this sort of situation. i think biden is benefiting from the fact that he is a man of government. he is a man who understands and respects government. and so i think that, you know, he is on his way to getting that nomination. he just has to figure out a way to sort of soothe the bernie

supporters in a way that can bring as many of them in as he can. >> okay, david plouffe, as joy just plainly put it, joe biden is widely seen as a guy on his way to claiming the nomination. talk about the downside of the optics of starting tomorrow morning, after a 3-0 victory by biden, the optics of a sanders campaign continuing, lumbering along, and the backdrop couldn't be more serious. it's a national emergency. >> right. well, joe biden is the democratic nominee. the general election is set. it's joe biden versus donald trump. so bernie sanders may continue to campaign. i think joe biden needs to be incredibly respectful of that. to joy's point, they're going to have to work as hard as they'll work on anything to bring the sanders folks in. the but the general election is in 7 1/2 months. it's one of the most consequential elections in american history if not the

most. it was already the case before the coronavirus. when joe biden -- he can't spend in his campaign, can't spend a minute or a dime in wisconsin, in season, in ohio, which polls suggest could be competitive. that's not focused on the general election. there's building the campaign. there's deciding which battleground states you're going to target. there's obviously being the one voice, narrating trump's mishandling of this crisis. but the american people are also going to focus on once we get past the immediate health crisis, this is going to be an economic catastrophe, one of the worst this country may have ever faced. so joe biden's going to have to provide answers for people, not just about how he's going to triage the moment, but how we're going to rebuild our economy. so it's irresponsible not to begin focusing on the general election. you can do it in a respectful way. that work has to happen right now because what's clear over the last few weeks is if you give donald trump a second term, my goodness, we literally may not survive it. >> people also need in that party -- i keep hearing -- to come together. society owes a debt to jim clyburn for giving us a new term of art. there's every other political endorsement, and then there's getting a clyburn, the most emotional and sincere endorsement most of us have ever seen in modern politics. where do you think, if it's

inevitable that bernie will be saying some form of "i support joe biden, you should too" -- where do you think that's going to fall on the clyburn spectrum? >> well, right. the clyburn, we'll be talking about that as long as we talk about politics. but, listen, it's important. i mean i think first of all, i think bernie sanders and joe biden have real affection for each other. bernie sanders has talked so powerfully about the stakes of this election, and we can't have a second donald trump. so i don't think this will just be words. i don't think this will just be going through the motions. i think on day one and the rest of the campaign be out there doing everything he can. it's important. i think the question is timing. if i was the biden campaign, you can't push sanders out. he's going to decide when is the right time to do this. we do have primaries in late april. who knows if those will occur?

so i think part of this is when is the next time there's going to be a vote. so if the pennsylvania primary does happen -- and i have big doubts whether it will -- what you don't want is joe biden spending a lot of money or time in that primary. we need to start building in pennsylvania to win back those 20 electoral votes. it will be a big moment when it happens and there's no doubt that the biden campaign needs not just that moment. they need to learn from the sanders campaign. sanders' campaign is super savvy digitally. they've shown the ability to reach young people, not just people in their 20s, people 45 and below. so listen, i don't know if you can fully integrate. if i was the biden campaign, there's a lot of talent in the sanders campaign, and i would look to restock my chain with some of the folks there and then have bernie all over the country. >> we should emphasize bernie sanders and his supporters have earned their role, their place in the conversation. we should also emphasize we realize this is a painful conversation during the heat of battle in the political business. to our friends, joy reid and david plouffe, thank you, gang,

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everything's stuck in the drawers! i'm sorry! oh, jeez. hi. kelly clarkson. try wayfair! oh, ok. it's going to help you, with all of... this! yeah, here you go. thank you! oh, i like that one! [ laugh ] that's a lot of storage! perfect. you're welcome! i love it. how did you do all this? wayfair! speaking of dinner, what're we eating, guys? tracfone lets you keep your leftover data each month. unlimited carryover data! $20 bucks. what are you doing? i want to ask you about your data. oh, i thought you said dating. this is your wake-up call, people. the new tracfone wireless. now you're in control. when we've got to talk to him, we've got to talk to him. and tonight is one of those nights for jon meacham, presidential historian, pulitzer prize-winning author. his latest, "the hope of glory: reflections on the last word of jesus christ from the

cross." jon, we don't anything quite that lofty tonight but i was thinking about you today because if we're not careful, people are going to start reading history books. people are issuing kind of vague exhortations about all this company has been able to do and pull off over the years, most of it in the name of warfare. and i was thinking about willow run, which was once an auto assembly line, but once it was converted, you can make an argument it helped us win the second world war by producing a new b-24 every hour. talk about that part of the american spirit that we haven't tapped into to make a single train in the last 40 years. >> that's exactly right. you know, franklin roosevelt would pick those numbers off the top of his head. he would say, we're going to make 10,000 planes a week, and i think it was sam rosenman, his

speechwriter said, where did you get that number, sir? he said, i made it up. but we did it. and we're in a situation, i think it's a little bit more like britain in world war ii in that we are all truly in this, and we're actually combatants. you know, the luftwaffe was coming after the brits. this virus is coming after us. it's a full mobilization. it's a civilian struggle. really we would have had this in the cold war if things had gone in a tragic direction. and the great news is when we actually put our minds to something, we've nearly always done it. and i think a part of it is the spirit as you say. i think part of it is the idea

that we are -- that the government itself, america is about us. it's about we, the people. and the great sense, it seems to me, the great hope here is that if you give us a challenge and if you're straight with us, you know, give us to it straight, we'll do what it takes. that was the lesson of franklin roosevelt. it was the lesson of the cold war. warfare, you're right, that is the analogy we fall back on because that's the fullest mobilization. and here we're all in this. we have a direct stake. >> but here's the asterisk. everything today is through a political filter. and as i said earlier, the president spoke these words with a straight face today. "i always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic." jon, did we just not live through the last couple weeks? >> well, he has his own reality field, and you and i have talked before.

to some extent, we have to put the president to the side here and hope that the government as it's constituted can in fact deliver what we need. at this point, the last couple of days have felt better in that regard. the presidency, as franklin roosevelt once said, is not an engineering job. it is preeminently a place of moral leadership. i think the great lesson tonight of the primaries is that america wants a president who reminds them of other presidents. and there was a novelty factor with the incumbent. but the show, which was always going to wear thin, is now wearing thin at a moment where he treats this as reality tv, but this is reality for the rest of us. >> jon meacham, thank you. be well. it's what we're saying to everybody. our coverage continues right after this. your mission:

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(howling wind) (howling wind) hello from new york. i'm chris hayes. it is midnight here on the east coast and what appears to be the end of a long day and a seeming route for joe biden in those three states that voted today. as we wrap up what i think is fair to say the strangest election day in recent memory, there is of course the global coronavirus pandemic. we as a country currently attempting to slow the rate of infection, to flatten the curve in order to save lives and save the health care system. we are doing that with things like social distancing, closures of schools, dine-ins, restaurants, gyms, bars and in some places like the bay area a

almost full shutdown of everything except for essential goods and services. here on the set tonight, we'll be going to people remotely. amidst all this, today is supposed to be the day where voters in four states went to the polls in the democratic presidential primary. of course ohio governor mike dewine thought it was too dangerous given the pandemic. yesterday he sued to delay the election. a judge denied his request. then the ohio director of health, dr. amy acton, ordered the polls closed anyway, saying she made the decision in order to, quote, avoid the imminent threat with a high probability of widespread exposure to coronavirus with a significant risk of substantial harm to a large number of people in the general population. so we will not have results from ohio tonight. they've extended their deadline till june. we do have, however, arizona, illinois, and florida all plunging ahead with in person

voting although it was not without issues which we will talk about. we don't have exit polling tonight due to the social distancing policies in place since exit polls require in-person interviews. we do have results and a sense of turnout, which is obviously a particularly big issue. going to these latest contests, joe biden led the presidential democratic race with 871 delegates. bernie sanders was in second place with 719. tonight as polls closed in florida, nbc news projected that joe biden will win the democratic primary there by quite a margin. nbc news also projecting biden will win the primary in illinois, and nbc projecting just an hour ago that biden will also win arizona. all three states a clean sweep. and this is how things look at this hour. biden with a total of 1,132 delegates. sanders with 817. take us through what happened in these latest states i'm joined by msnbc political correspondent steve kornacki at the big board. so what do we have tonight, steve? >> yeah, a couple of headlines here. just in terms of the delegates, the story here, ground zero for that is florida. this massive biden landslide. we certainly expected this was going to happen.

this was a terrible state for sanders four years ago. it's an even worse state for him tonight. closed primary, no independents voting here. that hurts him a little bit. heavy senior citizen population. he got destroyed with voters over 65. look at the delegate picture from florida. look at that, 148 for biden. just 33 for sanders. that's where biden's huge delegate haul comes from tonight, from the state of florida. by the way, turnout in florida is up a little bit compared to 2016. and the reason it's up at all is the early voting, the mail-in voting. the same-day there was very sparse today. arizona, the turnout here is up significantly over 2016 already. they're still counting the votes. they're already over the 2016 level. here again, this is a heavy mail-in voting, early voting state. you see joe biden with a double-digit lead.

the sanders campaign says arizona was their best bet today because they'd been doing well with hispanic voters. the hispanic vote was basically a tie. then there's illinois. the turnout is way down in illinois. this is not a heavy early voting state, not a heavy mail-in state. there's some of that but not a lot. and the same-day vote here was very, very thin. so it's going to be down probably 20% statewide. but biden does win this by 20-plus points. this was basically a two-point state in 2016. it continues to trend. i think this is the most notable trend big picture that i've seen in the primaries here. i'm circling ohio. we didn't get numbers from ohio today. but these are the kinds of states demographically where the general election in 2016 was decided, where donald trump got that margin, that critical margin with non-college white voters that allowed him to beat hillary clinton in the electoral college. and you see that demographic is particularly pronounced in these states.

and what you saw tonight in illinois is what we saw in missouri, in minnesota, and in michigan earlier. massive, i'm talking 30 to 40-point swings here among white voters without college degrees. blue collar white voters here who in 2016 lined up with sanders by double digits, and now tonight biden in illinois won them by 32 points. that, to me, demographically is the single biggest change from '16. we'll see if that translates to something in the general election. but if you're the biden campaign looking to a general election at all, that's got to be the most encouraging demographic finding you've got. >> steve kornacki, thank you. for more on what this means to the two candidates and their delegate counts going forward, i want to bring in david plouffe, campaign manager for the 2008 obama presidential campaign. the architect behind the obama strategy to win that democratic presidential primary. we have checked in with each other numerous times through the arc of this primary including before the votes were cast in new hampshire and way back when, you said once you get a delegate lead for proportional representation, it's hard to

give it up. we now have a very large, substantial delegate lead for joe biden. what's the math look like tonight? >> well, chris, joe biden's the democratic nominee. i mean the delegates he got out of florida tonight was bigger than our lead in the entire primary at this time in '08. he's got a much bigger lead in pledged delegates than hillary clinton. i think it would be an impossibility for the lead to be diminished at all. it doesn't mean bernie sanders isn't going to take some time. do these primaries in april happen? i'm dubious about that. we'll see. but joe biden now, you know, came back from maybe his last political life to be the democratic nominee, so that's great. they deserve congratulations. but we have a general election in 7 1/2 months, which is one of

the most consequential elections in american history. so they have to -- every ounce of thought, every dollar, every moment has to be to building a general election campaign that can beat trump. i think it's not just delivering what we need to do now to get ourselves through this crisis. what's pretty clear, chris is we're going to be facing an economic catastrophe, and what the american people are going to be looking for, if you're the next president, what are you going to do about that? not just the acute crisis of the moment but how are we going to dig out of this hole? so he's got to get into general election mode right away. he doesn't have a second to lose. >> how do you think you navigate that? you just made an important point. this is a larger lead out of florida than you had back in '08 in a primary you won. and i think also there is a definitiveness here that wasn't quite the case on any one given night outside the south in the hillary clinton/bernie sanders race. i mean partly because of that demographic shift that kornacki is talking about. how do you navigate that if you're the biden camp. >> well, yeah, because the truth is when you're down to a

two-person race, i think you can be a little more confident in making assumptions. there might not be another state bernie sanders wins, but if he does, he's not going to get north of 55. the fact of the matter is if we execute the rest of the primaries and they ran hard campaigns, he's probably going to add to his delegate lead. so i think you need to say, listen, i'll respect bernie sanders' decision, continue to reach out to his supporters. i'd certainly begin to do a lot of work with younger voters with an eye towards the general election, certainly latino voters where i think biden did better tonight in arizona and florida certainly than he did previously. and say, listen, if we're going to have primaries, i'd like to get support, but i need to beat donald trump. this is a burden joe biden and his campaign have right now. they have to beat donald trump. we cannot fool around with this. the general election will be here, assuming we have it, and we've got to make sure we do and we have vote by mail. they have to get at this right away. they can do it in a respectful

way, and that's going to be important. i'm not suggesting that you don't work overtime to earn the support of bernie sanders supporters, hire some of his staff. bernie sanders when he's ready i think will be a powerful, powerful surrogate out there. i thought the way he talked about what we needed to do right now to cushion the blow for people today was enormously powerful. so he'll be a big asset, i think. but my point is it's here. we know who the two candidates are, and there's not a second to lose. >> all right. david plouffe, as always, thank you so much. >> thanks, chris. ohio republican governor mike dewine has been very proactive in his state's handling of the coronavirus. shutting down a number of things including the election earlier than many others. but the confusion and strangeness of it is causing some deep questions for the elections taking place now, primaries going forward and crucially the election in november. here to talk about that, ashley allison, executive vice

president which has been pushing for elections not to be canceled. ashley, let me start with that question. i find myself persuaded by arguments on both sides. you don't want to get into the business of canceling elections. you don't want to do it by fiat on one hand. on the other hand, there was no way to conduct voting today that adhered to the cdc's guidelines. we saw pictures of people standing near each other. we know there was exposure that was happening. why did your group come down on the side of going ahead today? >> well, thanks for having me and thanks to all the voters who did participate either by early voting or absentee ballot or voting by mail or in person today. we weren't telling states how to conduct their election, but what we were saying to election administrators, governors and secretaries of state is that however the -- if the primaries took place today, if they're

taking place next week, if they're one of the 25 or so primaries that are going to happen over the next few months, that they need to make sure a couple of things take place. one, that they do follow the cdc guidance. they have hand sanitizer, they're able to sanitize machines, they keep voters standing a significant distance apart as guided by the cdc. but, two, that they also create more access for voters to vote, whether it be early voting, extending hours, increasing more days, whether it be vote by mail, ensuring that as many voters as possible can have a ballot via mail, or absentee ballot. states can make their own decisions, but whether the primary took place today, the future, or even for the general election, we want to make sure that administrators are putting these procedures in place and informing voters in a reasonable time. >> do you think we should have mandatory universal no excuse absentee balloting, essentially vote by mail everywhere? >> i think vote by mail is an important step. it's not the whole journey to make sure that all voters have access to vote. vote by mail is a good option, but we also know that usually black and brown voters, those

ballots are rejected when they do vote by mail, and black and brown voters usually like to vote in person whether it be early voting or on the day of the election. same with the disability community, making sure that they have access to ballots. vote by mail is not always the most friendly procedure for them to vote by as well as native americans because of the whole p.o. box issue. so vote by mail is a great option. it's not the only option that administrators should take, which includes, we believe, early voting, same-day voting, and extending hours to vote. >> so do you think -- i mean let's fast forward. let's imagine a universe in which we have similar conditions pertaining in november. god, i hope that's not the case, but lord knows what is coming for us. >> me too. >> yes. it makes me slightly nauseous

even to pursue the thought experiment, but were that the case, i mean today when we saw like turnout quite far down in a state like illinois, i just -- it seems like we need something more innovative than what we had today in terms of replicability if we're going to have a high stakes election in november under these possible conditions. >> that's right. november is several months away, so there is time to take the necessary actions. the first thing is that congress needs to fund the states to actually be able to implement these procedures. >> right. >> it is very expensive to have online voter registration, one, be set up in states, and, two, make sure that it works, that it doesn't crash. we've seen that happen in states before. first up, congress needs to fund the states to do these steps. then the states need to start acting tomorrow. the first time they go into the office they need to learn from the mistakes or the experience that voters had today and make the steps necessary for their primaries and for the general election. we definitely hope that we are not in this state of pandemic when it comes to november, but

if we are, there are steps that the secretaries of state, governors, and local election administrators can do today to ensure that every voter, every eligible voter who wants to vote can vote and that their vote is actually counted. >> ashley allison, thank you so much for your time. joining me now, maya wiley, bill de blasio, karine jean-pierre, and sam seder. i wish you were all here sitting next to me, but it's great to have you here virtually. sam, i saw reporter from "the new york times" saying fundamentally when it comes down to what happened to the sanders campaign, particularly in that trajectory between nevada, south carolina, super tuesday and now tonight, was that there's a theory of the politics of this of changing the electorate that fundamentally did not bear out, that he never made inroads with older voters particularly and he

just kept making too big a share of the electorate. when you put that math together, you end up with the kind of margins you're seeing. >> yeah. i mean i think that may have been the case. but i think fundamentally the real answer in my mind to the election is that you see it in the exit polling when people are looking for a candidate almost -- 65% in many states were saying i'm just looking for the person who can win. i think for a long time, the electorate did not have an idea who could win. and i think when all of the candidates essentially that were running in the race ended up coalescing around biden, i think that provided a signal to people. i mean obviously clyburn started it in south carolina, but i think absent buttigieg and klobuchar and starting to create that signifier for the voters, i'm not sure we would be in the same place right now. >> karine, where do you think we are right now in this democratic primary? david plouffe said the math here is essentially insurmountable.

it certainly looks like that to me although i will give this caution. the world as it exists now was unthinkable six weeks ago. i feel so tentative about offering any predictions about what is or is not insurmountable. >> yeah. we're kind of in this black hole, in a space that we've never, ever seen before with no historical context. that's the reality of where we are. but the problem is the math is the math, and this race seems to look to be all but over. and i think one of the reasons i think folks really feel that way is when are we going to have another primary? >> right. >> when is that going to actually happen? and so, you know, we can -- you know, we can ask people to vote, but then there is the -- how do you ask people to vote when you can't be around more than, like, ten people on a line? i mean that is -- it is very difficult to do. so bernie sanders is going to have to make some really difficult decisions. look, i've worked for many

campaigns. i've worked for winning campaigns and losing campaigns. and running is incredibly difficult. and i do believe that we have to give bernie sanders the space to do this. but i do want to touch a little bit on what sam said, which is, look, these are different times. this is a moment in time that we have not seen before. and you saw in exit polling that sanders was actually -- had better favorabilities in polling more than other candidates. he was actually very liked, and his ideas, medicare for all, were very, very popular. this is a time where voters want to beat donald trump, and now you have the coronavirus and they're even more so looking at that contrast, looking for a leader. when you think about joe biden, he's been in the oval office. he's been in the white house. he was obama's number two. so that really resonated with voters, and i do think that played a really big part of this. and i think so in the moment

that we're in right now with coronavirus, people are just -- you know, politics are going to have to take a back seat, and this is not what folks are going to be thinking about is these primaries and how this is going to move forward. >> we should note this is -- i mean there was a primary upset tonight where a challenger -- >> yes, marie newman. >> beat probably the most conservative, i think it's fair to say or one of the most conservative democrats in the caucus, in the chicago suburbs, a son of a congressman, a sort of old product of that southside chicago mean, pro life as well or anti-abortion, and he was defeated. she ran against him in 2018. she won tonight. so the reason i'm saying that is when you talk about, karine, you know there's not going to be a lot of headspace for primaries, like primaries don't exist just for the presidential election. >> yeah. >> there's all sorts of elections around the country. >> that's so true. good point. >> all up and down, right? there are challengers all over the place. there's a democracy we're running and solving that problem

remains -- although i'll say this, maya, and i'd like to get your feedback. my big fear heading into today with the messy muddiness of ohio, right? very uncharted waters. i was compelled by the argument made by mike dewine and the state public health director. i was compelled by not liking the precedent of canceling the election. the worry for me was a kind of legitimacy problem. -- you don't have that same kind of legitimacy worry. >> i think that's true although it's interesting because, you know, one of the things that bernie sanders has is a very committed base of voters who are completely loyal to him because of his positions on important issues like universal health care, like free college. and so for them, they're still raising some concerns particularly about illinois. but i think you are right that the reality is that in this primary in general, including before today, what we were seeing was record turnout numbers. i mean really important states for democrats like north carolina and virginia, we were seeing 200,000 to 500,000 more voters voting than in 2016. and those aren't the only

states, but they're just really good examples. and it's going to be a turnout race in that general election assuming we have an election. but it's critically important to be thinking about that enthusiasm factor, about showing up. it's not just that people want someone who can beat trump. it's that they're very committed to showing up and voting in order to beat trump. and i think that's a very important fact for us all to remember. >> maya, karine, sam, you guys are going to stay with me remotely. coming up, the house passed a coronavirus aid package last week. so why hasn't the senate voted on it? what mitch mcconnell has been up to instead of voting on it after this. - i've been pretty stable with

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there are a million ideas flying around washington about how to deal with what is looking more and more like an unprecedented crisis. but as i speak to you now, the house bill passed late friday that senate republican leader mitch mcconnell ignored and sent the senate home for a long three-day weekend -- that bill, the senate still has not passed. the bill the house passed

includes things like free coronavirus testing, paid sick leave for some workers, paid family leave, increased food assistance, strengthen unemployment insurance among its many provisions. the senate will reportedly vote on the bill tomorrow finally. leader mcconnell said today he's advised republican members who have objections to, quote, and this is an all timer, gag and vote for it anyway. more on that and what congress plans to do next. i'm joined by congresswoman karen bass who just completed a teletown hall with her constituents focused on the coronavirus. is it your expectation and the expectation of the leadership that the senate will indeed pass this tomorrow? >> yes, it is. it's shameful. it should have been passed on sunday. >> let me show you -- you bring that up. i just thought this picture was quite remarkable. mitch mcconnell let the senate go after you guys stayed, and he went to louisville on friday for an investiture ceremony for a former kavanaugh clerk. there's brett kavanaugh, mitch mcconnell at a swearing in

ceremony for a new federal judge. and that was part of the reason they got a three-day weekend and they sat on it for more than 72 hours. do you think that was a good choice by the senate majority leader? >> no. i mean i think one of the reasons why there's so much chaos and confusion and anxiety is because we have not had leadership. we haven't had leadership from the white house. we have watched him lie for 3 1/2 years, and so now how can we really take him seriously, especially because he downplayed this? and i think mcconnell, he abdicated his leadership a long time ago. so what you really have in the country right now is you have speaker pelosi leading the country because the other ones are absent without leave. but i think that now they're beginning to come around. but they should have stayed in session. the minute we passed that bill

saturday morning, they should have been there ready to receive it, go through their process so they could have passed it on sunday. that sends the wrong message to the american people. >> you said speaker pelosi is leading the country. >> that's right. >> you said she was proactive on this. but is the scale of what you all in the house are doing up to the crisis? here's an example. originally i think the draft of the bill had essential universal paid sick leave. that was negotiated down by steve mnuchin. the paid sick leave is starting to like look a disturbingly small piece of the puzzle here, especially when we're talking about giving people 14 days. the much greater problem is there's going to be no work demand for millions and millions of service workers with perhaps months to come. are you thinking big enough? >> oh, no. well, i don't think we thought big enough in that package. but, believe me, we knew that we were preparing another package right on the heels of it. what was most important about the last package was that we got the testing done. that was absolutely critical. but the house is busy at work on the third package, and i do believe that that will be much bigger. but we should prepare because a

point of contention is going to be that the republicans don't want to have paid sick leave at all, and there are many jobs where you don't have sick leave. we don't want people to go into work. we're telling them to stay at home, and then they have no income. so we absolutely need to do this. now, i'm worried that where the president is coming from is that he's going to want to bail out the industries, and some of those industries do need to be bailed out. but if you're going to bail out the airlines, you need to think about the flight attendants, the people that clean the planes, the people that work in the restaurants in the airport as well. so we have to make sure that the next package that we do extends benefits to as wide of a population as possible. >> all right. congresswoman karen bass, thanks for staying up for us. i appreciate it. >> thank you. when we come back, what the future of the presidential election looks like as the global pandemic grows. where we are after this.

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going into tonight, joe biden had just over a 150 delegate lead over bernie sanders. as of right now with tonight's gains, biden has doubled that lead in delegates. over 300 delegates. those are where the numbers stand. it is of course an extremely strange time to be conducting a

national election amidst the coronavirus pandemic, everything in flux. to talk about where things go from here, i want to bring back to the conversation maya wiley, bill de blasio, karine jean-pierre, and sam seder. both of the candidates, senator bernie sanders and joe biden gave addresses although again in the strange, surreal world we find ourselves in, not the classic rally in front of a bunch of people. sanders gave an address focused almost exclusively on a coronavirus rescue package. biden too largely on that. take a listen to what they had to say. >> in the midst of this crisis, what i believe we must do is empower medicare to cover all medical bills during this emergency. now, this is not medicare for all. we can't pass that right now. but what this does say is that if you're uninsured, if you are underinsured, if you have high deductibles, if you have high co-payments, if you have out-of-pocket expenses, medicare will cover those expenses. >> it's moments like these we realize we need to put politics

aside and work together as americans. the coronavirus doesn't care if you're a democrat or republican. it will not discriminate based on national origin, race, gender, or your zip code. it will touch people in positions of power as well as the most vulnerable people in our society. we're all in this together. >> you know, part of what's so strange, maya, about this moment among many things is we had a long campaign, a lot of issues people were talking about. we find ourselves in this moment in which the possible future that's spread out before us, a campaign that was going to basically be on this terrain, donald trump is unliked by a big chunk of the population who think he's unfit and terrible, but the economy is pretty good. that was -- that was a year plus of what the campaign was going to be. everyone knew it. high growth and low unemployment. we're in a totally different

world politically. what do you think about the messages you're hearing from biden and sanders? >> what's interesting to me is it's been one of the differences between bernie sanders and joe biden for much of the primary, which is bernie sanders is the person who comes forward with a way to get americans health care. >> right. >> that has been central to who he is as an elected leader for decades, and it's been central to his campaign in 2016, and it's still central. and so he's constantly focused on that. he's passionate about it. it's significant to him. and he's constantly thinking about how is that going to get done, how is health care factoring in in this moment. i think what joe biden is doing is he's running a unity campaign. in other words, he's really thinking of this as we're a country deeply divided. we have seen extreme partisanship. we have hate on the rise. we have a president who has stoked it, and i'm the one who's going to be able to bring us

together. and i think that has constantly been a distinction in their messages. i also think that joe biden may be focused on this as a general election, meaning when you start to look at a general election as opposed to a primary, you're not battling as much in the first instance on policy. and americans aren't thinking about policy right now. they're thinking very much about literally how they're going to get through tomorrow. >> right, although that connects to policy, right? >> it does. >> in a weird way, it's like people aren't thinking right now about policy as like i want to look at the policy part of your website. they're thinking about policy in the most urgent, visceral, brutal way, which is can i pay my rent, and can i watch after my kid, and can i do everything in life right now, which is going to be dependent upon government policy? >> it's interesting. in a way, if bernie sanders had started talking about eviction moratorium, that might have been a little bit more relevant, and i don't mean that the health

care coverage is of course extremely relevant, and that's why congress was looking at paid sick days. it's that, you know, right now we're facing a crisis in hospital beds, in ventilators. you know, that's so much of what people are starting to see is, yes, can i even get the test? but if i need a bed or if my loved one needs a bed, are they going to get kicked out of their bed because we have such limited space in icus? we're really in a very, very deep hole right now, and i think people are looking at this. yes, you're right about policy, but they're looking at tomorrow. they're looking at it in a very practical sense. and, you know, i think joe biden is going to have to step up to that moment, and i absolutely agree that bernie sanders was speaking to it in a substantive way. >> sam, everything has changed now, and i think that, you know, i agree with what maya said and i think there's real returns politically to the unity message and the back to normal message and away from this aberrant thing.

it's a different world now. the biden campaign for instance needs to release what their rescue plan is. >> yeah. >> and sanders came out today and said $2 trillion and $2,000 per household and the biden people will do that and work with the democrats. but this stuff is very important suddenly. >> i mean first off, i can't even begin to fathom where we're going to be in a week, never mind seven, eight months from now. but i think, you know, look, there is obviously -- and i think the assessments that we've heard about biden are correct in terms of what the voters are looking for. but no one who is watching us right now is for a moment not going to be enthused about voting against donald trump. and what i worry about is that there is a segment of the population, the same segment that stayed home in 2016 and saw no consequence, and as horrible as this is, and i think it's hard for us to imagine that people could see it that way,

but i think there are still some people who perceive there to be no consequence as to who the president is, that they're going to lose out regardless. and i think joe biden has an opportunity or really -- you know, i was surprised frankly because in the last debate, bernie sanders said, here are the keys. i'm giving you the questions. i'm giving you the answers. you know, come to -- come to us essentially, you know, because this is not about bernie sanders. this is about the people who have been supporting bernie sanders. and i'm not sure that bernie sanders can simply just say, you know, none of the stuff that we've been talking about, we're going to see it all. but we should still support joe biden. i don't know if that works. and i think joe biden has to sort of like head in that direction. i think the unity message is effective, but i think those people were already planning to come out and vote against donald trump. >> right. maya, karine, sam, i want you to stand by. we're going to have a little

update coming up. the coronavirus is now in all 50 states. testing here in the u.s. is still, still lagging. i'll talk to someone who started developing a test for covid-19 weeks ago after this. r covid-19 weeks ago after this they answered 410 questions in 8 categories about vehicle quality. and when they were done, chevy earned more j.d. power quality awards across cars, trucks and suvs than any other brand over the last four years. so on behalf of chevrolet, i want to say "thank you, real people." you're welcome. we're gonna need a bigger room.

we're seeing exponential growth of the coronavirus continue in the united states. the virus is now in every state in the country. at least it's confirmed in every state. it's been in every state for a while. there are 6,000 confirmed cases nationwide although of course we don't know how many cases there are because of the testing issues. what's most concerning is that we continue to track italy,

which is in the thick of what is hopefully the peak of their epidemic, having essentially shut down the entire country for much of the past week. while our own testing capacity is finally beginning to scale up, it's still the case we are lagging far, far behind, which makes a lot of things difficult. here to talk more about that, someone who started working on his own test in late february, dr. alex greninger, assistant director of the clinical virology lab at the university of washington medical center. it's great to have you here. thank you for the work you're doing. how are we doing? >> thanks for having me, chris. so we're doing better. i mean a few things have happened in the last couple days. so both roche and hologic got an emergency use authorization from the fda. labcorp and quest are offering tests now. the state public health labs are hitting about 4,000 tests a day. between all that capacity, it does take a little bit of time for those kits to get shipped, for you to verify the

performance of those tests and bring them online. but we're doing much better. here in seattle we're still testing about 1,800 specimens a day, unfortunately making about 150 detections a day of the virus. it's still very pervasive here. >> what is your sense -- in cable news, we tend to be number obsessed, so it's like a metric. here's the delegates. i'm as obsessed with anyone. but realistically, we know that's a lagging indicator. when we look at that curve, when you look at that curve which tracks so close to italy, are we seeing a real thing there? are we seeing an actual signal, or are we seeing a measurement issue? >> i think we're seeing both. i think that, you know, one of the problems with this virus is that when you detect a case, it itself is a lagging indicator. it as a long incubation time. it has a long time between when you develop symptoms and between when you seek medical care. so you're detecting transmissions that occurred

maybe 2, 2 1/2 weeks ago. so it in itself is a lagging indicator. certainly measurement is a big aspect. you're seeing a lot of cases where new york state and city, a labs are doing a lot of testing. we're seeing a lot of cases here where we're able to perform a lot of tests as well. i think there's definitely a measurement aspect to this. i think as we continue to have these tests come online in the next coming days, we'll see more and more cases. one of the problems is as you noted, like the exponential growth, no one's supply chain doubles every five to six days. so actually providing these tests is a challenge with the supply chain. >> that's a great point. i saw the chair, i think, of the new york city council health committee today talking about testing being fighting the last war. i sort of get this from the point of care perspective. like if you're the medical system in new york or in seattle or in sort of greater metro seattle, you're worried more about caring for sick people,

identifying people, and getting them icu beds and ventilators. but is that true? like how important is testing to the actual fighting of the epidemic? >> testing is very important from the standpoint it allows us to identify people who have this virus and isolate them, prevent onward transmission of the virus. it allows us to determine, you know, icu beds and ventilators. those are mostly determined symptomatically. but it allows us to protect our health care workers, our first responders. right now for instance when you send a test, you have to wear personal protective equipment around that patient until we've cleared them of that virus. the speed we get that test back is very important to conserve personal protective equipment. so it's really -- you know, it touches on many, many aspects. but i do agree what's most important is access to supportive care, questions about bed, ventilators, and protecting our health care labor supply so we continue to provide health care ask that can protect and save lives. >> thank you so much for the work you're doing and thank you for making some time for us.

>> thank you. stick around. more on what congress is doing to prepare for the massive impact coronavirus will have on american life after this. american life after this

back for our final time tonight with maya wiley, mayor bill de blasio, karine jean-pierre, and sam seder. just about an hour ago, "the new york times" published a remarkable story, a sort of behind the scenes look. it has a very sort of understated headline. trump slowly enlisting more agencies in the whole of government response to the virus.

the details are jaw dropping. there's an on the record quote from the army corps of engineers that says, we stand ready to help but we have not been given a mission yet. that is after governor andrew cuomo has explicitly asked for their help. there are stories for governors asking for masks and not getting a response, getting one-third of the masks they asked for and all the masks were expired. karine, one of the things about the transformation of where we are substantively, policy-wise, politically and the election is i just think it cannot be overstated the degree to which the federal response in the last two months has been an abject failure as bad as anything i've seen in the time i've covered politics. that includes the financial crisis and katrina and the iraq war. this is on a level of incompetence and malfeasance from the president of the united states and the people that he handpicked all the way down, and i feel it is incredibly important, incredibly important that that be a strong message from every democrat up and down the ticket.

>> i agree with you wholeheartedly, chris. look, this is the moment that we all have been saying was going to come. and let's be clear. donald trump has had a lot of failures. they've been his own policymaking. when you think about the migrants at the border, the young kids being separated from their parents, and many other things that have been devastating, this one, this one is just one of those things where he just ignored it for eight weeks. he just ignored it. he didn't care. he had no kind of plan. he disbanded the pandemic -- the white house office that dealt with pandemic that was started under obama, and it is really just abhorrent. and here's the thing. in this moment, voters really -- americans really need consistency, and he has not provided that. one week it's a hoax. another week it's a crisis. then we talk about how somber he is, and then five hours later, he is on twitter attacking democrats, talking about hillary clinton, and talking about tv

ratings. so this is something that needs to be called out. and then there's another underlying thing too which is incredibly important, which is the racism and the xenophobia, the type of language that he uses when he says foreign virus, when he talks about -- >> the chinese virus. >> a chinese virus. that is also problematic. this is the thing that democrats need to make sure they talk about and show the contrast of how much he is not a leader and how much trouble that he's going to get americans in and how much they're going to suffer in the next couple of months because of this virus and this moment that we're in. >> and that's -- you know, sam, you said this before. maya, i want to get your reaction to it, which is everything's changed now. things are changing by the minute. who knows what the election looks like when november comes. but two things to me seem clear. competence and management now as an urgent task for an opposition party to hold accountability for things to happen better, and

laying out an ideological vision of how we all take care of each other so this does not descend into a situation in which the people in the bottom of the social pyramid are ground to absolute dust while the people who have privilege and money and access to capital are able to sort of hunker down and get through it. >> absolutely. look, we don't want to be italy. that's what we're measuring ourselves against and right now we're going in the wrong direction because what we're seeing is a jump in cases. we now for the first time have every state in this country has a case of infection. and the startling thing about that article is that you have the mayor of seattle begging for tents. you have governors who are begging, begging for creating more access to hospital services because what we know now just from looking at italy is that we don't have enough icu beds. we don't have enough equipment, and we may not have enough personnel if it goes in that direction. and all of that says that donald trump will have blood on his

hands if he does not do what he has told the nation he will, which is step up. >> and we have watched him now, sam, and i was going back through my favorite books on the great depression actually, and i was reading back about hoover. and hoover of course has gone down in history as a failure. he's a fascinating guy who actually delivered this incredible humanitarian response in world war i, and was very active from 29 onward. he just thought if he met with enough ceos and he jostled enough american business people, they could solve the problem. and the problem was you needed state capacity, which is what fdr understood. and i've watched donald trump meet with ceos now for two weeks while we get this story that the state capacity we have is not being used. >> yeah. i mean i don't think it's analogous because i think what

donald trump has perceived this from the beginning was simply like, you know, poor optics. >> yes. >> and frankly, you know, i also want to be clear -- and, i know, i think you and i have had a similar conversation like this over the past three or four years. the entire republican party lined up for him. >> absolutely. >> mitch mcconnell took a couple of -- you know, took a day to go to a brett kavanaugh, you know, some type of celebration about one of his judges getting passed, i mean in the midst of trying to pass and deal with this. you had rush limbaugh, who was given the medal of honor, three weeks ago saying this was a hoax. >> yep. >> the president did too. >> they were all on board. thank you all so much. that does it for me. i'm chris hayes. you can find me tomorrow night. msnbc's coverage continues after this. msnbc's coverage continues after this

good evening. we're covering these dual stories at this hour. both of them will change life in our country, though, in different ways. while covering a spreading pandemic, we are also tonight covering three state primaries. in arizona, illinois and florida. first, to the urgent health crisis we have now entered a new stage in this nation's battle against coronavirus. the virus has spread now to all 50 states and the district of columbia. death toll has crossed north of

100. tonight there are over 6,000 confirmed cases in these united states. there's now the possibility that new york city, the largest urban center in our country, may soon see more severe measures to contain this virus. >> this is moving very fast. we should all be very concerned about how we find a way to slow down the trajectory of this virus. the idea of shelter in place has to be considered now. but i was trying to say to new yorkers, this is the reality we're facing. get ready for the possibility because it's not so distant an idea. even a week ago, i would have said, no, that's impossible, but not now. >> what a series of events. mayor de blasio in this studio not long ago. also tonight, let's look to the west. the governor of kansas announced all public schools will be shut for the remainder of the school

year. governor of california warns most schools in that state will likely face that same fate. in washington, the trump white house grappling with the economic fallout from, think about it this way, a nation forced to shut down to fight a pandemic. the government may start by spending a trillion dollars. that includes giving money directly to americans. >> we'll tell you what we've heard from many people and the president has said we can consider this. the payroll tax holiday would get people money over the next 6 to 8 months. we're looking at sending checks to americans immediately. and what we've heard from hardworking americans, many companies have now shut down, whether it's bars or restaurants, americans need cash now, and the president wants to get cash now. and i mean now in the next two weeks. >> and the following made people snap to attention tonight. nbc news has confirmed that same man, the treasury secretary, told republican senators on the hill, unemployment could reach 20% if congress fails to enact

the stimulus measures. we already know we are looking at a huge hit to gdp. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell says his chamber won't leave washington until it passes a coronavirus aid bill that was already passed by the house, even if some of his republican colleagues are not fully on board. >> a number of my members think there were considerable shortcomings in the house bill. my counsel to them is to gag and vote for it anyway even if they think it has some shortcomings. >> news of potential federal intervention did help stocks recover some of the ground lost after monday's brutal sell-off. even so, there is still a lot of uncertainty tonight about how long we'll be in this new kind of normal. somebody there? let's instead turn to the results in the three races of this night. arizona, too early to call.

illinois, joe biden the projected winner. and in florida, joe biden the projected winner. steve kornacki over at the big board. and, steve, as you've been pointing out all evening long, part of the story here is how the delegate math changes in a rather dramatic way. >> yeah. i mean it's a huge night for joe biden in terms of the delegates just based on that massive landslide he had in florida, he will net, get more than 100 delegates more than bernie sanders, it looks like, out of florida. so just on that one alone. illinois he's going to win by, you know, probably a couple dozen there. then we're waiting on arizona. i keep looking back. if i look like i'm nervously darting my eyes here, it's because what we're seeing happen in arizona right now is that all of the counties around the state, their polls closed an hour ago. there is a state law that prevents them from reporting any results for an hour after polls close. that hour just passed. they're filling in right now. here we go.

this is what i was waiting for. this is the ball game. this is maricopa county, and just right now, three-quarters of the vote for maricopa county, which is well over half the state -- this is phoenix and the suburbs just all reported in, and joe biden is leading this by double digits, you see. this is biden, 42%. sanders 30%. >> hey, steve? >> yeah. >> something that often happens. i have to interrupt you, and that is for this. >> that's why. >> election alert from nbc news. we are projecting that when all the votes are counted in the state steve was just walking us through, in arizona, joe biden will indeed make it a clean sweep, 3 for 0 tonight and be declared the winner of the arizona democratic primary. steve kornacki, as you were saying. >> well, that was it. the decision desk was waiting on exactly what i was waiting on here. it was just a question of maricopa county. this is about 60% of the vote in the state of arizona.

it is phoenix. it is the phoenix suburbs. it is population dense, massive, sprawling, all these things. and what happened is you've got weeks here of mail-in voting coming in, early voting in arizona. the bulk of the vote, like three-quarters of the vote in arizona was cast before election day. so what happens is they're getting it in. they're tallying it. they're getting it ready to release as soon as the polls close. i say as soon as the polls close, but they have to wait an hour. so the polls closed at 10:00 p.m. eastern, 7:00 p.m. local, and the state law in arizona says, okay, you've got to wait an hour now to release it. so basically all these counties around the state have the vast majority of their vote tabulated and ready to go, and they're just looking at their clocks waiting for that one hour. so that's what happened there. about 62 minutes after polls closed, you saw maricopa county came in, a double-digit lead here with still a little bit more to come in for biden. if you're winning double digits in maricopa county, you're going

to be winning the state of arizona. that's what we've seen for joe biden. again, this was sanders and his campaign, this was their best shot today. this was their best shot demographically. this is a state where you have a large hispanic population, where sanders has done well with hispanic voters in other states. our phone poll tonight shows sanders and biden basically tying with hispanic voters. that's good for sanders, but he needed better than that among hispanic voters. biden winning the white vote by double digits. it adds up. this is another biden win. the delegate haul tonight is probably going to push him to an advantage. let's see where it sits at. it's sitting at over 300 right now. the national delegate race, joe biden has gone over 1,100. that is a lead of more than 300 over bernie sanders. you pick your adjective. that is daunting if you're bernie sanders to try to overcome something like that. and tonight just showing you different demographic patterns, different geographic patterns, but the common thread there, biden's winning them all. >> and, steve, a potentially

unfair question from me. i'll accept ballpark. i'll accept top of your head. how many of those blue biden states did he win every county in? >> you know, the number -- >> i knew this was going to be hard. >> mississippi, alabama -- i'll tell you what. illinois we're waiting on. this is the one county in the state where sanders has got a shot, and it's -- it's 100% now. sanders is going to win a county in illinois. 48-45. this is where the university of illinois, urbana-champaign. this was sanders by 32. it's going to be sanders by 3. he'll avoid the shutout in illinois. he got shut out in michigan, missouri, alabama, mississippi, all those states, but not in illinois. >> steve, thanks. claire mccaskill, former democratic senator from the great state of missouri, happens to be in the great state of missouri tonight. such is the nature of social distancing. claire, what i'd like to do with you is because we're taking part

in this coverage during a national emergency, which is the fault of a pandemic, can we just take a second and talk about the scope of the turnaround in the campaign and the fortunes of joe biden? >> yeah. there are so many things that have contributed to this. one is a lot of the candidates getting out of the race and coalescing behind joe biden. certainly jim clyburn and what happened with the african-american vote in south carolina will be looked at as a pivotal moment. but tonight i was reminded how presidents are supposed to act in a crisis. we have a president right now who lies, then hits the microphone and lies again, and then hits the twitter thing and lies again. and when you're in a crisis, americans want to be reassured, and it's hard to get reassurance from a liar. joe biden tonight was calm.

he was presidential. he was reassuring. i thought it was his best speech of his campaign, and that is because of the times we find ourselves in. and i think you're going to see him opening up bigger and bigger margins if bernie decides to stay in the race. and i think you're going to see polling, really more separation between him and the liar in chief that is in the oval office right now as this crisis rolls along and americans want clear direction and clear information and the facts. >> claire, the president today -- and he said this with a straight face. he said, i always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic, as if none of his campaign of diminishment had ever happened. >> yeah, and it's so unbelievably sick because it's like he thinks none of us notice that he's lying.

like he thinks we're all too stupid to know that when he says stuff like this, we're going, no, no. you're lying. and i just want to mention briefly, brian, what's going on in the senate tonight. i've been talking to some of my former colleagues, and rand paul is up to his tricks again. the house passed what was the first, i think, of several measures to try to help americans at this time, and it came over from the house. they passed it last week. and, you know, mitch didn't get around to calling the senate into session, and monday passed, and now tuesday has passed because rand paul wants to vote on ending the war in afghanistan. it is so outrageous that rand paul is being allowed to hijack the senate tonight and the bill that will include more testing, which we've all talked about all night as being so important, is going to languish for another day to try to get rand paul to

behave like a grown-up. it is not a good moment for the united states senate, and it will be interesting to see how the stimulus package being talked about, is handled in the senate because they can't even do this much less the giant package that mnuchin rolled out today. >> and, claire, one more thing. i just have to ask. i keep thinking of all the hourly, the service employees, the people in the city where you are, places like laclede's landing in st. louis where it's kind of a smaller scale new orleans with food and music, and that's what life is about there. it's the backbone of the economy in more than one st. louis neighborhood. what happens when all those incomes are stopped, cut off? >> you know, i feel personally about this. i worked my way through college and law school as a waitress. i spent years waiting tables,

and i understand what this means to millions of americans just in the restaurant and bar industry to say nothing of all the other small businesses that are travel related, tourist related, that are going to shrivel up if we do not get help to them first. you know, let's focus on the workers, not focus on big corporations that have squandered their tax cut on stock buybacks. but let's focus on the workers and get them help and tell rand paul to sit down so we can get to it. >> senator claire mccaskill in st. louis, the gateway to the west. and let's change our focus all the way to the west. more cities are taking these unprecedented steps to try to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. monterey county, california's shelter in place order goes into effect tonight at midnight. further north, san francisco, as you know, became the first and

largest city to impose such a mandate early this morning. almost 7 million people are now under orders to stay home. for at least the next three weeks, people are prohibited from leaving unless for essential needs. essential government services including transit, police, fire, along with health care services, grocery stores, pharmacies, bank, gas stations, they will remain open. people can leave their homes to go on walks, to exercise, or take a pet outside, but they must maintain what's now become common, this six feet of buffer area in social distancing. nbc correspondent jake ward lives in the bay area's restricted area. he's with us once again tonight from his home. jake, it's almost dark disney movie creepy to have to report that you're allowed to go outside. you're allowed to take the family dog for necessary relief.

but while outside, at least maintain the spacing called for. >> that's right. i mean, brian, there's a sort of an awkward social dynamic that's unfolding here where you talk to people from a great distance. you don't congregate. you certainly don't hug anybody. all of that is there. you know, there's a sort of an inconvenience that comes with all of that, but when i think about how other countries have had to take steps to lock off national borders, in the case of china, shut down whole cities not just in the way we're experiencing now, this inconvenience of staying home, but shutting down highways, bringing out military rule to shut off any kind of transit among people, it is amazing to imagine, wow, that stuff is just starting to begin to trickle into our lives here in the united states. at this point this is an inconvenience, but really not that much more than that when i think back across all the examples we've seen from across the world in terms of dealing with the need to really lock life down in order to slow down

this pandemic. >> i know you're the parent of little ones. we talked about it earlier this evening, and on social media i keep coming across various ideas to help parents with this new notion of homeschooling. somebody in the last couple hours asked if pbs wouldn't be perfect for this kind of role, and i'm guessing there would be an hour per grade going on through the day. but of course no two classrooms even in the same grade, no two schools, no two school districts are going to be on the same lesson plan. but to prevent slide in learning, which normally happens just in summertime, happens disproportionately to low-income kids, to prevent that slide, i suppose any assist would be welcome by parents. >> i think that's right, brian. i mean for us, right, our children just want to bet moments ago in the room next to where i'm standing here. so they're thrilled. they're out of school. they get to hang with us.

but it's suddenly on us to try to keep their minds moving, right, to keep it all happening. but for me the greater concern, i think, is the conversation i had earlier today with one of the big outreach programs in san francisco that deals with homelessness there, a program called glide. and they were pointing out that the hundreds if not thousands of children across california that are homeless on a day-to-day basis depend on the school system not just for the child care that makes this situation inconvenient for a family like mine, but the need to get food and shelter and the rest of it. >> as a fellow parent, i just realized you should probably keep it down if you're trying to get those two little ones down for the night. jake, thank you very much for being so accommodating and welcoming in the confines of your home starting tonight for a good long while. we appreciate it. we are very fortunate to be joined now by the mayor of the city of san francisco, london breed. and, mayor breed, i watched your announcement, and i watched you

come to a critical part of it when you asked people, you warned people not to panic. and i'm so curious tonight to get your assessment of compliance, what is in effect the end of day one. >> well, it looks like so many people have rosen to the occasion and are complying with the order. you see people walking around a lot more, but they are exercising social distancing. there are still challenges in our grocery stores and in other places, but for the most part, the streets were pretty empty other than people walking around, walking their dogs, riding their bikes, on buses. our buses were fairly empty, so i think for the most part people are complying. they realize the importance of this, how significant it is, and we are adjusting. >> there's reporting that it took the aides around the president to kind of make him

concentrate on a worst-case scenario loss of life in a study to get him to take this more seriously. for you, as the mayor of an important and large and sprawling city and financial center, was there a moment, was there a presentation where you left the room and said, we've got to do this? >> well, back in february, february 25th to be exact, when my team came to me with some of the information they had, because we had already operated our emergency operations center back in january to prepare for this. and so we were getting daily updates. we were provided with information, and when i declared a state of emergency on february 25th, i knew then we were in for a major challenge. and people were wondering, well, what are you doing? we don't even have a case yet in san francisco. the fact is we knew that it was only a matter of time, and if we

didn't alert the public, provide the most accurate, scientific data necessary to make sure people were prepared, then we were going to be in for a real challenge with our public health system here in the city. and so everything that we've done has been in collaboration with our public health officers, some of the best in the country, to try and prevent the spread. we have taken steps that i know are unprecedented, but they are necessary. and i think it's important for other cities throughout this country because this is not just san francisco. it's not just the bay area. it's not just california. we need to take drastic steps now in order to avoid, you know, the increase in the number of people who end up with the coronavirus. and that's what this is about. we want to slow the spread. we don't want it to get out of control where we can't handle the capacity in our hospitals. >> how often every day do you talk to the governor?

>> the governor and i communicate somewhat on a regular basis, but i probably talk to my public health director more throughout the day than anybody else. >> mayor london breed, thanks for being patient with us, and we wish you the very best with the enormous challenge you've been handed. and please stay well. >> thank you. we're going to take a break in our coverage. when we come back, we're going to talk about other aspects of this crisis we're covering, other aspects of tonight's political ramifications following the primary vote in three cities. the dire warnings in this country about hospital shortfalls. what we need and by how much will it fall short of what we've got.

i'm really sorry to tell you this because the number has gone up literally over 100 cases in the course of the day. we're at 923 cases at this hour tonight with 10 people who have passed away. >> 923 cases in the city? >> in the city alone. >> wow. >> in the city alone, rachel. it's unbelievable how rapidly this crisis is growing right now. >> as coronavirus cases surge in new york state, new york city, across the country, there's growing concern over the availability of hospital beds and medical equipment. tonight "the washington post" reporting the defense department offering health and human

services up to 5 million single-use face masks, 2,000 ventilators, and 14 testing labs. with us for more, dr. kavita patel. she served as a senior aide to valerie jarrett in the obama white house, advising on health reform and economic recovery. also happens to be a practicing primary care doc at johns hopkins. and dr. natalie azar, nbc news medical contributor who is with us via skype because she is currently self-quarantining at her home and social distancing as we all must. dr. patel, i'd like to begin with you with a very simple reminder, and this is often unpleasant to hear. for the folks watching, it's coming up on 11:30 eastern time, 8:30 out west. what's life going to look like in our country? let's give it two to three weeks from now. where are these numbers that seem astronomical? new york city has fully

one-sixth of all the known cases in this country. where are these numbers going to be? >> brian, these numbers are going to elevate at least twentyfold. we're talking -- you've already heard the governor of new york try to give people a stark reminder. 18 million new yorkers, anywhere from 40% to 60%. remember, a lot of those people will be completely asymptomatic, so these people should not all end up in the hospital. but we're talking just in the state of new york alone, potentially 9 million people. so these numbers are absolutely going to go up unless a lot of the measures that many of the governors and mayors who truly are the heroes out of this story are taking right now to shelter in place and to do that kind of proverbial flatten the curve. >> dr. patel, we're starting to hear the term "herd immunity." we're starting to hear arguments, well, if everybody gets it, that's the only way we

can arrest its growth. can you explain this term to a lay audience, including me? >> sure. it's certainly not something that even for many medical professionals is kind of easy to get. but for public health professionals and people with that background, herd immunity, just to be very simplistic about it, is the concept almost like the flu or like the common cold, brian, that the more people that get it, then the more people who have either through a vaccine or actually having the disease can actually spread kind of person to person immunity. and so that's the concept of herd immunity. and really this happens through having kind of passive -- it's something that wsee with infectious diseases, and it's something that you saw the uk, up until recently, was advocating for by keeping schools open. i think the real issue is that we don't know enough about this virus to make that prediction. you've had guests that talked about that.

the second thing is that we actually are not sure what the fatality rate is, and it's way too early to think about how we could potentially, without a vaccine, without any sort of treatments, safely and responsibly encourage herd immunity. and we also do think -- i think you've had guests in the last two hours that have talked about the fast-changing nature of this virus. the virus we see today is not going to be the virus that we see in six months, and that's because it's a very different type of organism. >> and, dr. azar, you know because you've been experiencing it for the last couple of days what the front lines are like here in new york, working in a big company in new york city, in a building known around the planet, which markets itself as a magnet to tourists. we keep a skating rink out back in the winter. and that makes us kind of a target within a target in the

city of new york. are you confident that your charges, the folks you've been advising inside this network, this company, have done all they can to arrest the spread and fortify themselves? >> you mean here at nbc? >> yeah. >> yeah. i think -- i think they really, really, really acted appropriately. i mean we used the term "out of an abundance of caution" -- >> mm-hmm. >> -- a lot. but i really believe that they did in this case. as far as we know, the exposure that we all had was truly minimal, and i had, you know, conversations with my hospital colleagues about whether or not my exposure at nbc would have qualified for quarantine as a medical professional. and, in fact, it probably wouldn't have.

so i theoretically could have, you know, gone and worked this week and seen my patients based on the level of exposure that i had, which i think is interesting. so i think that nbc, again -- i think nbc was very, you know, very quick to say, you know what? we're reporting on how to do this. we have to do this right. and, yeah, so, you know, you can never be too careful with something like this. you know, there's no monday morning quarterbacking. we know just how contagious this virus is. we're learning more and more just how contagious it is in the asymptomatic period. so, yeah, i mean i think they did everything right. and, you know, i'll be back in both offices hopefully next week. you know, interesting you bring that up, brian, because we're making adjustments on the hospital side too every single day. we're trying to get our telemedicine, our virtual care up and running by thursday, which is kind of unprecedented because most of us don't have that already, you know,

implemented in our practices. some of the younger, newer practices do. we didn't. you know, so everything is being modified literally on a daily basis as much as we're hearing the news changing on a daily basis. >> doctors, i want to thank you very much, first of all, for staying up late with us after a long day and for helping us understand this and pass it along to our audience. dr. kavita patel, dr. natalie azar, we greatly appreciate it. when we come back, we're going to switch over to our political coverage, talk about what happened tonight in three of our 50 states. the dramatic come-around of the campaign of joe biden and voter turnout, what we've learned.

welcome back, and let's speak candidly, shall we? a funny thing happened to this guy on super tuesday. he started winning, and he has never looked back since. in florida, nbc news projects biden the winner tonight. in illinois, nbc news projects biden the winner tonight. in arizona, in the desert southwest, nbc news projecting joe biden, making it 3-0. not a bad tuesday night. the unknown, of course, was supposed to be our fourth state. that's ohio. we won't find out there until june, but steve kornacki already

knows a lot at the big board. hey, steve. >> hey, brian. yeah, a couple things we can tell you here. first, on the delegate count, the national delegate count, you see that lead for biden there. still adding them all up tonight, but over 300 now. 315 the margin. if you look at this same combination of states, this same point in the race, in the pledged delegate count in 2016, biden -- excuse me -- sanders running against hillary clinton, hillary clinton did not get a lead like this in the pledged delegate count over bernie sanders. he never got ahead of her, but he didn't fall this far behind in the pledged delegate count. so i think that's significant, the distance biden is starting to open up in the pledged delegate race. the other thing we've been keeping in mind is the question of turnout. the coronavirus. was that going to affect it? the answer here is yes but in an interesting way. let's start in arizona where again we just got a bunch of the vote in, the early vote out there. that's the key to this. how much early voting there is in the state of arizona.

so two-thirds of the vote is now counted. this adds up to about 471,000 votes that have been cast so far, counted so far, with more to be tallied. look at this. that is significantly ahead of the 2016 primary turnout in arizona. they're at 471 now. they're still counting them. that number is probably going to be north of 500,000. you look, it was barely 400,000 in 2016, so they're going to be up, and they're going to be up significantly in arizona. i said, remember, that's a heavy mail-in voting state, a heavy early voting state. take a look at florida. florida is also a pretty heavy early mail-in voting state. you can see with 93% in here, it's a little over 1.7 million. it is now past the 2016 level. it's going to rise a little bit more. it's going to be a modest increase in florida over the 2016 level. if you can remember, a couple hours earlier when we were starting to look at the florida results, our decision desk had a higher estimate for what the total turnout was going to be in

florida. what happened was that early vote, that mail-in vote was a very big number. the same-day vote there in florida, comparatively microscopic. so you're not going to see more than 2 million. you're going to see an increase because of the early and the mail-in voting, but it's going to be a modest increase. then you get to the third state tonight, and that is illinois. illinois is not the heavy early, mail-in state that these other two are. we're up to 84% of the vote here in illinois. right now, that adds up to about 1.2 million votes that have been counted. look at what it was in 2016. it was over 2 million. so that number, about 1.2 million, is going to rise. it's not going to rise a ton because what we're seeing here is what we saw in florida in a lot of these counties. that same-day vote today, it was a trickle in terms of people going out to the polls. you're just seeing here across the state of illinois for different reasons, if you look

down here in little egypt, southern illinois, you're seeing 40% reductions in turnout. some of that is rural voters who just aren't interested in the democratic party anymore. but even in these suburbs, these collar counties, these densely populated suburbs outside chicago where you saw huge democratic surges in 2018, you're seeing here turnout actually down from 2016 in places like that. in these college counties where of course school has been canceled for the last week or so because of the coronavirus, you're seeing turnout reductions as well. so illinois, unlike arizona and unlike florida, when they count these all up, you're going to see a pretty significant decline, probably like 20% in the turnout in illinois, and that is a coronavirus effect. there's no question about it. >> steve, a nonpartisan question about process. tell me why all 50 secretaries of state in all 50 states

shouldn't begin a marshal plan as of now to move their elections to a lock cinch even if people are not allowed out, not allowed to congregate. >> i got to think for the general election, just in this climate we're in right now, that's where the conversation is going to move rapidly, at least for states to put the option on the table so that if you get to the summer, if you get to the fall and it looks like we're going to be in any situation like we are right now, that they have the option to go to some kind of mail-in. i suspect the conversation is going to be moving there rapidly and a lot of people are going to point to exactly what we're seeing tonight in terms of these turnout patterns as the reason why. >> all right. steve kornacki, as always worth his weight in gold. thank you so much. joy reid is back with us, host of "a.m. joy," well known around here, as is former obama campaign manager david plouffe, who happens to be in the bay area tonight of all places, probably made up the excuse of walking the dog as a way of making it to a television studio and looking essential. joy reid, i'd like to start with you. we have a front-runner, joy.

i think you've seen the map. i think by now you know the shade of biden blue i'm talking about. two-part question. what do you think should happen in the democratic party tomorrow morning? what do you think will happen in the democratic party tomorrow morning? >> well, you know, i hate to tell the party what to do, but i think what is going to happen, what you're going to start to see are democrats start to move on from the primary. i think that the biden campaign, what they must do is find a way to bring down the bernie sanders, you know, supporters, his hard-core supporters are going to be heartbroken. i worked an election where we lost. it is very difficult to walk away. and in the case of what we were doing in '04, it wasn't that the people i was working with had some great attachment to john kerry. it was a great attachment to ending the war in iraq and to defeating george w. bush.

and when we lost, i can remember that election night having an older woman sort of crying into my arms, you know. she couldn't believe that it wasn't possible to defeat a president who in the minds of the people in that room had lied us into a war in which a lot of people died, you know, in a lot of people's minds for something that didn't make any sense. so, you know, it isn't easy. and the sanders supporters are going to have a difficult walk now. and i think for the biden team, they've got to think about are there issues and ideas that sanders has put forward that he can adopt in a way that might bring some of those -- at least some of them or most of them in, and can he with the pick of his vice presidential running mate bring them in and excite some of those younger voters? a lot of them are younger voters of color. they're people who are excited, you know, as lawrence said earlier, some of them are first-time voters. so he has to think about that. i don't expect bernie sanders to necessarily walk away from the campaign in the near future.

but, you know, i wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot less active campaigning. but if i could just say, you know, just on a kind of a bigger picture sense, brian, i think a lot of voters today and just people i've been talking to and really spent a lot of time talking to people in florida. people are really coming to grips with the incredible cost of having elected a man like donald trump to be president. i think what's helping and what's driving this biden surge is that people are reckoning with that cost. you know, people sort of felt with barack obama as the backdrop, that they sort of had all of these options, you know, that you could sort of make all these choices about going to iconoclasm or do you really want hillary? i don't think she's good enough for me. and people made those choices with obama as the backdrop. with trump here, this was like hiring william shatner to be an airline pilot because he was james t. kirk and he piloted the enterprise. this man has no capacity to lead this country.

he fired the pandemic office and then lied and said he didn't. now the video is out showing, yes, he did. he doesn't understand government. he's got a guy working for him like steve mnuchin who thinks you can do a payroll tax cut. folks i'm talking to in the restaurant industry, they're going to have to lay their people off. if you aren't getting a paycheck, a payroll tax cut does absolutely nothing for you. what's the point of that? i think the republican party has to start to rethink. if you don't believe in government, you cannot govern. and someone like donald trump as president is absurd in this sort of situation. i think biden is benefiting from the fact that he is a man of government. he is a man who understands and respects government. and so i think that, you know, he is on his way to getting that nomination. he just has to figure out a way to sort of soothe the bernie supporters in a way that can bring as many of them in as he can. >> okay, david plouffe, as joy just plainly put it, joe biden

is widely seen as a guy on his way to claiming the nomination. talk about the downside of the optics of starting tomorrow morning, after a 3-0 victory by biden, the optics of a sanders campaign continuing, lumbering along, and the backdrop couldn't be more serious. it's a national emergency. >> right. well, joe biden is the democratic nominee. the general election is set. it's joe biden versus donald trump. so bernie sanders may continue to campaign. i think joe biden needs to be incredibly respectful of that. to joy's point, they're going to have to work as hard as they'll work on anything to bring the sanders folks in. the but the general election is in 7 1/2 months. it's one of the most consequential elections in american history if not the most. it was already the case before the coronavirus. when joe biden -- he can't spend in his campaign, can't spend a minute or a dime in wisconsin, in pennsylvania in ohio, which

polls suggest it could be competitive. that's not focused on the general election. there's building the campaign. there's deciding which battleground states you're going to target. there's obviously being the one voice, narrating trump's mishandling of this crisis. but the american people are also going to focus on once we get past the immediate health crisis, this is going to be an economic catastrophe, one of the worst this country may have ever faced. so joe biden's going to have to provide answers for people, not just about how he's going to triage the moment, but how we're going to rebuild our economy. so it's irresponsible not to begin focusing on the general election. you can do it in a respectful way. that work has to happen right now because what's clear over the last few weeks is if you give donald trump a second term, my goodness, we literally may not survive it. >> people also need in that party -- i keep hearing -- to come together. society owes a debt to jim clyburn for giving us a new term of art. there's every other political endorsement, and then there's getting a clyburn, the most emotional and sincere

endorsement most of us have ever seen in modern politics. where do you think, if it's inevitable that bernie will be saying some form of "i support joe biden, you should too" -- where do you think that's going to fall on the clyburn spectrum? >> well, right. the clyburn, we'll be talking about that as long as we talk about politics. but, listen, it's important. i mean i think first of all, i think bernie sanders and joe biden have real affection for each other. bernie sanders has talked so powerfully about the stakes of this election, and we can't have a second donald trump. so i don't think this will just be words. i don't think this will just be going through the motions. i think on day one and the rest of the campaign be out there doing everything he can. it's important. i think the question is timing. if i was the biden campaign, you can't push sanders out. he's going to decide when is the right time to do this. we do have primaries in late april. who knows if those will occur?

so i think part of this is when is the next time there's going to be a vote? so if the pennsylvania primary does happen -- and i have big doubts whether it will -- what you don't want is joe biden spending a lot of money or time in that primary. we need to start building in pennsylvania to win back those 20 electoral votes. it will be a big moment when it happens, and there's no doubt that the biden campaign needs not just that moment. they need to learn from the sanders campaign. sanders' campaign is super savvy digitally. they've shown the ability to reach young people, not just people in their 20s, people 45 and below. i don't know if you can fully integrate, but if i was the biden campaign, there's a lot of talent in the sanders campaign, and i would look to restock my chain with some of the folks there and then have bernie all over the country. >> we should emphasize bernie sanders and his supporters have earned their role, their place in the conversation. we should also emphasize we realize this is a painful conversation during the heat of battle in the political business. to our friends, joy reid and

david plouffe, thank you, gang, for staying up late with us. we greatly appreciate it. when we come back, a man who knows his history. we'll ask him if we've ever seen anything like this before. i have the power to lower my blood sugar and a1c. because i can still make my own insulin. and trulicity activates my body to release it like it's supposed to. trulicity is for people with type 2 diabetes. it's not insulin. i take it once a week. it starts acting in my body from the first dose. trulicity isn't for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. don't take trulicity if you're allergic to it, you or your family have medullary thyroid cancer, or have multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. stop trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, or severe stomach pain. serious side effects may include pancreatitis. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin increases low blood sugar risk. side effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, belly pain,

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when we've got to talk to him, we've got to talk to him. and tonight is one of those nights for jon meacham, presidential historian, pulitzer prize-winning author. his latest, "the hope of glory: reflections on the last

words of jesus christ from the cross." jon, we don't need anything quite that lofty tonight but i was thinking about you today because if we're not careful, people are going to start reading history books. people are issuing kind of vague exhortations about all this country has been able to do and pull off over the years, most of it in the name of warfare. and i was thinking about willow run, which was once an auto assembly line, but once it was converted, you can make an argument it helped us win the second world war by producing a new b-24 every hour. talk about that part of the american spirit that we haven't tapped into to make a single train in the last 40 years. >> that's exactly right. you know, franklin roosevelt would pick those numbers off the top of his head. he would say, we're going to make 10,000 planes a week, and i

think it was sam rosenman, his speechwriter said, where did you get that number, sir? he said, i made it up. but we did it. and we're in a situation, i think it's a little bit more like britain in world war ii in that we are all truly in this, and we're actually combatants. you know, the luftwaffe was coming after the brits. this virus is coming after us. it's a full mobilization. it's a civilian struggle. really we would have had this in the cold war if things had gone in a tragic direction. and the great news is when we actually put our minds to something, we've nearly always done it. and i think a part of it is the spirit as you say. i think part of it is the idea that we are -- that the government itself, america is

about us. it's about we, the people. and the great sense, it seems to me, the great hope here is that if you give us a challenge and if you're straight with us, you know, give it to us straight, we'll do what it takes. that was the lesson of franklin roosevelt. it was the lesson of the cold war. warfare, you're right, that is the analogy we fall back on because that's the fullest mobilization. and here we're all in this. we have a direct stake. >> but here's the asterisk. everything today is through a political filter. and as i said earlier, the president spoke these words with a straight face today. "i always felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic." jon, did we just not live through the last couple weeks? >> well, he has his own reality field, and you and i have talked before. to some extent, we have to put

the president to the side here and hope that the government as it's constituted can in fact deliver what we need. at this point, the last couple of days have felt better in that regard. the presidency, as franklin roosevelt once said, is not an engineering job. it is preeminently a place of moral leadership. i think the great lesson tonight of the primaries is that america wants a president who reminds them of other presidents. and there was a novelty factor with the incumbent. but the show, which was always going to wear thin, is now wearing thin at a moment where he treats this as reality tv, but this is reality for the rest of us. >> jon meacham, thank you. be well. it's what we're saying to everybody. our coverage continues right after this.

♪ hello from new york. i'm chris hayes. it is midnight here on the east coast and what appears to be the end of a long day and a seeming route for joe biden in those three states that voted today. as we wrap up what i think is fair to say the strangest election day in recent memory, there is of course the global coronavirus pandemic. we as a country currently attempting to slow the rate of infection, to flatten the curve in order to save lives and save the health care system. we are doing that with things like social distancing, closures of schools, dine-ins, restaurants, gyms, bars and in some places like the bay area a almost full shutf