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we feel good about where we are. we really do. i'm here to tell you tonight, we believe we're on track to win this election. we knew, because of the unprecedented early vote and the mail-in vote, it was going to take a while. we're going to have to be patient until we -- the hard work of tallying the votes is finished. and it ain't over until every vote is counted. every ballot is counted. keep the faith, guys, we're going to win this, thank you, thank you, thank you. >> this is a major fraud in our nation, we want law to be used in a proper manner. so, we'll be going to the u.s. supreme court. we want all voting to stop.

we don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list. okay. it's a very sad -- it's a very sad moment. to me, it's a very sad moment. and we will win this, as far as i'm concerned, we already have won it. >> and that is where we stand this morning. count every ballot, versus stop counting the votes. despite president trump's false claim that he won, the winner of the presidential election has not been determined. and we will continue to keep track of the votes as they come in. it is legal. and within voting procedures to continue counting after the polls close. and there are millions of votes still to be counted, included in michigan, pennsylvania and wisconsin. which represent a combined 46 electoral votes.

and we just got some breaking news out of wisconsin that we'll get to in just a moment. also in georgia, most populous counties in the state, put itten and gwinnett have had trouble tallying early and election day results. and georgia is still too close to call right now. and in north carolina, president trump is ahead, but that race is also too close to call this morning. the state of maine is still too early to call. but joe biden is leading by about 12 points there. in arizona, joe biden is leading, but so far nbc news deems the race is too early to call. similarly, in nevada, biden is ahead, but that race is also too early to call. right now, in the electoral college, nbc news has biden with 220 votes and trump at 213. it takes, of course, 270 to win. welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, november 4th,

along with joe, willie and me. we have white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire. nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early," kasie hunt. we're here. and the president of the historian jon meacham. and for msnbc steve kornacki. >> in the last few minutes, jobe jobe h joe biden has outperformed hillary clinton in milwaukee county. doing extremely well, what's remaining in that count? >> yes, you can see the lead for joe biden just under 10,000 votes statewide in wisconsin,

now 9, 673. what happened in the last 15 minutes the absentee vote for the city of milwaukee which we've been anticipating since 1:00 in the morning was finally released. and it produced a massive margin for joe biden, about 118,000 votes. is it erased a lead for trump looking at all night, of 100,000 votes, put biden in the lead. if you're a democrat, you're talking about two places here, kenosha, yes, in the county, trump leads by 21 minutes rig p now. 22 points but it's the kenosha city absentee vote. for the democrats that might be a little more friendly to them, at the very least, less hostile than the entire county vote. we'll see, though, when that comes in. also, we're waiting on the city of green bay and it's absentee vote. this is brown county, trump doing well in the county.

the green bay absentee vote might be a place of a different story. there are places for democrats to pad out the biden lead. there are also a few republican counties on this map. richland county, for instance, very small here, i think we're looking at getting some more vote there. we're looking at more vote in dunn county, a little bigger one, trump county there. there are a couple pockets here for trump to still make some gains. it's sort of the same question if folks were watching an hour ago, when biden was down 100,000 plus, i was saying is there enough left there in milwaukee to erase that big of a lead. now, you got to ask that question for trump, is there enough left in counties like dunn and richland. the margin for trump in 2016, 23,000 votes. so they're used to close presidential elections here. >> yeah, obviously, a lot of eyes also on georgia. what are we looking at there?

>> so, let's take a look down here. the margin -- yeah, we've been sitting here for a while. i think they have stopped counting for the night. the story in georgia is the atlanta metro area. that is where the bulk of the outstanding voters. in fact, i can put that up here. here is the outstanding vote in georgia right now, the bigger the bubble -- i can take my bubble off the screen. the bigger the bubble, the more outstanding vote there is. for democrats, they trail right now, biden does, by 102,000 votes in georgia. you still have a lot of vote in fulton county. you still have a lot of vote in dekalb right next door. out of albany, macon, augusta, savannah. there are places still on this map where biden can eat into that trump lead. there are also the very small dots if you can make them out here scattered around the state. there are a lot of republican pockets of the state where trump can pick up a little bit here, a little bit will there.

and it starts to add up. biden trying to erase a six-figure deficit there. 102,000 votes. this was sitting at 375,000 when the atlanta metro area started coming in. we've gotten very close here. we're trying to get an exact sense from fulton county, how many ballots exactly are left to be counted here. that's obviously a critical variable if biden is going to make up a deficit like that at this point. >> steve, let's hop west a little bit when we went off the air on peacock tv just a couple hours ago, arizona was looking good for joe biden, maricopa was looking good for joe biden. where does it stand? >> yeah, arizona reports out in three groups of votes. the first by far, the biggest, probably watching it, 75% of the vote that comes in, it's the most favorable vote to democrats. what it is, the early vote that was cast from the very beginning

of absentee voting until last weekend. that's what they reported out first. let's go to maricopa county which is kind of the ball game in arizona. when that was reported in, joe biden's advantage over donald trump was ten points. we got through that first group. the next question is where we are right now. how much same-day vote, i mean election day vote was cast because that's where trump's strongest group is, and trump is winning that election day vote pretty overwhelmingly. enough that he's cut the gap in maricopa county from that initial from ten plus to six. how much of that same-day is left? and there's a third group of ballots. and they're the late arriving absentee. the late arriving early votes. the one that kim came in the da before election day. you want to get a sense of that. again, if you're biden, six points up in maricopa county.

this county is almost two-thirds of all of arizona in terms of population. just a massive suburban metro area there. if biden is able to hang on to that by a couple points, that would put him in a very good picks in arizona. >> as we said he's got to win arizona for the upper midwest. sorry to jump across the map, let's go to north carolina. that was looking strong for donald trump near the end of the night. where are we this morning? >> yeah, it hasn't been called yet. donald trump leads by 75,000 votes. the issue for north carolina, the ballots didn't have to be in by election day. if they were postmarked in transit, if they still arrive like today, they will be counted. so, we don't know. we don't know the exact number of ballots that are actually going to arrive in north carolina that were sent and postmarked before election day. so, until you get a sense of what that is, nobody is calling

this, but that is a fairly sizable number for donald trump in the context of things. >> all right, steve. we're back to you, obviously, any news breaking out of wisconsin, let us know, we'll be right back to you. jonathan lemire, in arizona, fox news called arizona earlier in the evening last night. for donald trump. the associated press early this morning followed. and obviously, nbc news still waiting to do that. but talk about what's happening right now in wisconsin and the impact that could have on the race. >> well, it's an extraordinarily tight race, of course, joe. let's actually quickly go back to arizona for a moment when the fox news did call the state for joe biden. it was met with a howl of anger from the trump campaign who

claimed that it was premature that it was an act of -- they said it was fundamentally wrong. they said there were still too many votes outstanding to say what happened when the ap made its call. of course, the president has made clear from the white house earlier that he thinks it was wrong as well. in terms of wisconsin, it opens up for biden if he's to win many more pathways to the magic 270. where he is now if he is indeed able to hold on to arizona, he would then just need two of the three great lakes states that have defined this election. the blue wall from 2016. that president trump won from hillary clinton, the wisconsin/pennsylvania/michigan trio. biden if he were to hang on to arizona could win wisconsin and michigan and not need pennsylvania in order to get to that magic number.

regardless of what happens with states in the southeast, georgia and north carolina that are extraordinarily close and have yet to be called. the trump campaign right now, i've been talking to them all night long, they are, of course, as indicated very angered with what happened in arizona. we should not underlook or overstate what the president of the united states did tonight from the white house where the incumbent, the sitting president suggested that the ballots cast by voters in the united states should not be counted. and that he would take legal action, potentially with the supreme court to stop that. now, it's not clear what justification he has. it's not clear whether the supreme court would hear this case what other legal hoops he would have to jump through. that in itself, subverting the very foundation of democracy cannot be stressed enough what the president has done tonight. what a norm he has shattered and how dangerous that it is. they still feel good, the trump campaign, they feel like the southeast they'll hang on there. the three states in the great

lakes are close. the biden camp, as well, they acknowledge it's close. ejust talked to the biden camp within the hour, they feel like they can bring it home, even if it takes hours, even potentially a few days to get the final results. >> well, then, as you look at the map, if in fact nbc news follows the ap and if the votes end up putting joe biden ahead, if we go to arizona, as the associated press, fox news and others have projected, and if nevada follows, well, then, of course, we're looking at wisconsin. and if donald trump loses withes with, as he's doing right now, then joe biden is either a win in michigan, pennsylvania, north carolina or georgia away from being over 270 electoral votes. and winning the presidency. but, of course, if donald trump

has his way, jon meacham, that will never happen, the same man who refused time and time again to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power. the same man who called for the arrest as president of the united states of your political opponent and final weeks of the campaign and pressured his attorney general to issue an arrest, that man shattered another constitutional and political norm earlier this evening. >> you know, america runs on a kind of faith, faith in basic institutions, faith in each other, faith that at the end of the day there is a sense of fair play. there's a sense that the rule of law is in fact the controlling and prevailing force. that we're not a government of men and certainly, not of a

single man, but of laws. and that is under fundamental assault and testing at this hour. the contrast last night, this morning, couldn't have been any starker between the two competitors for the presidency. we have world enough in time to talk about what these margins mean in terms of the character of the people and the life of the nation. right now, this is kind of an all-hands on deck moment, where even if you are a loyalist of the president and you cast your vote, you should want every vote to be counted. the president has spun this narrative that the voting is still unfolding. you know, let's be very careful about our words here. he's saying that -- he's trying

to create the impression that what steve was just doing, what willie was doing last night is somehow reporting fresh information, fresh votes being cast, now that somehow or another the democrats know the margin they need. i mean, that's the story he's trying to tell. unclear at this hour how many people will believe it. i was struck by some of the opinion polling heading into yesterday that people had a kind of faith in the system. that there's no use looking to trump for that. looking for any kind of steadying hand. the system, in an interesting way, i think, the people ourselves, we the people, have to take charge of this, in the sense of insisting that the laws be followed.

and in no other universe except in a television-driven world view would the presidential election be over. at no point in american history has it all been done on election night. it seems that way, because these are estimates that are made and rational ones. but there are days and weeks for the certification. electoral college meets in december. it's just yet another example, and again, we don't want -- i don't think we neat to litigate the whys here. but it's another example of reality show narrative replacing reality in the president's head. >> right. >> which really doesn't matter, except that now it's our reality, so the only mercy of last night was that the

president was speaking so late. so, i'm hoping that, again, we the people, not just people on tv, not just people who have access to larger megaphones, but all of us should want this process to unfold legally, rationally, because final point, this is a little bit like religious liberty. one of the cases for religious liberty is that we allow rilibey for all to believe or not believe, because the dominance of any one group could be undone. and some day, you may be on top, but some day you may not be. that's true in democracy. you follow the rules, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the rational thing to do. because you want the rules to apply to those who are against you, as well as to yourself. >> well, and, of course, this is

a president who governs by gesture, usually, those gestures are meaningless when the president talks about building a wall, that mexico is going to pay for. or he makes other grandiose claims. the president, though, understands that the votes are going to be counted. his own allies are demanding that all the votes be counted in places like arizona. this is just as hypocritical as it was when he was decrying mail-in voting in democratic states, with democratic governors. but it wasn't a force in republican states. and in states like florida. but the president has no legal standing. he knows he has no legal standing for this. all he wanted to do is get that sound bite out there. and undermine the democratic

process. this, again -- this shouldn't be a shock to anybody. because it's what he's been doing for this entire election cycle. so, anyway, mika, we'll be getting back to wisconsin. and the other races. but not a good night for democrats across the board in the senate or the house. >> yeah. nbc news projects democrats will retain enough seats to keep control of the house of representatives. yet, democrats are winning fewer house seats than they had hoped. results so far suggest, house democrats are running strong in many of the competitive districts. they swept up in 2018, but are struggling to make further inroads into the republican-leaning suburbs where they had expected strong gains. fueled by discontent with president trump. at this point, democrats have lost at least six incumbents and failed to oust republican

incumbents. so far, their only gains have been two seats in north carolina, both of which were vacated by incumbents. republican incumbents, after a court-ordered remapping, kasie, this is painful for democrats in race after race, it's close, or it didn't go the way they wanted. >> it really didn't, mika. and i think that these congressional races really underscore this broader top line that we have been talking about that this race is so much closer, frankly, than anyone projected. i mean, we're not talking about a situation just where polls that the media were doing turned out to be wrong. i mean, every single congressional campaign, supermack doisuper pac doingle positiving, large outside groups. there was so much data, all of it, internals, externals, reporting so much different than what we saw on the map. this district level information

gives a sense the degree to which democratic hopes for a sweeping commanding majority across the map, a rebuke of president trump, just didn't materialize. i mean, when i was talking to hill sources and, again, both sides of the aisle, going into last night, both sides were expecting democrats to pick up probably between five and eight seats. and both sides suggested, well, if it's a really good night for democrats, that number could be in the double digits. nobody was talking about republicans actually gaining seats in the house. while we've got a long road to count all of the votes on that level and all on nbc, it's likely at the end of the day, republicans are going to pick up some seats. democrats are going to hang on to control of the chamber. the senate is a similar story. the republicans that i was talking to, going into last night. were so depressed to be almost punch drunk about what they were facing. they thought the president was dragging down their incumbents in an amazing way and they

thought things looked bleak. instead, it looks like thom tillis is going to hang on in north carolina, susan collins still has a chance in maine, although that's going to take a long time to count. looks like arizona and texas went as many expected. they went for democrats. we're still waiting on michigan to see how gary peters is doing. and joni ernst hung on to her seat in iowa. so, i think really the opposite lesson is likely to be learned by republicans than many expected going into the night which is, you know, holding on to donald trump was really a strategy that saved a lot of them. i think even if joe biden does pull it out in michigan and wisconsin and arizona, pulls together enough votes to win the white house, we're looking at a deeply divided government. again, two more years of real gridlock and a struggle to get things done. so, really not what anyone

expected, going into the congressional map here. but, you know, here we are, again, it seems like, everyone -- i don't know that people failed to learn a lesson in 2016. i mean, they certainly tried to make sure that they learned them. here we are again, this morning. >> and lindsey graham wins going away in a race he was worried he was going to lose. so much money was poured in there. >> $100 million. >> $100 million on behalf of jaime harrison and a double-digit victory for lindsey graham. you led me to the question under normal circumstances when the president of the united states comes out and says incorrectly that we have already won it, that voting should stop, there is fraud, i'm going to the supreme court, irresponsibly, recklessly undermining this process, you would hope that republicans would step forward in that moment. this is a moment for democracy, where you'd say, no, actually, sir, we're going to wait and count every vote. there is no evidence of fraud

here but for the point you just made, the lesson that they just learned forget the last couple weeks, the last couple hours staying close to donald trump and loyal to donald trump may be why they retain their seats so they're not going to cross him now. >> willie, this is the exact question of the day for me, absolutely hitting the nail on the head. and frankly, a lot of my sources went to bed as i put this to them. i'm waiting for them to get up to talk more about it. i had been reporting this out before the election. the general sense i got across for a couple weeks of reporting, you know, private conversations with republican lawmakers and aides trying to get a sense of, okay, how would they react if something like this happened. and the sense was then it was likely that there was going to be a significant repudation trump, while they were potentially willing to let him file the lawsuits. and you point out correctly that there is not legal standing for

what he suggested already in just the comments he made over the course of the last night, they, i think, are going to let him go forward with that. and the dynamics of how this is playing out, how close it is, i think potentially changes some of the calculations. i was convinced they weren't ready to let the entire republican party experiment go down with donald trump. there are too many of them invested in it for their own reason, who have worked inside of it for so many decades and, frankly, who have ambitions that are way past a second donald trump term. but i think the lesson that we learned last night potentially really changes that political calculus. i'm still waiting to find out from conversations that i have yet to have with folks as they grapple with it but i would not be surprised to see that exact trend emerge, willie. >> kasie hunt, thank you very, very much for your around-the-clock work here. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll go live to wilmington, delaware, for the very latest from the biden

campaign. politico's jake sherman will also join us, and much more with steve kornacki at the big board. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. and because it's a ninja foodi, it can do things no other oven can, like flip away. the ninja foodi air fry oven, the oven that crisps and flips away. ♪ oh, oh, (announcer)®! ♪ once-weekly ozempic® is helping many people with type 2 diabetes like emily lower their blood sugar. a majority of adults who took ozempic® reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. here's your a1c. oh! my a1c is under 7! (announcer) and you may lose weight. adults who took ozempic® lost on average up to 12 pounds. i lost almost 12 pounds! oh! (announcer) for those also with known heart disease, ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, or death. it lowers the risk. oh! and i only have to take it once a week.

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♪ welcome back to "morning joe." we're here early. we're going to steve kornacki in one second. willie, we covered a lot last night on peacock, over six

hours. but one or two things that bear repeating this morning. when it comes to the expectations of yesterday's election, democrats got crushed. they got crushed in expectations in the senate and the house. and, yes, even in the race for the white house. especially if you look at all of those public polls. a lot of them that we have been skeptical of. but i want to underline a point this morning that kasie touched upon. it wasn't just the public polls. >> right. >> it was republicans' internal polls. it was republican congressional candidates' internal polls. republican senate candidates' internal polls. and the rnc's own polling. we had said earlier in the evening that the white house, people in the white house, had all but given up on michigan sometime ago. and thought that wisconsin was

out of reach. we're going to be win thousands of votes. so it shows you, you know, there's going to be, of course, you know, fear and loathing and tears and the gnashing of teeth. but this was a bipartisan failure, as well as a public polling failure. but once again, once again, the polls and the entire political world in washington, d.c., and new york, totally missed the scale of the democrats' underperformance last night. >> it's more stunning than it was in 2016 when some of the polls were wrong, because we've heard again and again and again from these pollsters that they recalibrated that they learned from 2016. this time they'd be closer to what's right. joe, there was a poll from a major news organization that had joe biden up 17 points.

we laughed at a time in realtime on the air. 17 points in the state of wisconsin. >> right. >> but even the average, we thought that was an outlier, but the average was seven, eight points. and we're lacking at a 9,000 vote spread for joe biden right now in the state of wisconsin. pushing up to 10,000 with some of the votes still out there so, yeah, the polling wasn't even close. as you say, a lot of was internal, did lindsey graham really think he was going to beat jaime harrison by double digits? absolutely not. he was fighting for his life. every time he went on tv, he was asking for money, he was giving out the name of his website because he was so worried. even with the trump campaign, this thing could still be close, in spite of the polls saying we really don't believe in the polls. frankly, their heart didn't feel in it. that sounded like a last-ditch excuse, but they were right, the

polls were wrong, even more wrong than in 2016. >> that is absurd. you look at wisconsin again, a 1 17-point poll, but the average for wisconsin was nine points. we always said that wisconsin and michigan were going to be much closer. between four points, three, four, five points and said that the florida polls were ridiculous. but they were all preposterously off. and steve kornacki, here we are in arizona, michigan, wisconsin, in georgia, north carolina, we have one close race after another. and nowhere is that any more true than in nevada, which is seeing some really slow going in a very tight race. what's going on there? >> yeah, we just got an update from nevada, too. let's call it up. remember, this is a state

clinton won in 2016 that trump is trying to flip. look at that you can see biden's lead statewide, nevada has fallen under 10,000 votes, 9200 votes. that's even closer when you start looking at the difference with candidates percentagewise. the key in nevada, clark county, las vegas, this is the bulk of the state here. a lot of the voters in. there's still vote to come. you see biden leading by 8 1/2 point, 7 1/2 points in clark county. the question we're trying to figure out is exactly what are the ballots that are left to come here. one thing we know in nevada is the mail vote, if it is postmarked by election day can arrive a while after election day and still can be counted. and the democrats which would seem like an advantage in mail-in voting may have a pad of votes there. we're not sure the exact amount.

otherwise here, it looks like there's 60,000, 70,000 votes coming from clark. we're trying to get a look at what type of vote that is if that's going to allow trump any closer here. yeah, this one, if there was a path for trump to pick off nevada, that would be a blue state that he's actually flipping. if we take it back to wisconsin, i know we have left folks hanging here. biden's advantage, a few more precincts in midsize republican counties scale in, 8100 is biden's lead statewide right now. a scattering of votes to come in here. it remains extremely close there. >> good gracious. steve kornacki, thank you. you'll keep us posted. we're going to take a quick break. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." politico's jake sherman will join us after a quick break. ♪ tide pods ultra oxi

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♪ it is 41 past the hour. and joining us now senior writer at politico and co-author of "the playbook," jake sherman. an msnbc contributor. jake, let's talk about the democrats, the senate races, just how badly they performed and why? >> this is where democrats in washington are waking up to an abject disaster, and there's no other way to explain this. forget the white house for a second, you can, but republicans are going to net seats in the house of representatives. that was on nobody's radar. they knocked off a whole host of incumbents. they have spent 1$125 million. and they lose to a whole host of

republican senators who they consider to be in danger, mitch mcconnell, jaime harrison, john cornyn and lindsey graham. if i were a democrat right now, i'd be -- again, forget joe biden for a second. congressional races operate kind of in a silo. and that silo is very messy this morning. if i'm a democrat looking to the top of my party and wondering what just went on. i mean, no matter who wins the presidency, capitol hill is going to be a mess in the next couple of years. you're going to have a house republican minority with more than 200 seats. you're going to have likely a republican majority in the senate. and that makes for gridlock no matter who wins the white house. so, again, i don't know what conclusion they're going to come to. there's always these kinds of discussions after an election whether the party was too far --

you know, too moderate, too liberal, too whatever. but there's going to be a soul searching in the democratic party for the next couple of weeks. it's going to be absolutely bloodying to see. >> jake, going down the races we were watching, tommy tuberville not a surprise. john hickenlooper, looks like john kelly. a couple of hiccups. which surprised you the most, thom tillis, joni ernst, and lindsey graham, just the margin alone by how much it looks like he's going to end up winning by. which of these races surprises you the most? >> probably joni ernst. the margin by which they won, lindsey graham and john cornyn, considering jaime harrison raise ready $100 million. i know we're talking senate, willie, but i want to shift to

the house. democrats, we talked about this last night on peacock, republicans won two seats in the miami area. they beat incumbents, max rose in new york. i'm not sure if that's officially called but republicans are quite confident they won that seat. they won a seat in south carolina, joe cunningham got knocked off. they won a seat back in oklahoma. by the way, i just weant to mak this clear and this doesn't mean anything besides making this statement. republicans did not expect this. >> no. >> they expected at best to keep their losses to single digits in the house of representatives. but they did not expect a net gain of seats. by the way, in a great sign for house republicans. i mean, they've struggled with a bunch of women have won their races. that is a big deal for republicans who have struggled with women in their ranks. >> yeah. and it is -- it just -- for democrats, it's a shocking result. but can't underline this enough,

it's shocking for republicans as well. they never saw this coming. their polls never suggested that they were going to have this kind of outcome. and, again, there will be a lot of hammering, people trying to figure out exactly what happened. could it be that 1 in 5 voters that pollsters talked to lied about who they were going to be supporting? i'm not so sure. but i don't think it all comes down to some sampling error. certainly, again, you can look at a presidential race. you can look at state polling. you can look at the editorial polling. you can look at the congressional polling, all wrong. now, jonathan lemire, again, we're jumping a little ahead here. but even if joe biden wins the presidency, and right now, that's a big if, because you look at the board, and arizona is too close to call.

nbc thinks. nevada too close to call. wisconsin too close to call. michigan too close to call. pennsylvania, north carolina, georgia, too close to call. there's some of those states that joe biden right now, at this moment, seems more likely to win than not. but let's talk about the democratic party. let's talk about the operation, just the basics of running political campaigns. it reminds me of what casey stingle said when he started coaching the expansion new york mets. can't anybody play this game? it's not a former republican talking. that is an observer who knows exactly what these democratic contributors are thinking right now. $100 million for a senate race that they lose in double digits? like $1 billion spread around the map. and one bad performance after

another, jonathan. at some point, the democratic party is going to have to look inward and examine themselves. and, no, not to play to the lowest common denominator, not to be racist, like donald trump, but ask how do they get a message that's more appealing to americans. barack obama did it. so it doesn't have to be racist. >> after 2016, joe, obviously, there were a lot of really traumatized democrats for what happened in that election so there wasn't a lot of outward boasting going into this election. it was a quiet confidence. they were nervous. democrats are democrats. deep down, you talked to some privately, they expressed their hopes that what happened yesterday, in this election would be a thorough repudiation of trump and his system and would be cast out of washington and national politics and

leaving the republicans to be the party in the wilderness to go back it the drawing board to figure out what went wrong. that's not where we are right now. certainly, as you said, biden jos should still be president. there are states left on the board that his team feels confident about but even if he is president, he is likely to be facing a republican-controlled senate. he's likely to get in with not nearly the electoral college that members of his own team thought he would get, raising questions perhaps about what his mandate will look like. i think it is -- you were right. there was a miscalculation by democrats. an underestimation, if you will, about the president's message and who he was talking to. and certainly, efforts to win back parts of the demographics including white working class voters by democrats didn't really work. at least not to the extent they hoped. they're going to have to look at the messaging.

there's probably going to be internal strife among democrats between moderates and progressives, what their message should be going forward. let's just put it out there, if a couple states go the wrong way for joe biden, and president trump is inner turmoil and the civil war will be that much greater and bloodier to the point where, as one democratic strategist told me last night at a particularly dire moment as results were coming in, he -- in a text, this person said to me, if we lose to donald trump twice, not only does that perhaps tell you about the country and about the identity of that nation, that he will be re-elected with more votes this time around, but it calls into question our future as a political party. do we have to start over to come up with a message that can win a national election at a time, in the age of trump? >> and let's say this again. i will repeat it again slowly so nobody misunderstands what i'm

saying -- barack obama somehow managed to win twice with a majority of votes. so, it is possible for the democratic party to win and win big without playing to the lowest common denominator, without using the sort of racist message -- >> right. >> -- that the president -- and by the way, is that my judgment? and this is something, mika, about examining this country. is it my judgment that donald trump is a racist? well, if you watch this show, you know that's my judgment, but that also, according to polls, is the judgment of a majority of americans. and so, so, if if the democrats can't beat a candidate like donald trump, who can they beat in 2020? it is -- and again, it's not

just on the presidential level. it's in the congressional races. it's in the senate races. this is a shocking repudiation of the democratic party, and again, shocking not just to democrats, but this morning, shocking to a lot of republicans on capitol hill who were telling all of us, they expected to be -- >> well, to build on jonathan lamire's point about the democrats potentially being in a position where they have to question their future as a party. over the past weeks and months, the narrative has been that republicans would be doing that, and that is not where we are this morning. >> no. >> at all. let's go to the biden campaign headquarters in wilmington, delaware, where we find nbc news political reporter ali vitali. ali, i know, obviously, the biden campaign would have liked to have had clarity early in the evening to put this to bed. at the same time, they have been

saying, pretty much every step of the way, that this could go beyond election day by days, even weeks. and joe biden pointed to that in his comments last night. what's the mood there this morning? what are you hearing from the campaign? >> reporter: that's certainly still the mind-set, mika. i think the word that we've been hearing from our campaign sources is that this is going to be a slog. and we knew that it was going to take a while to count votes in some of these places, but now living in that reality clearly feels a little different to democrats, because i think you guys make a really good point when you talk about -- and i have heard this in my text message chains as well, this idea of democrats needing to recalibrate their message because of how they fared yet again against donald trump nationally in this case. but the campaign right now also still has to be focused on the potential of winning this election, and so, they're still looking at places like michigan, pennsylvania, and wisconsin. they still feel like they can rebuild the blue wall, especially as so many of us went to bed last night, a lot of those big metropolitan areas

were still out with so many votes left to be counted. and so, the biden campaign clearly watched what donald trump did last night. they watched him unfoundedly declare victory. and they're out this morning with a statement in which they're saying that it was outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect. jenna o'malley dillon in that statement in the wee hours of the morning saying they still believe every vote is going to be counted and saying that if donald trump makes good on his promise to come at them with legal challenges, they've got teams of lawyers at the right. >> yeah, ali, and they're right in that assessment of what the president came out and said late last night. but what is the state of mind of the campaign right now? we should point out, again, joe biden has a good chance to get to 270. he's still there. and these states are close. but 24 hours ago, as you know well, the campaign was sort of indicating, hey, we feel pretty good about georgia, we feel good about north carolina, florida looks like it's in play. they were talking about a huge map. all of a sudden, they're fighting for their lives in the upper midwest that they thought they had locked. so, how are they feeling this

morning? are they shellshocked? >> reporter: we know there's the emotional roller coaster of election day and i think we've been talking about it as cautious optimism. yesterday i would have told you that this campaign was leaning into the optimism. today i would tell you that they're leaning into the cautious, because, frankly, i think a lot of the things that we saw in 2016, democrats then felt like there was really no way that they could lose to donald trump. this time around, obviously, democrats more skittish because they saw what happened in 2016, but even though a lot of these democrats, whether they're strategists outside the campaign or people inside of this campaign, they said that they saw that the numbers were close, a lot of them were still looking at the data, seeing early voter turnout that tilted in biden's direction. i think a lot of them looked at this race going into last night and felt like the numbers couldn't lie to them. they were just looking at the math. >> all right. >> ali vitali at biden headquarters, thank you so much. >> by the way, the dust is still settling, and we have a long way to go. when we come back, let's talk about hillary clinton and the

apologies that -- i'll just say it -- that i owe her and a lot of other people owe her, saying, oh, it's so easy to beat donald trump! all you had to do was go to wisconsin! >> mm. >> ends up, not so easy. we still don't know who's going to be president come january. >> steve kornacki will join us after a break to update the map. we'll be right back. be right ba. before voltaren arthritis pain gel, my husband would have been on the sidelines. but not anymore! an alternative to pills voltaren is the first full prescription strength non-steroidal anti-inflammatory gel to target pain directly at the source for powerful arthritis pain relief. voltaren. the joy of movement.

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some people say that's ridiculous. i dress how i feel. yesterday i felt bold with boundless energy. this morning i woke up calm and unbreakable. tomorrow? who knows. age is just an illusion. how you show up for the world, that's what's real. what's your idea? i put it out there with a godaddy website.

make the world you want. look, you know, we could know the results as early as tomorrow morning, but it may take a little longer, as i've said all along. it's not my place or donald trump's place to declare who's won this election. that's the decision of the american people.

but i am optimistic about this outcome. >> all right. welcome back to "morning joe." it's 6:00 on the east coast, 3:00 a.m. out west. the top headline this morning, the presidential race is not yet decided, no matter what president trump claims. by nbc's count, nearly 25 million votes still need to be counted. let's go right to the big board where we find national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc, steve kornacki. steve, update us. >> yeah, i mean, we're still continuing to look at a bunch of these states take shape. wisconsin we've been watching all night. that biden lead down to 7,300 votes. the biggest piece of business now left to attend to in wisconsin is in brown county. that is where green bay is. it's the absentee vote in green bay. we have been waiting for this one for a while, too. we talked a few hours ago, if anybody was with us, about the absentee vote in milwaukee.

that was what put joe biden ahead statewide. now we're looking at this is the biggest bloc, the absentee vote in green bay. we've been expecting it and expecting it and expecting it. got word a little while ago that apparently it was on its way, the vote totals, to reporting headquarters. still haven't seen it here, but we're keeping an eye on that to see if that does anything to change the math here with biden clinging to that 7,300-vote lead. also in nevada, the other extremely close one here, 7,600 votes is biden's margin over trump here. we have some clarity on what is left to be counted here, because this is such a narrow margin here. what we're getting from the folks running elections in nevada is that essentially what is left is mail vote. and in clark county, you can see in particular where you've got outstanding vote, this is las vegas. this is the vast majority of the state right here. they're looking at mail ballots that arrived on election day. they're looking at mail ballots that were postmarked by election day and that will still come in, in the next few days.

those will count in nevada. and they're looking at provisional ballots. so, if you're democrats in nevada, you know the mail ballots so far have been working to your advantage there. it's certainly for biden to be ahead with that left. that's got to be a better feeling than the opposite, if that makes any sense. so, that's nevada. that is wisconsin. in michigan, we continue to get vote in. it's been coming in all night. now up to about 80% in. you do see trump leading here in the vote tally by just under 200,000 votes. the biggest thing in michigan is right here. it's wayne county. it's where detroit is. it's massive, and that's where you have the most outstanding votes at this point. you see less than half of the vote is in right now. the vote that has been counted in wayne county looks like it's basically the vote that was cast same day, the vote that was cast on election day, the most pro-trump, most anti-biden, however you want to put it, vote you're going to get. so, what's to come in wayne for the mail ballots, the absentee ballots. so there's the possibility here

that biden, when all is said and done -- you see he leads in wayne by about 87,000. when all is said and done, wouldn't be surprised if he gets that north of 200,000, you know, a couple hundred thousand. that could significantly eat into trump's lead statewide. there are other pockets of the state like grand rapids, where you're seeing same-day vote, but you're not seeing that mail-in vote. so, this is one of those things where i think there's a lot of mail to come, in particular, in some key parts of this state, and it is to be counted, i should say, a lot of mail ballots to be counted in some important parts of this state, and it's the mail ballots where democrats have been doing better than the republicans, so that trump lead there, that is something that biden can eat into. and you know, again -- >> steve, can i stop you right there for one second, steve? >> yep. >> because for conspiracy theorists, the 12 of you out there who may have believed what the president said last night, steve, i want to underline what dave wasserman, what you, what others have been saying for quite some time, that there was

going to be a, quote, red mirage in these northern states where we are going to get same-day voting counted first. so, that's why you're seeing the mail-in ballots being counted later, obviously, because we don't count them early like florida and other states. so, that's why we saw a late rush in wisconsin. that's why we're going to see a late rush in wayne county, which ron fournier and other people from michigan say that joe biden's numbers coming out of wayne county look very good. same thing with nevada. the nevada votes also should be trending more for joe biden than donald trump, just because that was the case, even in florida, where joe biden ran up a 430,000-vote lead, or at least

partisan, republican versus democratic ballots, plus 430, after all those absentee ballots were counted. >> right. and of course, the difference between a state -- one of the differences between a state like florida, that can have some swings, but it all happens in a course of a few hours, and a state like michigan, where this might play out over a much longer period of time, is in michigan, they couldn't touch the ballots until just before the election, you know, to get -- they were able in some cases to get to these ballots the day before the election to begin to process them. it's just a flood of mail-in ballots coming into these counties that had never handled this stuff before, so processing those mail-in ballots, taking them out, verifying them, matching signatures, is long and tedious work. and when you're dealing with tens or hundreds of thousands of ballots, that can take some time, so that's particularly true in michigan, particularly true in pennsylvania as well. and the other thing is, it's also varying by county in these states, in michigan and in pennsylvania. i can show you counties in pennsylvania that now have all of their vote done. they've done all of the mail.

they've done all of the same-day. i can show you counties that say we're not even going to touch the mail vote until today, until wednesday, until the day after the election, and i can show you counties that have a mix of both of them. so, it's making these results in michigan and pennsylvania in particular very complicated and very potentially misleading because you just have giant chunks of the state with hundreds of thousands of ballots that were cast long before election day, but they haven't been able to process yet because those are the antiquated rules they have in the state. >> yeah, and willie geist, it's important to remember, in a lot of these states, in pennsylvania and michigan and wisconsin, i know in pennsylvania especially, democrats had wanted the republican legislatures to allow the vote counting to begin before election day, and it was the republican legislatures that refused to do that. you've got democratic governors in all three states. you've got republican

legislatures in all three states. and in, i believe it was pennsylvania, they would not allow that to happen. >> yeah, that's right. and we should remind people, as steve was just doing, that this is the way it was going to be. this is not some -- this is not chaos. this is not something strange that suddenly has happened. these states in the upper midwest, down into pennsylvania, were going to be counting. we weren't going to know unless there was, for some reason, some huge blowout last night in one of those states, we weren't going to know those outcomes. so we're sitting where we thought we were. it's some of the other states that have been more surprising if you're a democrat. and steve kornacki, democrats waking up this morning after a couple of hours of sleep may be looking at your national map there, seeing a couple areas of gray, some states that are still up for grabs, looking for hope, and will look at north carolina and will look at georgia as perhaps still being in play for joe biden. so, what are -- let's start with georgia. what does that look like right now, particularly as you look at the atlanta suburbs? >> yeah, it looks like what had been all night just in the

vote-counting a big trump lead that has closed and closed and closed as more and more of the atlanta metro area has reported. it still sits, though, this trump advantage, at just over 100,000 votes here. the bulk of the vote left looks like it's right here in the atlanta metro area, you know, more specifically, fulton county. that's where atlanta is. you've got dekalb next door, overwhelmingly democratic. you've still got a big chunk of vote to come there. cobb county, this has become democratic. this used to be quintessential, you know, suburban atlanta republican territory. now it's become democratic territory, not as much as dekalb, nearly, but again, you have votes to come here. so there is some potential and there are smaller democratic counties around the state where you could also get some vote in here. so, there is a potential here for biden to erode this. we're trying to get an exact count on the number of ballots, get an exact sense of this from folks in fulton county. don't have that yet. so you know, is there enough

there for biden to erase all of that 100,000-vote? we had a sense here, just the way the vote reporting usually comes in georgia, that there would be a late biden push here because it usually comes in very late in the atlanta metro. how close can he get to trump? and north carolina image, too, we can show you that. trump's margin sitting north of 75,000 votes. one key factor in this not being a called state right now is north carolina allows ballots that were postmarked before election day to arrive within a few days of election day. so, there is the potential here for more votes to come in, in the next few days. it's a variable. we don't know the exact number that actually -- how many folks had ballots, put stamps on them, threw them in the mail, and you know, they're going to show up, show up in the next couple days. we don't have the exact number there, so out of caution, no call there, but that is, you know, 75,000, if you're the trump campaign and you're looking at the entire map of the country, north carolina's not

the worst of your problems right now. >> all right. steve kornacki, stay close. by the way, if you want some pointers on the big board, willie geist is still there for you. >> he's a pro man. >> he's got this down. >> poor man's kornacki. >> steve, jump in whenever you have more updates, no matter what. with us now, white house reporter for the "associated press," jonathan lamire, still with us. and bringing in now co-founder and ceo of axios, jim vandehei. also with us, nbc news and msnbc contributor shawna thomas. good to have you all. >> so, jim hand hi, you're a wisconsin guy, so let's start with you, jim vandehei. first of all, we could have predicted -- we couldn't predict -- i don't think anybody, even republicans couldn't predict how much democrats would underperform, but the one thing everybody was predicting weeks ahead of time was that we needed to be patient, that we needed to wait. it would take a couple of days,

especially in your state, in michigan and pennsylvania and other states. it was going to take a couple of days for the mail-in ballots to be counted. that's exactly the process we're in right now. unlike florida, they don't frontload the process. they wait until after to count those ballots. and just as predictable as that was donald trump going out last night, desperately trying to stop the vote, because he knows the biggest chunk of democratic votes in michigan will be coming from wayne county absentee ballots, in wisconsin, also, absentee ballots in nevada. same thing's happening there in clark county, the most democratic county, the dominant county, obviously, in nevada, and the same thing in georgia. so, of course, donald trump would love to stop the counting, because this is now the democrats' advantage. the absentee ballots in some of

the most democratic parts of these states. >> yeah. i mean, there's so much to unpack. a couple months ago, we rolled out the red mirage, this concept that it could appear that trump wins on election night, but when we tally all the votes, he might not. jonathan swan a couple weeks ago reported that trump would do exactly as he did, declare a premature victory. then trump denied it, now he's done it. so, on the one hand, a lot of this was knowable. but the one thing that wasn't knowable, and this is the one where i think all of us have to have a little bit of humility and a lot of people living in bubbles have to realize, they don't understand america -- republicans way overperformed! they're going to pick up house seats. i think donald trump was the only person who thought they were going to pick up house seats. they're going to keep the senate. trump could still lose, but he performed way better than most people thought that he would. look at wisconsin. some of the polls, somebody had a 17-point biden lead. it looks like it's going to come down to a point or two.

and so, there's things happening in america that people don't realize if they're living in big cities. something's happening with the hispanic vote, at least in texas, in florida. this wasn't just working-class white men that turned out for trump. in almost every state, he overperformed what people thought he would do. and so, we're headed towards some really, really rocky times. the president's been very clear, very clear what he's going to do. and we have to take him at his word that he's going to fight this all the way to the supreme court and he is going to consider any biden victory from this day forward to be illegitimate, and we've never been here as a country, never. and we don't have a lot of rules for how -- what do you do if it's this tight in so many states? there could be recounts triggered in some of these states because it's so tight. it's going to be days, many days, possibly in michigan or pennsylvania, before you sort through all those mail-in votes and you actually get to a sort of a legitimate officially sanctioned winner. and so, there's so much that

we're going to be unpacking in the coming weeks, but i do think, like the one thing all of us can learn is to have a little bit of humility that there's something going on. and we talked a lot about it on the show, all these flags, the boats, everything. there's something going on out there that most of the media has been missing. and obviously, donald trump and republicans are the big beneficiaries of that, as we sit here today, even if trump loses the presidency. >> yeah. that's absolutely fair, and it's something that will be done. that certainly will be a huge conversation here on "morning joe." but joe, also, if we're looking at days or weeks, as this is sort of settling out, to see who has won the presidential election, i just wonder, looking at the first attempt to subvert the process last night by the president, the options, and if i may, the type of damage president trump can do to this process during that time. >> well, i mean, he can try to

defy the supreme court. he's not going to do that. he's lost one court ruling after another court ruling. the supreme court is not going to step in and stop the count in michigan. they're not going to stop the count in wisconsin. they're not going to stop the count in nevada. i mean, we have, out of michigan, we had the secretary of state guaranteeing that it's going to be done by tonight. in wisconsin, we're closing in on finishing that count. but there is no doubt that we could have a number of floridas here -- florida from florida 2000. we could have challenges, expect challenges in wisconsin, if joe biden stays ahead. expect challenges in michigan if joe biden performs as well as we expect him to perform with absentee votes in wayne county. expect challenges from donald trump if joe biden performs as

well as we expect him to perform in the atlanta metro area and in the suburbs. so, we are in for a long battle. shawna, i want to go to you, though. again, we could all be humbled by not understanding what was coming last night, but i'm going to put republicans right up there with democratic leaders and people in the media, because the republicans never saw this coming either. >> no. i think -- i mean, if you look at polling, it all seemed to say that joe biden had an edge, even though there were definitely polls that were within the margin of error on this level, especially the last couple of days, so things tightened. right now, all we can do is wait for the votes to be counted in the three or four states, right? or i guess five. but i kind of want to go back to what jim vandehei was talking about, which is this idea that we literally are living in two different countries.

and if joe biden is able to win, because i think we kind of know what president trump's second term will look like. i think it will look a lot like the first term. he doesn't mind playing with that division that's in this country. but joe biden has run on this idea of the soul of america, and he's run on this idea of bringing people together and floated, you know, cabinet positions for possible republicans. and if we are literally not speaking the same language in these two different parts of america, how do you govern with that? what does that mean? i mean, i think that is right now the larger conversation. and even though i'm sort of being a little dismissive of president trump because we have seen these last four years, and he may not even try to reach out to the side that didn't vote for him, it's still something that members of congress and the republican party have to think about. what is -- if it is now divided,

the two different, totally different messages, and there's no connection anymore, what does that look like going forward? and i don't have a great answer for that, but it's what i've been kind of sitting here trying to grapple with. >> and the problem is, it's not just -- >> it's a lot. >> yeah. it certainly is a lot. and you're right, it's two countries that don't seem to speak the same language. i think more concerning, they don't actually operate under the same set of established facts. donald trump went out last night trying to stir up conspiracy theories about even counting the ballots. i mean, you can go to videotape and you can see everybody saying this was coming. you can read what axios said about the red mirage.

and again, none of that matters to donald trump. facts, so many facts don't matter to him and do not matter to many of his supporters. >> and will members of his republican party stand by those comments and others that he will make, subverting this process? >> well, i mean, you look at the results from last night, and you have to say that a lot of people that stood meekly by donald trump when he was breaching constitutional norms and just flat out lying -- by the way, i mean, that's not subjective. you just look at videotape and compare donald trump with what donald trump says, and it's obvious in many cases he's lying. jonathan lamire, it worked for donald trump. it kept him competitive and it worked for a hell of a lot of republican senators to follow donald trump down that pathway and to embrace his alternative set of facts. >> there are few predictions i would venture to say that are

safe, but one would be that, certainly, this is the nation's capital and the country itself is only going to be more divided after the results of the last 24 hours, picking up on that thread, that what a bitter and rancorous campaign, and certainly, whether trump is to win or lose and how many days or weeks we may have of legal appeals and fights, i think tensions will only grow higher. and certainly, we saw some doubts across this country all boarded up in recent days, worried about what could come next. i don't think that concern is going to go away. in terms of the president and republicans, you're right. as we were discussing last hour, the democrats thought it would be a firm rebuke to trump and trumpism didn't happen last night, even if, indeed, joe biden goes on to win. and certainly, there will be some second guessing among democrats about their agenda, about their messaging, but also their strategy and their plans in recent days and weeks, where we saw biden and the campaign's top surrogates, including

president obama and senator harris be in places like ohio and iowa and texas, none of which really came that close to flipping in the end from republican to democrat. georgia is one still very much in play, so that was perhaps a smart strategy. but i don't know that republicans are going to do anything differently here, even if trump were to lose. they recognize how powerful trump's base is, the hold that he has on the republican party. now, to be clear, he is, again, going to lose the popular vote this time around, that will be two straight cycles. there are more americans who voted against donald trump than voted for him. let's not lose sight of that. but certainly, there is still a huge swath of americans who do support him, who do endorse his job as president, and therefore, and many of them republicans who these senators and congressmen and women feel like they have to respect and go by. and therefore, toe the line. and even if trump himself does go down in defeat here, trumpism may not, certainly not in the way the democrats would have wanted.

>> so, jim vandehei, as we're looking at republicans to perhaps condemn what the president did last night, so far, adam kinzinger said something about it. chris christie, who obviously doesn't hold office anymore, said, "i speak as a former u.s. attorney, there is no basis to make the argument tonight. there just isn't. i disagree with what he did tonight," talking about president trump claiming victory and calling for the voting to stop. but to joe's point earlier and what we've been talking about this morning is the lesson republicans learned over the last 12 hours is that hugging donald trump tightly for 3 1/2, 4 years now, and especially down the stretch of a campaign, saved their jobs. so, the idea that this morning they're going to come out and condemn them -- they should on this issue alone. that shouldn't be that hard, right, to say, no, mr. president, let's count all the votes in america? but are we really going to hear from any of these leading republicans that he ought not say something like that that's patently false and obviously dangerous and pores gasoliurs g

a volatile situation? >> it's a crazy topic. the voting rules are set by states well in advance. people knew how the counting was going to take place and it would take days in places like wisconsin and pennsylvania. so it's really sort of a fake topic and we have to caution people. whether you're republican or democrat, trust the system. like, in almost every case throughout history, voting goes down the way it should. you can trust it. take a deep breath and just see what the results are. but make no mistake, donald trump emerges, even if he loses, even more powerful than he was before election day. he was one of the few republicans saying, listen, we might pick up house seats. he was the one person out there campaigning, doing six, seven events a day when people were saying he has no chance of winning and his margins are bigger than ever. all those people that bet on him. look at lindsey graham. look at the amount of money that was dumped on some republicans where they were being outraised two, three, four to one and they won. looks like lindsey graham will

win easily, despite the hyperventilating about that. even if trump loses, play it out -- he's not going away. we all knew he was never going away, but now he will loom larger. it's like he has a feel for the party that the republican establishment didn't have in '16 and again didn't have in 2020, because privately a lot of them thought they were going to lose the senate, lose 5 to 15 house seats and have a hell of a hard time winning the presidency. and so, to your average republican, he looks like he just understands the country in a way no other republican does, and he will use that to his advantage. so, if you think republicans are going to line up and say, come on, donald, let's just act responsibly and then cool it down -- they didn't -- [ laughter ] >> yeah. >> it's not happening. >> so, jim -- >> he's right. >> we have so much to unpack here, but quickly, a couple of points. first point is this -- donald trump kept doing campaign rallies, as dangerous and as reckless as it was. that's what he did. republicans kept knocking on

people's doors. they also -- i talked to so many democrats and so many democratic groups that were going out and trying to bring people into the democratic party. when covid hit, democrats did what doctors would tell them to do -- they got off the street, they stopped organizing. republicans continued. and you add to the fact that donald trump, just like barack obama before him, just like george w. bush before him, just like bill clinton before him, had the power of the presidency and technology to focus in on the people he wanted to drag out to the polls in wisconsin and michigan and these other states for four years. there's a reason why this is the first time since the early 1800s that you've had three presidents get re-elected in a row, then donald trump may be the fourth. the power of incumbency,

especially the age of technology, is an extraordinary power, and it is getting harder and harder for challengers to defeat a sitting president, in large part because of that. >> right. and democrats had all of the advantages. they had money, they had media, they had a terrible political environment surrounding trump, and trump was either going to lose narrowly or he's going to win narrowly. and by the way, i'm going to get pummeled on twitter for this -- like, the new left has to understand, biden was probably right about where america was. a lot of liberals wanted him to be a lot more liberal. that's not where the country is when you get outside of the big cities. and that's why joe biden, i do think in his rhetoric, was careful and probably did play it right in trying not to scare off people who don't like sort of the liberal establishment and don't like a lot of what they hear necessarily in the media. he tried to thread that needle. now, i think people are going to question and should question, like, why did he do the four corner stall for months. people thought it was working.

and now it's this close, people will rightly ask why wasn't he out there? why wasn't he doing any more? but i don't know that him being out there would have made that big a difference, which is something i kept coming back to and something that stuck into my head heading into the election, was just how much republicans identify with trump not as a political figure but almost as a cultural figure, almost like as an identity, like their representative, not in a political sense, but in an identity sense. and i do think we have to unpack this, because so much is changing so fast before our eyes, and there's all these assumptions we have about politics, many of which were proven wrong. and once again, going back to 2002, now it's a 50/50 country. and if you're the incumbent and you have the trappings of power, it's been pretty easy to keep power. and so, like i said earlier, i think anyone, if we just have the humility to step back and, like let's see what we really see. let's see what the voters actually did. and from there, start to make

some araisals of how do you govern? how do you bring people together if they live in two different truths or information ecosystems? because if we keep going through this, we're just going to continue to have conflict and probably not that much resolution. >> by the way, i'll let you join in, mika, with what jim just said, as far as pummelling goes. i can't speak to wisconsin, but i can tell you one of the reasons why republicans overperformed the way they did in south florida is because one ad after another used one word over and over and over again, and that's socialism. and whether it was cuban americans or immigrants from venezuela or immigrants from nicaragua, that was a very, very powerful message that the democratic party was too liberal, the democratic party was filled with socialists, and that argument was made everywhere from south florida

all the way to montana. and steve daines used it against steve bullock ruthlessless and effectively, and it had impact. now, maybe the democrats decide they need to go far left. maybe they think that's what the answer is to all of their problems. maybe it's that they become even more conservative. that's a battle that's going to be waged by the democratic party. and as barack obama showed us, there is no right answer. it may be beyond ideology. it may just be, being a strong leader, like barack obama, or a strong leader like ronald reagan, or as his followers see him, a strong leader like donald trump. as bill clinton said, a man re-elected twice himself, it's better in politics to be strong and wrong than to be right and meek. and, my god, that's playing out in a way that many democrats and

many other americans think is just absolutely terrible right now. >> jim vandehei, thank you very much. we'll be following, of course, as we go to break, the results coming in. we will let you know of any changes, but also, to touch on the conversation that you guys were just having, just as donald trump and joe biden were on the ballot, so, too, was the pandemic and the american attitude toward the pandemic. we have some really interesting exit polling information on how americans feel about the coronavirus pandemic versus the economy. we will talk about that and how it impacts the election when we come right back. k. i'm looking for my client. i'm his accountant. i'm so sorry. [ sighs ] hey!

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♪ hey, welcome back. willie, let's look at the map. and we're talking in shorthand for a lot of people who are just waking up this morning, or maybe just rolling over and regaining consciousness for a few minutes. let's look at the big map for a second. joe biden leading the electoral votes. of course, he's leading in the popular vote and is going to win the popular vote again, ensuring that only one republican presidential candidate since 1988 will have actually won more votes than his democratic opponent or her democratic opponent. but right now in the electoral college, it's 224 biden to 213 trump. and in the gray states that are remaining, arizona, which ap and fox has called, fox news has called for biden, but nbc has not yet. in nevada, we have a lot of absentee ballots that are still

to be counted in clark county, a democratic county. and wisconsin, we have absentee ballots that are still out. in michigan, a lot of absentee ballots that are out. and i understand we just got a big number that steve kornacki's going to report on in a second. same thing in pennsylvania. same thing in georgia. so, joe biden -- and, of course, pennsylvania -- joe biden actually holds the advantage, a significant advantage for the votes that are still outstanding. will it be enough for him to hold on in arizona and nevada? most likely. will it be enough for him to hold on in wisconsin? perhaps. but michigan and pennsylvania and georgia are the questions. will he have enough votes to catch up and get over 270? for biden to get over 270, he needs to win wisconsin and

michigan or georgia and hold on to those two western states. for trump, he's got to find three states, if biden ends up winning arizona and nevada. >> yeah, for msnbc very muchers who may have passed out for a couple of hours and hoped they would wake up to see a result at this point, not much actually has changed since you passed out for a couple of hours. even for us, on the air on peacock tv until a few hours ago. not much has changed. but what we want to underline again here, and i know there's some panic and frustration among supporters of joe biden about how this has gone over the last 12 hours or so, is that in states like michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania, this is how it was going to go. and we spent the last couple of weeks on "morning joe" and across the media, i think, trying to prepare you for what's happening right now, which is to say, it's going to take a while to count the votes. and big cities hadn't even come in. you're talking about atlanta. you're talking about philadelphia. you're talking about milwaukee. and now, steve kornacki, we're talking about detroit. we just got a big batch of vote

in, which goes to something you were telling us about. let's wait and see how the cities play. this is an air-tight state right now, michigan is, as is wisconsin. but wayne county just reported a big vote, and a vast majority of it for joe biden. >> yeah. you can see. let's go and look at michigan. if you've been watching along here, trump's lead in the statewide tally had been significantly higher than this until about three minutes ago. we got 150,000 absentee ballots, mail ballots, reported out in wayne county. that is where detroit, dearborn is. now you've got close to two-thirds of the vote coming out of wayne. you notice here biden's percentage of the vote has gone up. why? because we're not on the same-day ballots anymore. those have been basically counted here. now we're looking at the mail ballots that have been piling up for a long time there, that are much more friendly to biden. so, biden's lead now about 36 points in wayne. and also his lead there just in terms of the popular vote margin

is now north of 200,000, and there is still more to come from wayne county, so you can expect more of what you've just seen. that batch there of 150,000 votes that was just reported out. joe biden won 68% of those. so again, we're seeing these wide gaps between how biden's doing with the mail ballots, how trump's doing with the same-day. we're on to the mail-in portion here in wayne with a lot more to come. i think that 68% is probably a preview of things to come. there are other counties here, too, like in michigan, macomb county, right outside of detroit here where there's mail ballots to come there, mail ballots to come in grand rapids. so a lot of these places in michigan have already reported out a lot of, the bulk of, all of their same-day vote, and they're getting their mail ballots out right now. so you see biden getting within about 65,000 -- 64,000 right there. i can let you know, too, just a couple updates. we've been talking about

arizona. i say the question is what type of ballot are we waiting for, i should say, here in maricopa county? we think that the same-day vote has now been counted in maricopa county, and now it is on to a collection of these are the late-arriving absentee ballots. these are the ones that came in, like yesterday, that came in election day here. we want to get a sense of, is this going to be more of a democratic group? is this going to be more of a republican group? so waiting on that in maricopa county, in arizona. but biden continuing to lead the tally there in arizona. trump needing to turn that around. and again, there is just a question of how many votes are outstanding here in the atlanta metro area, in particular, with trump leading the georgia count right now by 102,000 votes. you know, we think there could be about 100,000 votes left in fulton county, something on that order. could be about 80,000 in dekalb county, right outside there. you look at the margins that joe biden's getting in fulton

county, the margins he's getting in dekalb county, you know, there could be 83% of the vote right there. there could certainly be enough votes left in those places. also dougherty county, albany, georgia. there are a couple democratic places still to come with the rest of their vote here where it is very plausible that biden could overtake trump, could overtake that 102,000-vote gap and actually pick off georgia. >> yeah, so, let's talk, steve, just about, again, the plausibility, because we can't, obviously, can't characterize how these are going to turn out. but if you're looking at mail-in ballots in arizona, where joe biden has about a 5% lead right now, if the past is prolonged over the past 24 hours, biden will perform obviously much better with mail-in ballots than same-day ballots. same thing with nevada, am i correct? did i hear you correctly, that in nevada, we're looking at mail-in ballots in clark county?

>> yeah, that's right. >> yeah, in clark county? yeah. >> yep, mail-in ballots that came in today, mail-in ballots that will come in, in the next few days, also provisional ballots, which usually when they get counted, you know, are good for democrats, too. you just look at the electoral college here, you know, if biden hangs on in arizona, if he hangs on in nevada, you know, if we're still waiting on green bay, but he leads in the tally if he hangs on in wisconsin, and if he overtakes trump with more like we're seeing there from wayne in michigan, that be 267 for biden. and by the way, the state of maine hasn't been called yet, either. if biden were to get that -- i should say, there's that second congressional district of maine where trump's leading. if biden got maine, but not the second congressional district, that's a path to 270 that the results right now suggest is one the biden campaign is probably eyeing very closely. >> so, steve, if we take this latest data going back to michigan from wayne county --

150,000 votes, 140,000 of which go for joe biden, cutting into donald trump's statewide lead by two-thirds, and you say there's more out there, if we assume that a lot of that goes for joe biden, is that something we can sort of extrapolate out to somewhere like philadelphia or somewhere like milwaukee, that we may see some of that in those states as well, as that urban vote, as those cities come in? >> yeah, i mean, we've got the milwaukee. the big thing in milwaukee earlier that put joe biden ahead was the absentee vote out of milwaukee. they reported that all at once, biden got like almost 120,000-vote plurality out of that to put him ahead statewide. the big one to keep an eye on -- there's two in wisconsin to keep an eye on. it is the city of green bay absentee vote. we are still waiting on that. i thought this was going to be in a long time ago. but this is in brown county, which trump is winning, you can see here by 15 points. but this is specifically the city of green bay and this is

specifically the absentee vote. so democrats, i think, think they're going to do well with that when it gets reported. we want to see what those numbers are, obviously. we are also waiting on, this is kenosha county, but we're waiting specifically on the city of kenosha and its absentee ballots. that's what's outstanding down here. those are the two big pieces left. there's a couple other things, too, but those are the two big ones left in wisconsin. so we want to see what that does to the statewide total right there, which sits at 7,000 right now for joe biden. you get into pennsylvania, it's much more confusing right now in terms of what exactly is still to come, because some of these counties have not started the mail-in ballots yet. some of them have partially reported. some, like philadelphia, have made an effort to report out sporadically. you do see here, it is even allowing for all of the confusion and everything right now, you know, 600,000 votes. that is the lead in the counting that trump has jumped out to here. biden is going to need some

very, very big numbers to erase that. you know, again, we'll get a better sense here, you know, philadelphia, pittsburgh in particular. you want to see exactly how big biden can drive those numbers up. but interestingly, yeah, his campaign right now, i think pennsylvania a bit of a question mark, but they've got to be encouraged by what they've seen in the last two hours in michigan and wisconsin. >> yeah. jonathan lamire, while we look at the big map, you do understand why the biden campaign right now, obviously, would have liked to have put this away last night. but a feeling cautiously optimistic about arizona, about nevada, about wisconsin, and about michigan right now -- they just picked up a huge chunk of votes out of wayne county, out of detroit, and even more are going to be coming their way. they're even feeling pretty good right now about georgia, for good reason, because, of course,

we've been talking for weeks about how the strength of the biden campaign in georgia was going to be and the metro atlanta area, downtown atlanta and the suburbs. there are a lot of votes left that still haven't been counted there. so, this looks like this is going to be a race to the end. it reminds me an awful lot of what happened in 2018, where at the end of the night, democrats in the house, at least, in virginia races, in california races, caught up at the very end after mail-in ballots were counted. >> yeah. certainly, in 2018, there was a huge wave of democrat votes that came in late in california. expect that to happen this time around, too, which will increase joe biden's margin of popular vote. but in terms of these battlegrounds, you're right, cautiously optimistic is, indeed, the buzz words, the catch phrase for the biden camp this morning. and last night, they were really preaching patience. they were talking to reporters,

you know, on background, sort of counseling us who were writing about and following the election, to give it some time, that, yes, of course, as you said, they had hoped to deliver that early knockout blow. that's why joe biden was in places like ohio, why his running mate was in texas. they wanted to try to pick something off early that would just totally blow up donald trump's path to 270. that didn't happen. but as they've watched the numbers come in overnight, an as steve has so beautifully outlined on the board, they knew that the votes that were still out there were going to be largely from democratic counties, certainly in the states like wisconsin, where so much was just, we just saw, come in from milwaukee and michigan. detroit, wayne county's coming in. and as you said, joe, metro atlanta, the city itself, but also those vote-rich suburbs of atlanta, where the biden camp expects to do really well, where they have seen, as much as they've been disturbed by donald trump's ability to really have a dramatic increase in number of latino supporters, it appears. he's done really well in heavily

latino counties in a number of states across the country. the biden camp feels good about their standing with seniors and suburbs. and certainly, atlanta and georgia, which may still be a tipping point state. right now that's about a 50/50 race, both campaigns believe. that's where biden has his strength and that's just one of the many ways now he still can reach 270. he has a couple different combinations of states to reach that magic number. >> yeah, and shawna, we would be remiss if, while talking about how many are shocked, all of us are actually shocked, republicans included, by how well the republican party did last night overall in holding on. you look down at the map and you see north carolina still up for grabs, georgia still up for grabs. and probably right now, now joe biden has a pretty good shot of

catching donald trump there. same with arizona. no republican president has lost the state of arizona since harry truman. since harry truman beat dewey in 1948. you look at suburbs, you look at other demographic groups and actually democrats made some inroads that aren't going to help them this year in texas but certainly may four years from now. >> yeah, i mean i think it's one of those things where, as you said, not going to necessarily help them this time. four years from now maybe it will. what is the lesson learned for

republicans from this and will they -- will they take that lesson? and they have talked about this lesson before. the changing demographics of the country, the interest that people have, especially the younger generation, that have shown up in larger numbers this time around when you think about the gen x and millenial voters. so are republicans going to take some lessons from the changing demographics, the possible loss of arizona, unclear. but because the lesson here is that this election came down to fear, right? there's three big topics. we've got covid-19, we've got the economy and jobs and people scared of losing their jobs, which is on both sides, covid-19. if you're scared of losing your job and on the conservative trump side and you believe that covid isn't as bad as it appears to be in this country, then that economic argument really works for you because you're scared of

not getting back to work. and the third topic is risk, right, and fear over race. whether that is on some conservatives who believe that the people we saw in the streets may come and maraud through their suburbs which is what president trump wanted people to believe versus people on the other side who worry about driving their cars at night and the police pulling them over. so it's all about these fears and what is that lesson that you take away from it. and right now the lesson is that the republicans didn't do so bad, but there was that little bit of erosion that we have seen. and can around that conversation of race and economy and health care, can we fine some way for everybody to talk to each other. i think the republicans are going to have to figure that out for 2022 and 2024. i think the democrats are going to have to figure out what they didn't see necessarily in some

of these other places where it's really, really close for biden right now or he's still losing in some of these places. but that is -- that fear, undergirding all of this, that is the conversation that people are going to have to figure out because do we keep running elections just on fear? is that how this is going to go for the next four to eight to 12 to 16 years? because if so, that's going to tear the country apart. >> so questions for the weeks, months and years to come, shawna, thank you. joe, if you're just joining us, bottom line it right now. not the resounding election night result that the biden campaign was hoping for but the race is not over of the there are states with votes still to be counted and joe biden is still in the game. fair to say? >> more than fair to say. i want to underline what willie said. willie, i don't have to tell viewers where we are today, because they can just go back

and look at the video from the past several weeks, not only from this show but from every show that has said that we've got to be patient, we're not going to know who the winners are, especially in the upper midwest, until all those mail-in ballots are counted and it's probably not going to happen on election night. and that's exactly, willie, where we are right now. and yes, joe biden, as predicted, is doing much better at the end of the counting than the beginning of counting. in michigan, doing much better in michigan than he did at the beginning of michigan. and of course he will also have a surge of voters in pennsylvania as well, as predicted, because they're counting mail-in ballots. the same thing in arizona, the same thing in nevada where they're counting mail m-in

ballots. the only outlier is georgia. but in the atlanta area they're going to be counting a lot of mail-in ballots too, which as we said last week were going to break joe biden's way. >> number one, absolutely joe biden has a path to victory here. absolutely he has a path to victory. number two is theis irrational democratic panic is only because of irrational expectations coming into last night of winning north carolina and georgia and maybe texas is in play. that was all put out there. that was all on the table. we looked at these state-by-state polls particularly in florida, there's absolutely no way there's that big of a spread. you were right about florida. so joe biden is still in a position to win this race, there's absolutely no question about it. it's just that democrats are coming down from a place where they thought they were going to run up a landslide against a president they thought was more

popular than he is. >> a lot of people were texting me saying what's going on so we had to bottom line it. we're back in a moment with more reporters and analysts on this consequential morning. bob woodward will join us. live on peacock last night bob woodward was looking at the astounding underperformance on the part of the democratic party and blaming himself. we'll talk about that this morning. claire mccaskill joins us, john heilemann, michael steel, victoria defrancesco soto and of course steve kornacki at the big board. back in just a moment. an official message from medicare. did you try it yet? comparing plans? oh yeah. they sure can change year to year. i found lower premiums - and lower prescription costs. and those new insulin savings! hundreds of plans, $35 a month. that'll save you money. so uh, mark? on medicare.gov now. open enrollment ends dec 7th. comparing plans...

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welcome back to "morning joe." it is 7:00 a.m. on the east coast, 4:00 a.m. out west. for many, we're still up. election day has come and gone, but the race for the presidency

is far from over. before we go to the big board, joe, just bottom line this election right now for people who are just joining us. >> well, it's -- it's, of course, surprising how much democrats underperformed. but as far as the sequence that this election has taken, it's going exactly the way that we and other people said it was going to go, which is that donald trump is going to do very well. there was going to be a, quote, red mirage, which axios, dave wasserman and all of us have been talking about for some time up north. but then you would get the mail-in ballots at the end of the process which wouldn't come on election night and then you would see donald trump losing, losing possibly his lead in those states. it has already happened in wisconsin. right before we came on this morning at 5:00 a.m., donald trump was ahead, but after

milwaukee was counted, milwaukee county was counted, joe biden surged ahead. so i'm just going to speak for myself. it's very important for me to say that because it certainly is not the characterization of this network or steve kornacki or willie or mika or anybody else. but just as i had said that the polls in florida were preposterous, my words, there's no way that biden was going to win by three or four or five or seven or nine points there, it was also preposterous to say that he was going to easily win wisconsin or michigan or pennsylvania. just as i said that, i'm telling you this morning, democrats who are on the ledge ready to jump, that's just as preposterous and i'll tell you why. i'm looking at this map. again, just my characterization, i could be wrong, i am every day, arizona right now, arizona has already been called, if we can put up the big board, guys.

if we can put up the map. arizona has already been called by the associated press, who is usually very conservative in their calls for joe biden. it's also been called by fox news for joe biden and arizona. nevada, they're not going to be counting their votes until going back until thursday. but right now we're looking at a lot of mail-in ballots, absentee ballots, provisional ballots from clark county, nevada. three-fourths of the state, also a democratic leaning county and of course the absentee mail-in provisional ballots are far more democratic than republican, if the past is prologue. wisconsin, we're going to be asking steve about the exact timing of wisconsin, but joe biden has gone ahead in wisconsin again, because as predicted, mail-in ballots were going to break disproportionately for joe

biden. and milwaukee county came in late, just like the biggest cities in michigan, biggest city in michigan is coming in late, detroit, just like the biggest city in georgia is coming in late, atlanta, and those predictably are going to break joe biden's way. so what we have in wisconsin right now is we have biden ahead. we're still waiting, i think, that brown county. and in michigan, you have donald trump ahead, but joe biden catching up fast same in georgia. so what does it look like to me? it looks most likely to me, and only me, that biden holds on, again, if the past is prologue, to arizona, nevada, he'll likely hold on to wisconsin, those those absentee ballots are coming from a republican-leaning

county. and in michigan, i suspect in michigan and in georgia there are more than enough mail-in ballots yet to be counted in heavy, heavy democratic territory for joe biden to catch up. what does that mean? well, if he holds on out west and he holds on in wisconsin and picks up michigan and georgia and we're of course assuming he's going to win maine, he's going to be at 270, willie. again, a lot of things can happen, all right? but i think if you were wagering in vegas -- not you, but anybody who's wagering in vegas and looking at the votes still outstanding where they're coming in from and the fact that day of voting is for the most part counted and done with, then this map right now favors joe biden. and to say what a lot of people have been saying over the past

couple of hours, you would much rather be in joe biden's position than donald trump's. and that's my position. >> i think a lot of people would have liked to have been waking up right now at 7:00 on the east coast turning on that show and seeing that number that says 224 for joe biden to be 270. i'm sure a lot of msnbc viewers would like to see that. but what we're looking at right now, going to steve kornacki and the big board is exactly what you're talking about. is dumps now of early votes in the cities. this is how we've said it was going to play out, we've been trying to prepare you for this. it would take a while to count the votes in michigan and pennsylvania and wisconsin, but these city votes that would favor joe biden would come in slowly and come in later. as they did, would shrink the lead that donald trump showed early on in some of these states. so, steve, i'll let you walk across the map, but this is true, we know, in milwaukee that you showed us a couple of hours

ago. we just got a bunch in detroit and we expect over the next couple of days a ton to come out of pennsylvania, particularly philly and pittsburgh. >> and what we just got and i can finally say this, green bay, just got this two minutes ago. we got the same-day vote out of green bay. we've been waiting, it has been promised for hours. what did that do to the statewide margin. it's been sitting at 7,000 for joe biden and bumps up over 11,000. this is something we expected was going to happen but we wanted to see that vote come in actually from green bay. you see biden has a pad just north of 11,000, so green bay was one of two. the other big outstanding one, we are still waiting on that same type of vote. the absentee vote in the city of kenosha. we are still waiting on that. that's the biggest thing left on

this map in wisconsin. we wanted to make sure when that green bay vote came in, we expected that it would pad biden's lead but you never know until you see it. it could have gotten closer. instead biden up over 11,000 statewide. again, city of kenosha, would would expect this would be a favorable batch for democrats when it gets reported out. that just happened a couple of minutes ago. also, you know, georgia, i've got to look at what time it is. this morning we are expecting them to resume the counting. and again, f ulton county, dekab county, that's where you've got the largest share of outstanding vote, a little in cobb county. also dougherty county, we expect them to pick up the county then this morning. arizona, i think they'll have something to say 7:00 tonight,

nevada not until tomorrow and pennsylvania is one, it's lagging here and i think it's fair to say biden does have a lot of work to do there in pennsylvania. >> okay. >> you know, steve, by the way, i just had our political guru, donny deutsch, send me the vegas line. i talked about if you were bettingi in vegas, you would lie joe biden's chances. donny just sent in that right now vegas has biden at a 61.5% chance of winning to donald trump's 35% chance of winning. i talked about the upside for joe biden. i've got to say, though, in pennsylvan pennsylvania, i don't see the votes. unlike other states, i don't see the votes in pennsylvania, just

like i was saying early on in florida when we weren't calling florida, i didn't see how biden caught up. i think pennsylvania is going to be far closer, but what is the scenario? i mean how much does he have to get out of philly? how much does he have to get out of the philly suburbs? how much does he have to win to catch up to donald trump? because that seems like a much bigger lift than all these other states. >> that's exactly what it looks like here. let's take philadelphia as an example here. so, you know, again, if there's about 350,000 votes left to come, we expect we're talking about mail-in vote here so biden is winning philadelphia overall with 76%. that's same-day. a lot of that is same-day vote. the mail we figure will be more favorable to biden. in a dream scenario for him if he's getting into the 80s, upward of 90 on the mail ballots out of philadelphia he could make up close to 275,000,

300,000 out of philadelphia, that would get him close to 40%, 50% of it statewide. there's plenty of room for biden to grow, certainly allegheny county and he's winning 54% but a lot of that is same-day. so when you get that mail-in vote counted here, biden we expect will be leading at a much bigger clip. but again, if he's getting two-thirds of 225,000, you know, maybe he can net 80,000 out of there. no, i agree with you, joe, when we were looking at wisconsin, when we were looking at michigan, you certainly saw trump get ahead and you could always pretty clearly make out that path back for biden. it's complicated in pennsylvania because, again, there are some states that haven't -- some counties here that just haven't reported any mail-in vote. they're going to get to that today. there could be some votes, some

bigger batches of votes. we have to go really closely through this for biden, but yeah, this is a tall order from him. from the electoral college as you go through it, if biden is getting wisconsin, michigan, and if he can get arizona or a georgia, that could be a substitute. >> yeah. and some of those states, the biden campaign was counting on, they were dreaming about states like florida and texas and a resounding election night victory but they weren't actually counting those as potential wins, they were counting those as possible wins. the states that we're looking at right now are the ones that they need to win that they have a real chance at. let's bring in msnbc national affairs analyst, co-host of showtime's "the circus" and executive editor of "the recount," john heilemann, bob woodward joins us and former chairman of the republican national committee and senior

advisor to the lincoln project, michael steel is with us this morning. also with lyndon b. johnson -- victoria defrancesco soto and claire mccaskill. >> so, john heilemann, we spoke last night i think at 1:00, 1:30, and looked at the map and thought that it might be breaking this way. wisconsin took a while. and wayne county obviously taking a while. but right now if you look at the map it does seem to favor joe biden even though it is going to be tight in just about every one of these remaining states. >> yeah, that's right, joe. i think if you look at this

thing, we went through quite a roller coaster last night for a lot of people emotionally on both sides. but by the time we went to bed, what was the situation? the situation was that donald trump had won no states that he didn't win in 2016, that of the six core battleground states, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, north carolina, florida and arizona, where do we stand? we stood with donald trump having won one of the core battleground states in florida. none of the other states had been formally called, but arizona looking increasingly like it was going to be joe biden's state. and joe biden being, i think, on the basis of what we knew about the vote that was out, the favorite to win those three great lake states that we always said were joe biden's easiest route to 270 electoral votes and north carolina still being uncalled. and, and georgia, the kind of late addition to the battleground states i would say,

in that last week it became a core battleground state. and joe biden, you and i were looking because you know the georgia map really well from your history and i had been banging the drum for the last week saying that georgia was more likely than florida for joe biden and i think that's been proven out. florida turned out to be not that likely for joe biden. as of right now, i think joe biden is the favorite to win in georgia. so by the time, as depressed at one point as democrats were because the most optimistic scenarios for them had not come true, the reality was there were six states that were battleground states that had not been lost. joe biden had not lost any of them except for the -- out of the seven, florida he had lost. but there were six that were still out. of those six, five where biden was in a better position to win them than trump given what was

left in the vote and the way the map was playing out. so i think there's zero doubt, zero about who's hand you'd rather be playing right now between donald trump and joe biden. the confounding thing, and this is another thing that we all said not just for the last week or so but for months was that people had to get their heads around the notion that we would end up -- we have had presidential elections not resolved on election night. we have never had situations where three or four core battleground states would not have been resolved on election night and when we couldn't talk about when we knew those results would be in and when we knew that the incumbent president had has part of his strategy to try to win in the overtime through anti-democratic means. that is all temprra incognito. i said guys, it's going to be weird when we look up on

election night and there are a bunch of states that the election depends on is unresolved and the president is going to stand up and say i'm the winner on the basis of nothing and tell you he's going to seek -- last night -- the president stood up last night in classic authoritarian fashion and said i want to call the election off right now. i think i'm ahead in all the states i want to be ahead in. stop the counting. stop the counting right now. i'm ahead. so stop the counting now. i declare myself the winner. oh, and by the way, those votes that i don't want counted, mostly black votes. so that's what happened last night at 2:00 in the morning. and i think it's hard for people to get it into their heads that was what was going to happen. but i will say i thought that was what was going to happen really all along and here we are. >> and make no mistake of it. you look at the outstanding votes that are out in wayne

county and also in the metro atlanta area. the overwhelming votes that donald trump wants to stop from being counted are the votes of black voters. it's that simple. and by the way, if you're running around going this is so confusing. i don't understand. it's all very clear. i will say it again. we told you this was coming. we told you donald trump was going to do this. and you may be sitting there going, well, why -- if you're a trump supporter, why in the world is it done that way? you know why it's done that way? because there are republican legislatures in pennsylvania, in michigan and in wisconsin. and they set the rules. and even when democrats were asking to have these ballots counted early like they do in florida, it was the republican legislatures that said no. and by the way, you don't have

to believe me. check your google machine. >> and donald trump told you this was coming too. can i jump in and go to steve kornacki, he's got some information from kenosha. steve. >> we said the other big outstanding piece of real estate after green bay would be kenosha, the absentee vote for the city. here's what that has done to the kenosha count which has put biden ahead by 20,000 votes in wisconsin. remember, about ten minutes ago it was a third of that. just over 7,000. we've gotten green bay with the absentee vote, kenosha with the absentee vote and that biden lead has been pushed up. he leads by 0.7 of 1%. z 0.7 of 1% was donald trump's win in 2016. you've got that reversed at the moment in wisconsin. not much left here that's notable. we're talking about the decision

desk right now to see what their thinking is on this. >> steve, when i saw that 20,000 number, that was the spread for donald trump, 23,000 in 2016. amazing how close these states continue to be consistently. so i was just going to ask you that 8% that's still out there, do you have any sense at this point which way that may tilt? >> yeah, that's based on some estimates from are earlier in the night, that 92%. that also leaves some wiggle room so i wouldn't say that's a hard and fast 91 because we're at the point here where we're looking at -- i've got the brown county board of election site called up and we are looking at -- we are looking directly at the election officials in these places where we know vote count is left. for instance, we saw -- we actually saw video of the vote being brought over for green bay earlier. we're at that level right now. so i would not use that 92%. that's more of a guide, an

estimator through the night. that's not a hard and fast number at this point. what's hard and fast are the actual vote returns you're seeing inside the county. >> all right. claire mccaskill, i believe it was just about 12 hours ago we were talking just like this and you said i feel good. how do you feel this morning? >> well, i don't feel bad, but i am shaking my head that it's this close. i mean there is a certain irony here. you go back four years and donald trump won the presidency by whisker-thin margins in wisconsin and michigan. and now i believe joe biden will win the presidency by whisker-thin margins in wisconsin and michigan. now, even though he had lost the popular vote four years ago and i believe biden will win the popular vote this year, look at the contrast.

i don't remember anybody saying quit counting when donald trump was winning those states four years ago. and there is an irony that the margins are going to be almost identical to what brought trump to the presidency. now, here's where i'm going to add something else. this -- i never thought i would say this. i'm actually glad at this moment that trump has the supreme court, quote unquote. it is clearly a republican court right now, conservative court. and if in fact institutions hold and if trump tries to run this up under some bogus legal claim that somehow we shouldn't count votes, i'm confident that he'll get rebuked by his court and that will help us move forward. it's still going to be tough, we're a very divided nation and mitch mcconnell is probably going to be in charge in the senate. >> all right. well, i actually -- claire,

thank you so much. i think that's a great point. sorry, i thought we were going to willie. but the supreme court that appears to be his court, they're going to have to work within the realm of the law. and if they rebuke president trump and his efforts, it will be a lot more, let's say, credible to trump supporters and to the division that is in america than had it been a court that perhaps had members that trump did not pick. willie. >> yeah, i wanted to point out also as we talk about institutions and their potential to hold, the supreme court just last week upheld the idea that pennsylvania could continue to count these votes after election day. it was under republican challenge, so that was the united states supreme court that allowed that to continue. claire, i've got to ask you before i let you go about the senate, the body you served in. what do you make of lindsey graham blowing jamie harrison out by double digits, joni ernst winning in iowa. which of these races jumps out

at you? >> well, i think the one that jumps out at me more than anything is north carolina. that was a race -- you know, we always knew south carolina was going to be a trump state. and so it is north carolina where cal cunningham had some personal scandal and i think it cost him the seat. >> i'm getting a phone call. >> it's the other network. it's the other network. it's in d.c. >> we thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it. please, pick up the phone. very good. and there she goes. >> bye, claire. >> so, yeah, it is, john heilemann, you look at the map and while things are breaking joe biden's way right now, and it certainly reminds me a lot more of 2018 than it does 2000 -- >> yes. >> -- the democrats just failed

colossally in their attempt to take over the united states senate. a lot of people spent a lot of money and they're going to be asking a lot of questions about how the democrats used that money and why they came up so short. >> yeah, i think that's right, joe. look, the fact is that -- i believe -- correct me if i'm wrong. we're still waiting for calls in the susan collins race, right? we don't know how that race has resolved itself. we still don't know about thom tillis' race at this hour. and i think we're still -- what are we -- still outstanding in the senate, when i went to bed the democrats were plus one net on the senate, is that correct? >> yes. >> so we still have a situation where with a couple of these

outstanding races where democrats could still just barely eke out control of the united states senate. but there's no doubt, joe, that the amount of money -- i would just say apart from anything else, if you look at state after state the amount of money that got put into these senate races was staggering. i think the only explanation was that the money liberal base in the democratic party was so -- had so much money to spend and was so fired up by donald trump and the prospect of trying to get a clean sweep going that they were -- they lost a little bit of -- collectively lost a little bit of a sense of proportion about what might have been possible in the united states senate. having said that, i just don't -- at this point similar to the presidential race, i don't want to get ahead of ourselves here in terms of what the outcome is. there's still a lot of counting to be done in a lot of these

states and still two senate races in georgia. david perdue's race has not been called and we have a run-off where rafael warnock is going up against kelly loeffler. i don't want to write that situation off prematury. >> and mark kelly with an advantage, we have not called that race. over the incumbent martha mcsally. as we sit right now as we can sit on your screen, 47-46 for republicans with seven races still out there in the senate. victoria, let's talk about the latino vote. we previewed what we thought may happen yesterday before all the returns came in. the differences between the latino vote in florida and, say, arizona and nevada. but let's look specifically at miami-dade county. if you look at it actually, it's not even that much that joe biden underperformed where hillary clinton was, it was how much vote donald trump added in miami-dade county. he picked up by this morning's

margins, 200,000 more total votes in miami-dade county than he did in 2016. >> so i'm with joe here. i always believed that florida was going to go to trump and a key piece of that was because of miami-dade county where trump really did crush it. and i think there are a couple of reasons that we have to understand here. the baseline is that there has always been stronger support among that latino cu teetino cu community for the republican party. and the miami-dade republicans learned their lessons from the losses of that midyear election. so they went in deep and got their butts in gear for this election. the trump campaign started a latino-targeted outreach on the ground back in august of 2010. the biden campaign was late in mobilizing latinos.

it wasn't until earlier this year, mid-summer that we really saw a concerted effort. you start putteriing all of tho pieces together, the cuban community like many other latino communities really thrive on that old school grassroots effort, the knocking on the doors, the going into the living rooms and the republican party was doing that because in their view the pandemic, they didn't have the same public health concerns that the democratic party did, the emotional socially distant, more cautious approach. you start adding all of those pieces up together and you see why trump performed like he did in miami-dade county and the state in general. >> i'm just looking at our exit polling. 55% of florida's cuban american vote went to donald trump. a different story in arizona. we have not called that state yet, but we look at maricopa county where phoenix is, of course the biggest county in the state of arizona. what did you see in that vote so far that has it tilting at least toward joe biden?

some news organizations have actually called it for him. we have not done that yet. what do you see in that younger latino vote in arizona? >> willie, it's a whole different world in arizona. in arizona, you have a mexican american population that has traditionally been more democratic, has leaned more democratic, and is also more progressive. so think latinos in california, that kind of progressivism. you also have a younger latino population that, again, means a little bit more progressive. and i think what's really important to understand in arizona is that every action has a reaction. a couple of years ago we had sb-1070, the show me your papers law. that really ticked off latinos nationwide and especially in arizona. since then, we saw latinos start to mobilize. we saw the ousting of joe arpaio. we saw increases for the democrats in arizona over the last couple of election cycles. so what we're seeing is the culmination of that anger and frustration and the cherry on

top is the strength of mark kelly. mark kelly is a great candidate. martha mcsally not so much. martha mcsally had cozied up to donald trump and then she tried to shy away when she saw that the state was tightening. it was too little too late. so i think all of those together show why arizona is going solidly -- i believe my home state solidly toward biden. >> all right, michael steel, victoria making some great points about how republicans and their campaigning in states like florida being effective in certain communities. at the same time, it's just all the data, the polls, the numbers, they just don't seem to add up. in fact the reporting was that the trump campaign was struggling financially. >> yeah. you know, there's a lot about the metrics that people will digest and everybody will ruminate about and have an opinion on. but what still remains

fundamentally true about this election as it was in 2016 is that i think a lot of folks in politics and in the media still don't get what donald trump's got. and why so many people, almost 50% of the country, want it. >> michael -- >> what's he got now? four years ago i totally agree with that sglnld oth. >> and i just want to say really quickly, oh, it's because he's a racist. it's because he attacks hispanics. >> maybe it is. >> attacks muslims. >> maybe it is. well, if that's the case, why did donald trump do so much better with hispanics than any democratic pollster believed? >> well, because if you were listening to hispanics who were trying to tell those democratic pollsters what the numbers were saying, what they would tell you is that appeal that he made regarding, you know, the whole narrative around socialism.

where was the counterattack on that? i saw a number of hispanic leaders over the course of the last few weeks saying you've got to get on radio here in florida to put a counternarrative out here because that narrative about socialism, which weighs heavily on the venezuelan community, which weighs heavily on a number of other hispanic communities, is working. so my point -- my broader point was it's the same thing. why do you think donald trump made the appeal to white women in suburban america about, oh, your neighborhoods are about to change. what do you think he was saying? so when you looked at the polling out of ohio last night, what did you see? 54% of white women voted for him in one county. >> right. >> so everything we know about donald trump, right, everything that they have seen, he still is able to make that appeal in such a way that they buy it, it resonates and works.

>> in terms of who he's got, it's everything because he throws it all at the wall, all of it. >> right. >> whether it's claims of socialism or disinformation. and i'll take your point, michael steel, now to bob woodward. you look at the disinformation that the president has put out there on the coronavirus and exit polling information about how americans feel about the virus and it seems to add up. >> well, it's a very -- first of all, watching this all night, i think steve kornacki deserves a raise and a big thank you. >> i agree. >> and whatever awards they give out. you know, i mean he is so sound. he is so straight, he is so -- it actually approaches wisdom. and you can trust it. and i think that's a starting point.

i think the other -- i think joe's right. this is not decided in any way based on the numbers. but you have to go back to 2016 and ask the question what happened in 2016 and trump came along and smashed up the old order in a very definitive way. and if you want to look at what's happened in 2020, i've got some noise here in the background, somebody's -- whatever they're doing. and in 2020, biden represented the old order or too much of the old order. and so the democratic has got to figure out how they change themselves. i think that's a big issue. but i love watching kornacki.

i think we should salute him. there is a way he has also of bringing clarity to what's on the board there. so to steve. >> to steve. amen to that. >> cheers to steve. >> we salute him every day. he carries us through nights like this and days like this and weeks like this. so, steve, bob woodward just offered you some praise there. so let's go to you now. and what exactly are you looking at in the state of michigan? you've given us the bulk of the vote it looks like in wisconsin, not calling anything, but the bulk of the vote. what about michigan? >> the pressure is on now. i better deliver something here. let's take a look here. the gap has come down. trump's lead in the statewide tally has come down to 26,000 votes. and again, you're looking at the bulk of what is out here continues to be wayne county, where detroit is, where dearborn is. i think you can see biden's

share of the total vote has gone a little bit. also you've got oakland county here. this is sort of an upscale suburbs outside the detroit area. biden is expected to do well. another area we got more vote to come from, mccomb county where trump is leading right now. if you notice watching these numbers, this trump lead has come down a bit. why? because you've got mail ballots in mccomb that have been counted and added to the tally. trump ran up the score with the same-day vote in mccomb. now that margin tightens a bit as the mail comes in. if the margin tightens in one county, it's tightening statewide as well. so it sits at 27,000 for trump. this is where grand rapids is. kent county is one democrats would really love to pick off in this election. you can see they came close with hillary clinton against trump in 2016. you still have a lot of mail votes to come in grand rapids so we'll see what happens here.

but you've got some big places with absentee votes still to be counted in michigan. and again, there's a lot of counties, you know, smaller counties, smaller republican counties throughout the state where trump is doing very well. he's hitting his 2016 numbers but he's kind of out of votes right now. a lot of places where they have counted up the same-day vote from the election and even counted out the absentee vote and trump doesn't have anything to gain in these counties where he's doing well overall so the action is in more biden favorable places. >> and we've got a change in category for nevada moving from too early to call to too close to call. >> bob woodward, donald trump can see what we can see. and that is wisconsin and michigan are slipping away and if the trends continue that we've seen over the past 12 hours, 13 hours, it's more than likely that joe biden will end up being even further ahead in

michigan than he is in wisconsin right now. arizona also not firmly in joe biden's camp, but getting there. and of course we see what's happening in georgia. that also looks like that could turn against donald trump. so you know this man. you've interviewed him. he biwill not go quietly into tt dark night. what do you expect to hear from donald trump today with all the news seeming to break joe biden's way and with all of these black votes still uncounted? >> yes. there are all kinds of rumblings in trump world as there always is. i can't confirm this, but there are serious discussions of appointing a special counsel to look at biden and the hunter biden laptop and all of that

situation. so that's something trump -- he can't do it but he can get the attorney general bill barr to do it and he well might. i think the other thing that we need to disentangle, if it's possible, and that is last night trump going out and saying he's going to go to the supreme court. everyone saying, now wait a minute, he can't do that to stop the legitimate counting. there is a mythology around that in 2020 the supreme court gave the election george w. bush which they did, they ruled in his favor. but the ruling was saying you can't recount and they made equal protection argument which was very, very powerful.

and said, look, in different counties you have different standards so we failed the equal protection test. but the idea that that might apply somehow to this case on the initial counting of votes is not sound legally in any way. but you can see trump gravitating toward that mythology of 2020. >> bob woodward, thank you so much. and with that in mind, despite what president trump says, this is still very much a live race. we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll go back to the big board with steve kornacki. we'll take a closer look at what's going on in pennsylvania. we'll be back in just a moment. we'll be back in just a moment ♪

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welcome back to "morning joe" and our 2020 decision coverage. a state we haven't talked about in a while is pennsylvania. let's go to steve kornacki at the big board. what does pennsylvania look like right now, steve? >> yeah, pennsylvania, this is the toughest one to figure out. you've got 75% or so of the vote in. trump, you see, 600,000 plus votes is his lead right now. keep in mind, though, not only is this a situation where philadelphia and pittsburgh where we have a lot of vote, a lot of absentee vote that's still coming in, there are just a lot of counties, a lot of red counties on this map throughout the state that are not doing anything with their mail-in voting until today. we are seeing in pennsylvania even more than other states massive, massive gaps between how the mail vote is looking and how the same-day vote is

looking. so even in a lot of these red counties across the state, i suspect when they start opening up and processing that mail-in ballot, biden might make up some ground even if he's not winning the county overall. so there is a lot of room, probably well over a million mail-in votes to be counted across the state. if biden is winning that overwhelmingly, he can eat a chunk into that 600,000 vote lead for donald trump. it might be very close here, but there could be more biden vote in those red counties than you realize. >> joining us now, reporter for "the philadelphia enquirer" covering the 2020 presidential election, julia taruso. let's talk about that mail-in vote in pennsylvania and the timeline in pennsylvania for counting all the votes. how long could this drag out? >> well, we've known for some time that pennsylvania is not used to getting this many mail-in votes. and so it could be -- it could

be days. we just really don't know. but philadelphia has been counting through the night. several counties, you know, as we just heard are starting their mail-in ballot counts today, and we'll see what happens as the days go on. >> you don't sound completely sure that it could even be days. in terms of the numbers of mail-in ballots, how much of a chance does joe biden have to close in on what appears to be a trump lead in pennsylvania? >> yeah, so the -- you know, the 618,000 vote lead that trump has of the votes that are counted right now, that doesn't include about 1.4 million expected votes that still need to be counted and many of those are in highly democratic counties. so we're talking about philadelphia, allegheny where

pittsburgh is, and the suburban counties around philadelphia, which are heavily, heavily democratic areas. those six counties alone have about 800,000 votes still to be added to the totals. so it is possible for biden to make up that map and i'll certainly be looking at those suburban counties where we've heard there was very high turnout and where we've known that a huge democratic turnout could be big for him. so we'll see. >> all right. reporter for "the philadelphia enquirer" julia taruso, thank you very much. >> and john heilemann, we're really starting to see a trend here. the biden campaign had said all along they expected these three stat states, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania to all move in the

same direction. and we're saying we're not going to lose two of them and win one, we'll probably win three or lose three. but i don't think even they expected them to be so similar. right now, of course, we saw a couple hours ago wisconsin, because of milwaukee county, move into biden's column. he is now up 20,000. it looks like the same thing is happening in the state of michigan where biden has almost pulled even and still a lot of votes, as you said, a lot of black votes that donald trump doesn't want counted in wayne county, and you start looking at the numbers, as steve kornacki said, if joe biden performance as well as he's expecting to perform in pennsylvania, even that race is going to get too tight and too close probably for

the trump team's comfort. and, of course, we have a supreme court ruling in pennsylvania that allows those votes to be counted and received through friday, right? >> yes, that's right. and i think, you know, i think joe, probably true that the similarities between these states, that the biden campaign didn't quite see them as being quite this degree of lock step, although there is no doubt that these three states have enormous dem graflk similarity, age, race, economics, culture. these are very similar states. and the theory of the case in the democratic party for why joe biden was ultimately, became the nominee, the party's nominee, and why he was the right person to go up against donald trump was the fact that he was going to be culturally inconvenient for donald trump. what do we mean by that? we meant these states here,

these core, these three great lakes battleground states and to laes lesser extent ohio and iowa, but these three that donald trump won by less than 1% in 2016 that joe biden was the right candidate for the states. the demographic similarity in the states is what it is. they saw the polling in the three states. people kept trying to say that the pennsylvania was different. to some extent, pennsylvania was different, an outlier from michigan and wisconsin and i think some extent that was people listening to the trump campaign saying, they felt they were in a longer position than pennsylvania. on the data i saw going into election night, public and private data, it looked to me and the biden campaign said we don't feel any worse in michigan or wisconsin. we think those states will be very similar in terms of how they turn out. i think they thought i think

that there was going to be when all is said and done there is no question but that the margin is going to be tighter than the final weeks polling suggested chs there was a lot of polling that had joe biden up by five, six, seven points in those three states. and i think when all the smoke clears here, getting to the bottom of why that polling was that way will abuseful task for us in the press and in politics. but the similarity between those states is what it is and it's w why i think last night when joe biden seemed confident when he came out in wilmington and gave his speech, unlike donald trump, who in his speech seemed like a tin pot dictator, like he was blatantly a racist dictator, but a panicked one, joe biden seemed confident and i think he felt confident because his team feels extraordinarily confident about knowing where though votse voten those three states and feeling

as though they are going to be able to pull this together in the end and when all these votes come through they are going to have all three of those states in their pocket. >> michael steele, for the understandable panic last night, all the heavy breathing we have seen, we are letting this play out over the course of the morning. it's remarkable the way it's playing out as the biden campaign suggested it might. yes, they said in the last few days that georgia and north carolina and florida might be on the table. john heilemann's point going back weeks and points now, this is a story of the upper midwest. he is in the lead in wisconsin. he is now in the lead in michigan, surging ahead there. he puts that together with arizona, puts it together with nevada and we can add some or all of maine eventually to joe biden's tote, the biden campaign would be in a position where pennsylvania wouldn't matter, that they could cross 270. this is still hypothetical, but just to say when a lot of people turned on the the tv last night and thought this would be a

landslide for joe biden and were shocked it wasn't, he is effectively where the campaign said he needed to be. it's just happening later than a lot of people hoped it would. >> yeah, willie. such an important point. just going back to the metrics on this, the reality was that the biden campaign never thought this would be a landslide. the biden campaign never put florida in their column. i remember -- last night, you know, 11:00 or so, people are still freaking out over florida. i was like, forget florida. florida is not the play here. florida was never the play. and then they got, you know, got on georgia. what georgia was a sweet little appetizer. there were elements about georgia and the numbers that even the biden campaign found a little bit enticing. well, okay, we can pick up a little georgia. that makes the next move into arizona, nevada then back up into the upper midwest a little bit sweeter, which is exactly how it's going to play because we haven't called georgia. and georgia still may drop for

biden. so the play has always been the three bricks in the blue wall were that were taken by donald trump in 2016. nothing else moved until you had a way to get at least two of those bricks back. wisconsin, michigan, or pennsylvania. they have found a way to do that. they knew where they were vote was. they mined that vote. and to the points that were made earlier about the power of the black vote in this election, you are seeing it right now going to come to fruition in the 11th hour and deliver these states to biden. and they knew that. and that's what panicked trump, his people know that. he didn't read what was on the teleprompter last night. he went totally off script. he went with what he was feeling in the moment, what he resented about the moment he was in because he couldn't call this race the way he wanted to because all of these votes, you're looking at significant numbers of votes that are still outstanding that are coming in

major metropolitan areas and they a their surrounding suburbs. last night i was talking to a number of folks in the campaign, talking to a number of folks at the lincoln project looking at the numbers and they said that biden was overperforming in those surrounding suburbs. and lo and behold, here we are. >> and our decision desk reminds us that georgia very much still in play. a lot of that outstanding vote is from the atlanta area and surrounding suburban counties where you would expect a surge for joe biden. victoria, as we turn the corner here now coming up on 8:00 on the east coast, a lot of people went to bed late, maybe waking up now, where will you be looking over the next couple of hours to see where the race is headed? >> i am still looking at the upper midwest like we have been talking about. but in terms of nevada, i know mika said it's gone from too early to call to too close to call. i do think though that it is eventually going to turn democratic and the reason i say

that is because nevada is one of the states where you still have a very strong labor organization. the union there has been extremely powerful. they were the reason that harry reid was able to pull that rabbit out of that hat in thinks la his last senate bid. nevada is going to be gray for a while, but ultimately it's going to trend because of the latino vote and because of that labor culinary vote. it's going to trend blue. that is going to be key for biden going in and giving that cushion that is so necessary for that blue wall in the upper midwest. >> well, we'll be watching that. it's just a few minutes before the top of the hour, 8:00 on the east coast. entering our tenth hour of coverage here on msnbc and last night on peacock. we want to start with national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc steve kornacki. i know the biden campaign is counting on some key states, key

states that they have been counting on all along, unlike states like florida that didn't go their way. but my question for you at this hour is, from what you are looking at and that the counties that are still coming in, is the possibility for biden real? how real? and real enough to avoid the possibility of a recount? >> yes. let's take a look here, a couple different states. nevada, by the way, we are not going to get more results from nevada until tomorrow. tomorrow, thursday, which i believe is tomorrow. thursday morning we are going to get results from nevada. i am sorry. but there is going to be a delay of a day in nevada. we are told by election officials, i will put the results back up there, told by election officials in nevada it's an extremely tight margin. too close to call here. but it is same-day mail vote provisional votes that are -- yeah, you put the tweet up

there. that are yet to be tabulated here. so you would suspect the democrats would feel better about that than the republicans, but let's see the votes get reported out and see what happens. take a look here. wisconsin, you can see the margin for joe biden still sitting at 20,000. we have had three significant changes here in the last four, five hours. the milwaukee absentee vote, the green bay absentee vote, the kenosha absentee vote. it basically took a lead of 120,000 votes for donald trump and turned it into a 20,000 vote lead for joe biden. i believe, what's the 0.7 point. i believe there is not an automatic, there is not an automatic recount provision in wisconsin. i think the losing candidate could request one, but it's 20,000. we are waiting just to see, make sure there aren't other pockets of votes that aren't accounted for. biden has been sitting on 20,000.

no obvious major pockets of vote there in wisconsin. go next door to michigan and here you go. this one is sitting at a 26,000 vote advantage for donald trump. the counting here, about 86% of the vote. here is the story in michigan. here is the remaining vote bubbles. the bigger the bubble, the more vote there is. i don't know if you can see this, but the giant one here that sort of subsumes everything else is wayne county, that's detroit, and buried within that bubble to the north of detroit, if you can see this, that is mccomb county and oakland county. and what you are seeing here specifically in these counties that's being added now is the absentee vote, which is particularly strong for biden. so you got strong biden vote coming out of these big bubbles. also potentially the absentee vote in grand rapids as well. again democrats have been eying that for a while. you have a lot of potential for democrats here to add. you have some small size

republican-friendly areas. is that going to be enough to offset the gains democrats look like they are poised to rack up around detroit. pennsylvania here, this is the biggest puzzle right now we have been saying. 600,000-vote advantage for donald trump in the vote counting. wild disparities between the counties when it comes to what has actually been counted in the vote. some counties just this morning around now, maybe an hour or so from now, are going to open the mail biarriallots for the first. so biden is certainly going to cut nsubstantially into this trump advantage. is he going to get all the way with the mail-in ballot here? that's the drama left there in pennsylvania. when you ask how real is it for joe biden? certainly from an electoral college perspective, if we just take a quick tour there, i thought i could call that up, ta tour of battleground map, let's reset that.

here we are. good lord, i don't know what i just pressed. >> steve, you are forgiven, my man. you have been on tv for two straight days. >> 224-213. >> we don't know what day it is. we got a lot going on. if you can, though, we are now at the top of the hour, 8:00 in the morning on the east coast. could we go back to arizona for just a minute because that last night when we were on peacock tv, joe, mika and i, we were in a holding pattern there, other organizations called that state, still in that pattern. what are you seeing in the state of arizona because that is a linchpin at this point of a strategy for the biden campaign. >> yeah, so basically what you're looking at here, we will call up maricopa county again, this is most of the vote in arizona, and you have most of the vote now counted in maricopa. biden leading by six points here. you have got two of the three types of vote that there are now accounted for here.

you got the early vote. you got the folks who went out a couple weeks ago, who went out last week. you have the absentee vote that was cast basically until last weekend. that's the biggest group of votes. we expect that to be friendly to democrats. that came out first. that put biden ahead by ten points in the count. the second group we think is now all added in here same day voters, the folks who went out to the polls yesterday, showed up and voted there. we expected that to be a trump friendly group. it was. that's why it's a six-point margin in maricopa and not the original ten. the third group of voters, what we are waiting to see, the latest arriving of the early votes, of the absentee votes, folks who stuck them in the mail yesterday, folks who said i got one of these ballots today, drove it in today to get it counted today. those are being to be the last votes that come in. i think there is a bit of a sort of dueling expectation here for, you know, which party those votes are going to favor. they tend to be these late

participating absentee voters, tend to be more democratic friendly, younger voters. about you if you looked at the partisan composition of that potential mail vote, absentee vote that had not yet been cast in arizona, you may be looking at a more republican-friendly group. i think our decision desk folks want a sense of what that vote looks like. it would need to be something substantially in the president's favor that would, you know, dramatically change a six-point deficit. if it's not, to be leading by six going into that round in maricopa, a sort of vote counting, that's a decent place for a candidate to be. one more state. we will let you sit down, have a bran muffin or something. in georgia, you have been felg us about fulton county, the city of atlanta, cobb, gwinnett, dekalb as well. >> in fulton county, let's call this up. oh, this is interesting. hang on a second.

this is a change without a change in the statewide margin. i am going to ask my producer, i am going to show you the rest of this, i think we have had an update in gwinnett -- in fulton county. adam, is this correct? do we know how -- did fulton just update? while he takes a look at that, i will look at dekalb. dekalb county, 80,000 plus votes we expect still to come if. biden is winning this county overwhelmingly. there is a clear opportunity for biden there to cut into the advantage that trump has. there is an opportunity we think about 45, 50,000 votes in cobb county outside atlanta as well. i want to again, we are now showing a lot more vote in fulton county. i am not immediately hearing anything. let me check on this. that's a potentially significant development. >> all right. we will give you a breather on

that one, steve. >> mika. >> let's bring in political reporter for "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst robert costa, the moderator of washington week on pbs. former senator and msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill, who felt really good last night, and today she doesn't feel bad. and professor princeton university eddie ga waud junior. and katty kay joins us this morning. and msnbc contributor mike barnicle is with us. good to have you all with us this hour. >> mike, it's been a roller coaster ride, obviously. >> what a night. >> again, as willie said time and again, even though it's closer than we expected, interests playing true to form and you have to bigo i have the biden campaign credit. they warned everybody about this weeks in voons. they said donald trump is going to go ahead in wisconsin, in michigan, in pennsylvania. you have got to be patient. you have got to wait for it.

it's a red mirage. wait a couple of days until all the votes are counted. and as i said last hour, the reason we wait a couple of days is because those are the rules of the states that are set by the republican state legislatures in all three states. so this actually is, even though it's much tighter, it's playing out exactly like the biden campaign predicted it would play out. >> that's true, joe. i think it's a little closer than they wanted to see it play out. but jen dylan, when she announced or made a statement about a week ago, joe biden's campaign manager exactly what would happen has happened. it would go red in a lot of states like michigan and pennsylvania early in the evening or late in the evening as indicated and you have to wait and, as you said, count the votes. the interesting to me and i think a lot of people in our business is that clearly no matter who wins this, no matter

what the final result is, we are now living in a nation seeking an identity. one of the few things we do together as a nation in this day and age is vote. and we all voted yesterday. and look where we are today. so, clearly, there is a huge huge number of americans who resent being told what to do, how to live, thousand feel about things. resent, in particular, us, the media for trying to tell them these things. and whoever is president of the united states, look it, covid is going to be the number one issue to deal with. no doubt about that. but around covid, around every other economy issue and cultural issue, the job of the next president of the united states, whoever it is, is going to be trying to figure out how we can heal this nation because the rupture in this country is incredibly wide. >> well, covid did not resonate

with a lot of voters during this election. claire mccaskill, as we're looking at some of the key states that could give biden this election, what are the possibilities in your mind at this point that he wins, but it's close, and there are recounts? >> well, there very well may be recounts. there are very few recounts that change outcomes. if you look at all of -- especially if it's more than, like, 50 or 100 votes. and i don't think any of those four states that biden has to get to become president will end up being that close. i mean, it will be within probably 1%, but i don't know about it being a handful of votes. so i think patience will pay off and that -- but i got to say, mike barnicle is right. i mean, if the democrats walk away from this election with the presidency, this is a gut-check moment. this is a moment to think about

how we communicate with america. what we are saying to america. now, there is going to be big problems, you know, especially if the supreme court throws out aca, that the next president is going to have to deal with. and if it's donald trump, he has a real problem with that. if it's joe biden, he's got a real problem with that because he is going to have mitch mcconnell to deal with. but we can't go back to assuming just because we think donald trump is an outlier in terms of what this country represents and who he is and how he behaves that he is not connecting with a lot of american people in ways that, frankly, for a lot of us is hard to understand but we need to get at it because we have to bring this nation together if we are going to remain a superpower. >> in question, claire. he is not a fluke. we can officially say that now. donald trump is not a fluke. he is not an outlier. he is not an aberration. and bob, we put the presidency

to the side for a second and look at the senate and what happened last night there. a lot of surprises in some of the margins at least if you look at the way that thom tillis is doing. if you look at lindsey graham. if you look at joanie earnest. if you look how some of these races played out. hickenlooper is doing well, obviously winning in colorado. mark kelly. not calling that race yet. a relatively comfortable lead there over martha mcsally. how shocked are republicans at the way they performed last night? >> democrats are buoyed by how the vote by mail has given vice president vice president joe biden a chance of taking the white house. they feel buoyed in the congressional ranks. they feel they move into 2021 regardless who sits in the oval office emboldened, empowered if it's vice president joe biden who becomes president of the united states, this is a congressional republican party that now has gained seats in the

house and in the senate feels like even if it goes towards the democrats, stays in republican hands, they have stayed a powerful, powerful group. this is not going to be some kind of democratic sweep that changes the whole makeup of the senate in a significant way. it's a divided senate and a narrowly divided house. that changes washington. it's going to make it harder for vice president biden to pursue his agenda, to get nominations through. it leads me as a reporter to see a lot of political warfare on the horizon. >> we talked an awful lot about john lewis over the past year, his passing but also his fight for voting rights, not only the '60s, but also in 2018, 2019, and until the end of his life. and, sadly, it's not surprising, if you look at the votes that donald trump said he wanted to

stop last night, it's predominantly overwhelmingly black voters. it was black voters in milwaukee county. it was black voters in detroit and wayne county. it's black voters in philadelphia and it's black voters overwhelmingly in the metro atlanta area. none of this -- i understand a lot of people are shocked and stunned and deeply saddened and surprised, but, eddie, we saw a lot of this coming. and as far as the red mirage, and i guess nobody should be surprised that donald trump early this morning talked about trying to disenfranchise millions and millions of black voters, and to throw away their votes before they get a chance to be counted. >> you know, you are absolutely right, joe. two things really quickly.

one is that if joe biden wins the white house, it will be because of those black voters in places like detroit, in places like philadelphia, in places like atlanta, and the surrounding areas. and so that's the first thing. and the second thing is that you're absolutely right in describing what donald trump tried to do last night, which leads me to this question. what are people voting for when they vote for it? what are we voting for? what are these folks voting for? this is really going to mike barnicle's point and claire's point. we have to understand that what donald trump planned -- what the campaign planned to do all along was to expand his base. we were wondering how was he going to add those numbers and what he did is that he appealed to the white voters disaffected, white voters who appealed to grieveens and hatred and resentment and the numbers show it. the democrats may win the white house, but we see what's happening at the congressional level, at the senate, right? part of what we have to do, and

i think mike was reaching for this in the earlier block, name what we are experiencing in this country and what we are seeing very carefully, joe, even with the hispanic vote, because the hispanic -- let me say this quickly. the hispanic vote, we need to read it more complexly, that it's ethnically differentiated and racially differentiated, joe. so we have to deal with the fact that race continues to confound this democracy. it is the original sin and it continues to haunt us in this moment. >> so let's turn now to katty kay on a topic that we discussed with you all the time. scared to ask right now, but that's the view from abroad this morning? >> well, mika, europeans woke up just as the president was saying that he had won an election that he has not won, and if this were almost any other country in the world, if this was mexico,

nigeria, greece, you would have european leaders rezbloundly saying that is a subversion of democracy because that isn't what took place. but they know they have to deal with the united states. they are looking off with complete bewilderment and quite a lot of alarm about what is happening here in america, whichever way this goes. they are looking at a country that is deeply divided. this is not the resounding repudiation of donald trump and trumpism that many people around the world we know from polling hoped that it would be. and that's a hard thing for a lot of other countries, particularly allies, to get their heads around when they were hoping perhaps there would be some kind of return to politics as normal here in america. they have to deal with north america. they will have to deal with donald trump if he is still president. they will have to deal with joe biden if he becomes president . they are scratching their heads like lot of people in this country tyirying to figure out

what is going on and why the polls led people to think this was going to be a different outcome because even if joe biden wins the white house this is not a huge ricvictory for th democrats that the polls suggested it would be. >> katty, i'm thinking about british politics in that, i don't know. obviously, many people were surprised by brexit, but it wasn't overwhelming surprise. you'll remember this, i think, even though -- well, you may be too young to remember this. but i remember how shocked the british were and many in the united states when john major outperformed polls by seven, eight, nine percent, and actually was able to keep the tories, keep the conservatives in control of parliament there. that was a huge miss. but i don't know. i don't know that i have seen as

huge a miss in the united states as what we saw last night. >> yeah. and twice in a row, right? i mean, i think that's why there are going to be a lot of questions about where the polls are useful as part of the democratic process. i mean, look, we have a country that for the last decade since the second world war has been the country that preached democratic norms to other countries, that held itself up as having strong democratic institutions. where are we? at this complete mess we are in now where votes are still being counted. there are lawsuits being challenged. we don't know who is going to be the next leader of the united states. that's alarming. you know, there are a lot of friends of the united states out there in the world looking on with concern right now and a lot of people looking at the balance of power in the world and thinking if joe biden wins, he is going to be a weakened president because he doesn't have a strong mandate, he doesn't have the senate, he is going to have to focus

internally, and if donald trump wins we have got more of america first. either way, you know what? we need to start looking somewhere else because america is not going to be the power we need it to be for the next four years. >> great. okay. thank you, katty. actually, everybody stay put. we are going to take a quick break. when we come back the first thing we will do is bottom line where this race stands right now. we will be right back with more coverage of election 2020. my nunormal: fewer asthma attacks. less oral steroids. taking my treatment at home. nucala is a once-monthly add-on injection for severe eosinophilic asthma. not for sudden breathing problems. allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. infections that can cause shingles have occurred. don't stop steroids unless told by your doctor. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. may cause headache, injection site reactions, back pain, and fatigue. ask your doctor about nucala at home. find your nunormal with nucala.

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welcome back to our coverage of election day, the next day, 2020. joe, you know, folks in the biden campaign are pretty confident this morning, and they point to a tweet by dave wasserman as really the narrative that they are confident will play out over the coming hours and days. >> yeah, and it's what we said

about an hour or two ago. you could just see what happened to wisconsin. i must say at 1:00 i thought it would be close. i think a lot of people didn't know if there were going to be enough votes in milwaukee county. it ended up there were, and joe biden's padded his lead, he is up by 20,000 now, at least the last time we checked with steve kornacki a few minutes ago. same thing with michigan. wayne county, the votes outstanding, and you could see it coming. it's happening in michigan as well. now all eyes obviously turn to arizona where joe biden is expected to hang on, and then nevada. but also pennsylvania. bob cast that, it's a state that you know know very well. if you look at the trend in wisconsin and then you look at the trend in michigan, you just keep on going east in the upper midwest and you look at pennsylvania and there are at

one .4 million votes there and the majority of it coming from mail-in ballots and also coming from really strong democratic areas. that's going to be another midwest state that ends up being really, really close. >> the big feature herpicture hn campaign from the start when the pandemic really began to take hold encouraged mail-in voting. that has been at the core of their strategy. that's why many biden advisors felt confident last night and early this morning because they knew in urban and suburban areas around places like philadelphia you would have vote-rich counties that had many college educated white voters, black voters, latino voters, non-college educated, too, using mail-in voting, the democratic traditional voters would come in and be counted by mail. so they expressed patience inside of the biden campaign

headquarters in wilmington for that factor. so what you are seeing now is the suburbs coming in, the cities coming in, and that includes places like fulton county no georgia. >> claire, for as chaotic and discouraging this last night into this morning may have felt for some democrats watching this, it's notable how it's playing out, kind of the way that we expected it would, which is to say there would be some time before the votes were counted in these critical states that joe biden believes will hand him the election, and also that donald trump would fill this space, as he did late last night, but falsely claiming he had won. we won't repeat everything he said, that he is going to lean on the supreme court. he made a number of false claims that were dangerous claims, frankly, to the democracy. but this is exactly how he actually announced at a rally a couple of days ago. he said we are going to send our lawyers into pennsylvania. they should stop counting on election night. this is playing out just the way the biden campaign and, frankly, president trump said it would. >> yeah, there is no surprise

here the way donald trump is behaving. i guess the surprise is that all of his bad behavior that mean of us see as disqualifying isn't so much disqualifying to a huge, huge part of the united states of america. and the fact that he has just methodically torn up the institutions, importantly journalism, importantly the reporting of factual information, this puts him in a place where he can do this crazy stuff. now, i don't think the republicans will go along with him trying to, you know, shoehorn a victory when the votes aren't there, but i do see this as just part of his playbook. and none of us should be shocked or surprised. this is a moment where we have to hope upon hope that the institutions hold. and i believe they will. >> all right. claire mccaskill and bob, thank you very much for being on this morning.

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. book clwelcome back to "mor joe." 8:33 in the morning. a live picture of the white house. here in new york city, if you are just waking up, the spread is 224-213 in favor of joe biden. no winner yet declared in the presidential election with nine states still out there, either too early or too close to call even this morning. let's go back to the big board and steve kornacki. steve, last we saw you were getting new data for georgia. we will let you dig into that a little bit. >> just an update there. we had seen numbers from fulton county. the story is trump leading statewide by just over 100,000. there are a few pockets of deep there are a few pockets of deep de and the question here is how much vote is left there in fulton, and what i was seeing is about ten minutes ago when we were doing this was potentially there wasn't any or there basically wasn't much vote at all there. just a scattering of a couple hundred votes. the short answer is, we're still not sure. there could be an error here from the data provider or there could be a new estimate here that the vote that's left in fulton county just isn't that much. so we are still trying to get clarification on that. it's a critical question hthoug. fulton county where atlanta is huge potential sources of support for joe biden if there is vote left there he is trying to make up a 100,000 vote statewide gap now. let's take a look south here of georgia into florida. this is one we spent an awful lot of time on early last night on election night. in this picture, slowly coming

into focus, donald trump getting a solid victory here, 3 1/2 points in florida. that's significantly bigger than his 2016 margin. i can remember being here at the board when i think one of the big reasons why came in, miami-dade county. >> this is the final close to the final vote out of miami-dade county. you see biden wins it by seven points. compare that to four years ago when clinton won miami-dade by 30. from 30 all the way down to seven. of course, this is, we saw this in the polls ahead of time here, the potential for this. hispanic voters specifically cuban-american voters, big part of the population in south florida, in miami-dade county, donald trump made big gains there. this is a huge, supposed to be a huge democratic vote producing county in florida. instead, donald trump made joe biden sweat there. that's not supposed to happen for a democrat. it's a big reason biden lost florida. it's a big reason trump wins it by 3 1/2 points at this moment.

>> donald trump in miami-dade picked up almost 200,000 more votes that time than four years ago. joining us with more, democratic strategist chuck rocha and journalism professor of morgan state university politics editor at the grio jason johnson. gentlemen, good morning. chuck, let me start with you. we were talking about miami-dade. what do you see as you dig through those numbers? what happened to joe biden there? >> let's talk about what happened there. i think it's super interesting. i have been doing this for 31 years and i have never seen such a dramatic swing. joe biden won the latino vote in florida. if he performed at the same numbers that steve described in miami-dade, donald trump would still win because we lost white voters by a larger percent as well. we can't lay this all at the feet of blame on latinos. he underperformed across the board. donald trump won a majority of white seniors and a majority of

white college educated but there was a problem in miami-dade and i have been the mexican redneck crying for a long time about the latino vote. i owe wrote a book about it this summer to what we should do to earn these communities, push back on the socialism argument and meet people where they are. mr. johnson talks about it all the time. people who look like our community, being in the community with pacs and leadership run by latinos. there is not another white consultant that will save us for fix this problem. >> all the people said, amen. hey, jason, i tell you, the message that really worked, i heard it in florida, i heard it from cuban-americans and i heard it from other people in miami-dade, that socialism argument that joe biden is a socialist, which, of course, certainly seems laughable to those of us who have followed

his career and seen him often attacked by democrats for being too close to credit card companies, too close to the big banks. but it worked with cuban-americans. it worked with immigrants from venezuela. it worked with immigrants from nicaragua. >> joe, i do wonder about that. i am looking forward to digging through some of that data because if you actually believe -- it this is not bernie sanders. it's joe biden. if you actually believe that joe biden is a socialist, you are never going to vote for a democrat anyway. that's like white voters are joe biden is going to defund the police. he is not about to defund the police. so i think as we dig through the numbers, i wonder if when you talk to some of these native spanish-speaking or spanish-speaking when they grow up in their home voters if socialism is what thmade them concerned about joe biden or did they just like donald trump. i think the bigger issue is

this. this is just like during the primary where you have a large number of african-american analysts and reporters who were like, look, we got to see what happens in south carolina or what happened in georgia in 2018. there need to be more experts and more journalists and more analysts with deep relationships and connections to spanish-speaking and latino american communities so we can disaggregate these things n the same way that joe biden may have underperformed in miami-dade he did a fantastic job in arizona. he had mixed results and what happened in texas. i think this will be the end of people saying people of color, hopefully will be the end of us just saying latino in general. we will talk about puerto rican americans and cuban-americans and make those distinctions by color and language and race. >> yeah, i mean, that's something that obviously we have been saying here for quite some time. in fact, years ago i started explaining to democrats that they couldn't look at the

hispanic vote, the latino vote as monolithic. they couldn't say, oh, it's all about immigration. it's all about this issue. it's not. it's an extraordinarily diverse population, and it depends. like, for instance, in arizona, and katty, i know you have a question for chuck, it's like arizona. joe arpaio in arizona and other moves by the republican party in arizona have turned off latino voters there. >> yeah. and you look at what's happened down in florida or if you ever needed a reminder the latino vote was not monolithic, we are waking up this morning and getting that. dhuk, you made the point that actually joe biden took the latino vote in other parts of florida, a majority, and there is such a distinction. i wonder to what extent events

outside of the united states -- we watched venezuela, we watched donald trump invite the venezuelan opposition leader, juan guaido, to the state of the union address. i remember at the time thinking th is this a florida play? this goes down well not just with venezuelan americans, but also goes down with cuban-americans. and to lump that group in with people who come from puerto rico after hurricane maria, it seemed, chuck, naive on the part of outsiders to think they have the same voting priorities. >> katty, i think you raise a great point. and donald trump was smart. at least his campaign was. i can't believe i said those two words together. in miami donald trump and the team started early and started having these messages and talking about the visits ahead of time. i would remind everybody about my tweet around the rnc convention. i said won't pass this democrats at your own peril. one cuban after another naturalizing people in the white house. was it disgusting?

did he take advantage? it was smart littpolitically bee he knew he could eat into the numbers. donald trump started advertising in spanish in miami-dade in the beginning of june, spending $500,000 a week. joe biden didn't get up there until the end of july. that was six weeks unanswered. joe scarborough knows this better than anybody. you only get one chance to make a first impression. then it was a steady drum. those ads were not about how great donald trump was for the latino community. it was can you really trust joe biden? and then at the end you saw all of this disinformation campaign in spanish that led on can you trust joe biden to mr. johnson's point. then you just saw all of this cultural competency go out the window because they knew exactly who their target was. >> looks like a bunch of that stuck. eddie glaude, hop in there. >> jason, i mean, we talk about the cuban vote in miami-dade. what do you make of african-american voters in this county? when i look at those numbers and i see that decline, it's

important to kind of talk about cuban-americans, but it's also important for us to see how did african-americans turn out, especially when we compare miami-dade to what we saw in broward. talk a little bit about what you see on the ground there, if you see anything. >> well, one, and i think this is a good point because also you can still talk about people who identify as black and still talk about cubans because there are afro cubans who make it clear that white cubans subject them to racism no different than sort of white people. i think that's part of what we have to understand. there was nothing going to be, and i certainly, no one could find tape of me suggesting that joe biden was going to do as well with black voters as barack obama did in '08 and 2012. he held his ground but he was always going to have difficulty because the enthusiasm level for many african-americans had been suppressed by years and years and years of disinformation from the biden campaign through facebook. we saw that they had had these

plans back in 2016 and also the ability to demonize senator kamala harris as his vp. all of those things were going to be challenges. i think it's very important when we look at the lower number for latinos, biden underperforming with latinos, biden underperforming with african americans we have to remember to put the focus frin the right place. this is about white people who saw a president who was corrupt and sexist and violent and mismanaged an entire pandemic that's killed 230,000 people by the election and they said i want some more of that. so even if every single black person and every single latino person said we are going to support joe biden, it wouldn't have been enough to overcome the number of white people with trump and his mini version of trumpism which is desantis which department black and latino voters from getting to the polls. >> jason, there has always been

in the state of florida a built-in advantage that the republicans have built over the past 25, 30 years. and, chuck, obviously there are a lot of white voters, older white voters that like what they see in donald trump. at the same time, the biden campaign was telling us two, three months ago they were really concerned about the numbers they saw from hispanic males and black males that donald trump was doing far better among hispanic males and black males than republican voters in the past, and they really still don't have a good answer for why that is. >> joe, i think you're exactly right. i think we have to separate florida from the rest of the country when you talk about latinos. you know that. you have been talking about it for weeks on "morning joe" and

you have been right. they act totally different. we say monolith and all of that. in arizona, joe biden is going to win 71% of the vote and pick up lots of latino men. will it be as good as latinas? >> no we have seen a huge divide between men and women in the latino community. when we talk about the latino vote and like you talked about, we have to set florida to the side. it's not just the cucheans. they are only one quarter of the vote. but i think there is one big major thing we are not talking about and that's all the outside money that got into florida and other places. i am currently tracking the top 12 super pacs, $1 billion that was spent trying to persuade white persuade voters while 1.5% of that actually went to latino groups on the ground to communicate and i think that that is a big deal because joe biden will show that he actually spent more thun man hillary clinton talking to latinos in spanish. the big difference here is that spending by the outside group that was hyperfocused on white

people getting them from the donald trump, back to the old obama days, and i see that being very underreported. >> all right. chuck and jason, thank you both for your analysis this morning. >> thank you guys so much. >> up next, we are going to check in with steve kornacki at the big board and get the bottom line to the state of the race right now. keep it right here on "morning joe."

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look, you know, we could know the results as early as tomorrow morning, but it may take a little longer, as i've said all along. it's not my place or donald trump's place to declare who's won this election. that's the decision of the american people. but i'm optimistic about this outcome. >> this is a major fraud in our nation. we want the law to be used in a proper manner, so we'll be going to the u.s. supreme court. we want all voting to stop. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list. okay? it's a very sad -- it's a very sad moment. to me this is a very sad moment, and we will win this. as far as i'm concerned, we already have won it. >> despite what the president

says -- >> actually, he says that in the third inning. >> that's a no. >> he actually hasn't won it, and even republicans were saying before the election you had to wait to count the votes. he knows this, of course. he also knows that by saying that last night, willie, what he was trying to do at that time was to stop the counting of black votes in milwaukee county and wayne county, in philly and in atlanta, georgia, the overwhelming majority of the votes that have been coming in since he said that and he knew it was coming. >> yeah. >> his campaign people told him it was coming. it was black voters and their absentee ballots, which were being counted last unlike in florida, because republican legislatures refused to change the law so they could be counted ahead of time. >> that's right, and the strategy did not work we should point out because just a couple of hours later, as steve

kornacki's been showing us all morning, when we got the votes in from milwaukee there goes wisconsin flipping over to joe biden. when the votes pour into michigan and pennsylvania and pittsburgh as they are right now, we'll get the vote total and this will play out again for the last time this morning in our last few minutes together here over the last ten that we've been together, this is actually playing out the way it's supposed to play out and the way we suggested to all of our viewers that it would for weeks and weeks and weeks now, that wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania were going to take time, and as those urban and suburban votes came in, eddie glaude that you would see exactly the effect we're seeing right now which is joe biden being bolstered by the mail-in and early vote that's come through. >> reminded of those three words that ralph waldo emerson said, patience, patience, patience. last night on peacock i was in the middle of an anxiety attack on your show trying to figure out where the nation was.

but again, we're deeply divided but let's hope that our institutions hold and that american democracy can be salvaged here. >> well, and mike barnicle, we are reminded again as we said this past week when we were telling voters and viewers they needed to relax and wait, we're reminded again of what tom brokaw told us back in new hampshire in 2008, you have to actually wait for the voters to speak, count their votes, see what they're telling you, and then declare a winner. we're still in that process as the world has been predicting for the past several months. >> yeah, joe, clearly the odds are with joe biden as this late vote comes in, all of the absentee ballots being counted, but listening to donald trump and donald trump knows this by the way, which is part of the reason why he spoke and said what he said last night, but listening to him, you know, i have to think a couple of

things. one, this is the last presidential campaign i'm covering. i've done every one since 1972 of. this is it. i won't be doing it four years from now, but listening to that president speak, all i could think of was the fake news thing that he's been selling, it worked. it has damaged our credibility. >> yes. >> and going forward we have to take a look at this country. we have upwards of maybe 45% of this country who resent the other half of the country. a democracy, no republic can survive in the long run with that kind of division. we've got to heal the resentments that boil, fester every day. >> and katty kay, to mike's point, we see ourselves right now looking at the results as a nation divided. we clearly are a nation in the middle of a pandemic that is still being allowed to get out of control, and we're seeing the

impact of disinformation coming from the highest office in the land. >> yeah, there were structural problems, a lot of soul searching to do, particularly on the democratic side, in particularly on behalf of the pollsters. the institutions are holding, and the vote count is taking place. it is exactly as it should be. this is a pandemic. we knew that it was going to be difficult. democracy in the time of a pandemic is not easy, and people, i'm loving the zen tone that i'm hearing from joe and willie. maybe it's just because they've been on air for so long that we all have. i need more of that because we just need to be patient. >> yeah. >> yeah, we do. >> this is a long road. >> everybody needs to take a breath. >> deep breath. >> if you think we're just saying that this morning, why don't you go back and google what willie has been telling you, what we've all been telling you for the past several weeks. in fact, the past several months. in fact, google the phrase red mirage. >> all right. >> that's what we had last

night. this morning the black votes and the votes of many in the suburbs are being counted, and it's making a big difference. donald trump does not want that to happen, but the states are continuing because as the attorney general of pennsylvania said, it's the law. >> so joe and willie, this was so much fun. why don't we do it again tomorrow. >> let's not. >> that's it for us this morning, stephanie ruhle -- >> willie, i want you back at the big board tomorrow. >> i'll be there. >> the coverage after this final break.

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ask your doctor about entresto. hi there, it's wednesday, november 4th. welcome to election day, part two. i am stephanie ruhle, and this thing is nowhere close to being over. former vp joe biden leads president trump 224 electoral votes to 213, but both candidates have multiple paths to 270. according to nbc there are still nine states that have not been called for either candidate. take a look at the front pages around the country this morning, this is nation still very much on edge, still very dividedment you may not get a resolution for days, but remember, that is what the exper