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good day, everyone. i'm andrea mitchell joined by my colleagues. we are here in new york. for the next four hours, we look forward after a stunning and historic midterm election night. for president biden and the democrats, a national sigh of relief as the feared red wave crashed on the shores of florida and went no further. for women across the country, major victories on abortion initiatives in red and blue states with the issue also helping democrats get their voters to the polls. for former president trump, a string of public defeats to high profile candidates, including dr. oz and election deniers raising questions over trump's

strength within the party six days away from a potential 2024 announcement. >> let's be real. this and this and looking and seeing what we got and looking at the board. >> steve kornacki. >> we have races out. we have vote out and potential projections that we could make in some of the key senate races. let's not overstate it. it's a while before we see anything in nevada or georgia. the big news as we come on the air is this projection that nbc news has made in wisconsin. we are projecting republican senator ron johnson, the incumbent, as the winner, with a third term by defeating the democrat in that race, mandela barnes. in georgia, it's too close to call. you see ron johnson there, the projected winner. let's talk about georgia where raphael warnock and herschel walker -- neither of them have hit the 50% threshold to avoid a runoff. do i have to tell you when it is? december 6th.

we're in election month. if this does go to a runoff. people are bracing for it. there are two senate races too early to call. in arizona, look at the numbers. you have senator mark kelly, who is leading the republican break masters. nbc again, too early to call. then you have the most vulnerable incumbent race in nevada. a lot of votes to be counted. >> let us look at the big picture as well. those big questions are still outstanding. the senate is a jump ball with four calls to go. counting the race in alaska, that will be a republican hold. in the house, it's the clear off the visual of that republican wave that did not materialize. the projection of a slim gop majority that could cause massive political headaches for someone like kevin mccarthy. for the house democrats, a big

embarrassment. sean maloney losing his re-election bid after he was redrawn out of his district. a crisis averted in new york. historic gains in massachusetts and maryland. a big win this morning in kansas. a national rejection of republican candidates who refused to say they would not have certified president biden's victory in 2020. let us get to the conversation. i know we want to answer these big questions. we have our panel. michael steele in person. good to see you. our friend mark murray as well, also great to see you. robert gibbs, former president secretary in the obama white house. donna edwards, a former maryland congresswoman. we miss you in the studio. i want to start with you, mark. steve kornacki will join us. let's talk about the outstanding races.

what's happening in arizona? what's happening in nevada? we will see a runoff in georgia. is it tightening more so there? >> let's start with nevada, which is the most fascinating state to follow over the next 24, 48, 72 hours, whenever we get the vote. right now, you have a lead of less than 3 percentage points. we know there's significant outstanding votes. particularly in clark county, that's las vegas. there's a lot of mail-in ballots that have ended up benefitting democrats. we have to count the votes. it's possible katherine cores at the -- cortez pulls ahead. >> it would be a 50/50 at that point? >> before we get to the georgia run-up. we need to get through arizona senate. you have mark kelly with the

lead. as we have seen from previous cycles, whether in 2018 or 2020, arizona also takes a while. i think the only guidance is, it's going to take time. hopefully, we will have clarity maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after. it's coming soon. >> let me follow up on that on arizona. we saw the bouncing around last time. that's what fed a lot of the misinformation, the false trump claims, all kind of accusations. from what you see now in arizona, do you think kelly's lead will shrink? >> i just don't -- we have to see the vote come in. as you ended up mentioning about the doubts to how arizona is conducting their elections, i will say covering how arizona conducts their elections, particularly gigantic maricopa county, they do great work.

what i'm focused on is kari lake and the governor race. we talk about mark kelly and the balance of power. that governor race is closer. as vaughan hillyard was reporting yesterday, you had kari lake doubting -- if i'm losing, it's because i'm being cheated. she said the same stuff in her primary that she ended up winning. i think, let's count the votes. let's let our colleagues do their great job. let's have kornacki break it down. i think we will have more clarity in the next couple of days. >> we are talking senate. let's talk about house for a send. did you have on your bingo card that -- >> i did. >> buy me a powerball. >> the polling -- you can talk about this. not to steal your thunder. the polling has been -- we are hearing from pollsters that they are not sure about the data we have. we are living in such a wild moment with such crazy policies,

crazy, didivergent issues. it's hard to predict. >> do you pick up an unknown number when it calls you? >> never. >> who does that? especially younger people. there's something there. that said, five seat net gain, that was not a huge margin. you have talked about that. that's on the lower end here. i look at that race in new york. this is one -- i wonder for you, robert -- i know there's been talk among democrats here that, sure, that's -- i think you framed it as an embarrassment for democrats here, the head of the dccc, but i have heard some democrats say, listen, look at the money republicans put into that race and look where they are this afternoon. >> i wonder if there's not going to be an audit in the senate and house side that looks at when they started making bigger bets

around the country, are they pulling some of that money away from ohio where they lost seats or other places where they didn't pick up what they thought they were going to do, places like virginia? that may be more in the end a symbolic victory in a way that i think if the house ends up sort of the direction we think it's going to go in, republicans will have some control. i say some control because i think they're goin tiger firmly by the tail. democrats will have the largest number of seats in a minority in an extraordinarily long time. 20 more seats than after the shellacking in 2010, which is important for what will ultimately be at stake in 2024. >> let me follow up on that. there's two sides to this. some of the new york seats they lost, kornacki called that yesterday morning. we talked about it at noon.

this could be a case where lee zeldon did well enough to pull his supporters in those districts. there are five of those districts. go in long island, three in upstate new york. the five seats could be decided right there that the republicans needed. that said, that's partly what happened, three out of the five. >> undoubtedly. i forget how -- i wouldn't know how much biden won new york by in 2020, because i wouldn't have paid attention to it. >> exactly. >> the idea that you have got -- >> hochul was -- >> you have plus five, plus six means probably a 14 or 15-point shift in this sort of atmospherics of the electorate. that's going to swamp some people. it did particularly for somebody who faced a lot of money, but was also in a different district. >> by his choice. >> undoubtedly. some challenges with democrats, none too happy -- >> i spent time in that district, speaking to voters.

a lot would bring up crime. that's currently the headline of every "new york post" paper. >> not the exit polls. >> if you turn on the television here, the amount of advertising the republicans had on the air was astounding. the pushback the democrats had, especially with the maloney race, they were trying to tie him to extremists. they could only do so one step removed, which was not as effective. look who mike lawler stands next to. a firm he worked with. that's the best they could get to try to tie him to the extremism. michael, across the country and in new york, i think it's interesting that democrats had a much easier time against people they were able to paint as extremists, the ones who were not in favor of democracy, the

ones who said 2020 was stolen, the ones more supportive of what happened on january 6. >> the exit polls showed in new hampshire, the voters said both sides were extreme. republicans thought democrats were extreme. democrats thought republicans -- >> maggie hassan won by a mile. >> i think to your point, it didn't start out that way. in the afterglow of seemingly important victories for democrats -- it's a victory to do what they did last night and achieve sort of a force of keeping and repelling the wave, it wasn't always that way. if you go back six weeks, everybody had their head in their soup and walking around like zombies thinking the sky is falling. there were those who saw something. it goes to how you started the conversation. who saw something different because they were listening to what voters actually tell them.

as robert and i know very well, voters will always tell you what they think. they just can't help it. they will. you ask them a question, they will tell you. >> or they tell you, i don't think anything. >> exactly. you always have an understanding of where they are. i think that there were tells along the way. one of the pollsters that i latched on to because i had an outlier view at the beginning of the summer about how this would play out where i was on the show saturday morning and i said democrats, my estimation, looking at everything and talking to people, they will hold the house. if republicans win, they will probably get somewhere no more than 18 seats. >> have you bought a powerball ticket? can i give you the money? >> i have it on tv and i have it on my podcast. >> you know who you were. >> exactly. i remember. i was laughed out of the studio. i was vilified by people. i was reinforced by simon

rosenberg, a noted democratic pollster. had him on my podcast. we were talking about this very thing that you just mentioned. >> but it's talking to voters. >> it's talking to voters. >> it's not necessarily -- it's not relying on the polling. >> let me just say the nbc poll -- let's defend -- we acknowledge when it's wrong. this time we were close. >> our poll -- finding that democrats had that enthusiasm and that -- that actually means so much in a midterm cycle. the big reason why the party in power takes a shellacking is your side isn't as fired up as the opposition. you know very well that getting that opposition -- the opposition is fired up. it's getting the people in power who is like -- that's the work. i think the power of the dobbs decision and igniting that democratic enthusiasm that we ended up seeing in the summer

was important. our polling actually picked up on that. i think where a lot of people ended up saying, well, looks like it's headed for a really big republican night is, the humongous confidence from a lot of republicans in the last two weeks of the election, where it was like, rick scott was on "meet the press," i think we will have 53 senate seats. there was a lot of confidence in a game in which usually even if you show really good cards or you have good cards, you try to tamper your expectations. you play the expectation game. we just want to get senate majority or house majority. our poll did pick up that enthusiasm from democrats. i think the question going forward is, are these kind of normal midtermdynamics we see. a lot of the kavanaugh factors where republicans were equally fired up ended up blunting

democratic gains. >> let me say, the president will be responding. we expected this to happen. the president is going to be responding at 4:00 p.m. in the white house. we will be live on that. >> did they just extend your time? on polling, every poll assumes some educated, hopefully, guess on what the electorate looks like. i think it's clear republicans expected a different electorate. a good friend of mine, a pollster, had a good sort of thinking about this this morning. voters are good at telling you how they feel. what they feel. they may not be as good at predicting in six weeks what they're going to do. right? i think we had a sense that abortion was going to be big. we had a sense inflation was going to be big. how all of that wound through six, eight -- the last six,

eight weeks of the race and what it spits out at the end can be very different. it could be a confluence of a lot of things. seeing election deniers. seeing extremist portions on abortion. that denialism, trump popping back up, that may have had people thinking not differently than what they told a pollster, but the outcome of what they did clearly was different. i will say one of the numbers that stood out to me -- mark and i were talking about this. i don't think anybody would have given me -- would have not taken the bet if i said, i think democrats are going to win independents on this election. 49 to 48 according to exit polls last night. we were talking about this. you had democrat and republican enthusiasm. what about independents? well, you will see. i think it's pretty remarkable. there was a rejection of that extremism, that rejection of that denialism, that really had accumulated in a way that

republicans never really dealt with. >> the turning point was the little thing no one seemingly cared about. it was the january 6 committee. you go back to the beginning of the january 6 hearings and the national mood projected by republicans was, no one is going to care about this. who cares? it's the summer. i'm going to the beach. i'm going to work on the tan. i'm going to be beautiful. 22 million people tuned in. over the course of the summer and into the fall, they stayed. they listened. they learned. they connected dots. i think the one thread, which the great polling by nbc news brought out right before the -- the weekend before the election was when it said the number one issue was what? threats to democracy. that was not on your bingo card at the beginning. >> nor was the attack on paul

pelosi. >> the combination to both those points. the combination of forces rounded out the picture, i think, for voters in a way that republicans just didn't bank on when it came to your point, how they would vote six weeks later. >> glen youngkin sent to pelosi, an apology. a written apology to pelosi about joking about the attack. >> is it going to catch up with the slam? >> let me ask you, why did he do that today? anyone have an idea? >> i think in a -- let's assume he runs for president. i think there's a lane for a hopeful, optimistic, forward-looking republican candidate. that's the model of a reagan. i think that's the lane glen youngkin wants to occupy. he is not going to get into his sleeveless fleece and outyell

everybody else. he has to occupy a distinct, more hopeful lane. i think that's probably a big part of it. >> there are some republican donors hoping a youngkin 2024 thing happens. donna edwards, are eager to jump in. please do. >> there are a couple of things that i think accumulated over the spring and into the summer. one is that all along, i have been saying that republicans were nominating some of the most extreme candidates in house and senate seats. independents and moderates, centrist democrats were not going to stomach those candidates. then the dobbs decision. there's an uptick of young people registers to vote, all through the summer. those are people who would never register in any polling that was going on. i think that that had a huge factor if you look at the long lines on college campuses and in

communities where there are colleges of young people who were showing up to vote. then you add to that, some people question whether president biden should have given the democracy speech at the close of the campaign. it turns out that, of course, that was really smart to do. these races were always going to be decided on the margins. some people were going in on abortion and others on democracy. at the end of the day, for independents and young voters, those are things that were going to move the races in the margins. i remember yesterday early in the day, i said, don't believe conventional wisdom, because conventional wisdom only plays out if it's not -- if it's a normal midterm. this was anything but normal. >> joining us now is republican congressman adam kinzinger, a member of the january 6th committee, one of the two

republicans on the committee who has had death threats and all kinds of abuse for being on that committee. i don't know if you were listening. we were just talking with michael steele about how he thought the january 6th committee hearings were a turning point in terms of changing the ideas of the electorate about what democracy means and what a threat means. perhaps also we should add the president's closing arguments that people derided. >> yeah. i think he is right. he is the first person i have heard say this. i guess the conventional wisdom and holding on to is the committee will make an impact in future history. it will tell the truth in schoolbooks the kids will learn about. i don't know if it will have an impact on the race. but i think it did. it may not be the thing people voted on. it was cumulative. whether it was abortion. whether it was january 6. whether it was paul pelosi. these things add up to an

uncomfortable feeling for people. i mean, if you are kevin mccarthy right now, you are in a really bad place. he has to be feeling terrible, which doesn't bother me in any way. i look at that and say -- a quick thing to democrats, real quick. candidate quality matters. you could have beaten ron johnson in wisconsin with a more centrist candidate. that said, democrats had much better candidates than republicans did. that's obvious. >> what's next for the committee? since we have you here. a few months before the house does or does not turn over. certainly, only a few months left in your term. what are you guys doing? >> it's interesting. we are continuing to chase down leads. everything pops up every day. we get a new lead or a new interview we have to do. at the same time, we are putting our report together. it's like walking and chewing gum. recognizing we are coming to the end of our mandate at the end of the year.

we're not giving up in terms of when we have stuff come forward. there's going to be unanswered questions ultimately because investigations can take years to get done. we had people that didn't bother to come in. that's where it is not our committee doing it, but it seems like the department of justice has picked up the torch. they have more time, more resources. i think any unanswered questions that we may have run into, doj will get to the bottom of. >> we understand you have had obviously a different perspective than many members of your republican caucus. the margin matters here of what is a potential house speaker doing? how does he wrangle his members from the policy perspective? what does that look like? help us understand how that works. >> it's going to be chaotic. the first thing kevin mccarthy has to do is get elected speaker. if it's a tiny republican majority, he doesn't just have to win a majority of the

republicans, he has to hit 218 votes, which means he could lose a couple republicans. let's assume it's a tight margin. that gives people like jim jordan, marjorie taylor greene -- i would say boebert, but it looks like she's not going to make it through -- real power to extract concessions for their votes or to simply pick another candidate. this is where you have a real opportunity. i will say this to my democratic colleagues if they are in the minority and it's close. maybe to look for a moderate republican that you can stomach and get democrats to vote for that person with concessions. see if you can peel off a couple republicans. you have a real opportunity for an interesting dynamic that never occurs. i don't expect that to happen. i'm just putting that bug in people's ear. look, on terms of things like the debt limit, kevin mccarthy, assuming he is speaker, will have to reach out to democrats or he will not be able to pass anything. i have lived through this. i have lived through when you have the freedom caucus decide

to extract more and more from the governing majority. it's not going to be fun to be in that position for him. >> let's see if the debt limit is raised while the democrats still have power. that's if republicans are going to retake the house. that's an if at this point. you talked about candidate quality, congressman. first read today talked about how this is another one of those moments where the republican party is being shown that the extremism, the denialism that donald trump maybe is not the best leader of the republican party, isn't delivering wins. this is one of those moments where they have a chance to dump him, to throw him aside, to go for someone like ron desantis. what's your sense of what might happen? >> i think it's that moment. the question is -- >> hold on one second. we have a little bit of news. the georgia senate race is going officially -- we throughout it would. officially to an run-off. >> we know, december 6th. in nevada, what's up?

>> unless democrats win nevada and arizona. right? >> so happy thanksgiving. >> steve kornacki is sprinting in. >> racing in here. >> here is what this means. if you are looking at some of the numbers here, you see just the slimmest of margins, which is why this run-off december 6 is going to be what we will see. as you point out, not unexpected but significant. we are waiting or projections in arizona and nevada. in arizona, you have at last count -- you have mark kelly, who is leading blake masters. in nevada, mark murray has talked about how in nevada, we know our colleague jacob soboroff -- mark said 72 hours. we will probably see nevada vote before we see georgia. that's an interesting tell. ellison is live in georgia.

i was in savannah. one thing that came up was voter fatigue. they have been through big elections. here we are, 2022, we are talking about georgia again. i talked to one voter on monday, he said to me -- he voted republican. he said, i hope there's not a run-off because i don't want to see more ads. i'm sick of them. it's the fatigue factor as it relates to a run-off. talk us through how this goes. i imagine no reaction from the campaigns yet, but i bet that's coming. >> reporter: you will see me glancing at my phone because i'm texting campaign sources now to try and see and get an initial reaction. you mentioned voter fatigue. georgia voters are sick of the ads. there's, i think, a little bit of fatigue or there was a hope from both campaigns that they wouldn't have to deal with a run-off. this has happened before in 2020. even weeks ago, a month and a half when we were talking to campaign sources regardless of which campaign they were with, they were saying, we really hope

this does not go to a run-off. i'm not sure georgia voters can take it. we know this is going to head to a december run-off. i ended last night with both campaigns telling me that they felt good. both campaigns saying they thought they were going to be able to eek out a win. by the time i woke up this morning, both campaigns seemed to already be hinting at the possibility of the run -- of a run-off. these tweets i want to read to you. these are from prior to the announcement. i think it's telling of just in terms of how kind of the perspectives seem to be shifting amongst the campaigns. both campaigns, they have consistently said this race is going to be close. the polls showed us that this race was going to be close.

last night when i was talking to a source close to warnock's campaign, he thought whether they eeked out a win or it went to a run-off, they felt like in this political climate, that was going to be a win for them. we have been talking for the last week and a half, two weeks about this possibility of split ticket voters. i had spoken to voters in georgia, a small group of them, but small is significant in races this close, who said they were republican leaning and they planned to vote for republican governor brian kemp. in the senate race, they were either going to split their ticket and vote for warnock or the libertarian candidate. it was nearly impossible to get any of those voters to say that on camera. look at the numbers. the libertarian candidate pulling 2% of the vote in this race. when you go through county by county and compare walker's returns in each county to kemp, there's a clear difference. walker underperformed in a lot of the republican strongholds by

at times 2% to 3%. just two counties that we spent a lot of time in. a rural republican stronghold in the northwest part of the state. donald trump won that in 2020 with 80% of the vote. walker, he is behind that by 2%, polling 78% in that county. another county on the other side of the state, the furthest northeast, a republican stronghold, donald trump won that with 78% in the vote. walker at 75%. those are small differences. in a race this tight, small is significant. now it looks like georgia voters will have to gear up. they will have to gear up for more ads, more weeks of this. warnock had run ads in the final push saying, don't have me interrupt your thanksgiving. show up. vote. this race was one that divided a lot of people here. we see that reflected in the numbers. it looks like they both will be

interrupting everyone's thanksgiving. >> you have 2% for the libertarian candidate. where does that 2% go? ordinarily, you would think that the libertarian would side with the republican. but herschel walker is not your typical republican. >> the libertarian was a receptacle for people that wanted to vote conservative but didn't want to register the vote forwalker campaign has a challenge. it's clear, had georgia republicans nominated sort of a typical republican congressman in georgia, i'm not sure we are having this conversation. >> considering how well kemp did. >> it's clear how much further walker ran behind kemp. that is not something that you can -- that's not something you will change with a few weeks of ads. people have heard the argument.

>> let me ask you about the variable of a win in nevada or a win in arizona, one of those. what might georgia voters do if they are confronted with the -- it's either a republican congress or a democratic congress, does that motivate democrats to go out, does it motivate more republicans? >> it motivates each side. we saw these in the run-offs in january of 2021. democrats were at 48 seats and needed to win both to be at 50/50. georgia has a lot of practice. i'm sure they are not excited about that. they have practice in understanding just how much they're going to be the focus not just in the run-up to this election, but now for an extra amount of weeks. it's going to be remarkable. i think each campaign -- the warnock campaign spent more than $100 million, which is a fantastic amount of money for a senate race. >> more is going to pour in now. >> it's going to be even

greater. >> brad raffensperger has been re-elected. >> it will be interesting to see, what is the effect -- trump's tease that he is going announce for president on the 15th. no candidate in georgia history has lost more races than donald trump. >> what does that do? >> i think there's going to be an enormous amount of pressure -- >> i heard this morning from people who are saying something similar. herschel walker -- >> we know how rational he is to outside opinions. >> the republicans looking at this say, why are we giving democrats additional incentives to turn out and make trump the focus of this battle between now and december? >> i can assure you, there's democrats right now -- it's like pickup basketball. best two out of three. they would love to end this in nevada and arizona and have georgia be important but not the balance of power. >> listen, you are talking about nevada.

can we talk to somebody who knows nevada? with this georgia race going to december 6, you are the guy. give it to us. what do you got? bring us up to speed. >> i hate to tell you about how many -- not to sound like donald rumsfeld, known unknowns right now. here is the situation. masto is ahead by 23,000 votes right now. what we don't know is how many mail ballots remain to be counted in clark county, which you know is 70% of the vote. it's where the democrats always do well. they especially do well in mail ballots. if there are enough mail ballots -- some people think -- this is coming from both sides. if you look at the turnout, it's probably true. there may be as many as 100,000 mail ballots to be counted. the democrats generally have won the mail ballots in clark by two to one.

it's not over yet here in nevada. i know what the next question is. let me help you out. when will we know? the answer to that question -- >> anchor yourself through the segment. take it. >> so, listen, we may not have any numbers today. the county election department here in clark county, which is las vegas, is supposed to update us later this morning, maybe closer to noon. maybe they will tell us how many ballots there are. they're not going to be done counting them today. they may post an update later. i would guess tomorrow we will have a much better sense. don't forget, friday is a holiday. the law here says they can count those mail ballots as long as they are postmarked before or on election day through saturday. it may be saturday before we know anything. if any of you remember back to 2020, that's when nevada was

called for joe biden as well. >> let me ask you a variation of the question of when will we know. what exactly are they doing behind the scenes? why does it take so long? >> do you know how many times i have been asked this question over the years? the answer to that is, too many times. there's no logical explanation for it. what the registrar of voters in clark county says is that he only has so many hands to put the ballots through the signature verification and processing. the question is, why didn't his bosses, the clark county commissioners in, make sure that he had the resources so people on msnbc would not be asking me how long is it going to be? >> i think he is listening. i got a text message from jacob soboroff. the clark county registrar will hold a press conference today at 2:30 p.m. eastern time. by the way, we will be on the air. 11:30 a.m. pacific.

he will update the vote count. maybe, john, we might get -- are we going to get the vote count itself updated or an update on when we will get more information? >> the number everyone is looking for is how many ballots there are. if there are 100,000 ballots or so, this race is going to end up being really close. say there's only 50,000 or 60,000, her path to catch up is very, very difficult. they are not just going to count eventually the mail ballots that were dropped off yesterday or received yesterday. that's what we are talking about in that counsel. mail ballots can arrive today and tomorrow and saturday and be counted in that total. we just don't know what that number is. we do know this. the culinary union, which you are familiar with, is the big democratic turnout operation, instructed its members to drop off mail at those drop boxes yesterday.

they are running a mostly mail campaign. if she ends up coming back, she will have the culinary union to thank for that. >> i know what you are going to be doing at 2:30 eastern. we will be check back with you later. thank you so much. we will ask you more questions that you've heard before. you always have the best answers. >> be nice. >> that's because you are the expert. you are mr. nevada for all of us. as we mentioned, we expect to hear from president biden, someone who has more than a passing interest in what happens at 4:00 eastern this afternoon. monica alba is with us from outside the white house. what do we expect to hear from president biden after a long night? >> there had been a question about when the president was going to react. we knew to expect to hear from him in some form today. we now know also he is expected to take questions from reporters. i think you can anticipate based

on conversations i have had all morning with biden advisers that the president feels buoyed by the results for democrats and his party. he was, after all, the incurable and eternal optimist through this in the last couple of days saying things publically about how he thought democrats would fare, that privately some of his own aides would say behind the scenes likely wouldn't happen. they were bracing for a tougher night following what would be a traditional midterm pattern. instead, overnight, i'm told as the president was doing all of those congratulatory calls, he was feeling very upbeat. he was feeling that the issues that he had spent all of this time talking about did resonate, namely something like abortion. i'm told by a biden advisor, they feel vindicated that that strategy seems to have paid off in terms of how many people cited that as a factor in their ballot box rationale. this afternoon, you can expect

to hear the president talking about some of those key issues. the other main thing i expect to hear from him is that argument about democracy being on the ballot. he gave this high profile speech laying out the threats to democracy and what he called these ultra. >> marv: -- ultra-maga conservatives. he received criticism. i think you will see the white house come out and say, we feel good about that because that was cited by a lot of people. some election deniers and some trump-backed candidates that lost last night, they will point to as evidence for perhaps that strategy working. the president will face tough questions. in terms of the gop investigations, they are ready for that as well. there will be certainly plenty of questions that could go into these probes about hunter biden's business dealings, the

origin s of covid, the afghanistan withdrawal. they know it's a more difficult area that they will have to field a lot of inquiries on. i think you can expect to see the president come out and say, i have been underestimated before. i was underestimated last night. now i am feeling a little bit more optimistic about where things went and where they still may go here. >> monica alba, thank you. 4:00 eastern, watch it here live on msnbc. we will sneak in a quick break on an important projection that the georgia senate race is going to a run-off in early december. we know there have been firsts in these midterm election races. coming up next, first woman elected to congress from the state of vermont. she will join us as you watch continuing coverage right here on msnbc.

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i've never been healthier. shingles doesn't care. but shingrix protects. proven over 90% effective, shingrix is a vaccine used to prevent shingles in adults 50 years and older. shingrix does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients or to a previous dose. an increased risk of guillain-barré syndrome was observed after getting shingrix. fainting can also happen. the most common side effects are pain, redness and swelling at the injection site, muscle pain, tiredness, headache, shivering, fever, and upset stomach. ask your doctor or pharmacist about shingrix today. history was made last night. first woman to represent vermont in the house was elected last night. believe it or not, she's the first woman, also the first openly lgbtq person to represent

vermont. she joins us now. congresswoman-elect, how are you feeling? >> i am feeling tremendous. i feel so honored that i'm going to get to represent this state that i love so much. it's a dream come true for me. >> also, your state voted to enshrine protections for abortion as well. what happened last night? >> so much good news here in vermont. yes, we have been working on our reproductive liberty amendment for five years. to have vermont come out so strongly in support of reproductive free don'doms was confirmation of the work i did in the statehouse. it was an amazing race because a lot of people said we couldn't do what we did. i'm the child of an immigrant, a working class mom. as you said, i'm openly gay.

former schoolteacher. so many reasons why people didn't think we would be able to pull this off. we really tapped into this feeling that vermonters had that they wanted a message of courage and kindness and really trying to pull our communities back together. it was a broad coalition that we put together. i couldn't be more proud of the race that we ran. >> what are your thoughts about the house you are likely to enter, which is likely to be red? we don't know by what margin. there's going to be an outsized influence by all of the election deniers in that group, some very conservative and extreme members of the house right now in the republican majority, possibly led by kevin mccarthy. >> absolutely. that's been on my mind in ernest for the last few weeks, of course. i'm waking up to a much better map than i thought i would wake up to. i'm feeling hopeful, much like i

think many people within the house right now on the democratic side. it did not end up being a reputation of the biden presidency. there was not a red wave. i see many signs of hope. looks like boebert lost her seat, some other extremists that went down. i think trump did not perform as well with his candidates as people thought he would. i'm feeling like there's an opportunity here for us to actually get work done, because the issues that impact rural america are very similar whether you are in vermont or whether you are in the middle of the country. we really have to get back to thinking about what working people in this country need. so i'm going to be looking for those partners wherever i can. i know it's going to be tough. it is. >> congratulations. we look forward to meeting you when you become a new member of the house. thank you so very much. it was a tough night for some

republican candidates who denied the 2020 election results. look at this. some of the candidates who refused to accept president biden's win and who lost their races last night. joining me now is jeh johnson, former department of homeland security, former head of the -- secretary of homeland security during the obama administration and before that top official at the pentagon. first of all, what message does it is send that so many of the prominent election deniers running for governor lost? >> first, i'm sorry i'm not there in person. i'm in covid quarantine in new jersey. i'm sorry i'm not there, particularly because you are at 30 rock across from my office. i'm feeling fine. i will be out and about in a couple of days. fine, out in a couple days. andrea n answer to your question, if history is a guide, what happened yesterday falls far short of republican

expectations, and whether the republicans eek out a majority in the house and senate, my hope is that what comes out of this is republican office holders, republican politicians, those who are running on a republican line, conclude that the trump-lauren boebert style of being outrageously offensive in politics is going out of style, is running out of steam, is something maybe we need to rethink. mocking victims of violence, remaining silent in the face of an attack like the one on speaker pelosi's husband, my hope is that collectively, republicans begin to think that this style of politics really isn't working very well and that we need to move on to basic common decency in our political dialog.

>> secretary johnson, it's hallie, you know, one of the things we've been looking at, one of the story lines what happens with people who have questioned the 2020 election or outright denied it, right. we've been tracking this at nbc news. i want to share the numbers because i think they're interesting here. 150 house races, 60 lost. we saw something different in the other races. in the senate, by the way, 8 election deniers winning their races on the republican side, five losing. look at governor and secretary of state. these are arguably, as you know, among the most important because these statewide races for governor, secretary of state, i would add, for attorney general as well, are so critical in determining the mechanisms by how people vote. they have a say in your state and how you go and cast your ballot. ten of the governors, we showed that graphic on the screen v lost their race, or projected to lose. on the secretary of state five lost, three won, and we have a number of several outstanding

projections that are yet to come in here. when you look at the landscape here, look ahead to what this means for 2024, when you look at state like arizona, right, or michigan, where all three of those statewide races had election deniers on the ballot, almost a clean sweep in michigan, we know that the gubernatorial candidate and secretary of state on the republican side lost. in arizona it's still an open question. how much does that concern you as you're looking ahead to 2024 and faith from american voters on the legitimacy of our elections? >> hallie, one of the last things i did when i was in office as secretary of dhs in 2017 was to declare that our election infrastructure is critical infrastructure. the good news is that a lot more attention is being paid to election integrity, ballot integrity. the other good news is, examples

like you cited a number of election deniers, but among republicans, you've got the georgia secretary of state who stood up for that election result, you've got rusty powers in arizona, republican who stood up for the election result in arizona, krens serred by the locally republican party as a result, but there are a number of republicans who took their office seriously, took their oath of office seriously, but we're right to focus on this particular point of concern, state level, secretaries of state, some cases attorneys general, who may try to cast doubt on the future elections. you know, the reality is, that this election cycle in 2020 turnout is growing. this may well be the largest

midterm turnout in history. 2018 at that point certainly was. and in the face of covid, we've done a remarkable job at having remarkably safe and secure elections with the vast number of mail-ins. the nearest round number percentage in terms of voter fraud is zero, and so the facts speak for themselves here. >> jeh, i want to correct a couple things, not correct but clarify, lauren boebert we have not called ta race. it's considered too close to call but the fact that it is too close to call is surprising considering she was safe. news from our friend jake sherman, kevin mccarthy announced he will be running for speaker. no surprise. he released a letter talking about how he expects the republicans will flip the house. i can confidently report we will

join the list building on our significant gains from last cycle to achieve our goal of taking back the house carefully worded. and that's why he's running. he's going to be in charge of a conference full of election deniers. a lot of the key ones didn't win, as hallie pointed out, but a lot of election deniers were in safe races and did win and they are going to congress. some of them are already there. how -- i mean this is not -- into the he's going to listen to you, but if you were going to give kevin mccarthy advice what would you advise him to do? >> kevin mccarthy is about to find out it's much more difficult to be the majority leader, speaker, than it is to be the minority leader. nancy pelosi, in my judgment, has been the most phenomenal speaker in modern times, simply because of her ability to hold her caucus together whether in the minority or majority. kevin mccarthy, if he's elected

speaker, is about to inherit a thin majority with a very, very cranky majority with some real outliers it within his caucus. i know from personal conversations with past republican speakers while i was in office that is a frustrating, difficult job, to the extent he listens to me, my advice is to try to, you know, govern from a center point of responsibility, and not just play to the extreme base of your caucus. >> secretary jeh johnson, good to have you with us. sorry you cannot be on set. hopefully a quick covid recovery and out of quarantine. >> get wellen. >> for sure. we've talked about the new developments. officially now in the running for kevin mccarthy to be the house speaker and hearing from senate minority leader mitch mcconnell asked about how he's feeling about things. i don't deal in feelings.

he said let's look at the vote count. we'll talk about that just after the break. >> that indicates a lot of self-knowledge. >> we're going to talk about it coming up. stay with us in just a couple minutes. we'll be back. couple minutes. we'll be back. we've got questions about medicare plans. well, we've got a lot of answers! how can i help? well for starters, do you have a medicare plan i can actually afford?

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