. >> we spoke with historian mark updegrove. >> while we await the results of this presidential election20's election making has been from the country electing the first openly two openly gay men being elected to congress. can you elaborate on the significance of this? >> it's incredibly important. more women in congress than we've ever seen as well and slowly but surely our elected officials are looking more like america and it reflects our coming of age in a sense, accepting people, who they are and opening our election process such that folks like this can be viable candidates. very, very positive sign for our country. >> mark, we've seen decisions, deep divisions in the history of this country. speak about the divisions that are happening from coast to coast right now. >> people come here to be themselves, to live a life full of liberty, and that means there's inherent division, right? we're not the same, so we clash very frequently. that's a natural part of who we are as a country, so frequently throughout our country we see those divisions fester. but the very best leaders in ameri

. >> we talked this morning with historian mark updegrove to get his thoughts on the last few hours. for joining us. let's skip right to it. we see that these record number of vote tallies have come in. vice president -- former vice president joe biden has like 73 million people who voted for him at this point, the president, 69 million. i think we asked you last night and we're going to ask you again, when you see numbers like this, your thoughts? >> well, i think there's a positive, and there's a negative. the positive is it shows the vitality of our democratic system. people got engaged. they went to the polls. maybe they didn't literally go to the polls, but they sent their ballots in. they registered their choice. that's good in a democracy. we want to be involved. that's the good news. the bad news is these results show that we are a very, very divided nation, and you couldn't have a more pronounced difference between candidates than donald trump and joe biden so, again, there's a huge challenge for the next president of the united states in uniting our nation. >> and the follo