Show: MTP DAILY Date: November 9, 2016 Guest: Bill McInturff, Fred Yang, Kay Granger, Yamiche Alcindor, Maria Teresa Kumar, J.D. Vance
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STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC HOST: That`s it for me. "MTP DAILY" starts now.
CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: Good evening. I`m Chuck Todd here at NBC election headquarters in New York City. Fresh off of 90 minutes of sleep for a couple of days. I`ll take it, right? Welcome to MTP DAILY. Are you feeling a bit dazed? You`re not alone. Hopefully half the country is feeling dazed and confused right now, and the other half is feeling dazed and elated. Folks, while Trump`s grass roots supporters have been insisting for months that their candidate was going to win, none of the experts saw this coming. Pollsters, pundits, the media or the partisans. Even the RNC`s internal models and had Trump losing in the final stretch by somewhat significant electorate college margin. Let`s be frank, we all got it wrong. At this hour, we`re going to try to answer some basic questions. What happened? Why did it happen? And what happens next? So, let`s begin the night by combing through some of the shrapnel from last night`s by political explosion. NBC News is projecting that Donald Trump has surpassed 270 electoral votes needed to become the 45th president of the United States. Democrats have one very sour consolation prize at the moment. Hillary Clinton is leading in the popular vote. This is, historically, unexpected battleground math. Trump swept the battlegrounds that he had to win, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina. And then, he did something a lot of us didn`t think could be done, particularly by Trump. He scaled the Democrats big, blue wall by winning Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa and could be another state, Michigan. Trump is leading in Michigan still, although that race is still technically too close to call, according to our decision desk. We still don`t have a proper number -- know how many absentee ballots are in the Detroit area, by the way. We still have a few other calls left on the map. Arizona is still too close to call. Trump does lead there. And New Hampshire remains too close to call. Clinton though holds a very tiny lead. Meanwhile, down the ballot, Republicans control all the levers of power in Washington. They retain of the House and Senate. And this just in from New Hampshire. Incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte has just conceded to Democratic challenger, Maggie Hassan. That means Democrats picked up two Senate seats so far in Illinois and New Hampshire. Now, shell shocked Democrats began their work of turning the page today. Clinton delivered an emotional concession speech to her supporters in New York City late this morning, specially calling out to young women in the crowd.
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HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion.
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TODD: It`s not often you see her show that kind of vulnerability. She also urged the country to keep an open mind about an opponent who, just weeks ago, she suggested could cause the apocalypse.
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CLINTON: We must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power. And we don`t just respect that, we cherish it.
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TODD: The president addressed the nation today from the White House as he began the dutiful work of passing the torch to Trump. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One thing you realize quickly in this job is that the presidency and the vice presidency is bigger than any of us. So, I have instructed my team to follow the example that President Bush set eight years ago and work as hard as we can to make sure that this is a successful transition for the president-elect because we are now rooting for a success. (END VIDEO CLIP) TODD: Let that sink in. President Obama is rooting for the success of a political opponent who called his presidency an illegitimate sham and labeled him, literally, the founder of ISIS. So, what the heck happened last night? We, the experts and our pollsters, and we`re going to talk to our pollsters in a moment, perhaps made the mistake of thinking that the Obama coalition was a Democratic coalition. Clearly, it was not. Other than a late surge of Latino voters in the sunbelt, this was basically John Kerry`s coalition. But John Kerry, he got wins in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. What put Trump over the top was his overwhelming support in rural America. The lack of turnout for Democrats was big and that turnout of rural America for Trump was huge, too. But look at this lack of turnout issue. Clinton`s vote total could be more than 5 million votes shy of Obama`s turnout in 2012 and nearly 10 million short of 2008. That matters. [17:05:08] Take a look at Wisconsin, for example. Trump won with fewer votes than Bush got in 2004 in Wisconsin. By the way, Bush lost the state to Kerry. Trump got basically the same turnout as Romney in 2012. Romney lost to Obama in Wisconsin I think by nearly seven points. I am joined by now by the NBC-"The Wall Street Journal" polling duo, Democratic pollster Fred Yenning of Heart Research, Republican pollster, Bill McInturff, of public opinion strategies, and our data guru both at NBC and "The Wall Street Journal," Dante Chinni. Gentlemen, welcome. Hello? All right, Bill, so, the word is we -- all of the pollsters got it wrong. What say you? BILL MCINTURFF, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: Well, look, this was a surprising election and president-elect Trump and his people deserve credit. But in many ways, I think the polling all over the country was, in many cases, fundamentally right. And we`ve watched a good lesson of how very modest margins about how Democrats dropped modestly over here (ph). The Republicans gained and the president-elect gained enormous ground with white non-college, so much that he tipped the scales by three net points and bingo. You`ve got a tied election where Hillary Clinton will be the nominal winner in the popular vote but Trump is our new president.
TODD: Fred, could you take our final NBC-"Wall Street Journal" poll and simply match it almost identically with what we saw nationally? And would we -- would we get the same number? And what would we do? Would you say we needed to -- we over-weighted African-Americans? Underweighted? I mean, how would you say, in the weighting of our sample, what was right and what was wrong?
FRED YANG, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: Well, I think in looking back at the polling results and now, of course, we have the benefit of having actual election results. You know, maybe, you know, the white non-college educated cohort was a couple points lower in our polling than it should`ve been. But I go back -- and, you know, Chuck, one of the things about Bill and I is we agree on a lot of the fundamentals of polling.
And when you -- you talked about the Obama coalition earlier, there wasn`t Obama coalition but Mrs. Clinton just didn`t carry those voters by the margins the president did. She got seven points less with millennials than Obama did. She got eight points less with African-Americans than President Obama did, same thing with Latinos.
So, when you sort of add up these discrepancies, -- TODD: Yes. YANG: -- as Bill said, it can take a three-point lead to a tie race. And, you know, I`m looking at our poll over the weekend. I think, you know, when you look at the structure of the electorate, you know, Mrs. Clinton lead in that poll was predicated on keeping some of these groups. And one of the numbers from the exit poll showed that the later deciders actually moved to Trump by five points. TODD: Hey, Dante, is there a little bit of, I guess I`ll call it, recentcy (ph) bias in this respect where a lot of political demographers, pollsters, handicappers, analysts, all of us took 2008 and 2012 and made an assumption that it was permanent in that it wasn`t just unique to Obama. Perhaps maybe the same mistake Republicans made post Reagan when they thought the Reagan coalition was easily replicated and maybe you have to have Reagan on the ballot to replicate it.
DANTE CHINNI, MSNBC NEWS DATA REPORTER: Yes, I think that`s a really good question. I do think that the reason we thought maybe this was more lasting than it has turned out to be was that the demographic trends were such that whites were keeping -- they were continuing their downward trajectory as the composition of the electorate. And that looked like that was true again actually on Tuesday night, going by the exit polls.
And I think the assumption was, look, here`s the first African-American president in history. He is not just winning cities. He is doing really well in these suburbs. And maybe the assumption was the cities always come along and they are going to be her with him. But I do think, still, the overall trend in the demographic data is such that It favors a more -- a more diverse coalition, you would think, to win. The only thing I`d say is this coalition that Donald Trump has put together to win, it is remarkable. I kept telling last night, death by a thousand cuts who was like margins -- bumping the margins up in these little places. I don`t know how replicable this is either. Maybe you`re right. Maybe it is that they are always changing. TODD: Bill, one of the things we talked about was the remarkable stability of the race. Obviously, it was not stable or did this move late? How would you -- how would you respond to that?
MCINTURFF: I think actually -- I don`t mean to upset folks who are going to say, hey, Donald Trump is president. How can you keep saying that you were -- you saw what was happening?
[17:10:05] In our polling, what we were talking was that Donald Trump had this unique margin with white non-college. He was struggling with while college women. That the African-American Latino vote were kind of going the same way. And he millennials were hurting Clinton`s margins because of the third party. But what happened was we`ve got Trump losing by -- we had Trump winning with noncollege white voters by 29. He won them by 37 points. He ran 10 points better than Romney. And importantly, and this is a big difference, we and a lot of other polls said correctly that Donald Trump`s going to lose white college women, except we frequently had that in double digits. He lost them by five or six. And that difference between losing white college women by single digits means overall that he did just as well as Romney with white women when you add that downscale of white women voter. And so, it is, as I said, I want to say again, these aren`t shocking things in our polling. These aren`t things we`ve not been seeing all year. TODD: Right. MCINTURFF: We`re watching, as Fred had indicated -- here`s the little -- the groups that dropped a net margin that are the core of the Democratic Party. Here are the groups that moved even further to Trump, larger than Ronald Reagan in 1984 is Trump`s margin. And at those margins, you can flip two or three points. And here`s the other thing I think that needs to be reminded. TODD: OK. MCINTURFF: Our national polling says Hillary Clinton`s going to win the popular vote. That`s what our poll said. TODD: All right. MCINTURFF: She is going to win the popular vote. TODD: Perhaps by two points. MCINTURFF: She is -- her margin is going to get bigger as we collect ballots in -- and we have 6 to 8 million ballots left. TODD: Right. MCINTURFF: Most of it from the Pacific Northwest. She might win by one or two points. TODD: Right. MCINTURFF: And so, in the midst of all this, when you say, hey, your national poll said she was going to win. That`s what our poll said. And she is going to win, I believe, the national vote from between a point or two points. TODD: I want to get Fred and Dante in here with one quick answer because then I got to go to break. Fred, let me ask you this. Who is the Obama- Trump voter? YANG: I think the Obama-Trump voter is someone -- there was a very interesting exit poll question. 17 percent in one question said they wanted a -- the next president to be more liberal on policies than Barack Obama. Among that group Clinton won but only 70 to 23. So, I think, when you sort of aggregate that in other answers, they were the change voters. Maybe younger. You know, maybe college educated, Chuck. But they were the voters who had ultimately swung the election toward Trump in these battleground states of people who, ultimately, when they went to the polling booth on Tuesday, -- TODD: Yes. YANG: -- voted for change.
TODD: And, Dante, the final question. Do we think college educated whites lied to the pollsters?
CHINNI: I don`t think that. I really don`t. I -- It is interesting, his margin with college educated whites is going to be better than our polls show, that a lot of polls shows. I don`t know. I think -- I guess it`s a legitimate question. I think -- in the end, I wonder if some of this is really the turnout and some of those voters were disgusted and didn`t turn out.
TODD: All right. Fred, Bill and Dante, we`re all going to be answering these questions. The beauty of it is we`re doing it in public for millions to watch right here. It`s why -- it`s why we want to do this as transparent as possible. Gentlemen, thanks very much. Up next, Donald Trump led the GOP wave last night. So, what`s next for the Democrats? Who`s in charge of this party now? A look at what went wrong for them and how that party claims to move forward. Then, later, how rural America came out like never before. Stay tuned. [17:14:50] (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PAUL RYAN, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think what Donald Trump just pulled off is an enormous political feat. It`s an enormous peat in that he heard those voices that were out there that other people weren`t hearing. And he just earned a mandate and we now just have a unified Republican government.
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TODD: Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, earlier today, talking about how president-elect Trump will have a unified Republican government. NBC News projects that the control of the House of Representatives will remain in Republican hands. Here`s where the House balance of power stands right now. Let`s put it up there on the screen. 238 Republican, 193 Democrat. There are still, obviously, looks like five uncounted seats. Go, California, we`ll get them. It always takes a few more days to get all of California`s vote in. And Republicans will retain control of the U.S. Senate. Republicans currently hold 51 seats. It could grow by one. Louisiana, the race for that Republican-held seat is going to a run off as it always does. Hop two (ph) in that general primary. It is Republican, sometimes even other parties, but it`s Republican John Kennedy and Democrat Foster Campbell who will face each other this December. By the way, this actually could be oddly erased because the Republican Party has never been crazy about Kennedy. This is -- this could be kind of a mess down there and only the way Louisiana does races down there. Got to love them. Democrats have managed to pick up two Senate seats. The one we knew who was most likely to fit -- flip, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth. She defeated incumbent Mark Kirk in Illinois. And as we just mentioned earlier, Senator Kelly Ayotte just conceded New Hampshire Senate race to Democrat Maggie Hassan who won the race by less than a thousand votes. And one other race that we`ve been watching closely that`s still too close to call at this hour, Governor Pat McCrory and Democrat challenger Roy Cooper are separated by just a few thousand votes, as you see there. Cooper is in the lead. That`s a lot of vote for McCrory to make up. But, hey, you never know. And while Republicans will be in controlled by both chambers, whether they`ll be unified, well, that`s a whole other story. And we`ll be back in just a minute for the Republican last night but never did back Trump. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) TODD: Welcome back. As we just mentioned, Donald Trump is riding a Republican wave into the White House or did those guys ride a Trump wave into reelection? Anyway, the GOP will maintain control of the House and the Senate. But, of course, not all Republicans on Capitol Hill were big Trump fans. Some even withdraw their support in the last few weeks of the campaign. Joining me now is one of those Republicans. Congresswoman Kay Granger is the lone woman in the Texas congressional delegation. Congresswoman, welcome back to the show.
REP. KAY GRANGER (R), TEXAS: Thank you.
TODD: Well, Donald Trump is the president-elect. You did not end up supporting him. What did -- what did you do at the ballot box?
GRANGER: No, I support -- I voted a straight Republican ticket at the ballot box.
TODD: You did? What turned you on Trump?
GRANGER: I just did. TODD: Right. No, what turned you? Because you, personally, seemed to -- you were uncomfortable for a while.
[17:20:00] GRANGER: Well, I was. I was uncomfortable when I asked to view the video and heard what he had to say. And so, I -- that was very harmful, I thought, to women and that position. And so, I said that I thought he should step down which is a pretty strong position.
He didn`t step down and I voted for him along with other Republicans. I watched what was happening and said, you know, at some point, you have to say, what do I believe in? What are the most important things? And Republicans represent what I think are most important.
TODD: That`s an interesting change, though. If you feel so strongly that you wanted him to step down. And then, you`re like, well, all right.
GRANGER: I did. TODD: I`ll forgive this behavior because, you know, he might support the House agenda here. He might do this. Was that easy?
GRANGER: No, no. No, it really wasn`t that way. I said I don`t support that behavior and I -- that was a very strong statement. But he supports the Republicans and what we stand for and I think that is extremely important.
And then, today, if you watched what happened last night. I watched it until 3:00. He not only won as president, he brought us along with him. The senators and the House. We thought for sure we`re losing the Senate. We thought we`re going to have a hard time in the House. And he was so strong, he brought us all together. Now, we really have to be together and I`ll be there.
TODD: Who`s agenda -- who should drive this agenda? Should it be -- you know, there was a time when I think the House Republicans thought, in a Trump presidency, they would drive the agenda. But you just mentioned, and I`m with you, this feels like Trump brought a lot of Republicans across the finish line. Has he earned the right to run this so that it`s his agenda and you guys should come along?
GRANGER: He has. And I`ll tell you the other thing that`s important, and I thought about this a long time last night as I watched what was happening. People believed in his agenda. And I think -- and I was on the phone call this morning. The different members of the House were together. And I said, let me tell you something. It`s a different day. And we can`t act like it`s business as usual.
We need to go in that White House with our president and listen to what people said and make it true. We`ve got to work like we may have never worked before and say, you said this is important to you. We`re going to pass it and make it law. And I think that is what we have to do in support of him. (INAUDIBLE) who voted for him.
TODD: What do you -- it`s interesting to hear you react that way. What do you think Republicans in Washington did that created the conditions in your party to nominate Trump?
GRANGER: I don`t know it`s worked that way. But I know that people said we didn`t do anything. We didn`t get our work done. We had continuing resolutions. I can defend that and why we did that. I`ve been in Congress for 20 years.
TODD: Sure. GRANGER: But I can say I saw that disappointment that turned to anger. And Donald Trump understood that. He listened to it. He spoke to those people. And so, when they talk about, you know, protecting our land, building our military, fixing the infrastructure, he talked right to them. And they`re saying that`s his agenda. That`s their agenda. And I think it`s our responsibility to follow that agenda.
TODD: All right. Kay Granger, Republican in Fort Worth, Texas. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on your reelection, by the way.
GRANGER: Thank you.
TODD: Well, after last night, the Democratic Party is the one that appears to be fracturing. And they`re moving through the stages of grief. Shock set in early last night, then came disbelief, and, of course, sadness this morning. Folks, at this -- at some point in this process, Democrats do have some big questions to ask themselves. What comes next? Because for all our talk throughout this campaign about a divided Republican Party, well, watch out for what`s going on now with the Democrats who might come out of this election more fractured than united. Which then begs the question, who leads this party through this new phase? I`m going to bring in my panel for the night. Joining me here on set, "New York Times" national reporter, Yamiche Alcindor, Maria Teresa Kumar, President and CEO of Voto Latino and Republican strategist and CNBC Contributor Sara Fagen. Welcome all. Yamiche, I`m going to start with you. You spent a lot of time covering Bernie Sanders. And I say this because it is interesting to look and I think there`s a lot of Sanders` supporters saying, I told you so this morning when it comes to what she couldn`t run against Trump on that Sanders could have. Is that where this debate in the Democratic Party begins?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR, NATIONAL REPORTER, "NEW YORK TIMES": I think that`s definitely where debate is going to begin because progressive Democrats are feeling as though if they had put up Bernie Sanders, he would have been able to make the case with trade. He would have been able to make the case to working class whites. He would`ve been able to talk about infrastructure. But I should say that he couldn`t inform the coalition that would`ve been a normal Democratic base, so that`s why he got beat in the primaries.
So, in some ways, it`s great to say, in hindsight and 20-20, Bernie could have beat Trump. But he couldn`t beat Hillary, so how could he have beat Trump? [17:25:00] But I think that the -- that the Democratic Party really is going to have to figure out how Donald Trump really beat her from coming from the left. He really beat her by coming from -- in talking about issues that progressives were talking about. And that`s going to be really problematic and Democrats are going to have to figure out what it means.
TODD: And, Maria, where does this go? Who`s the leader of the Democratic Party?
MARIA TERESA KUMAR, PRESIDENT AND CEO, VOTO LATINO: I think that everybody`s at a bit of a loss. I think, yesterday, what we found was that there`s actually -- with the exception of Donald Trump, now the leader of the Republican Party, the Republican Party is also in shambles. And they have to figure out how they are going to lay -- and the Democratic -- no, and the Democratic (INAUDIBLE.) TODD: I hear you but they have a lot of control. (CROSSTALK) KUMAR: And the -- and the Democrats are going to have to now also try to -- have a come to Jesus moment and figure out how are we going to set an agenda that is complimentary? And how are they going to work together? Because I think that the -- that the message that was sent last night was that the American people are angry. They`re upset. They want change. They brought in a populous candidate. And they`re going to have to figure out how are they going to be able to work together, ultimately. TODD: You know, Sara, I was hearing this conversation with -- and I` sure you were, like, boy, four years ago, this was a conversation Republicans are having about Mitt Romney. SARA FAGEN, CNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Right. TODD: Right? And about when are we going to have -- so, you`ve been on this side of that conversation and watching it happen. What do you -- what do you think is -- what would you tell Democrats is the next stage and how do you avoid some of the recriminations? Because it took Republicans a long time. And, in some ways, if Trump is your -- is the answer, not everyone Republican`s happy about that.
FAGEN: Well, I think Democrats could serve -- could take a lesson from Republicans in what not to do. I don`t think we did a good -- as good a job congressionally as we could have in running a cohesive message between both chambers and really putting President Obama on his heel.
TODD: Do you think if you had done that, let me pause you a minute, --
FAGEN: Yes. TODD: -- you wouldn`t have had a Donald Trump?
FAGEN: Potentially. Potentially.
TODD: But it`s sort of what Kay Granger was saying. FAGEN: Yes, I mean -- TODD: Sort of the impression. FAGEN: -- yes, I mean, potentially. I mean, who knows. I mean, he trans -- seems to have transcended the -- you know, a political movement here. But Republicans now have more raw political power in this country. And, at any point, since the 1920s. And so, the question is, you know, can Donald Trump work with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and build a coalition that stays united, and gets tax reform, gets infrastructure reform, looks at some of -- Obamacare and how to replace it. And if they can get those wins in the first three, four months, it`s going to -- it`ll probably take a little longer than that. But if the first six months, it`s going to be a new day in the Republican Party.
TODD: So, how do Democrats regroup?
ALCINDOR: I think Democrats regroup by trying to figure out how to harness some of the anxiety and the anger that fueled Bernie Sanders. And how to figure out how those people could support policies that don`t look like Donald -- that don`t look like Donald Trump`s policies.
And, obviously, Donald Trump is talking about deporting millions of people. He`s solving the problems of economics by saying, I`m going to redo all these trade deals. He`s talking about -- I think after talking to a lot of Bernie supporters and Trump supporters, people would be angry but they would take it out on different people.
FAGEN: Well, and I think it -- ALCINDOR: And that`s what -- that`s what Democrats will have to figure out.
TODD: It was interesting. Before Barack Obama, there was almost a quadrennial conversation about, all right, how are they going to fix their white guy problem?
ALCINDOR: Yes. TODD: Barack Obama comes along. Creates a coalition that essentially -- first of all, he ends up doing better with white guys than people realize, as we now look backwards. He sort of did. Look at the state of Iowa. So, that`s one. But if you don`t have the perfect Obama coalition, how does the Democratic Party -- is it -- is there too much identity politics that they`ve alienated the white guy? I don`t know. It would seem -- KUMAR: I would -- I mean, this is the tough part. I mean, we -- for a lot of the folks in the Democratic Party, folks are asking themselves, well, isn`t this part of a repudiation against the fact that we had a black president and it came too soon? Is the demographics of this country changing so quickly that we`re not ready? And I can share with you, I mean, the fact that a lot of the policies that Donald Trump ran on, the Republican Party, themselves, said, look, this is not actually a policy that we can have. It`s a problem. Let`s take immigration for an example. When he says that he is going to do a mass deportation, we have basically under docket, we had -- we have 500,000 young people that came out of the shadows and are now in a federal registry. There are people right now, Todd, and their families scared to death. Is he going to practice what he preached? And we don`t know. And it`s up to the -- and it`s up to the Republican leadership to say that we have to have this conversation to make sure -- how we proceed?
FAGEN: Let me take issue with the fact that you said that this might be because Barack Obama is black. This is because Hillary Clinton ran a bad campaign. She didn`t have a message. She didn`t inspire younger voters. She didn`t inspire minority voters. That`s why she --
KUMAR: That`s not the case. She actually --
FAGEN: Not because white people didn`t like having a black president. With all due respect, Donald Trump also, of course, he did play (INAUDIBLE) in politics himself. That`s kind of plain to see when he came out talking about Mexicans --
(CROSSTALK)
(INAUDIBLE) are so much stronger in the Democratic Party than they had with Hillary (ph). I`m not saying Donald Trump is perfect that he hand -- he did not conduct himself perfectly in this campaign by any stretch of the imagination. KUMAR: When you start a campaign and you start saying that a whole demographic of Americans and perhaps their loved ones are rapists, you can only deteriorate from there.
FAGEN: I am not defending his comments. I criticized them many times on T.V.
KUMAR: When you scream build the wall, when you have children in their home, literally in their homes, at our organization right now, we are getting inbound of how many parents are worried because their kids are coming home crying today saying are we.
FAGEN: Donald Trump did better with Latinos than Mitt Romney. ALCINDOR: Someone who is out there in the trenches to voters, we cannot deny that some of Donald Trump`s supporters, not all of them by far, but some of them by far told me to my face that they thought African-Americans didn`t like to work and that my parents didn`t go to college. They were making.
FAGEN: The people are wrong.
ALCINDOR: I`m saying that we should not ignore that. Of course, there is always other very legitimate things that are going on, infrastructure and all other stuff, but we can`t deny that race played a huge role in this as well.
TODD: There are a lot of people Trump alienated. He has got to figure out how to address this as president-elect. What would you tell him to do?
FAGEN: He made a good step last night. He passed his first test by giving a magnanimous speech.
TODD: When you win, that`s easy.
FAGEN: When you win, that`s easy. You`re right. When you`re a president, even though you win, even when you win relatively big, you still have to take a lot of crap. He is going to have to learn how to deal with all the arrows coming in and not get under his skin. I mean, he is going to have to grow in office. Lots of people have done it. We will see how it works out. I`m hopeful it will work out well for my party.
KUMAR: For America.
FAGEN: That`s true.
TODD: I will pause it there. You guys, I think, are sticking around. Still ahead, Donald Trump exceeded expectations in key states. Look at how he took down Hillary Clinton`s big blue fire wall. Stay tuned.
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TODD: Market rebound in a big wave after Donald Trump`s victory and sent shock waves to the economic world. Dow plunged last night as Trump was rocking up electoral votes. It was down as much as 867 points but that is also when we were not sure we are going to have a winner for a while. That number was more than cut in a half by the time Trump was declared the president-elect.
The Dow got back on track ahead of the opening bell and ended the day up over 250 points. More than a 1,000 point swing sort of if you count the future part of swing in less than 24 hours. Still for the rest of the day`s financial headlines which probably all unpacked by the election. Here`s Josh Lipton for CNBC Market Wrap.
JOSH LIPTON, CNBC TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Chuck. General motors is not one of today`s winners. The company is suspending shifts at two factories early next year, resulting in 2,000 layoffs, share sinking more than 2 percent during the session. Shake Shack is running is rallying after hour.
The burger chain posted revenue earning in same store sales that beat estimates and that stock is up sharply. Mylan, the maker of the EpiPen reporting results that missed forecasts, shares down slightly in late trading. That`s it from CNBC, first in business worldwide.
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TODD: One of the biggest reasons Donald Trump shocked election forecasters was that he overperformed in rural America. Take a look. According to NBC News exit polls, 71 percent of rural voters in Pennsylvania voted for Trump, 26 percent for Clinton. That`s a 45-point win for Trump. Compared that to 2012 with 59 percent of Pennsylvania rural voters went for Romney and 40 percent went for Obama.
Take a look at how Trump did with Michigan with the working class. According to exits, Trump trounced Clinton on non-college educated white voters in Michigan. Trump is winning that vote by more than 30 points, 62- 31. In 2012, those voters favored Romney but by just 11 points.
So maybe you`re sick with stats or don`t even trust them anymore. But here`s one more that may speak to the culture gap even better. According to our pal from "The Cook Political Report" David Wasserman, Donald Trump won 76 percent of counties with a cracker barrel restaurant and 22 percent of counties with the whole food grocery store.
That divide has grown sharply. In 1992, the gap between those counties was 19 percent. Last night, it was 54 percent. Joined now by the "Washington Post" is Jenna Johnson who covered Trump throughout this campaign and spent election day in the Trump strong hold of southwestern Pennsylvania. And here with me is J.D. Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy," part memoir, part study of white working class voters.
Jenna, let me start with you. Because it wasn`t that long ago that that part of Pennsylvania was union labor. Big democrat, I`m thinking Jack Murtha. That is what a southwestern Pennsylvania democrat was. That was old fashioned blue territory. What did you see in here last night?
JENNA JOHNSON, POLITICAL REPORTER, "WASHINGTON POST": Exactly. Well, I spent the day just going around to polling places, a popular Trump hang out, a bar, talking to people about who they were voting for, who they voted in the past. And I had a lot from people that they used to vote for democrats. That they were workers and co-workers. And their jobs went away. Their lives changed. They used to be making a really good living.
And now, they are having to piece together income from a little bit of construction here, odd jobs here, some janitorial work, things like that. And Donald Trump won them over. A lot of them had kind of been jumping on the republican wagon for a while. But Trump`s message just really resonated with them especially when you talked about jobs and trade and bringing back the industry that used to be such a big driver in that part of the state.
TODD: J.D., your book has become sort of a cult following among bunch of us political junkies, you know, all trying to figure out, okay, what do we miss, what`s going on there. I find it interesting, the rural vote first started going republican on culture issues. And then over the last couple of cycles, perhaps they haven`t been as republican and it could be they didn`t like the economic argument and here came a republican with an economic argument to talk about it.
J.D. VANCE, AUTHOR: That`s absolutely right. If you think about the republican debate stage where 10 candidates and nine of them were offering fundamentally the same argument to republican voters for 20 years.
TODD: We will cut entitlements and do this and free trade here and the economy is just going to grow.
VANCE: Yeah, absolutely. And the one guy who said no, no, no to all of it was Donald Trump. He is the guy of course who inspired so much confidence, so much passion, led to the nomination, now of course the presidency.
TODD: You didn`t think he would win the presidency?
VANCE: I didn`t think he would win the presidency. You know, the turn out numbers showed why I didn`t think he would win the presidency. Because I thought that eventually, there just wouldn`t be enough white working class voters in the electorate. There would be too many voters who voted for Obama in 2012 that he would not be able to make it.
TODD: So, you are both right and wrong. If Barack Obama had been on the ballot, he couldn`t have won.
VANCE: That`s essentially right.
TODD: Jenna, I imagine you ran into -- it`s obvious by our exit polls, you ran into plenty of Obama-Trump voters.
JOHNSON: You know, I ran into a couple of them, especially people who voted for Obama the first time around in 2008, and believed in him then, liked his message. And back then, Obama was really an inspirational, offered a lot of hope. And they signed up for it. And they were not happy with it. And I heard them talking a lot about kind of comparing Obama and Donald Trump in some ways.
They like having someone who gives them a big dream. Even if it seems a little bit pie in the sky. I talked to one guy at a polling booth and he said, you know, he couldn`t believe Donald Trump was talking about bringing back the coal industry, bringing back the steel industry. These industries have been gone for so long in that part of the state. And even if they were to come back, it wouldn`t bring quite the same number of jobs that there used to be just because technology has changed that industry.
He was just saying, you know, did he think that we`re stupid to buy into this? And then I asked him, well, who did you vote for? Thinking that he would say Hillary Clinton. And he told me he wrote in his own name because he thought he could do better than either of them. And he just kind of threw up his hands about this election.
TODD: You know, J.D., Jenna sort of brings up a point here. What are kind of margin for error does Trump have? He has made some big bull promises and it`s hard to imagine how he is going to fulfill them.
VANCE: Yeah. I think his margin for errors is actually probably pretty small and you`re seeing the fact that he trailed a lot of republicans and the candidates right. So even though a lot of folks voted against Hillary Clinton and does for Donald Trump, he is not an extraordinarily popular figure even among the voters who are most passionate about him.
TODD: Do you realize that these industries are not coming back? Or just say, you know, maybe he will just shake the place up.
VANCE: I think it`s more the latter than they think that these industries come back. A lot of the folks that I talked to are saying, look, he`s not our savior. These jobs probably are coming back. But at least he`s trying. At least he recognizes these concerns exist. At least he`s trying to shake up the status quo. That`s a pretty powerful argument when you thought of it for 20 years.
TODD: All right. Very quickly. Last question to both of you was this, royal surge, obviously it`s coupled with sort of lethargic democratic turnout, was this royal surge pro-Trump or anti-Hillary? Jenna, you first, from what you saw on the ground.
JOHNSON: I will say definitely anti-Hillary. I would talk to Donald Trump super fans and they would say that they still had a stronger hate for Hillary than a love for Trump.
TODD: Do you buy that?
VANCE: That`s absolutely right. That`s exactly what I heard. I heard very few people say Donald Trump is gonna fix these problems. I heard a lot of I just don`t trust Hillary, I don`t want her to be president.
TODD: J.D. Vance, like I said, the book got another surge in the sales, "Hillbilly Elegy." And Jenna Johnson with some terrific riding and reporting all year long through the campaign trail for the "Washington Post." Jenna, thanks for coming.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
TODD: Still ahead. I`m obsessed, really obsessed with the many things that many of us missed this election season.
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TODD: Welcome back. Boy, am I obsessed today. I`m obsessed with polls, rarely showed Trump`s number moving at all. He`s in the upper 30s or lower 40s. I`m obsessed. We were convinced the suburban color counties around big cities would inoculate Clinton from the growing Trump working class white vote elsewhere. I`m obsessed that the polls got it wrong. All of them. I`m obsessed with the exit polls that at least -- got it -- were released too early to show that it looked like we got it wrong.
I`m obsessed with the fact that we listened when Hillary Clinton said she would expand the map and ignore Donald Trump when he said he would expand the map. I`m obsessed that we believe in emerging democratic majority all but ensure democrats with all the White House for years to come. I`m obsessed with the fact that we didn`t realize that the Obama coalition was just that the Obama coalition and not a democratic party coalition.
I`m obsessed with the Latino vote, the African-American vote that we talked endlessly about and that just wasn`t enough. I`m obsessed with the fact that Trump won a lower percentage of whites than Romney did and still won. I`m obsessed with how we couldn`t talk enough about how successful the democratic national convention was and how awful the republican national convention was and how significant all that was.
I`m obsessed with the idea that divided parties like the GOP don`t win national elections. I`m obsessed with how the rural fly over angry blue collar America gave a collective one figure salute to the establishment, media, business, and political leadership. I`m obsessed with how a small band of partisans systematically delegitimize the mainstream press, and we just stood there and let it happen.
And most of all, I`m obsessed with how wrong and profoundly, historically, epically wrong we all got this election. It`s not good when you missed something like this. From the day Donald Trump rode down the escalator and called Mexicans rapists to the moment he smashed Hillary Clinton`s big blue wall and swept his way into the White House, we in the media have a lot to answer for, but we are not alone.
The leaders have a lot of institutions, including both political parties were put on notice. Here is the good news. You the people, you spoke, and it`s now all of our jobs to listen.
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TODD: Time now for "The Lid." What happens now? 72 days until the inauguration, and there are a dizzying array of story lines that we are gonna be following in the days ahead. Scrolling next to me, check it out, are just a few of the topics we`re going to be keeping an eye on. 54 to be exact, ranging from how will democrats pick up the pieces to Trump`s policy agenda.
There is a lot going on there, including the future of NATO. The point is we got a ton to dig through. Panel is back. Try a little lightning round here. Yamiche, Maria Teresa, and Sara. Empty your notebooks. You tell me, Yamiche, besides the big story of this election, what was the most shocking thing to you last night?
ALCINDOR: The most shocking thing to me last night was probably as a reporter feeling like did we do enough to really take the pulse of America? I spent a lot of time in rural Pennsylvania, but I think that going forward, we have to really go out and go into those areas, because a lot of the media is east coast slant in some ways, maybe.
At least that`s what I`m thinking. So I think that`s gonna be the thing that I want to do. I want to go out in the middle of the country and talk to people.
TODD: Maria?
KUMAR: We have to come and give people the space to have honest and frank conversations of where they are and why they feel so insecure and how do we bring together. Because we are an increasingly changing demographic. This is generation Z, the one that cast their vote for the first time this year. It`s the last white majority. So how do we prepare ourselves for the generations to come and making sure that we`re an inclusive America.
FAGEN: Stepping back from all the noise in the conversation and the events, this is the change election with the best example of an outsider candidate you could have, and the best example of an insider candidate you could have. And yet we all said the insider was going to win. And just common sense should have told us all this would be a really close race.
TODD: Why do we think Donald Trump was more Teflon? What is it -- what is it that he -- my theory is that he -- he doesn`t -- he doesn`t care when he gets criticized. And we`ve not had that from a politician. When I say that, he does care.
KUMAR: At 3:00 in the morning when he is twittering.
TODD: He does care personally but he doesn`t care collectively.
FAGEN: It`s part of his whole shtick. And it`s part of what his supporters, his most ardent supporters find so endearing about him. He takes it -- he can say anything, do anything, and bounce back. And I think part of the way that he is and conducts himself as part of what appeals to people is that he always rises up and survives.
ALCINDOR: But I also look at the reality T.V. president part. I think that he is entertaining. And I think that`s something that we really have to also have to think. He is able to laugh at himself. He is able to kind of say oh, yeah, I was just kidding about that wall or I was just kidding about this. I think there`s that point to.
TODD: Matt Bai had this great analogy and he said, there is two movie tickets you walk into. It was this movie that you`ve seen a million times, you can`t stand it and you know exactly how it ends. Then there is this ticket, you`ve never seen the movie. Everybody told you it`s the worst movie in the world, but you didn`t see it.
KUMAR: Right. It`s almost like a car wreck that we want to be a part of. I think we have to figure out -- there is a lot of vulnerable communities now. How do we make sure he has an inclusive message for all Americans.
TODD: All right. I got to stop there. All right. We`re digging out. This is just beginning. What an election. Yamiche, Maria Teresa, and Sara, thank you. We`ll be right back.
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TODD: Well, that`s all we have for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow with more MTP DAILY back down in Washington. For now, "HARDBALL" special edition with Chris Matthews starts right now.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END