Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: October 24, 2016 Guest: Wendy Davis, Michael Moore, Josh Barro, Linda Chavez, Myrna Perez
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ANNOUNCER: Tonight on ALL IN.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Nasty women are smart and nasty women vote.
ANNOUNCER: As early voting begins today in several key states, a full- court press by democrats.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What frustrates me about this election, Trump has so dumbed-down this election.
ANNOUNCER: For the White House and to take back congress.
BARACK OBAMA, UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: The other guy supporting Donald Trump. Heck, no! Heck, no!
ANNOUNCER: Then the rigged polling conspiracy theory.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Folks, we`re winning. We`re winning. We`re winning.
ANNOUNCER: Michael Moore joins me on the Trump Effect and his new movie.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A lot of people say that Trump is a clown. He won`t be when he`s president.
ANNOUNCER: "Michael Moore in TrumpLand."
MICHAEL MOORE, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER AND AUTHOR: Anybody from the - I don`t like Hillary camp that can say something nice about her?
ANNOUNCER: Plus, a look at the new early voting data at of swing states and a peek into the vault, what past presidential campaigns looked like 15 days out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, you guys, I didn`t name Taxachussets. The people named it Taxachussets.
ANNOUNCER: When ALL IN starts right now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. Well, technically, Election Day is still a couple weeks today - away, 15 days, November 8th, two weeks from tomorrow. But for many states around the country, Election Day is already here. Early voting has already began - been underway in key Battleground States, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, Iowa, Georgia and Arizona. We`ve been getting some new data from those states which we`ll bring you in just a bit. Today, early voting kicked off in a number of other states, including three crucial Battlegrounds, Colorado, Wisconsin and parts of Florida. And cue steadfastly republican states, Texas and Alaska, where the presidential race just got a lot closer, prompting The Associated Press to take the unheard of step of moving them both to the lean column. Yet another sign of the way this presidential race is headed, barring some massive unforeseen disruption in the very near future, Hillary Clinton is currently being - beating Donald Trump by between five and eight points in the national polling average, only slightly smaller than President Obama`s average over John McCain at this point in 2008, according to RealClearPolitics and much bigger than his tiny edge over Mitt Romney at this point in 2012. According to the latest Battleground map from NBC News, between states that are current likely democrat or lean democrat, Clinton already has well over the 270 electoral votes needed to win, that`s if she can hang on to those.
And after the candidate spent months making their case, the American people, this is where the rubber meets the road. It`s time for the campaigns to actually turn people into voters. And the two key questions now, whether Clinton`s operation can seal the deal, and just how far can it press its advantage to help elect democrats down the ballot. They don`t appear to be taking any chances deploying one of the party`s top closers to tackle both fronts, President Barack Obama, who`s approval rating just spiked to 57 percent last week, not even Ronald Reagan was that popular at this point in his presidency. Last night, the president was campaigning in Nevada, where Harry Reid`s senate seat is up for grabs in a very, very tough battle between democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and republican Joe Heck.
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OBAMA: Catherine`s story is Nevada`s story. Think about it, here`s somebody who spent a career in Nevada, working with democrats and republicans and law enforcement to do right by you and make you safer. And meanwhile, you got her opponent, Joe Heck. Just a few weeks ago, her opponent was supporting Donald Trump, who was bragging about actions that qualify as sexual assault. What the heck? What the heck? Heck, no!
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HAYES: See, that`s his - that`s his last name. Under pressure due to the release, the infamous tape in which Donald Trump brags about committing sexual assault, Heck eventually withdrew his endorsement of Donald Trump. President Obama wasn`t just targeting Joe Heck and Donald Trump last night, he took on republican congressional candidates around the country.
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OBAMA: Now, the excuse they`re using for why they should be elected as well, maybe we did support Trump and now we`re being kind of quiet about it, but you should vote republican anyway because we`ll check Hillary`s power. We`ll be a - we`ll be a - we`ll be a counterweight. No, no, no, no. No, listen, they have been in charge of congress now for the last six years, basically. And what have they done then? How have they helped you? A vote for them is basically more gridlock, that`s their argument.
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HAYES: According to POLITICO, President Obama will personally weigh in on down ballet races this week, endorsing another 30 candidates for the House of Representatives. And get this, at the state level, he`ll be personally endorsing 150 candidates for state legislative seats across 20 states. On the opposite side of the country, another democratic powerhouse was on the trail today, helping to close the deal, that was Senator Elizabeth Warren, campaigning in New Hampshire with Hillary Clinton and Governor Hassan who`s running a very tight senate race against republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte, as she seems to do better than anyone else, Warren turned Donald Trump`s own words against him.
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WARREN: Get this, Donald, nasty women are tough, nasty women are smart, and nasty women vote. And on November 8th, we nasty women are going to march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes to get you out of our lives forever.
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HAYES: It`s not just democratic politicians working to get out to vote over the next two weeks, of course, Clinton campaign just announced a series of celebrity concerts to help drive turnout in Battleground States with Jay Z performing Cleveland, Jennifer Lopez, Miami, and Katty Perry in Philadelphia, among others. Now, Clinton is backing from luminaries of pop culture and of her party, Donald Trump appears to be increasing the isolated, denying he`s losing, though his staff publicly admits the opposite, promoting evermore outlandish conspiracy theories, and telling his supporters it`s us against the world. It`s gotten so bad, Trump`s own running mate is now pleading with fellow republicans not to abandon them on Election Day.
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GOV. MIKE PENCE (R-IN), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It`s time to reach out to all of our republican and conservative friends and say with one voice, it`s time to come home, and elect Donald Trump as the next President of the United States. It`s time to come home and come together and do everything in our power to make sure that Hillary Clinton is never elected President of the United States of America. And Donald Trump and republican congress can move this country forward.
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HAYES: And joining me now, republican strategist, MSNBC contributor, Steve Schmidt. I`m curious what you make of that argument from Mike Pence, because at some level, the way that you can understand the fluctuations in Trump`s polling numbers are what percentage of republicans he`s getting, and in the latest CNN poll today, he`s getting up around 90 percent, and he`s still five points down. It seems to me that there will be some republicans filtering back coming home. The problem is, that doesn`t get him over the - over the hump.
STEVE SCHMIDT, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: No. Look, Chris, I`ve said for some time, the presidential race is effectively over. The question is how close Secretary Clinton will get to 400 electoral votes versus how close she`ll be to 350 electoral votes. Now, I think what`s interesting is a matter of political strategy, is Secretary Clinton, until the last couple of days, had kept this race focused squarely on Donald Trump and hadn`t expanded the argument to republican members of congress. And so, what I would say is beware of the law of unintended consequences. The result that the democrats were heading towards was they were going to take control of the senate, and they were going to do significant damage to the republican majority in the house. But moving away from Donald Trump and focusing on these candidates will have the effect of bringing republicans back home, and for democrats, it will have the effect of putting them out of reach, I think, in a senate seat or two that they would have won if they kept the race focused squarely on Donald Trump. Republican voters look at Elizabeth Warren, and they say, "Oh, my God, you know, this is not what we want. I`m not voting in my vote against Donald Trump as a vote for Elizabeth Warren. And so -
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HAYES: So, you think your argument there is a kind of boomerang effect to the extent that essentially focusing on Donald Trump and essentially focusing on him depresses certain amount of republican turnout at the margin in key races that could benefit democrats that you believe there`s a kind of boomerang effect when you target them squarely as we`re now seeing in these last two weeks that will sort of motivate some marginal set of republicans who are not voting for Trump anyway.
SCHMIDT: Look, focusing on Trump is - gets them to the result they want. Shining a light on Warrenism, making this an ideological contest, is going to have the exact opposite political result of what they want to achieve. I think at a strategic level, it`s a mistake.
HAYES: Well - and there`s also - and so then, there`s the question, too, I mean, I`ve always sort of anticipated these last two weeks, we`d see the polls tighten a bit. Usually, that`s what happens in races just generally. Then there`s the question of - I mean, the most stunning fact of 2012 to me is that the RealClearPolitics average have Barack Obama up by less than a point, and he won by 3.8. There was about three points, that was essentially done - I mean, the turnout operation at that day, if you think the polls are basically right. Here is the GOP chairman of Washoe County, key county in Nevada, talking about his interactions with the Trump campaign. Take a listen.
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ROGER EDWARDS, GOP CHAIRMAN OF WASHOE COUNTY: A state with six is not going to get the same kind of attention. The attention I`m talking about is interviews from the campaign, yard signs, bumper stickers, hats, whatever.
REPORTER: You can`t get yard signs and bumper stickers?
EDWARDS: Correct.
REPORTER: So you called the Trump campaign and the RNC -
EDWARD: Every day. I call them every day. You want the number?
REPORTER: And you say, "Can I have yard signs?"
EDWARD: I say, "I am the chairman of a swing county and a swing state. You guys need to talk to me. I need 2,000 yard signs, I need 10,000 bumper stickers, and I don`t even get a call-back.
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HAYES: Now, stipulating the complaints about yard signs are perennial and ubiquitous in every campaign. There is something happening here in terms of what this turnout machine is or is not that we`re going to find out soon enough.
SCHMIDT: We sure are. Look, Stuart Stevens had the best - the best analogy for this. He say, the Trump campaign is like a rock concert tour. It doesn`t have any of the normal trappings of a presidential campaign. And the reality is, presidential campaign, Chris, is like an iceberg. 10 percent of the mass of the iceberg is what you see above the waterline, 90 percent of it is below the waterline. And 90 percent of the work of a presidential campaign in these final weeks takes place below the waterline. This is where your algorithmic data modelling, your vote targeting, your micro-targeting. The hundreds of millions of dollars that have been invested in the infrastructure of the campaign -
HAYES: Right.
SCHMIDT: -- all gets turned on. The Trump campaign has none of it.
HAYES: Yeah.
SCHMIDT: And there`s never been a campaign so inadequately prepared for the battle in the fall, and -- but for the RNC, there would be no effort anywhere in any state but for building the data for what I suspect will eventually be Trump TV.
HAYES: All right. Steve Schmidt, thanks so much, appreciate it.
Joined now by former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis who supports Hillary Clinton. And Wendy, I`m really curious what this looks like from Texas, right? Because when you`re talking about these Battleground States, you`ve got these operations, particularly on the Clinton side, that are quite developed and sophisticated. Texas is a state that`s been very, very hard democrats particularly state-wide and yet we`ve seen a raff of polls showing it very close. Like what does the campaign feel like in these final two weeks there on the first day of early voting in Texas?
WENDY DAVIS, FMR. TEXAS STATE SENATOR: I have to tell you, today, Chris, when I went to vote here in Texas, I had to stand in line, and that just doesn`t happen in presidential contests on the first day of early vote, and it shows you that there are a huge swath of people who are anxious to cast their ballot in this election. Half the battle that we`ve faced in Texas, as is the case in other red states, is the idea that many democratic voters have, that their vote just won`t matter.
HAYES: Right.
DAVIS: In this election, I think we`re going to see that they feel like, hey, you know, this is close. Let`s show up. Let`s make sure that we cast our ballots and see if we can make a difference here.
HAYES: Yeah, that`s a really important point about the psychology of this last part of the race, which is generally, if you`re in states - I mean, I grew up in New York - in New York State, which is - you know, it`s basically always, particularly in presidentials, it`s won by a democrat by 25, 30 points. On the other side, it could be sort of like, "Well, if I don`t get to the polling place today, we know what`s going to happen in New York." I mean, to the extent that this narrowing actually has a kind of incentivizing psychological effect on some sort of set of voters that normally wouldn`t be so motivated in a presidential?
DAVIS: That`s absolutely true. And of course, Donald Trump has helped that along. He`s alienated women and Latino voters and Latino voters, of course, in Texas being a huge voting bloc here, and he has given them a tremendous incentive added to the incentive that they long have had a great appreciation and love for Hillary Clinton. And that dynamic, I think, is going to evidence itself in Latino turnout at the polls here. So, that number should go up as well.
HAYES: And Latino voters in Texas -- and this is sort of one the keys to this whole election both in the way that Texas has deviated from the national GOP, that it`s become a - it`s a very diverse state that has retained GOP control, and it`s because Latino voters do not vote overwhelmingly for democrats in Texas the way we see them do that in other states and particularly increasingly in Florida. That`s been the key to that that the GOP`s lockhold on that state.
DAVIS: No question about it. We see in republican gubernatorial contests, for example, Latino vote in the 30s, sometimes even 40 percent range, when George W. Bush was running. And a lot of that, of course, is the fact that they have a unique appeal in terms of some of the catholic values of that particular voting bloc, but also that so many who disagree with the values and the platform of the Republican Party have just been staying home.
HAYES: All right. Wendy Davis, thanks for your time. I appreciate it.
DAVIS: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Still to come, Donald Trump claims democrats have been caught red- handed rigging the polls. What`s actually happening, coming up. And filmmaker Michael Moore October surprise and new movie, "Michael Moore in TrumpLand." It`s as good as it sounds, and he`s joining me to talk to about it right after this two-minute break.
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TRUMP: WikiLeaks also shows how John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling democrats, a voter suppression technique, and that`s happening to me all the time. When the polls are even, when they leave them alone and do them properly, I`m leading. But you see these polls where they are polling democrats. "How`s Trump doing? Oh, he`s down." They`re polling democrats. The system is corrupt and it`s rigged and it`s broken, and we`re going to change it.
HAYES: Donald Trump`s latest defense of his sinking poll numbers, he says, "Democrats are rigging the polls against him." And that, which he was reading from prompter, let`s be clear, and here`s Trump`s proof, a 2008 e- mail allegedly from the hacked account of Clinton and John Podesta posted by WikiLeaks and picked up by a right-wing blogs and radio shows. If you recall, 2008 was the year in which Hillary Clinton was not her party`s nominee. The e-mail allegedly shows a democratic activist recommending oversampling certain groups of voters when conducting internal polling. Now, oversampling is entirely standard practice in the polling room, in fact, when pollsters want the survey, they`ll often try to interview more people from underrepresented groups like Latino, as well as African Americans, so end up with a large enough sample of those people to draw real, A.K.A statistically significant conclusions.
Oversampling does not affect the horse race numbers, those head to head numbers that Trump is complaining about, something that Trump should already know considering his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, is a pollster whose firm, like most polling firms, uses oversampling for underrepresented groups. This seemingly desperate assertion by Trump and his supporters that he`s losing because of an imaginary poll rating conspiracy reflects a far deeper truth, one that`s been haunting the entire election. But as the country`s demographics increasingly shift, conservatives are apparently no longer the majority of this country. Republican candidate for president lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, poised to make it six out of seven, and that new reality is something many voters are still struggling to accept. Joining me now, Documentary Filmmaker Michael Moore, his latest film, "Michael Moore in TrumpLand" is playing in selected theaters, also available on iTunes. And I want to talk to you about precisely this, because in some ways, it`s kind of the crux of this film, right?
MOORE: Uh-hmm.
HAYES: It - that it feels to me that part of what makes this election feel so viscerally intense, is that it feels like we`re answering question like who`s country is it? Who gets to say it`s our country and we run things?
MOORE: It`s a real changing of the guard, which actually started, as you pointed out, many elections ago, culminated in the American people, our fellow citizens, twice electing a man whose middle name was Hussein. And now, this is the end. This is the - this is their - they should play the door song at the beginning of every Trump rally, "This is the end," because they know it`s the end. And that`s why they`re so angry, that`s why it`s so crazy to share this so out of control, because if you`ve held power for so long, it was a conservative country, and the Nixon/Reagan era changed this country in such a profound way. And now, that`s over. We live in a liberal country. Our fellow Americans take the liberal position on every single issue, look -- whether it`s pro-choice, whether it`s women should be paid the same as men, whether it`s the environment, go down the line. And last week, the last issue that Americans weren`t liberal on, the latest poll now shows that the majority of Americans are opposed to the death penalty. So, they`re against the death penalty, they`re for legalization of decriminalization. I want to go down the whole list, it`s all liberal, liberal, liberal, and if you`re a conservative -
HAYES: Right.
MOORE: -- you`re republican, you`re a Trump supporter, this sounds like a cacophony of madness that you have let power slip away, and if you want to look at the macro of it, men -- white men have been in power for a very long time. A good 10,000 years at least, and it`s been a nice run, Chris, that you and I and the others have had, and now it`s over. And the thing is, we`ve let it - we`ve let it slip away on our watch.
HAYES: Right, right.
MOORE: Grand Papi and Papi handed this down to us, and now the men of our time (INAUDIBLE) the women and the gays and the blacks take over.
HAYES: Well, it`s funny, because you say that you have a rift in the -- in the film sort of along those lines, which gets a sort of great response and sort of interesting and awkward and funny response in the room. And I wonder like, do you think that is, in the Trump voters that you`re talking to, and I feel like you have this kind of affection for these folks or admiration or respect, because it`s partly people that you grew up with grew up with, came from.
MOORE: Still live with.
HAYES: Still live with. That it`s being understood as that, that like when you talk about this country is being taken away from white men, they`re not feeling it - those aren`t the word they would put to it.
MOORE: Yeah, of the 750 people in the theater in this film, where I`m performing a one-man show in a town that`s 80 percent republican, 100, 150 people are Trump supporters, and not one of them walked out. It was amazing. Now, granted, a lot of them were there with their wives and girlfriends who were Hillary supporters.
HAYES: And you make a great joke about this. You say - you say, well, everyone here has a conservative they know, your father, your brother, your brother-in-law, your uncle, your sister, and then you`re like, I`m just kidding, not your sister.
MOORE: It is kind of a guy thing. And - but they, you know, in the film, you see the women are, you know, in a manner of like, you know, sitting there like this, but by the end of it, through humor, and you know, my sense of humor, not ridiculing them, not putting them down because they`re thinking of voting for Trump, but understanding why they have a legitimate right to be angry. The people I grew up with who are auto workers, people who lost their jobs and used to be part of the middleclass, that`s all over for them.
HAYES: Right.
MOORE: And so, they are angry, and Trump, to them, and I`ve had many guys tell me this, in fact, I was just yesterday filming a thing here and three people - three guys on the crew told me they were voting for Trump, and I said, "Really?" and they said, "Yeah, we don`t really like him that much, but we want to see the system blow up. They want -- Trump is the human Molotov cocktail.
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: Right. Yeah. It feels like throwing something (INAUDIBLE)
MOORE: That they - that they (INAUDIBLE) into that booth and go bing.
HAYES: I want -- there`s been this debate about Trump support, broadly on the left and about sort of the economic anxiety and racism, and I think you`ve got sort of really particular interesting perspective on this. So, will you stick around for another break?
MOORE: Oh, yeah, sure.
HAYES: All right. Michael Moore is going to stick around. We`re going to talk more about his movie right after this short break.
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MOORE: Whether Trump means it or not, is kind of irrelevant because he`s saying the things to people who are hurting. And it`s why every beaten down, nameless, forgotten working stiff, who used to be part of what was called the middleclass loves Trump. He is the human Molotov cocktail that they`ve been waiting for.
HAYES: Michael Moore in his latest film, "Michael Moore in TrumpLand" talking about the appeal of Donald Trump to white working class voters. There`s been this debate about, is this economic anxiety that the left or liberals could find a way to draw people away from the allure of Trump, or is it so bound up in essentially white identity politics, racist backlash that there`s no use? What do you think about that?
MOORE: I think it`s male identity politics. I think that that`s really what a lot of this - obviously, the racism of Trump and all of that, it`s quite evident, we don`t need to do much. You know, I didn`t want to make a movie just pointing out once again everything everybody else already knows about Trump. Go to New York Times, they`ve got those two wonderful pages of 6,000 words of insults from him. Everybody knows all that. I wanted to make a film that focused on the fact that we know we have a woman running for president, and she may be our first -- if she`s elected, she will be our first woman president. And she brings a lot to the table by having been a woman who went through the first wave of the modern feminist era. And the way she was treated, the way women of her generation were treated, they haven`t forgotten that, she hasn`t forgotten that. And I think that she`s going to bring all of that into the White House, and I hope, I think, do a lot of good with that.
HAYES: So, you really locate something central about gender and gender backlash in the entire story of what this campaign has been.
MOORE: Yes, I think that this is - this is a lot -- we don`t talk about it much. I`m surprised more people don`t talk about the fact or aren`t excited about the fact that we are going to have our first women president. And not just -
HAYES: A lot of a -- women writers do.
MOORES: Yeah, well.
HAYES: Men writers talk about it less.
MOORE: I guess, I mean, most of the pundits we see and well some of - I mean -- yes, we work in industries, as you know, we don`t need to go into what the gender percentages are, but they are pretty pathetic. But it`s there, and it`s a wonderful thing, not just the - not just the fact that she`s a woman, but look at all that she`s done. This - what is this -- the thing, too, with Hillary supporters who have this, "Yeah, you know, I`m going to vote for Hillary." The sort of lack of whatever that is, there`s not that thing that people had on the day we were going to vote for Obama, where it`s like, "I couldn`t wait to get to the polls." I need people to feel that way on this November 8th. You know, there`s no reason to be into this place with, you know, the sort of the knock on her has been unfair. She`s been attacked and harassed and abused in ways that I believe, honestly, if she were a man, she wouldn`t have to go through some much of this. And she did something -- she tried to do something 20 years ago -- 23 years ago for us, get us universal health care, real universal health care, and she was -- man, she was massacred. And it was sad. It was sad that we didn`t -- and we ended up with no universal health care for the last 20 years.
HAYES: We ended up with ObamaCare, which has insured about 20 million people, has been a success in many respects.
MOORE: Stay on your parents` plan until you`re 26. Good.
HAYES: But, we got the headline today that the benchmark premiums are going to rise about 25 percent. You`ve actually got a joke about the bronze plan in the movie.
MOORE: Yes.
HAYES: Is - well, how do you think about that in this? Because it`s like, "OK, mission accomplished, democrats did it, liberals did it." There`s still problems with this law.
MOORE: Yeah, because we didn`t go all the way.
HAYES: Right.
MOORE: FDR didn`t do half of Social Security. Went all of the way -- you have to go all the way. We have to have single payer universal health care. I`m hoping -- I`m praying that president Hillary Clinton is going to make that happen. We don`t -- first of all, we have this, you know, the gold, the silver and the bronze plan in ObamaCare. The bronze, where do they have to call it the bronze plan? You know, where --
HAYES: I had - I had an insurance executive once said to me, people basically order it, the way they order a bottle of wine at the hotel, which is they get the second cheapest. Like - or like at a restaurant, it`s like, no one knows, right? It`s like you`re looking at your insurance the way you`re looking at wine, it`s like, I don`t know, I`ll get the - I don`t want to be the cheapest, I`ll get the second cheapest.
MOORE: Well, this should not - we should not have a health care plan in this country that is the equivalent of Boone`s Farm.
HAYES: Right. The Movie is "Michael Moore in TrumpLand," available now on iTunes and in select theaters. Michael Moore, what a pleasure.
MOORE: Thanks so much, Chris. I appreciate it.
HAYES: Come by anytime. Still to come, our republican congressman went from blasting President Obama for corruption to tottering his partnership with Obama on a mailer for his own reelection, the struggle for down ballot Republicans is real ahead.
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HAYES: Early voting, as we said, is now under way across much of the country and those early voting states include many key battleground states. As of today, more than 6.5 million votes have been cast, six-and-a-half, more than 4 million in battleground states, according to the NBC News Data Analytics Lab, which has been monitoring all this.
Right now, Democratic registered voters are voting more than Republican registered voters in battleground states like Arizona, a battleground state this year, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin while Republican registered voters are voting early more often in Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
That said, the voting landscape is marred by early voting restrictions in certain states, according to analysis by University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald.
17 North Carolina counties reduced the number of early voting locations from 2012. Of those, 15 saw lower in-person turnout in the first two days of early voting. In at least six, the in-person voting rate declined by around 50 percent, and Guilford County, home to the predominately African- American city of Greensboro, cut its early voting locations from 16 down to just one.
And guess what happened? It saw in-person voting decline in the first two days by roughly 85 percent.
Joining me now, Myrna Perez, deputy director for the Brendan Center for Democracy program. And as we`re looking at early voting, one thing to keep in mind is that this has been one of the things that Republican legislators, particular, have really waged a kind of assault against.
MYRNA PEREZ, BRENNAN CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY: Right. We saw right after the 2010 elections where we had a change in those statehouses a number of voting restrictions reduced. Certainly cutbacks to early voting mattered.
One of the things most distressing is it seemed that these cutbacks were targeted. For example, cutting the Sundays before election day where many African-American churches had their get out the vote efforts, people call soul to the polls. And the political scientists are pretty clear about the fact that the more barriers you put in front of the ballot box, that`s going to decreases and depresses turnout.
Unfortunately, we`re seeing some of that. But I think that there`s a countervailing trend which is people are mad when their right to vote is being threatened and people want to show that they care about voting and that they are not going to let politicians manipulate the rules of the game, not to let them vote.
HAYES: Obviously the benchmarks here, are the important apples-to-apples comparison, is 2012 to 2016. And they vary according to different states, but it looks on the whole like Democrats are out-performing their 2012 benchmarks, which is maybe a sign about that sort of backlash effect you might get even if not in Guilford County where clearly that restriction had a significant effect, if that essentially you kind of bottle up the energy that then pours forth.
PEREZ: Right.
I think in this country, we need to change how we administer elections. Voting needs to be easier, it needs to be more accessible, it needs to be more fair, it needs to be better resourced and one of the things that needs to happen is that it should not be a political football among partisans. It should not be the case that instead of trying to compete for votes, people are trying to cheat and trying to change the rules so that some people can participate and some people can`t.
And one of the things that I, as a voting lawyer, take so seriously is I don`t want anybody seeing these lines or hearing this rhetoric of who they are going to have out there challenging and watching them to be deterred from voting.
This is an important election. People need to go out there. There`s a lot of federal laws protecting them. There are people like me and others all across the country that are ready to back voters up.
So, get out to vote. People will be there help you. The law is on your side.
HAYES: Quickly, a passing reference there, Donald Trump has talked about sending observers, whether it`s sort of citizen observers or lawyers, there`s actually a consent decree guiding the RNC which say they are very limited in what they can do, because they`ve used this sort of tactic of voter intimidation in the past.
PEREZ: Right. I mean, again, there have been politicians that instead of competing voters have been trying to shave some people out of participating. There is a consent decree that makes it very clear that intimidation and suppression of votes like this is illegal. And beyond that, there are additionally federal and state laws that also try to fill in the gaps.
So anybody that thinks that they are going to be a bully at the polls, that they`re self-appointing themselves as policemen of the polls, they need to know that they are on very, very shaky ground because there are very clear rules about what they can do and intimidating and discriminating against voters is not one of them.
HAYES: All right, Myrna Perez, thanks for your time tonight.
Still to com with just 15 days left to go, how does Trump versus Clinton compare to the elections of the past? Some incredible footage from precisely at this point in past campaigns coming up. But first, tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two starts right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Thing One tonight, Breitbart News, a conservative media organization whose top executive is Donald Trump`s campaign CEO has announced its latest hire. Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling will host the network`s first online radio show, "Whatever it Takes." The show will officially launch tomorrow, according to Breitbart, will, quote, "feature Schilling`s unfiltered and insightful commentary on a mix of topics ranging from politics and culture to current affairs."
We`ve seen that kind of unfiltered and insightful commentary before. He was fired as a baseball analyst for ESPN back in April for posting an offensive meme on social media about transgender Americans. Schilling could use the national platform to build momentum for his potential foray into electoral politics. He says he may challenge Senator Elizabeth Warren.
And this weekend, we got a glimpse into the political power Mr. Schilling might yield when he held a rally for Donald Trump in Boston.
How did it go? Well, his face might give you a clue. That rally is Thing Two in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Ahead of today`s announcement that former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling will host a radio show for Breitbart News, Schilling held a rally for Donald Trump on Saturday.
Now, keep in mind six days ago, Schilling said he may challenge Senator Elizabeth Warren. So in some ways this could be a window into 2018.
Well, this is what the scene looked like outside Boston City Hall, according to a local reporter who tweeted this photo, tens of people were in attendance.
The Boston Globe put the number around two dozen. Now, it was, as you can tell, it was raining.
But around the same time, Elizabeth Warren was in western Massachusetts campaigning for a local congressman and speaking to a crowd of roughly 200 people. Afterwards, she was asked about Schilling.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Curt Schilling said this week that running against you on 2018 and then he went on TV and some controversial statements about Jewish support for Democrats. I just wanted to get your take on your potential challenger.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: Hmm.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: 15 days out from the 2016 election, the headlines are all about rigged polls yet another woman accusing Trump of unwanted sexual advances. So, once again, we wanted to see what the headlines in other presidential campaigns when election day was just two weeks from tomorrow.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM BROKAW, FRM. NBC NEWS ANCHOR: The election day, two weeks from tomorrow.
The election is two weeks from tomorrow.
Two weeks from tomorrow.
Two weeks from tomorrow.
Tomorrow, two weeks until the election, tonight, the final scheduled man- to-man showdown among President Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.
ROSS PEROT, FRM. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Now, you`ve got to stop telling these people who to vote for, you`ve got to stop telling these folks in the press tell you you`re throwing your vote away. You`ve got to start using your own head.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With the hours ticking away, suddenly it`s a two- front war against George Bush and a new headache, consumer advocate, Ralph Nader.
AL GORE, FRM. VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My task is not to tell those people that are going to vote -- that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, that may be true, but my task is to convince them to vote enthusiastically for me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Bush came to New Jersey today, a state hard hit by the attacks to argue that the first presidential election since that day comes down to a simple question.
GEORGE W. BUSH, 43RD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Will we stay on the offensive against those who want to attack us, or will we take action only after we are attacked?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Democrats today kept up their charges. The Bush campaign is appealing to racial fears. In Michigan, running mate Lloyd Benson said the Republicans had exploited the case of Willy Hhorton.
LLOYD BENSON, FRM. VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There were racist overtones in that commercial.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The vice president dismissed all of the charges as a sign of desperation.
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, 41ST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That is desperation, insidious and outrageous and so do the American people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Negotiators for President Carter and Ronald Reagan met for several long hours today, but were not able to reach formal agreement on where the presidential debate will be held or when.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Carter wants as direct a confrontation with Reagan as he can get. Reagan`s people prefer an indirect faceoff with a bigger role for panelists and a moderator.
Carter`s aides want the debate next Sunday, the 26th, believing that more people watch TV on Sunday nights. Reagan`s people have not responded to the league`s suggestion, Tuesday the 28th.
Also unsettled, what time the debate should be, how long it should run, and what they`ll talk about.
UNIDETIFIED MALE: Kennedy called for a greater student exchange program, especially with Africa, so this election was a contest between the contented and the concerned.
He left at 11:40, the students jamming against his car trying to touch him. Kennedy produces several effects on people, one of them is jumping. Reporters with a tendency toward categorizing things have called such types jumpers.
After a pause for lunch, Kennedy went to the east Peoria Caterpillar tractor plant where at 3:45 he picked up an enthusiastic lady on his car. People like this are not mere jumpers, they`re classified as leapers.
Up in his suite, where at 8:00 a waiter appeared with four glasses of milk. Kennedy was not just bidding for the farm vote, he really does like milk and consumes great quantities of it.
BROKAW: Today, President Reagan and Walter Mondale were each claiming a win in their final face-to-face meeting at last night`s debate in Kansas City.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They say in poker, that winners talk while loser say deal. Today, the Reagans talked, reflecting his advisers sense he may have clinched the election last night.
NANCY REAGAN, FRM. FIRST LADY. He won.
(LAUGHTER)
RONALD REAGAN, 40TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She says I won.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you say?
REAGAN: It comes better from her than me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: If you want to understand the weird existential crisis the GOP finds itself in with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, look no further than this guy: Trump endorsing Republican congressman Darrell Issa of California, former car alarm magnate who, when he was chair of the House oversight and government reform committee, led investigations into the Benghazi attack, the IRS targeting conservatives pseudo scandal and the ATS so-called Fast and Furious gun sting.
In 2010, Issa called President Obama one of the most corrupt presidents of modern times two years into his administration, later amended that comment to say that Obama leads, quote, the most corrupt government in history.
Which is why people thought it was a little bit strange when Issa, seen here heartily shaking Trump`s hand back in May, recently sent out this mailer saying he`s, quote, very pleased the president signed legislation to provide sexual assault victims legal protection that Issa had co-sponsored.
That`s the same president Issa tried and failed to destroy and whose approval rating last week hit 57 percent.
Issa cruised to victory by an average of nearly 30 points in his past eight elections, but this year he`s in a tight race against Democratic newcomer Doug Applegate in a district that Mitt Romney won by just six points back in 2012.
And at a fundraiser last night, Obama descried Issa decision to embrace him as shameless, quote, "Issa`s primary contribution to the United States congress has been to obstruct and to waste taxpayer dollars on trumped up investigations that have led nowhere and this is now a guy who because poll numbers are bad has sent out brochures with my picture on them touting his cooperation on issues with me? Now that is the definition of chutzpah."
Joining me now, MSNBC contributor Josh Barro, senior editor at Business Insider, former Reagan official and syndicated columnist Linda Chavez.
Josh, let me go to you first on this, because this to me -- the Darrell Issa is two things. It`s, one, the political problems that down-ballot Republicans are worried about; but also, it`s like what is the Republican Party in 2016? What are you voting for? What are you getting when you vote for this party in 2016?
JOSH BARRO, BUSINESS INSIDER: It`s funny because usually people talk about a three legged stool of conservatism. It`s economic conservatives, social conservatives, foreign policy conservatives. Trump has sort of kicked out all three legs of the stool. He`s -- you know, he does not run on social issues at all. It`s not at all clear that if you`re a serious social conservative he`s your guy. He`s abandoned the conservative positions on trade, the economic aspects of immigration, doesn`t really talk about taxes very much, doesn`t embrace the Bush vision of foreign policy, says Bush made all these failures in his administration.
So if you take away all of the policy stuff, all you have left is sort of this anger. And that`s what Donald Trump has run on. And it`s left the down-ballot candidates a little bit awash as well.
HAYES: Linda, this is the thing, like, in 2012, I mean, the Ryan budget was this sort of manifesto in certain ways. And it was more than a manifesto, right. It was an operational document that was actually a plan for what the priorities were . And they got attacked over it. And I, for one, would -- not a big fan of it. But it was a thing that was - this is what the Republican Party is. I just don`t even understand what that case is in 2016.
LINDA CHAVEZ, CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST: Well, I think that`s the big question and the real question is going to be what is the Republican Party going to be on November 9.
After the election is over, after Trump by -- if the polls are correct, does not become our president, then the Republican Party is going to have to decide whether it`s going to go back to that three-legged stool that Josh talked about -- and certainly on some key issues, such as trade, economic issues, foreign policy, it`s going to be very, very tough because Trump represents people who have grievances, they feel like they are victims and they like to promote their, you know, white national identity, but they don`t represent ideas or a platform that can be cohesive for our party.
HAYES: Well, an ethnonationalist mini state for white people is an idea. It`s a bad idea but it is an idea. I mean, this is the problem, right, if you ask Republicans who represents the views of the party, Donald Trump 51 percent, Paul Ryan 33 percent. Like, it`s sort of in the nature maybe in the heat of this kind of election that the titular head of the party insofar as he`s the nominee is the one that lays down the marker for what it is. But it`s not operationalizable for any of these other candidates.
BARRO: A lot of people have been pointing to that number as something that`s really alarming for Paul Ryan, because it shows a majority of the party siding against him. But it`s also really alarming for Donald Trump`s vision of the party, because sort of to your point about white nationalism being a thing, as the demographics of the country have changed, some people have looked at that and said, well, if you can win 70 percent of the white vote, then you can still win elections even with fewer whites.
The problem is that white people have all sorts of ideological diversity on things, which is why -- you know, for example, there are a lot of white people...
HAYES: Thank god they do.
BARRO: ...who like Social Security and Medicare a lot. And that`s one of the reasons that Donald Trump has deemphasized entitlement cuts. And it`s helped him do well in places like Youngstown, Ohio where you have a lot of white voters who are not really conservative on economics, but don`t like the way the country has been changing.
The problem is if you shed that 33 percent of the party, the people who really did care about that ideology, that`s people like in Darrell Issa`s district, which is a wealthy suburban district in California. You have a lot of those wealthy, educated professional Republicans who really were in the party for the ideology.
So, you basically -- you can`t build a majority coalition around the Ryan ideas, you also can`t build a majority coalition around the Trump identity politics.
HAYES: And then you end up -- Linda, you end up with all these folks who sort of caught between first and second base with a lead that was too large in trying to get back to the base. Mike Crapo, you know, U.S. Senator who had endorsed Trump, unendorsed him after that tape came out is now going to -- is re-endorsing him, I guess, they`re going to vote for him. And all those folks are going to have to kind of wear that after whatever happens on election day.
CHAVEZ: I think that`s really a problem. It`s become a kind of revolving door and you don`t know when they are actually going to come out and be where they are eventually going to be. I mena, they just keep flip- flopping and I think that`s always bad for a politician. There`s nothing worse for a politician than to be pegged as somebody who doesn`t stand firm on the issues.
So, frankly, I think they are really losing by this strategy.
HAYES: Yes. Standing firm on alternate days. Josh Barro and Linda Chavez, thank you both for your time.
That is ALL IN for this evening. Go Cubs, go. First World Series in 71 years. Very exciting. "RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END