Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: November 9, 2016 Guest: Rebecca Traister, Jelani Cobb, J.D. Vance, Maria Hinojosa, Linda Sarsour, Cornell Belcher, Michelle Goldberg, Sam Seder, Robert Reich
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: That`s HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being with us. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON (D), FMR. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump is going to be our president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Making sense of the most shocking event in modern political history.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Tonight, the twilight of the elites that brought us here and the terrified millions on the wrong side of Trump`s America. Then, the resistance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD: Not my president. Not my president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: As the establishment is dealt a fatal blow, who leads the next era of opposition? When ALL IN starts right now.
Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Tonight, the nation and the world are still reeling from the most shocking election result in American political history.
For the first time since the founding of the republic, the American people elected a president who has never served in any kind of public capacity either in the government, military or anything else. Someone who has trampled some of the most sacred norms of our American political tradition over the course of his campaign, it was a stunning and decisive Electoral College victory foreseen by very few.
Donald Trump ended the night with 279 electoral votes, just clearing the 270 vote threshold to win the presidency. Remarkably, that`s about three states that are still too close to call. New Hampshire with four electoral votes, Arizona with 11, usually a fairly safe red state, and Michigan formerly part of the democrats so-called blue wall with 16.
And yet, Hillary Clinton maintains a slim lead in the popular vote. Her margin is a little over 200,000 votes. But that is likely to grow as more ballots are counted in states like California.
For the second time in two decades, Republicans will occupy the White House without having one support from even a plurality of American voters. They`ll also hold on to full control of congress.
And as shocking as those results are, there`s a pretty simple "Tweetland" explanation for what happened yesterday, at least in the presidential. In four so-called rustbelt states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, many hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of white working class voters who had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 decided this year to vote for Donald Trump. That was pretty much the whole ball game.
Beyond the electoral map, Trump`s ascendance can be seen as part of a much broader phenomenon, the rise especially in the developed world of nationalist figures often trading on xenophobia and racism, could channel populous rage against the existing global order.
It`s a link that Trump has explicitly promoted giving himself the name, Mr. Brexit. Like Brexit, the UK`s vote to leave the European Union, Donald Trump was opposed by virtually every elite institution in society.
The editorial pages of almost every single daily newspaper in the country, bipartisan experts and foreign policy economics, the military, even a sizable chunk of the Republican Party itself including the GOP`s past two presidents and its last nominee.
But as with Brexit, voters had other ideas. Trump`s election is the latest in a series of cataclysmic events that reshaped the country and the world over the last 10 or 15 years.
Situations where people with the very best credentials, the most trusted authorities in their given fields convinced the public of what they knew to be true and were later were proven to be completely, epically, disastrously wrong.
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Hurricane Katrina was nothing to worry about. The levies would hold the housing market, there`s not a bubble. The banks are just fine and now Donald Trump could never be elected the president of these United States of America.
This is the precise subject of the book I wrote in 2012 called "Twilight of the Elites," about the crisis of authority in American public life.
And according here, such betrayals produce accumulative effect. They prompt citizens to adopt a corrosive skepticism about the very legitimacy of the project of self-government. That corrosive skepticism was, of course, the fuel powering Trump`s campaign from the beginning.
Leading up to Election Day I had the opportunity to attend pre-election briefings from both campaigns. And last week, I`ll tell you this, I watched some extremely smart capable skilled members of the Clinton team assuredly lay out their path to victory in charts and graphs backed up with extensive data just like those bankers circa 2007 who assured us derivatives were rock solid.
There`s never been a housing crash across all 50 states. And I have to admit, that unlike WMD and the housing boom, I bought it. Sitting there, listening to their technocratic data-driven certainties, I was convinced. Last night, all that certainty melted away into thin air.
The question now for the country is how the country puts itself back together again. And that`s a question for the president-elect, for his supporters, the people around him and his party. It`s a question for democrats, for us in the media and truly for every single citizen. Because whoever you supported in this election, whatever your politics, your ideological beliefs, what`s very clear is that this country has been torn asunder.
Joining me now, Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large of New York Magazine, Jelani Cobb, staff writer for New Yorker and Prof. J.D. Vance, author of the great book "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Future -- a Culture in Crisis."
There`s a lot of ways to think about what happened last night, to react to last night. How are you thinking about what happened last night?
REBECCA TRAISTER, NEW YOURK MAGAZINE WRITER-AT-LARGE: Well, I`m trying to process it because, as you know, I`ve been on the show many times over the past year and expressed always my anxiety that Hillary Clinton couldn`t win.
HAYES: We`ve had many conversations about that.
TRAISTER: Yes. And then apparently in the past couple of weeks I, too, was persuaded that she was likely to win. And I, too, had that experience last night of realizing quite quickly as soon as I saw the numbers go sideways that she wasn`t going to.
And it was like Charlie Brown and the football. It was like, oh, I bought it this time. I was talked into believing that we were going to be better than we actually are.
And there are a million reasons that I`m sure we`re going to talk about, I`ve been listening to news all day, reading commentary, you know, all kinds of errors that were made and everything.
But, you know, it`s so hard to compare this sort of typical strategy talk around Hillary Clinton`s campaign, should she have gone to Wisconsin, what kind of attention should she have paid to the white working class when you are comparing her to a candidate who was literally endorsed by the KKK and, you know, regularly called a sitting "Senator Pocahontas."
You know, the sort of like, she made some campaign strategy errors compared to the guy who you regularly refer to here as the "Trumpster Fire" who`s not going to be our president. You know, and so -
HAYES: All that sort of technical minutia seems bizarre in the context of Trump.
TRAISTER: Right. Of the man who actually was elected.
HAYES: And yes. I mean - I mean, this is - I mean, when we - when we -- so there`s a bunch of ways to understand, but J.D., I want to talk to you. You`re from Southeastern Ohio, right?
J.D. VANCE, AUTHOR: Southwestern.
HAYES: I`m sorry, Southwestern Ohio. And, you know, there -- one of the things that I think that there was a sort of trope that got written about the Trump voter. And, I thought sometimes it got a little much, like this sort of Trump pastoral.
Well, one of the things I think we saw here when you`re just looking is like, there were hundreds of thousands, millions of white voters, white non-college educated voters throughout the rustbelt who changed their vote, who voted for Barack Obama and voted for Trump this time, and a sort of very narrow technical sense, that`s what happened. How do you understand that?
VANCE: Well, I understand it as fundamentally consequence that people have lost faith in the political norms that govern our society or at least the white working class has lost faith in those political norms.
We talk about all the things that Trump has done, how he`s violated those norms. But those norms, ultimately led us into, for example, the Iraq war which his burden fell especially heavily on the working class in some of the rustbelt states.
So, I think that it`s fundamentally a rejection of political norms, conventional wisdom and it`s going to be with us for a while. We`ve got to figure out how to deal with it.
HAYES: We have this debate that has been going throughout the entire election about xenophobia, racism and economic anxiety. These have been - these sort of two twin theories. I don`t think that they`re in competition in certain ways because it`s not like there`s a single cause factor.
What do you -- how do you understand the racial politics of what happened last night?
JELANI COBB, THE NEW YORKER STAFF WRITER: I mean, I think it`s so unfortunate this is identitarian and I think we can`t get around that. And, you know, as for those the people who, you know, voted for Hillary -- excuse me, voted for Barack Obama then opted to not vote for Hillary Clinton, I think we can`t overestimate the significance of the fact that people have been primed for 25 years to really hate Hillary Clinton.
They believe that she killed Vince Foster. There are people who believe that they killed Ron Brown. But, you know, this figurative -- this fictive trail of bodies that people have bought into. And I think that that`s a real factor in people`s contempt for her.
Now, the other part of this is that when I was in the Trump rally in North Carolina that last day and that final sprint and I saw just large numbers of men wearing these shirts that say, we want a president who has, you know, kind of -`
HAYES: Balls.
COBB: Yes, right. So this was not about economic anxiety.
HAYES: Right, Right, Right, Right, Right. Yes, please.
TRAISTER: I just wanted to add to that. I think that there`s a way that we talk about these voters who voted for Obama and are - and now don`t vote for Hillary in a way that sort of suggesting. So, it can`t be about race because they liked Obama that one time.
And I think one of the things that we have to look at is the way in which these presidential symbols are representing sort of tectonic shifts and who in this country has increasing share of some kind of power, right?
HAYES: Right.
TRAISTER: So there`s a way in which the election of Barack Obama could be comfortably exceptional, and we could pat ourselves on the back about it and assume that it`s an exception to what is fundamentally the American rule of white male power. But when it`s going to on the heels of that, now we`re going to have this woman, and wait a minute, maybe that`s not an exception of the rule, maybe we`re making new rules about who has this kind of power, and I don`t think there`s any way to disentangle the misogyny from the racism in terms of what we`re seeing.
This was a package deal and a lot of it was internalized. I mean, you look at 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump.
HAYES: Yes.
COBB: I mean, that`s huge outstanding allegations of sexual assault.
HAYES: Another thing we have to say is that, a lot of this also -- particularly in the final days you talk about Hillary Clinton, is republicans coming home. I mean, you know there was a bet. There was a kind of arbitrage bet made by the Clinton campaign, which was that the kind of folks that you grew up around, were not winnable for them. But they were going to make that back up in Bucks County and the Philly suburbs with essentially college educated white women. And, while their margins were better than Barack Obama`s, republicans came home in the end.
VANCE: Yes, most republicans came home, though it is really interesting the fact that Trump got basically the same number of white voters as Mitt Romney did in 2012, but the distribution was totally different, it was much heavily weighted, more heavily weighted to the working class -
HAYES: And rural also.
VANCE: Yes, absolutely. I think there`s a tendency -- and I`m going to disagree here with these guys. I mean, I think we can overstate the role of racial anxiety in driving the Trump phenomenon.
If you look at the data, it`s clearly a part of it, right? If you look at the data, there`s clearly an economic component about it. But one of the things I write in the book and one of the things I really try to push on, is that there are a lot of other things going on in these communities. Like, the opioid epidemic, the resentment over the Iraq war, the family dissolution that`s existing, that`s not really economic or racial. There`s something else going on in these communities that drive this sort of crisis.
(CROSSTALK)
COBB: So here`s the thing, though, about that, right, when with you looked at this, and said economic anxiety, we saw that a large number of people, not just talking about the people who voted for Obama, a large number of these people were economically more prosperous than Hillary Clinton`s voters were.
And for African-Americans and Latinos who were going through - who`s subject to those same dynamics, they did not turn to a xenophobe, to a racist, to a misogynist.
And so, those people in the working class just as well as the white individuals are. And then finally, we have seen at the very least that these people have not rejected someone who has begun by calling an entire ethnicity racist.
So, if it`s not actively attracted to racism, then it`s a kind of passive tolerance for racism which is equally corrosive.
TRAISTER: The other thing is that, you mentioned the opioid epidemic, just an example. Hillary Clinton is a candidate who has had a very lengthy policy plan to address the opioid epidemic -
HAYES: In fact, this is sort of the perfect microcosm of the campaign.
TRAISTER: Right. It`s in through the primary she has, she chose a running mate against -- of who I wish she had chosen somebody else, who was a white man in part as a strategy to speak to white working class voters. She did bus tours in Ohio and Pennsylvania, she`s talking about expanding health care.
I mean, policy wise in terms of issue and in terms of her attempts to reach these voters using her husband, she has -- I don`t think it is true to say she ignored that -- this is the storyline that she somehow ignored these voters, so much of her policy was built around addressing the issues that you`re naming.
VANCE: Well, I wouldn`t say that their policies totally ignored these voters but the narrative often times in campaigns matters more than the actual policy.
And who was the person he was talking to most about heroin epidemic? It was definitely Trump. He`s the guy that brought it up in the debate. He`s the guy who brought it up in some of his primary victory speeches.
So, there`s an element of which you can say, Clinton had policies that address these issues but at the end of the day, Trump was the one actually getting in front of people talking about them, nearly pushing on them.
HAYES: Well -- and there`s also - let me just also say this. I mean, part of the thing here is in terms of what - I think the distinction that you made there is really important, right, where it`s like, politics are tribal, right? So, they - or they always are. I mean, my friends always like all politics are identity, politics is what people say, "Oh, that`s identity."
I was like, well, yes. Yes, come work in any political environment.
And you`ve got an identity that`s now formed here. And that identity can be a lot of different things you write about in the book. But one of the things it can be is real dangerous essentially white power, right? That you know, you can see white people, certain group of white people sort of voting like an interest group, right, like a minority and in these overwhelming numbers.
There`s another part that the identity doesn`t have to be that, right? And those few things, the degree to which those two things are connected is the part of I think a kind of deep stuff here. The other thing that Jelani said that I think is really important, is there`s this distinguishing what is driving the voters and what were the voters` countenance.
And it`s that latter place, right? It`s like the drives of those voters who weren`t, you know, these folks, those are complicated but what we do know is that it was not a deal breaker for them that he did these things. And that I think is for a certain - a lot of people, the hard part to swallow.
COBB: Can I just add something here? That, we`re having this conversation about populism, talking about a punitive billionaire who manufactures his clothing line abroad.
TRAISTER: Whose phrase is, "You`re fired."
COBB: Right. This is the big con, right? This the kind of long con game that people have had here.
I think it does raise the sort of fundamental questions about democracy. And even outside of these things, we`re talking about the identity element of it.
When someone tells you that I am the only person who can save you, I don`t care if it is a lawyer, I don`t care if it`s a doctor, I don`t care -- if someone says I`m the only person who can save you, this person is dangerous.
VANCE: Yeah. There`s a very important point there which is that I think we should countenance Trump`s rhetoric, and I`ve obviously taken a lot of personal flak for criticizing the very, very direct terms.
But there`s a difference - I think it`s important to remind ourselves that we all live in a very certain media bubble. I live in that media bubble.
My friends back home, my family back home who are voting for Trump, they don`t think that he`s a racist. They don`t think - I mean -
(CROSSTALK)
VANCE: -- they`re not even aware that he made these comments about Mexicans and rapists because that`s not something that`s repeated to them on their news sources. So it`s just a very strong component of geographic and cultural segregation that drives that.
HAYES: One thing that I want to later this week is talk about the media environment that produced this. Rebecca Traister, Jelani Cobb, J.D. Vance, thank you all for being here. Really appreciate it.
As you can see there are protests happening all around the country. I just saw thousands of people marching up 6th Avenue here in New York City, there are folks gathered there in Philadelphia, there are folks in Chicago as well, Portland, Oregon, folks yelling, chanting anti-Trump slogans, folks in Seattle, Washington.
We have seen a lot of street protests in the last four or five years. We`ve seen a lot of resistance and protests in town halls about Obamacare, the Tea Party, this is a part of American political life at this moment.
And I think what we`re seeing right here as we watch this is on the first day of the president-elect Donald Trump, this will - is going to be a mainstay of American political life in the next period. Stay with us. We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Here`s something to keep in mind when talking about the, quote, "white vote." This is an electoral map that shows what the election would look like if only white people voted. And this is what the election would look like if only people of color voted.
Like Obama, Clinton won voters of color by a wide margin. Although, there`s some evidence in the exit data she underperformed among Latinos and African-Americans compared to Barack Obama in 2012.
To date, millions of Americans in that political coalition are waking up to a president-elect who is beloved and celebrated by white supremacists and who has said things like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: When Mexico sends its people, they`re not sending their best. They`re bringing drugs, they`re bringing crime, they`re rapists, and some I assume are good people.
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country`s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
Now, this judge is of Mexican heritage. I`m building a wall, OK? I`m building a wall. I`m going to do very well with the Hispanics, the Mexicans --
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: So no Mexican judge could ever be involved in a case that involves you?
TRUMP: No, he`s a member of a society where, you know, very pro Mexico, and that`s fine, it`s all fine, but I think --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: I think he should recuse himself.
TAPPER: If you`re saying he can`t do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?
TRUMP: I don`t think so at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
Did you ever hear Pocahontas, huh? It`s Pocahontas Elizabeth Warren, she said she was an Indian. She said because her cheekbones were high, she was an Indian. Pocahontas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me now, Maria Hinojosa, Anchor and Executive Producer of NPR`s Latino USA, Linda Sarsour, Executive Director of Arab American Association of New York.
And Linda, I want to start with you because we`ve had you on the show many times. You just came, you were part of the protest that was happening. Just how your -- you and folks you love and care about feel waking up this morning?
LINDA SARSOUR, ARAB AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: I`m going to be honest with you, Chris, I`m horrified.
I`m still wearing the same clothes that I was wearing yesterday at 6:00 in the morning. I haven`t even been home. My 12-year-old daughter was sobbing at home, crying, my office was full of people.
I`m worried about 800,000 young people in this country, some of whom are my clients, who are doctors recipients, who have work authorization who thinks that it`s just going to be automatically stripped from them, people who think that it`s going to be mass deportation and mass roundup of people.
People are horrified. And honestly, like, I don`t have it in me to say to them confidently and look them in the eye and say, we`ve got this. I`m going to act strong and protest and do what I can, but I`m literally shell- shocked.
HAYES: There`s a lot of people - I mean, to Linda`s point, it`s like we have these debates about policy, we have this campaign that seem policy- free, then all of a sudden it`s like, OK, here`s the list, like, the president signed an order allowing these people who were brought here as children to stay in the country to get legal work.
That order is almost certainly going to be revoked day one. That`s -- there are millions of hundreds of thousands of people who directly day one are going to be evicted.
MARIA HINOJOSA, NPR ANCHOR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Right. So, we put out a call in Latino USA, to actually ask, we`re going to report on this for this week. And the kinds of responses that we`re getting are just like you know, I feel like my wings are being cut out, there`s nothing I can do, i feel hopeless.
Wow, so it`s like, what do we do when we have so many people who are feeling this way? Now, again, had it been reversed, we have to understand that there would have been absolute upset, but there`s a difference here, because you actually have a president-elect who has said things like what he said in his Phoenix speech.
Day one, we`re coming after you. So another one of the tweets was somebody saying I`m a teacher, my students are 99 percent Latino, and they`re crying all day in my class. How do I teach them?
And these are questions, Chris -- Linda, that we have never actually had to think about how do we respond.
HAYES: I`ve got to say, I communicated with a bunch of teachers today. And I mean, one of the things about the youngest generation of America is that they are more diverse than the oldest generation. That`s part of what is happening in this country and folks and teachers in front of kids are worried about those things.
I wonder also like to me, the moment in the campaign that I found the most troubling was the Muslim ban. For a variety of reasons, there`s a million of things he`s done but because it was a policy that he called for.
He said in the figure as I am a nominee. Now, today that came off the website today, maybe a hopeful sign. But, like, do you -- how do you feel today in the America with the president-elect who called to ban a billion people that share the faith that you practice?
SARSOUR: First of all, my kids didn`t go to school today. I have two kids in high school, and a daughter in middle school. They just couldn`t even drive themselves out of bed and I honestly didn`t force them. I said, "Stay home and relax, just don`t go to school."
I`m shocked that we`re having a conversation about this white working class poor that seems to be the conversation that is on many media outlets. And I want to remind people that two-thirds of Americans actually supported that proposal that we were not shocked, that we were not as outraged at the Muslim ban as we were when we heard the tape of Donald Trump saying absolutely outrageous things to a white woman.
So, I am just really disappointed of the conversation we`re having. We should have been up in arms on Donald Trump and I don`t care if you`re white working class.
People are saying, oh, they`re not racist. So you basically chose your economic insecurities and that`s in your economic anxieties and you still casted your vote for a sexist, misogynist, Islamophobe, homophobe, everything that I fight against every single day.
It`s just fundamentally bothering me on a deep level. We are allowing a man who has executive order power, just like president Obama did DACA. He`s going to undo DACA. He has power to do things. He has access to nuclear codes.
Muslim Americans, we have been living a post 9/11 period for 15 years. And now, we just think that it`s going to be vamped up. I mean, for god sake`s we lived poorer under President Obama, patriot act, mass surveillance, under a democratic president, a black president, a constitutional lawyer. And now, we have a guy whose like unhinged.
HAYES: That`s what I want to - a lot of things you and I talk about on the show is, you know, in one of the -- Donald Trump said this at one point, a lot of people don`t know this, but Barack Obama`s deported a lot of people. Well, yeah, people do know that.
Like, how much do you think that played a role in what happened last night?
HINOJOSA: The fact that Donald -- oh, the anger towards the Democratic Party?
HAYES: Yes.
HINOJOSA: It`s real. Although, I will tell you that towards the end, those same activists, my students, for example, you know, said they were all in literally -
(CROSSTALK)
HINOJOSA: But they were all in for Hillary. So that kind of didn`t stay there. But the question is, what are these young people going to do, right? I mean, we have a situation now where they`re asking where I go from here? Like where do we go from here?
So my question is, what does it mean as a country, right, that we know that there are people who are living in this kind of terror?
And it`s true. The raids have happened, the knocks at the door from immigration agents are getting ready to happen tomorrow morning. They are getting ready to do that because they do that. They do it at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning.
Perhaps what Donald Trump is saying is that we`re just going to do it more and in broad daylight. You know, so at least we`ll see it. But the real fear? I mean, people are already afraid of that knock. They are afraid of that knock.
SARSOUR: But I just want to say something real quick, Chris. Like honestly, I`m not even - I`m not even blaming white working class voters. I blame totally the Democratic Party. I was a Bernie surrogate. I think there could have been a lot of things different.
They told us we are naive, uninformed, misinformed, they marginalized us, never tried to organize us into the Democratic Party. So, there`s soul searching opportunity for the Democratic Party right now. We are going to be a majority/minority country, you either want us or we`re going to go third party, we`re going to go fourth party. So, they have to decide now.
HAYES: Alright, Maria Hinojosa and Linda Sarsour, thank you both. Really appreciate it.
We will be right back. Don`t go anywhere. You can see street protests continuing in New York City among many others across the country, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland. That is the scene here in Midtown Manhattan at this hour, thousands thronging the streets.
There`s going to be a lot more of this, America. We just entered uncharted territory.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Today something interesting happened, well, a lot of interesting things happened. But a political leader warned against a party overreaching after winning an election. And that warning came not from the losing side but from the winning side. The mouth of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MITCH MCCONNELL, REPUBLICAN SENATE MAJORITY LEADER OF KENTUCKY: I think it`s always a mistake to misread your mandate, and frequently new majorities think it`s going to be forever.
Nothing is forever in this country. We have an election every two years right on schedule. We have had since 1788.
And so, I don`t think we should act as if we`re going to be in the majority forever. We`ve been given a temporary lease on power, if you will, and I think we need to use it responsibly.
I think what the American people are looking for is results. And to get results in the senate as all of you know, it requires some democratic participation and cooperation. I think overreaching after an election is, generally speaking, a mistake.
HAYES: As Mitch McConnell said in only two years, the political tide has turned very quickly. That`s ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: On January 20th, inauguration day a little after noon there will be no titular leader of the Democratic Party. It will no longer be President Obama, the highest ranking elected Democrats will be in the minority. Senator Chuck Schumer is expected to take over the minority leader position following the retirement of Senator Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi will expect to continue as House minority leader.
We don`t know who the head of the DNC will be. Right now it`s Donna Brazile who is interim. In many ways, the Democratic Party establishment, at least the one that helped nominate Hillary Clinton, will be finished.
Joining me now, Cornell Belcher, president at Brilliant Corners research and strategies and former pollster for the Democratic National Committee -- the Democratic Party finds itself in quite a situation right now.
CORNELL BELCHER, BRILLIANT CORNERS: They do.
Look, after a loss there needs to be shakeup. I think that`s a natural thing. Although, this was a game of inches, right? There is not a -- and I just tweeted about this in my scatter plot. I mean, this is a game of inches. It`s not like there`s a realignment here.
In a lot of ways Mitt Romney didn`t -- I mean, Donald Trump didn`t do anything that Mitt Romney didn`t do and their percentages look awfully a lot like the same and so dominating that white vote.
If you had told me, Chris, that 70 percent of our electorate was going to be white as opposed to 72, 73, 74, I would say that -- actually, I told you this -- that she`s probably going to be president. So we had, in fact, a browner electorate. But when you look at that protest vote, when you look at the younger voters who 80 or 90 percent of them say...
HAYES: But here`s the thing about those voters is we don`t know, I remember litigating this with Ralph Nader in 2000, right. It turned out when you went back and you studied those voters, they wouldn`t have voted for Al Gore. They weren`t there to like -- this idea that -- there`s this idea that that`s a vote that should be in this column and isn`t, like it just doesn`t strike me as borne out by this data.
BELCHER: It is, but when you look at her margins -- she won all the groups that Barack Obama won, particularly those younger sort of ascending America, but she won them by smaller margins, right. She`s three or four points off in all those younger vote margins, and a lot of that really is protest vote.
Donald Trump didn`t expand the Republican Party. He didn`t expand the Republican brand yesterday evening, but those young voters who say they were rejecting both of them and they in fact did that, we`ve got to do more to sort of reach those votes.
I loved your last person on your panel here because she`s absolutely right, right? The Democratic Party looks more like her than it does right now a lot of the people who are running the Democratic Party. And I`ve got to be a disruptor tonight, Chris. I`ve got to tell you this, I don`t want to go -- and a lot of friends I talk to -- I don`t want to go into another election where there`s not a person of color who has budgetary authority to speak truth to power and to put commercials and advertisement out there that we know speaks to younger people...
HAYES: That`s interesting.
BELCHER: ...in our community right now. The top of the Democratic Party does not look like the electorate that the Democratic Party needs.
So, within our party, Chris, we`ve got to change that. We`ve got to shake some things up right now because it`s stagnant and the less diverse we are at the top in our thinking, the less able we are to compete in a diverse marketplace.
HAYES: It also seems me. I mean, there have been now -- you know, there was 2008 was a huge election for Democrats up and down the ticket, but 2010 and 2014 were bad, 2016 was bad, 2012 was...
BELCHER: Was good.
HAYES: Was good.
But there`s a question about how reproduceable the Obama coalition is. I mean, it has been -- the Democratic Party at the state, local level all the way up now to federal has been hollowed out in the last six years.
BELCHER: Let`s separate the two electorates, it`s apples to oranges. You know, off-year electorate looks very different from the on-year electorate.
HAYES: But that`s a problem for Democrats.
BELCHER: It is absolutely a problem for Democrats. And, Chris, you know, I do focus groups with younger, particularly sort of younger minorities and they don`t know what a midterm is, right? And they don`t understand the importance of midterm. That`s not their fault, that`s our fault as the Democratic Party.
When I go into North Carolina four weeks before the election and I say, you know, show them a criminal justice reform bullet point here, a platform here and it`s everything they ask for, but they don`t know where the Democratic Party is on it and it`s Hillary Clinton`s criminal justice platform reform, that`s our problem not their problem because we`re not communicating effectively.
HAYES: It`s amazing you just said that, because we literally had this exact conversation about opioid policy in the A block for a very different sort of geographic constituent. Cornell Belcher, thank you very much.
BELCHER: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: All right, more on those protests happening around the country when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: All right, there are about 5,000 protesters right now gathered outside Trump Tower, the home of president-elect Donald Trump in New York City.
Vaughn Hillyard, NBC`s Vaughn Hillyard is there. And Vaughn, what`s the scene like?
VAUGHN HILLYARD, NBC NEWS: So Chris, I joined up with this rally close to Columbus Circle about an hour at this point. There are about 1,000 people. They are marching down Broadway into Time`s Square. They ended up taking a left turn. They went up Fifth Avenue and actually shut down Fifth Avenue. This is Midtown Manhattan to (inaudible) to the city.
They went right past New York City, Midtown (inaudible) which is where last night Trump held their victory rally.
They shut down Fifth Avenue, which is no small road into Midtown Manhattan. they came down 57th Street over here to Fifth Avenue.
We`re going to have you pan over here to the right, which is where Trump Tower is at. 57th Street, Fifth Avenue are shut down. It`s tough to get through here. It probably what turned into 1,000 has turned into multiple thousands.
The police have come in and they`ve turned -- brought in barricades that have been set up at the intersections so that people cannot expand further out around the tower.
If you look up here, you`ve got people hanging up on to the poles. You have (inaudible) like a show at Carnegie Hall, people from school, people all across that joined up and just became part of the march -- Chris.
HAYES: All right, Vaughn Hillyard, thanks for that dispatch.
Some bright spots last night for the Democratic Party. I`m going to bring you those in just a second.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: If there`s a bright spot for Democratic women this election, it is this: come January 2017 there will be a record number of women serving in the U.S. senate, and that includes Democrat Maggie Hassan who narrowly defeated Republican Senate Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire last night, and it includes Democratic women of color, quadrupling the number of women in color currently serving in the senate from one -- Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii to four.
The state of California sending its attorney general Kamala Harris to the senate. Harris was an Indian mother and Jamaican she`ll be the first Indian-American and the second African-American woman to serve.
Harris defeated fellow Democrat, congresswoman Loretta Sanchez to replace the retiring Barbara Boxer.
Nevada electing its attorney general Catherine Cortez-Masto. She will be the first latina to serve in the Seante. Corez-Masto defeated Republican congressman Joe Heck and will replace retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic pickup category, Congresswoman and Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth defeated Republican incumbent Senator Mark Kirk in Illinois. Republicans still held the senate and the house and gained the White House last night, but if history is any indicator that action will have an equal and opposite reaction.
We`ll look at that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Very soon Republicans will control the White House, the Senate, the House, most governorships and state houses and eventually the Supreme Court thanks to their unprecedented stonewalling in the wake of Antonin Scalia`s death.
For many Democrats it feels like a gut punch, the beginning of a prolonged period of wandering the political wilderness.
But it`s worthwhile to consider recent history. When George W. Bush won a second term in 2004, the GOP expanded their House and Senate majorities. Republicans and pundits alike were crowing about a permanent majority.
Just two years later Democrats had taken back the House. Then, when President Obama won in 2008, Democrats held the House and Senate. It was the Democrat`s turn to trumpet an emerging enduring majority.
But 2010, the Tea Party protests were front page news, the GOP was taking back the House in midterm election the president famously described as a shellacking.
The point is that when a party takes party, executes its agenda, it does not happen in a vacuum, instead its actions prompt a reaction and often it`s a very big one.
Today Mitch McConnell suggested one of the first things the GOP will do in the new congress is repeal Obamacare.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R) KENTUCKY: It`s a pretty high item on our agenda, as you know. And I would be shocked if we didn`t move forward to keep our commitment to the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Unless the GOP eliminates the filibuster, something Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker argued for today, a full repeal is easier said than done. But even with just a simple majority, the GOP can repeal much of the law, including the Medicaid expansion, leaving millions without the healthcare coverage that they enjoy now.
That is going to make people angry. It is going to have political ramifications, so will tax cuts for the wealthy or a rollback of welfare reforms, the reversals of policies to address climate change, the tearing apart of immigrant families, all of this will be devastating to millions of individuals and will also produce resistance, anger, probably political change.
Already today, we`re seeing Americans take to the streets in opposition to Trump. The GOP advances its agenda, there will be much more of that. And we`re talking about what that opposition is going to look like, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: All right. Joining me now, Robert Reich, who was secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, MSNBC contributor Sam Seder, host of the Majority Report, and Slate Columnist Michelle Goldberg.
And Robert, let me start with you. I mean, you`ve been through different periods of different kinds of Republican, Democratic control, obviously, you served in a Democratic administration. How are you thinking about what the political reaction, the political opposition, particularly from the Democratic Party and others is going to be like?
ROBERT REICH, FRM. LABOR SECRETARY: Well, there`s already, Chris, a growing organization. I mean, progressives getting together, energized, angry already, have good reason to be given the way Donald Trump actually conducted his campaign.
Now, if he comes through with the jobs and better wages and everything else he`s talking about for the middle class and for the working class, then he might have a mandate to go forward, but nothing that he has said, no policy he has iterated, has anything to do with getting more jobs and better jobs. I think there`s going to be a very large backlash. And you talked about backlash initially a couple of minutes ago. I think there is going to be a huge backlash against Donald Trump and the Republicans.
HAYES: Yeah.
I mean, part of the reason I wanted, Sam and Michelle, to have you here is I think I met you both when we were all journalists in the Bush years. And I think -- in some ways I think the Democratic Party, the sort of infrastructure broadly, the progressive left, whatever, a lot was built up during that period of time of essentially resistance and opposition. And it changed a lot when Barack Obama was there. It was sort of this like, well, you know, particularly if you went through the Bush years, how do you see the politics of this moment for those in that part of the ideological spectrum?
SAM SEDER, MAJORITY REPORT: During the Bush years the left and the Democratic Party were one.
HAYES: Yeah, it was a popular front.
SEDER: And it was a popular front. And I`m not sure that the people involved in either of those two camps were aware that it was a popular front.
HAYES: Right.
SEDER: And now i think they are. And I think the left, to the extent that they`re interested in the Democratic Party, is going to demand -- and I think they should get it, frankly -- a wholesale change of leadership in the Democratic Party.
I mean, you cannot have a more abject failure than the loss of the majority of state houses, state legislatures, the congress, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the executive branch. I mean, you`re 0 for everything. It`s time for the Democratic leadership to step aside.
And you know two weeks ago Chuck Schumer was bragging about he and Hillary Clinton and Paul Ryan were going to do this tax repatriation deal. I don`t know if that had anything to do with laying off of Paul Ryan during the campaign, but that failed, and I think they should step aside.
I mean, honestly, I think anybody associated with.../
HAYES: It`s interesting to hear you this, because remember what happened - - the same thing happened in the Democratic Party in its sort of out years in 2005, 2006 where it was -- there was a war against the Democratic Party establishment from sort of the net roots and that then...
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, SLATE: Well, that didn`t change the party establishment.
HAYES: ...party establishment. And then the exact same thing, remember what the Tea Party was? Who did the Tea Party primary? Who did they go after? Who did they take the heads off of? It was the Republican establishment.
GOLDBERG: I mean, I think that one of the things you`re going to see is sort of like an emboldened or insurgent liberalism. I mean, liberalism as opposed to leftism right now has been sort of depressed or moribund or you know kind of cope with being at the tail end of the establishment.
You have a very impassioned left wing that I think is going to be disappointed if it thinks that the Trump years are going to be high tide for kind of left wing resistance. What happened during the Bush years was that, because the political center moved so far right, seeing liberalism became in itself felt like a radical opposition movement.
HAYES: And fought a lot of rear guard actions. I mean, right now that`s the other thing.
SEDER: That was the popular front...
HAYES: But the fights are going to be...
Robert fights -- that`s one of the things about the fights and that you`re going to have, right. So today, we have news about a climate science skeptic who has been apparently tasked to head the EPA transition.
I mean, there`s going to be a million things like this in which essentially rear guard actions to attempt to defend some things that are in place are going to take up a tremendous amount of political capital.
REICH: Well, Chris, what happens -- and we know this from the Nixon administration and the Reagan administration, the Bush administration, is that when you have Republican majorities and a Republican president they overreach, inevitably overreach. They think they have huge mandates and that overreaching generates a reaction and that reaction itself is a very powerful political force.
I think the real question is how much damage can be done in the meantime? I think Sam is exactly right. The Democratic Party, the establishment of the Democratic Party, has a lot to answer for. I think the real heartbeat of the Democratic Party is the Bernie Sanders movement. I mean, that`s where -- those are the progressives who actually -- young people, those are the future of the Democratic Party, and also African-Americans and Latinos. Demographically, that`s the future of the Democrats.
And the Republicans will overreach and I think ignite that kind of prairie fire, but how much damage is done in the interim?
GOLDBERG: I mean, I think the one thing -- first of all, I think it`s a mistake to kind of try to get to silver lining about all of this. I mean, this is one of the worst days in the history of our country in the modern era. This is a catastrophe. And the thing to do right now is to really grieve and kind of come to terms with the magnitude of our loss.
But one thing I think that it`s important to remind ourselves and the country every single day is that Donald Trump did not win a majority of the vote in this country. Right? Hillary -- I mean, a majority of the country voted against Donald Trump, and so Donald Trump does not have a mandate. I mean, my dearest hope is that, except for things like infrastructure, the kind of nods towards decency that Trump has made in his campaign, I hope that the Democratic minority in the Senate will actually take a page from McConnell and say no.
HAYES: OK, so this is the big question now. The tactical question that confronts the Democrats. And you saw a statement today saying -- even Bernie Sanders said basically it was sort on the one hand or the other. If he wants to do things like infrastructure and good jobs for folks, we`re going to work with him, if he wants to pursue xenophobia and bigotry, we will oppose him.
There`s a tactical question. Do Democrats do the thing that Democrats did with George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind and say...
GOLDBERG: Yes. No. They should not do that.
HAYES: What`s the first bill we can work on with you on President Trump or do they do what Mitch McConnell did is no. The answer is no for everything.
SEDER: Was there a day during the general election where the Democratic Party argued ideology with Donald Trump? I don`t think so. I mean, maybe it happened, but they whispered it in the corner. It was all this man is unfit to be in office.
HAYES: Yeah, although arguing bigotry is ideology.
SEDER: No, OK, all right, fair enough.
But I`m talking about in terms of policy and whatnot. They need to obstruct. They need to not go along. They need to create a distinction with the Republican Party.
There was a lot of voters that Hillary Clinton didn`t even make a play for because there was one note that was hit during that campaign. I don`t know -- again, I don`t know if it was a function of wanting to make deals moving forward, making a grand bargain on corporate tax as they were bragging about two weeks ago. Two weeks ago.
HAYES: I think it was a tactical calculation.
SEDER: Exactly, exactly. It was a tactical -- yes, it was a failed tactical calculation that we can get elected if we seem reasonable to reasonable Republicans. Those reasonable Republicans voted for Donald Trump.
HAYES: Yeah, they came home.
SEDER: They don`t exist.
HAYES: And I think that should guide actually the -- inform the strategy.
Robert Reich, Sam Seder, Michelle Goldberg, thank you all for being with me tonight.
That is ALL IN for this evening. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END