Summary
Democratic candidate for president, Joe Biden, was in the state of Georgia seven days before the election. Kamala Harris is heading to Texas where polls show the Democratic ticket within striking distance, and where Michael Bloomberg is now dumping millions of dollars to try to put Democrats over the top. Mail delivery is slowing down in Democratic strongholds and in swing states. COVID is spreading in the U.S. at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: And we want to help you out. So, make sure you send us your questions. That's tonight's REIDOUT. "ALL IN" with my friend Chris Hayes starts right now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What's his closing argument, that people are too focused on COVID? He said this at one of his rallies, COVID, COVID, COVID. He's complaining. He's jealous of COVID's media coverage.
HAYES: Seven days from November 3rd and Joe Biden is campaigning in Georgia.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There aren't a lot of pundits who would have guessed four years ago that a Democratic candidate for President in 2020 would be campaigning in Georgia on the final week of the election.
HAYES: Tonight, how 2020 is different from 2016 with Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. Then, former Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain on the plot to subvert the election in Pennsylvania.
Plus, plan your vote. As the U.S. mail slows down in the final week, what you need to do to make sure your ballot is counted.
And we'll go to the front lines of the pandemic nightmare in El Paso, Texas, where there's a COVID curfew and the funeral homes are overrun. When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Well, we are now one week from the end of this election, or at least the end of votes being cast in this election. I think it's fair to say there's an intense, almost unbearable level of anxiety right now among the millions and millions of people that make up the pro-democracy anti-Trump majority of this country.
It's a majority that's been ridiculed and belittled, of course, by the president and by the institutional Republican Party, and by conservatives and conservative media as somehow being out of touch, despite being the majority. And to be clear, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for people to be nervous a week before Election Day.
Number one, I don't have to remind you this, everyone remembers four years ago. And even though the national polls were pretty close to accurate, down the stretch, there were major polling issues in individual states, particularly Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, that meant that Donald Trump eked out that narrow victory in the Electoral College.
Number two, if this election was decided the way that almost every other election in America is decided by who gets the most votes, people would be less stressed out. After all, Joe Biden is leading nationally by almost eight points in the NBC polling average, and more than 66 million votes are already in. But of course, it is not decided that way. Instead, we use the Electoral College system which has allowed Republicans to win two of the past five presidential elections despite losing the popular vote.
And number three, the President is explicitly day in day out articulating a plan to undermine our system of free and fair elections, to undermine and subvert the legitimacy of legal ballots that are cast and to work with his allies that he has appointed to the courts, people he believes to be his allies, that will be yet to be proven, in order to claim victory no matter what.
Right now, there are some troubling signs from Trump-appointed justices and judges like Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court that they'd be all too happy to play along with the President's plan to stay in power. I'm going to talk about that later.
So, if you're feeling anxious, you don't need me to tell you this, but I'll tell you this. It's not crazy, OK. I know you're nervous. I'm nervous. We are too. This is stressful. What can you say? But here's the other thing. If it was not this race, all right, and if it was not this race and this guy, and we hadn't had the trauma of 2016, if this were just a, you know, electoral contest in another country, or a small municipal race in a town you didn't know much about, and I came here to tell you the numbers and talk you through it, you'd have very little question as to who was winning, OK, by a lot.
I mean, think about this. Today, the Democratic candidate for president, Joe Biden, was in the state of Georgia, Georgia, seven days before the election. Now, Joe Biden can easily win the election on the Electoral college without winning the state of Georgia. There are four or five more favorable states that could put them over the top.
And in fact, a Democrat hasn't won Georgia since all the way back in 1992 when Clinton carried it. Trump won it by five points last time. And if Trump were winning this race right now, Georgia would not be contested. That's just the truth. But it is. In fact, to pull out yesterday from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution basically showed the race to be a tie, extremely close. Now, listen to Biden himself at his drive-in rally in Atlanta today.
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BIDEN: There aren't a lot of pundits who would have guessed four years ago that a Democratic candidate for President in 2020 would be campaigning in Georgia on the final week of the election, or that we have such competitive Senate races in Georgia. But we do because something is happening here in Georgia and across America.
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HAYES: Georgia is not the only state that could upend expectations. Later this week, Kamala Harris is heading to Texas, Texas where polls show the Democratic ticket within striking distance, and where Michael Bloomberg is now dumping millions of dollars to try to put Democrats over the top. In fact, today, NBC News moved Texas from lean Republican to toss-up in the presidential race based on all the polling.
And look, if you pin me down as someone who's covered Texas politics over the years, who pays attention to this for a living about who's going to win Texas, I'd say Donald Trump is favored in that state. But the fact that is genuinely up in the air right now is remarkable. And with the early voting, no one can really model what this electorate looks like. You cannot underestimate and understate what a cataclysmic a Democratic win in Texas would be for the entire Republican Party and conservative movement around the country. And that Cataclysm for that movement and that party is a real possibility right now.
This is the NBC News battleground map out today. It shows that right now, Biden is expected to win 212 electoral votes versus just 125 for Trump. For Biden to get to 270, he only has to win a few of those toss up states in gray. Right now, he's leading in a lot of them.
Let's talk about one in particular, Florida, perennial Florida were nonpartisan poll out today show by him the two-point lead within the margin of error. So, it's closed because Florida is always close. Now, if Trump loses Florida, he's almost certainly done. And it's one of the states where we might well know that outcome on election night because of how they process and count their votes. And former President Obama was stumping for Biden at a driving rally in Orlando today, where he implored Democrats to do everything they could to deliver the state.
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OBAMA: We can't just dream for a better future. We got to fight for a better future. We got out hustled the other side. We've got to vote like never before and leave no doubt.
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HAYES: So, look, if you're stressed out, that makes sense. Lives hang in the balance. That's the fact of it. And it really feels like American democracy hangs in the balance in some ways. And there's only so much individuals can do about our collective fate as a nation. That's I think the source of the stress, the gap between the stakes and the outcome and what we can do. But the situation does look hopeful all things considered. I know you're probably scared to let yourself hope.
But what you can do is you can plan your vote. You make sure it gets counted. We're going to talk about how to do that in a moment. Heads up, Postal Services is running slow again, so mailing your ballot might not be a good option anymore. So, we're going to talk about that.
You can talk to your friends, and your loved ones. You can volunteer with organizations or campaigns that you believe in. You can donate to campaigns and causes and organizations you believe in. And the good news in all of this, the thing you can take inspiration is that there are tens of millions of people right now that are doing that, that are doing everything they can to make things right.
Someone probably has a better sense of the last-minute campaign push than anyone else right now is John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential Campaign, and he joins me now. John, I've been thinking about you a lot, because I think a lot about 2016, and we all do down the stretch to this election. What is your read having lived through that campaign, having lived through the big polling mess, particularly in those Midwestern states as you watch this unfold in the last week? Where's your head at?
JOHN PODESTA, CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN, HILLARY CLINTON 2016: I'm stressed out, Chris. But I think you gave the right advice. Just make sure you plan to vote, make jury vote early, make sure your vote is in and counted. If you haven't mailed your ballot in, drop it off or go to -- you know, in states that where you're able to do it, go vote early, and just make sure your vote gets counted.
But, you know, I think in reality, Biden is in very strong position. You see that I think by the way the two candidates are campaigning. Biden is confident in Georgia spreading the map. I think he's really campaigning partly, you know, to win Georgia, partly to try to help those two Democratic candidates who are running, partly nationally.
Now, he's in Warm Springs, which evokes a president who could really bring the country together as opposed to Donald Trump who's both done a terrible job and split the country, you know, in half.
HAYES: As you look at where we are right now, is this where you thought -- is this worse, better about where you thought we would be under the presidency of Donald Trump?
PODESTA: Oh, it's worse. You know, I think that, you know, we made a concerted effort to say that he only thought about himself, he was unequipped, ill-suited to be president. He didn't have the personality for it. But I don't -- I think anybody could have imagined a worst response to COVID. He's now effectively just thrown in the towel based on what he's been saying, what his chief of staff said on Sunday, you know, it can't be controlled, we're just going to forget about it.
He's running around the country doing super spreader events. And I think that no one could have anticipated how incompetent he was on top of what, you know, the -- his famous personality flaws, his bullying, his racism, etcetera.
HAYES: You know, there's always a suspicion, I think, with people that read about politics think that like when talk about internal numbers, that campaigns have access to some secret set of data that shows what's really going on. And sometimes they have access to more sophisticated data, but largely the data is the data.
You know, do you think that things have been corrected? Like, is your sense that obviously there was -- there was a blind spot that particularly among white non-college voters in the greater industrial Midwest, including Pennsylvania last time around? Like, Is it your sense that the pollsters and the campaigns and everyone have corrected for that?
PODESTA: Yes, I think they have all obviously done a lot of self-reflection. I think they, missed those states. I think the other thing we sometimes forget, is that we were fighting with Jim Comey that last week. The race did tighten up. We knew that it had tightened up. We thought we were -- had kind of pulled out of that. Remember, he famously sends the letter to the Hill, and then a week later sort of says never mind.
HAYES: Yes.
PODESTA: And so, we thought we had kind of weathered it, but we knew it definitely had tightened in the last week, and it was just enough to pull us under in those three states. But I think the polling now is better. There's more understanding of the need to adjust for college-educated versus non-college-educated white voters in those states. But nevertheless, Biden maintains a substantial lead in most of those states and a solid lead in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
You noted Florida is close, but he is Biden's ahead. And I think again, we might know that on election night. Now, I might add one thing, Chris, to what the President said. Donald Trump is closing this campaign saying really three things.
One, I'm throwing in the towel on COVID. Two, I put someone on the Supreme Court who is going to destroy the ACA, take away health insurance from 15 million people, and jeopardize health insurance for the hundred million people with preexisting conditions. And three, my main goal is to protect the subsidies to the oil industry, even as I'm not lifting a finger for people who are unemployed. That doesn't seem like a very strong closing argument to me.
HAYES: No, it doesn't. I mean, in some ways, I guess, my final question for you is this. I tweeted this earlier today. I have to say that, you know, I'm covering politics for 20 years, more or less. The craziest thing in the 20 years I've covered politics that I have seen is the fact that Donald Trump's approval number, which is bad around 42 percent, is essentially what it was in October of 2019.
225,000 deaths later, eight million infected, tens of millions out of work, a once in a century calamity, we spent three months in our houses, we all wear masks everywhere we go now, like kids aren't in school, same approval rating. It's nuts.
PODESTA: Well, you know, as President Obama said last week, it's not normal. He's not normal. Maybe the electorate isn't normal any longer. You know, this didn't happen to George W. Bush. His approval rating crashed, you know, particularly during the end of his term as a result of the Iraq war. But Trump, if nothing else, has a solid base but I think that's it.
He hasn't done anything to try to prove upon that and his performance holds him back, so that 42 percent is just an anchor on what he can expect on Election Day. Early voting, I think, is showing that. Young people's strong voting in the early vote is proving that. So, you know, I remain -- I remain nervous but hopeful.
HAYES: John Podesta who is stressed out like the rest of us, who have made some time to talk to us tonight. I appreciate it, John. Be good.
PODESTA: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: With just a week to go until polls begin closing, I'm joined by two people with deep understanding of presidential politics. Stephanie Schirock, president of Emily's List, the organization focused on recruiting and mobilizing the vote for pro-choice women candidates, and Dave Wasserman, house editor for the Cook Political Report. His latest piece for NBC News is titled, "The polls could be wrong, but that may help Biden and not just Trump."
Dave, let me -- let me start with you. Something that you and I have been sort of going back and forth on Twitter about another context is about the -- some of the polling we're seeing competitive house districts. I thought this is interesting. You flagged this tweet of yours about a Siena poll in New York's first congressional district back in 2016 that was showing, you know, Trump winning a district somewhat surprisingly, as a kind of sign of a warning symbol, a red flag about Clinton's strength or weakness with a certain pool of voters. What are you seeing in the district level polling now?
DAVE WASSERMAN, HOUSE EDITOR, THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT: Yes, Chris. So, I went back this week and looked at what I was saying in the final week of 2016 and what others were saying, and there were a few of us in the data world who were following congressional district level polling closely, who were shouting from the rooftops that we were seeing flashing red warning signs for Hillary Clinton real underperformance is in districts with large white working-class populations like northern Wisconsin, the southern tier of New York, which borders Pennsylvania, Suffolk County, Long Island, all over the place.
And so, this time around, what are we seeing? We're seeing flashing red warning signs for President Trump. And we're seeing them especially in suburban districts, in swing states, like Grand Rapids, Michigan, Michigan's third district. We're seeing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and in the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh.
These are places where we're seeing 10 point under performances from Trump's margin in 2016. And that's -- it defies logic that Trump would be making that up in other parts of the state. And that is why I am so confident that that Joe Biden is on track to win this election.
HAYES: Stephanie, you've worked in a number of campaigns, and obviously, Emily's List is working with candidates all the time. What's your read on what has changed, what's different this time around, where the big shifts are that is producing the environment we're in now?
STEPHANIE SCHIROCK, PRESIDENT, EMILY'S LIST: Well, we really need to cite almost immediately, and I have to go back to -- actually, I got to go back to the Women's March and then what we saw in Virginia in 2017 that then resulted in a huge blue wave in 2018, led by women candidates taking over the Democratic majority in the U.S. House. But that was really led by were women voters in particular in those suburban districts that were just fed up, and we are continuing to see that.
And Dave is right. We're looking at these suburban districts too have a lot of women. And these -- and these candidates, great candidates in these House districts across the country talking about Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, these are really strong candidates. These are in suburban districts that we didn't pick up in 18, where we're leading in 2020.
Why do you see these huge swings? And it's happening -- It's happening in the Senate races too. In places where I didn't think necessarily, we'd be playing. And we're playing in Kansas. We're playing in Texas. We're playing in Iowa in the U.S. Senate.
HAYES: Yes. The thing that's crazy to me, I mean, you just mentioned a bunch of states where there's both competitive Senate races and also looks pretty competitive at the presidential level, Dave. You know, one thing that's happening here is because of some of the shifts that are happening among certain demographic groups and how those are replicated in different places, right, particularly large metro areas with fairly significant numbers of white folks with college degrees who used to be a very bedrock Republican constituency, particularly in the Dallas metro area for an example, right. Like, that's, that's a real solid Romney core that has now moved.
You know, there's a sort of strange convergence happening where like Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas are all looking like not that different from each other in the polling right now, which is pretty nuts, because those were -- those were quite different and had been quite different prior.
WASSERMAN: Yes. The Florida Georgia line, so to speak, is getting pretty thin for those country music fans out there. We're seeing all those states basically converging in a similar tossup range. And look, the one thing that Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas all have in common, they are must win states for the President.
President Trump won Florida by 1.2, North Carolina by 3.7, Georgia by 5.1, and Texas by 9.0 in 2016. But they've all moved pretty proportionately to those margins in Democrat's favor. And that means that they're all kind of in the same narrow trading range at the moment and that's excellent news for Joe Biden.
What we're seeing simultaneously is modest but consistent leads for Biden in the states that he absolutely needs to get in order to get 270 which include my book Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He needs three of those four.
HAYES: And Michigan, Stephanie, quickly, is a state where the kind of thing you're talking about we saw on display in 2018, the election of Gretchen Whitmer, the election of a few different Democratic women in those sort of swing seats. And now it's sort of like it's from a perspective of having some power that state is happening. And we're seeing some of the same trends, which is -- which is interesting to me.
SCHIROCK: That's exactly right. And when you elect somebody like Governor Whitmer to run the state of Michigan, you get this whole new energy because you realize that you've got the power to make the change in your vote. And I think that's the other thing you're seeing in these states Chris, is you're seeing voters recognize their power, that when they come together, and they vote, they win. And they needed to be reminded of that after 2016.
And that's what '18 did. And that's why I think you're seeing an early voter turnout across the country, and you're going to see high turnout all the way through the voting on Tuesday.
HAYES: Also, it turns out like in Georgia and Texas, if states are swing states, lots of people vote turnout which like that's nice, right? Like, let's all have our votes count. Get rid of the Electoral College. Stephanie Schirock and Dave Wasserman, thank you, thank you both.
Next up, the Trump strategy to sow chaos once all the ballots have been cast. Now, it seems as though the Supreme Court handed him a pretty big victory in a crucial state. I'll explain after this.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks which is totally inappropriate. And I don't believe that that's by our laws. I don't believe that. So, we'll see what happens.
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HAYES: He's, of course, wrong there. It's completely by our laws. But the President's approach to this election is very clear, polarize mail-in voting, right, by questioning its integrity, get your people to turn on Election Day, depress turnout generally, attempt to claim victory on election night before millions of those votes are counted, the mailed-in ones, because you know they're mostly from the Democrats, then use the courts to try and get those ballots tossed out under completely baseless accusations of fraud.
It's a crazy, crazy scheme, it's vicious, but Republican legislators in swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are actively helping with the plan. I mean, their position, listen to this, is this is that they can't count ballots that arrive after election day because they have to know the winner by election night.
At the same time, the same Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have stood in the way of efforts to allow their states to presort the mail-in votes so that they could produce a quicker count on election night, right? They want this sort of liminal space of ballots uncounted. That's the key. And this is all in line with the Trump strategy, create maximum amounts of ambiguity for him and Trump T.V. and GOP lawyers to exploit.
And now you have a Supreme Court justice taking up this same past time. Just before the Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court last night that handed down to 5-3 decision to throw out mail-in ballots in Wisconsin that are postmarked by election day but arrive after the day, right.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote an opinion that sticks out for how much it parrots Trump's talking points on mail-in ballots. "States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election."
What? That argument that votes should not be counted after Election Day for free of -- fear of impropriety and suspicions is so specious that when Trump tweeted out essentially the same argument minutes later, Twitter hid the tweet behind a warning, saying it might be misleading about how to participate in an election.
Now, Kavanaugh is one of three Supreme Court justices along with Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts who are part of Bush's legal team during Bush v. Gore. And it appears that the model of that dubious victory is now in the minds of many of the right.
Ron Klain bears the scars from the last presidential race decided by the Supreme Court. He was the general counsel -- can you imagine that -- on Al Gore's recount committee in 2000, and he joins me now.
Ron, you have an interesting set of experiences from being the recount dude in Florida, the Ebola czar. You're now part of the Biden campaign. What's your reaction having been in the trenches of the last brutal fight to read those words by Justice Kavanaugh, this idea that like we have to know election night to watch what the President is doing? What's your reaction having lived through this?
RON KLAIN, SENIOR ADVISOR, BIDEN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Well, before Justice Brett Kavanaugh took the position, he took at that opinion yesterday, Lawyer Brett Kavanaugh stood in Florida and argued that votes could be added to the tally as late as Thanksgiving. In fact, if lawyer Brett Kavanaugh had not gotten votes added to the tally of Thanksgiving weekend, Al Gore would have been President of the United States.
Al Gore was set to go ahead on the recount that weekend, and Brett Kavanaugh and the Bush legal team went into courts, went into canvassing boards and ask them to count votes that by the way, had no postmarks at all of them, had no indication of when they had been voted at all, and simply were sitting around and he jammed into the tally.
So, there's no way to look at this as anything other than rank hypocrisy and a reversal of convenience by Justice Kavanaugh.
HAYES: In my interest to bend over backwards, to be fair, I will say the role of an advocate and a justice is different. He had a client in that case in the Bush -- the Bush lawyers who pursuing zealously their cause. He is now a justice. But there is something troubling about just, you know, the logic he uses is not that different necessarily on legal grounds and some of the other folks in that 5-3 decision, but that he goes out of his way to make these sort of specious claims.
You know, Justice Kagan I thought had a good rebuttal. She says Justice Kavanaugh alleges that suspicions of impropriety will result if absentee ballots flow in after Election Day and potentially flip the results in election. But there are no results to flip until all valid votes are counted. That to me is the key principle for all involved here.
KLAIN: Chris, I think you're right. Look, I mean, I thought Justice Kagan's opinion had it right, of course. But to your point before, you know, election lawyers know that there's a trick to this game, which is you want your client to be ahead and then you want the vote counting to stop. And that -- you know, that was the strategy that George Bush pursued in Florida while also simultaneously adding additional votes to the tally.
There was an effort just simply to win at all costs. They won, we lost, the country's suffered for 20 years as a result. And look, there's only one answer. If you're out there listening tonight, you heard John Podesta at the start of the show expressing his anxieties. We all have one tool that can prevent Brett Kavanaugh from impacting this election. That's for people to go out and vote. And if we vote, and we win by enough votes, then the courts don't get involved.
Now, Wisconsin lived through this in April, the start of the pandemic with an election for a Supreme Court Justice, the State Supreme Court Justice, where Wisconsinites in the middle of a pandemic voted in record numbers and produced a surprise 10 point win, Jill Karofsky of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
So, this is in the hands of the voters of Wisconsin. They're the ones who can decide if the Supreme Court decides or not.
HAYES: And I think that -- yes, I think that's an important point. But I just want to push back a little bit or say this. From a motivating perspective and from a descriptive and political analysis, I agree. A Joe Biden national victory of eight or nine or 10 points settles the question, right? But in a narrow normative sense, if Joe Biden wins Pennsylvania by 100 votes when all the votes are counted, and that gives him 270, he's the next president. There's no special rule the Democrats have to win by more. Like, you win -- if you win, you win.
And if Bush v Gore 537 votes in Florida prove one thing, it's like, there shouldn't be any understanding the Democrats have to somehow pad the lead to actually legitimately take office.
KLAIN: No, Chris, absolutely not. Of course, you're right. And of course, Vice President Biden has a team of some of the best lawyers in the country ready to go to court, if needed, to establish that a win, if he achieves it, is a legitimate win, and to make sure the courts don't set it aside. We're prepared to fight this campaign in the courts if it comes to that.
My only point is that it shouldn't come to that. And it shouldn't come to that not because Democrats have some special burden to win by more votes, but because Donald Trump is a horrible president, and Democrats and everyone else, Independents and Republicans should show up at the polls and make a clear statement that the era of Trump is over and it's time to get this country back on track.
HAYES: Well, that's --
KLAIN: That's a political conclusion out of a legal conclusion. You're absolutely right about the law. But I'm telling you, I think I'm absolutely right about what should happen next Tuesday based on the Trump record and the alternative Joe Biden is offering people.
HAYES: Yes, that -- well, that segues nicely into our next segment. Ron Klain who's a very, very busy man, and will get more busy as time goes on, thank you for making some time for us tonight.
KLAIN: Thanks for having me, Chris.
HAYES: With only seven days until the end of voting, it is officially crunch time. And if you or someone you know has not cast their ballot yet, you do not want to miss our next segment. What you need to know right after this.
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HAYES: We are one week from the end of voting. And if you have not cast your ballot yet, it is crunch time. As I mentioned before, you can go to NBC.com/planyourvote for all the information about how to vote in every single state.
And the other thing that we've been talking about in the run-up to Election Day is the added complexity caused by the mail slowdown, you'll remember, under the Trump-appointed Postmaster General, Republican fundraiser, Louis DeJoy. And guess what, the mail is still slower than it should be.
Before DeJoy instituted changes this summer, the Postal Service routinely delivered over 90 percent of the nation's first-class mail on time. In the week of October 16th, 85.6 percent of all first-class mail in the country was delivered on time, and it was significantly worse in some key battleground states and particularly regions with them. In the Philly metro area, just 76.9 percent was on time. In the Detroit postal District, which includes most of these to Michigan, only 71.5 percent was on time.
And so we are seeing a messaging shift among elections experts and Democratic leaders. Here's the governor of Pennsylvania who was on our air earlier today with his advice to voters.
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GOV. TOM WOLF (D-PA): We're actually suggesting, encouraging people to walk their balance in right now. I don't think people should be waiting till the very last minute to send in their mail-in ballot. They should be doing it right now.
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HAYES: So, this is the final seven-day window. If you're one of those people has not yet cast your ballot, you haven't voted yet, we want to talk about how you can still vote. Xochitl Hinojosa is here to help us with that. She's communications director of the Democratic National Committee. And I should note, the advice is the same no matter which party you're voting for or which candidate. We just want to make sure that your vote gets delivered.
So, Xochitl, first, I guess, the first point to make here is about there's always obviously Election Day. Like, if you're registered to vote, you can go to your local polling place and vote like normal. What is your sort of advice about that in terms of people's worries about safety and social distancing and the like?
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, DNC: Well, my advice is that it's easy. We want people -- then, they have options. If you take out your phone right now, if you are one of the people, like Chris said, who has not voted yet, I want you to take out your mobile device right now and I want you to go to IWillVote.com, and I want you to make a plan to vote right this minute.
And whether that is if you hold your ballot in hand, find a way to drop it out of drop box, if you decide that you're going to vote in person, go ahead and figure out, can I vote in-person early this week or am I going to vote on election day. You have options and we want to make sure voters understand that.
If you are voting in person, bring a mask, bring a pen, bring some hand sanitizer. It is easy. I actually voted in person in the primary and what I noticed was that there were hardly any people around me. There are people out voting, but at the same time people were keeping their distance and it is easy to do.
So, we want voters to understand that they have options, but you only have one week left. This is it. If you don't want four more years of Donald Trump, then you need to go and vote. It is critical. If you want to make sure that you are seeing your grandchildren, because of this pandemic, after this pandemic, you want to make sure that we are dealing with COVID-19 and you want steady leadership, we need to go out there and vote for Joe Biden. It is urgent.
HAYES: OK, so in-person voting -- I mean, one thing I will note about in-person voting, I went in early in person voting. It's fairly crowded, there's a long line, but everything was outside, right? So, I mean, the sort of risk -- my understanding on the public health here is that in-person voting, you don't want a lot of people inside particularly unmasked for long periods of time. Most voting sites I've seen have been keeping people outside, limiting the number of people inside. It's a fairly, you know, short amount of time inside, so that's one thing.
But the second thing is this question about mail-in votes. OK, so let's say I have an absentee ballot and I haven't sent it in yet, what should I do?
HINOJOSA: I want you to go to IWillVote.com and figure out where you are turning it in, because you can either put it in a drop box, you can either potentially take it to your polling location, or you can go ahead and vote in person. And so there are various options right now. But you have to make that plan right this minute because there are different laws in various states, and you want to make sure that you are following the rules in every state.
HAYES: Yes, so that's a key point here. If and, again, rules vary by state but you -- it is fine -- and I don't know every state's election law, but I generally know. If you get an absentee ballot, if you don't -- you can just say OK, you know what, I'm going to go vote in person and go vote in person. And it's not like wrong to do that. Even if they sent you an absentee ballot, you can always still just go and vote in person even if you got an absentee ballot.
HINOJOSA: That's right. In some states, you're able to go ahead and do that and go ahead and vote in person. But it again, in every state it varies. And in every state, you want to make sure that you are following the rules whether that is if you are voting by mail and putting it in a drop box and following the laws in your state, you want to make sure that you are filling it out with ink or follow the directions on there. Make sure it goes into the envelope and then into the other envelope. Make sure you sign it.
You want to follow all of the directions very carefully because you want your vote to count. And every state has done it so it is easy for voters to either vote in person or they can vote by mail, whether via drop box or by other means.
HAYES: All right, Xochitl Hinojosa, you can go to NBC.com/planyourvote or IWillVote.com. Both of them will guide you through local state election laws to make sure that you can get your vote counted. Thank you so much.
Coming up, hospitals in El Paso are so overrun with Coronavirus cases, are reportedly setting up a field hospital to manage the influx of patients. The troubling story is coming out of one of the country's hardest-hit areas just ahead.
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TRUMP: Don't let it dominate. Don't let it take over your lives. Don't let that happen. We're the greatest country in the world. We're going back. We're going back to work. We're going to be out front.
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HAYES: For months now, the president, the vice president, Trump T.V., conservative media have all been downplaying the threat of Coronavirus and telling Americans to get back out there. Even though the President got COVID-19 and was hospitalized for it, got top quality public leaf funded health care. And that happened after a White House super sprayer event that appears who sickened more than a dozen people.
The president also apparently helped spread Coronavirus to his supporters in Minnesota as well. Authorities traced almost two dozen cases to Trump campaign events in the state last month. Five Pence staffers have also recently tested positive, although the Vice President is defying quarantine guidelines.
And now the New York Times report says several high level Fox News employees including the President of the network and anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum were advised to quarantine because they were on the same chartered flight after the presidential debate last Thursday, as someone who turned out to have COVID.
That's as its on-air anchors continue to downplay the danger of the virus day in day out. Of course, this is just one -- just a window into one small part of life in America in October 2020 where we have an out of control virus raging across the country the White House has now just given up on trying to contain.
We're seeing the results of that decision every day with more than 225,000 of our fellow Americans dead. The number of climbing every day. A continuing surge in new cases, especially across the Midwest and West as you can see in red on this map. In Utah, new cases have been hitting record highs in recent days. Patients are pouring into the intensive care unit in hospitals in that state even those facilities are now understaffed for months of this pandemic.
As the president Utah Hospital Association told the Salt Lake Tribune, "We're down 20 to 30 percent. Hundreds and hundreds of nurses are not able to work as they were because of their own disease or infection of the family or their moms and dads with school issues. Some are worn out. Some are on leave because they've been doing this for seven months.
Wisconsin, another hotspot, now seeing thousands of new cases daily, hitting a triple record high today of deaths, hospitalizations, and daily cases. In El Paso, Texas officials have set up field hospitals after hospital and ICU beds reached full capacity this week. They got to the brim. We're going to talk to -- with a county official in El Paso who's ringing the alarm and asking the governor for more resources next.
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HAYES: No matter how many times the president says we are rounding the turn on Coronavirus, it doesn't make it true. In fact, things are getting worse or getting bad very quickly. Infections are spreading across the U.S., the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic. According to NBC News latest numbers, 71,000 new cases per day average is the most of any seven-day stretch.
Right now, El Paso, Texas is one of the hardest-hit spots in all the country as we head into this mounting third wave. The area is dealing with more than 13,000 active cases right now. Look at this chart, active cases marked by the yellow dots, it just skyrockets.
At the beginning of this month, nearly 900 people are currently hospitalized, 206 of them are in ICU beds. The convention center there is now converted into a 50 bed-field hospital able to expand up to 100 beds. There are some very scary stories coming up the highlight of the out of control nature of the virus.
Local funeral director Jorge Ortiz told The Guardian, he has been forced to put an overflow of bodies into a chapel at one of his funeral homes. Ortiz said he -- we actually converted one of our chapels into a cooler. We're not going to be able to have visitations there anymore.
The situation is so dangerous, the County Judge Ricardo Samaniego imposed a 10:00 p.m. curfew for the next two weeks for anything other than emergencies or travel to and from work as a first step in trying to mitigate the spread. And on Thursday, Judge Samaniego sent a letter to Governor Greg Abbott reporting the area's coronavirus outbreak and saying I urge you to push for the approval of William Beaumont Hospital, that's the military hospital at Fort Bliss, as a resource for treating coronavirus patients.
Judge Ricardo Samaniego of El Paso joins me now. It's good to have you, Judge. And I'm sorry that you are going through what you are there in El Paso. We know what it looks like here in New York. Describe to us what the situation is there right now.
JUDGE RICARDO SAMANIEGO, EL PASO COUNTY, TEXAS: Well, you know, obviously we're on in a crisis situation. We've got full capacity of our hospitals. You've got, you know, everybody trying to pull together. One of the things, we've done almost 800 personnel, medical personnel from Texas that we've been given to be able to address the virus.
We've got the tents coming in with negative pressure. We've got the convention center, as you mentioned, Chris. We've got almost everything that we need to do. Recently, one of the steps that I've taken is to get quiet as neighbors so to -- you know, we're right up with our neighbors. And we've got Dona Ana from New Mexico, that's also there.
So, we have a very different dynamics, a lot of the individuals passing from Juarez to El Paso, El Paso to Juarez. So, we have a lot of things that we need to look at. But it is a crisis, we've anticipated -- a lot of people think that it gets surprises. But really, we've been working on this almost three months finding new space. We purchased a hospital that we're opening up for non-COVID patients. We're trying to do the best that we can in order to understand the situation.
And I'd like, just to add Chris, is that when we were focusing on public health and trying to minimize the economy, that was a reason we were able to start opening businesses. As soon as we shifted from focusing on the economy and trying to minimize the impact of the virus, I think that's when the numbers begin to increase. So, I'm doing just the opposite of going back to what we did.
HAYES: Well, I guess my question for you is, I mean, obviously, it sounds like you're dealing with this supply constraint on the amount of health care provision you can -- you can have in your area, right. So, health care workers, hospital bed space, trying to expand. But obviously, the virus is going to outrun that unless, you know, that curve comes down.
You have a curfew right now. Like, what is your understanding of what tools you have at your disposal as a local policymaker to break the back of that curve?
SAMANIEGO: We're under the governor's orders. So, what I did, when I had requested -- actually requested to see we could have a shutdown, and it wasn't denied but it wasn't approved, and so it was one of those things. So, the best thing I could do, Chris, is to take the shutdown, and what are the provisions within the shutdown that under my authority, that I would be able to implement and issue, and the curfew was obviously one.
We're trying to stop mobility, also young adults going into Juarez to be able to party and entertain themselves there. We stopped that. So, in essence, the shutdown really takes place after 10:00 p.m. because we're able to then not allow individuals to be out. But some -- I'm still constrained by the fact that we're in we have a 50 percent capacity on restaurants and venues like we could have weddings and so forth are still under that 50 percent. Gyms, which we get a lot of comments about, you know, the situation there, we're still at 50 percent.
So, within the governor's order, I've done everything possible to do something that would not, you know, go against the order -- because I know it's happened before, if I go against the order, I get an injunction, and we're going to be more in this situation, instead of looking at resources and working with a government in those positive areas of that have been so important to us during this crisis.
HAYES: So, let me ask this. I know that in Arizona, for example, during the summer, there was reticence about sort of rolling back policy. And eventually they closed the bars and they allowed county officials to offer masks mandates things like that. Is behavior changing in El Paso?
We've seen a sort of interesting interplay in lots of places in terms of policy and behavior, which is that if there's an outbreak, even if you don't say close restaurants or gyms, people stop going to them because they don't want to get sick. Like, are you seeing behavior changing in your traffic data and the amount of people that are masking in terms of people going to bars and things like that, that give you some faith that that curve can be brought down?
SAMANIEGO: Well, you know, the way it starts, Chris, is that we go from 50 to 75, and everybody gets excited and they drop their guard. So, I'm always very careful when we were going -- moving forward because the first thing that would happen, people stop going to testing, things seem to get better, and then we're right back to the same situation, especially after the holiday.
So, once we saw that, then obviously it does help. When we went to restaurants -- first, restaurants no service after nine. That didn't work very well. And then I implemented in my order that it would -- you have to be out of the business by nine. So, I know that's going to be a huge contributor of the curfew. Obviously, like I said, not allowing young adults to cross back and forth from Juarez. That's going to be -- so, I think we're changing the behavior. We're trying to do the best we can.
There's a lot of recommendations. For example, if you go by yourself, one per household to go shopping, that obviously limits the mobility.
HAYES: Yes.
SAMANIEGO: And so, anything that prevents us from having either an accident or any situation of somebody ending up in a hospital actually contributing to do that. So, mine is two weeks. My order is very strong in two weeks to give us the opportunity to be able to determine whether we take the next step which would be me asking for a shutdown. And we extremely -- you know, just upfront.
And I'm going to do that independent of the -- if I see the numbers increasing, I will go for the shutdown, and then I have to wait for the injunction, but I'm not going to ask for --
HAYES: We're going to hope you don't have to do that and we're going to hope that curve comes down and monitor the situation. El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, thank you very much.
That is ALL IN for this Tuesday night, which means "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
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