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top of the 8:00 hour here on the east coast. and by my calculations, our coverage of election night and that's me and rachel and joe and nicolle, started 25 hours, 59 minutes ago, and here we are. before too long, if we're not careful, one of these outstanding states is going to put this race over the top for either candidate. steve kornacki, who has taken some nourishment and gotten some rest, his health is now a national matter during this time, is back at the big board tonight with a second or third wind. steve, what are you looking at? >> well, actually, pennsylvania, brian. we just got some more votes in. we got a bunch of them in. we have been tracking this story of that trump lead dwindling in

pennsylvania, as more votes are counted. and you can see now, it sits at basically 200,000 votes, just over 3 percentage points. trump's advantage over biden. again, the question here is exactly how many votes are out there. the best guess here is that there's, you know, close to 900,000 remaining. and the key for biden, as we have been saying, is these are mail-in ballots that are being counted up here. so certainly in the democratic area, in philadelphia, in a pittsburgh, you know, a harrisburg, he's winning the mail vote overwhelmingly there. but even in the republican friendly counties, the mail vote itself is something where joe biden tends to be beaten donald trump, sometimes by 10, 20 points. in other words, he's winning this overwhelmingly. if he continues to win the mail-in vote in these remaining ballots at the rate he's getting right now, the clip he's getting, above two thirds of it, he could net another 300,000 votes out of those remaining

ballots. if that estimate is correct, he could net another 300,000. and you see, he's sitting there down 200,000 right now. that would put joe biden ahead. that would put him ahead by about 100,000 vote, just at the pace he's at right now. we want to make sure that count, that estimate of what's left is accurate. checking that. we want to make sure that that pace, see if he continues at that pace or if he his any unexpected hiccups there, but at the pace that he's getting votes right now with the mail-in ballots and we're just talking about mail-in ballots at this point, he could get past donald trump. that looks like a big number. there are a lot of ballots out there, and joe biden is winning the lion's share of them. >> that's a very important update in terms of pennsylvania. i believe we also have an update in terms of the united states senate. is that correct? yes. nbc news can now project that in the united states senate race in the great state of michigan, democratic incumbent gary peters has held on and will be returning to the senate. this is an important, important

part in terms of the democrats and republicans' calculation in terms of the balance of power in the senate. it's also been a real drama for peters himself. that was a tight, tight race. it has taken sort of second place in the national media's attention to the presidential fight in michigan, but that senate race was very, very hard fought. gary peters will be returning to the u.s. senate. again, that's just new. nbc news just projecting that at this hour. >> we're talking now about not only the outstanding races and the timeline for when we expect final votes to be in. we're watching nevada tonight, arizona, pennsylvania, georgia, north carolina. but we're also now watching the league fight that's being waged by the trump campaign in multiple states to try to stop the vote in the state of michigan, in pennsylvania, in wisconsin, where nbc news has described vice president biden as the apparent winner.

the trump campaign has brought lawsuits to stop the vote. this wisconsin lawsuit just being filed tonight. cal perry is in milwaukee, wisconsin, for us tonight. cal, what are you seeing on the ground there. what's the latest in terms of the resolution here? >> reporter: well, listen, try this on for size. donald trump won this state four years ago by a factor of just 25,000 votes. joe biden has won it by a slimmer margin. that is less than 1% difference in the vote. the trump campaign has said they will try a recount here in the state. the first thing that needs to happen is the state needs to certify the vote. that will happen in about a week. then there's a three-day window that opens up, the trump campaign is officially ask for the recount, then the state has 13 days. there are 72 counties in the state. each one will go through and do their own version of recounting. for history here, four years ago when we had a recount, only 131 votes actually switched hands. while a number of us are probably going to be living in the state for the next month,

the chances that the vote actually changes very much is very low. it does seem to be, as we're seeing from the president, sort sof an overall delaying tactic, rachel. >> cal perry for us in milwaukee, thank you very much. we're going to get some very, very expert advice on the same subject right now from josh call, who is the attorney general of the state of wisconsin. he's also co-chair of vote safe wisconsin which is a bipartisan coalition to promote safe voting during the pandemic. attorney general, thank you so much for taking time to be here tonight. i know you're still really in the center of the storm. >> thanks for having me. >> first, let me just ask you to reflect on what wisconsin has just been through. how the vote went. you have 99% of the vote in. nbc is reporting joe biden is the apparent winner in wisconsin. his lead there a little more than 20,000, 20,500. tell us how you feel as a law enforcement official in wisconsin, how you feel the vote went and how things stand today. >> well, the process went incredibly smoothly.

we had a record breaking number of people using absentee voting and in-person early voting. we didn't have any real issues at the polls. a lot of people were concerned thaubt in advance. we took a lot of steps to prepare to make sure that if anything did arise, it would be addressed quickly, and we didn't really have any issues. and what we have seen is small change from what we had in 2016, but a very significant one. that led to joe biden winning the state by about 20,000 votes. it took a little while longer to count the votes that might be ideal, but that's because we have a law in wisconsin like they have in michigan and pennsylvania that doesn't allow absentee ballots to be counted until election day. that's a law that our republican legislature could have changed. people called on them to change that, but they didn't. but now we have the full results in or just about the full results. and we will move forward. >> in terms of the trump campaign seeking a recount,

obviously, after the 2016 election, there was the recount that was instigated by jill stein, third party, green party candidate. i also remember in i think it was 2011 covering a very hard fought recount, a very controversial recount in wisconsin over a state supreme court seat. in which sort of more progressive challenger appeared to defeat a more conservative candidate. there was then a recount, and the recount ended up changing the count quite significantly, and the more conservative candidate ended up winning the race. there was a lot of kroecontrove over late found ballots in a county that was seen to be friendly to the candidate who benefitted from those things. if there is a recount of those ballots, are you confident in wisconsin's ability to do so with sort of no muss and no fuss and not tee much additional controversy? >> i am, and rachel, your memory is pretty good, i have to say. in 2011, there was a state

supreme court race and some additional ballots were found late, but that was before the recount process started. in the recounts themselves, the change in the number of votes has only been a few hundred votes, both in 2016 and in 2011. here we're talking about a margin of more than 20,000 votes. it would be unprecedented to make up anything like that kind of number of votes in a recount, and scott walker today tweeted that this was a high hurdle, so i don't know if we're even going to see the trump campaign go forward with this recount, but if they do, the odds of them having the result change are basically zero. >> and would we expect it to take a long time? i know there's that 13-day prescription in terms of how long the recount should take, but then potentially if the challenger, the person who lost the recount or came out as the losing candidate at the end of the recount wanted to challenge it, it would then start going into the wisconsin state court system. what do you see as the outside

timeline in terms of how longy krount miga recount might take in terms of a verdict in your state? >> it has to taken in 13 days, but i think it would happen more quickly than that. my recollection of the 2016 recount happened more quickly. this is something we have training in because we had one four years ago. we have a lot of close elections in wisconsin. four out of the last six presidential elections were less than one percentage point. in 2018, i won by less than one percentage point, and our governor, tony evers, won by just more than that. we're used to dealing with close elections. we have consistently been shown to have secure, reliable results that reflect the will of the voters, and i'm very confident that if this recount does go forward, it will happen swiftly and it will show that the results that have been reported so far are very accurate reflection of what the votes cast were. >> wisconsin attorney general

josh call, thank you so much for helping us understand it. obviously, there's a lot of different states right now where there's a lot of different types of wrangling going on, but thanks helping us understand what's going to happen in wisconsin. >> all right, we are right now in a situation where we are waiting on results from five different states, but we have adjusted our timelines over the course of just being on the air for the last couple hours in terms of when we are expecting more votes. steve, we keep hearing that we might be getting some vote from arizona imminently, but it looks like we're getting some new vote now. >> yeah, we're expecting i think the top of the hour, so 9:00 eastern, if it's past 8:00 now, 9:00 p.m. eastern, we're expecting probably a fair amount of vote here. again, this is the state-wide picture in arizona right now. we're expecting a bunch from maricopa. this is almost two thirds of the votes out of arizona are going to come from maricopa. the phoenix metro area. you see how the vote counting is going now.

here's the deal on what is outstanding in maricopa county. there's about 420,000 votes still to come out of maricopa county. there's about 600,000 total still to come state-wide, so again, the lion's share of the outstanding vote is coming out of maricopa county. this is the suspense. you have mentioned other folks have called the arizona race. there's some people saying was that too early? here's the reason why there has been some suspense here. arizona's votes come in three buckets. the first bucket of votes, call them the early votes, these were the ones that were cast weeks ago. folks mailed them in in october, folks mailed them in a week before the election. this is the bucket that contains every ballot that was cast up until the weekend before the election. this is what was counted first in maricopa county. it's the largest bucket. and we expect it's perhaps the most democratic bucket, a very democratic bucket. joe biden won it by ten points.

so those are the first votes that we saw last night out of maricopa, and everywhere in arizona. now, the second bucket of votes, this is the one that was tabulated overnight last night. the second bucket of votes is the same day. it's folks who showed up, said i want to vote, in sort of normal old fashioned way of going to the polls and getting your ballot on election day. this is a very republican group. donald trump was winning this group, something on the order of 26 points. now, they have counted, we believe, all of the same-day vote in maricopa county. all of that early vote, all of that same-day vote, and it's left the overall picture in maricopa in this position. biden leading by six. wins the early by ten, loses the same day by 26, and it brings us to the third and final bucket of votes. that's what we're expecting to get a read out on at 9:00 eastern time or thereabouts. what this is, we're going to call this the late early vote.

okay. and what -- i can't really read my writing on that. the late early vote. these are the ballots, the mail-in ballots that arrived after the last week, like the monday before the election. that arrived like right before election day or that people drove in to the their polling places on election day. and i think you were talking about this, rachel, with your guest earlier. there's a little bit of suspense. a little bit of philosophical debate among election nerds that's playing out right now because we know the early was going to be democratic. and it was. we know the same-day was going to be republican, and it was. and then the question is, what is this going to be? what is this late early going to be? look at how many ballots there are now. one argument is, it tends -- it's early vote. we keep talking about the democratic vote as being the early vote. hey, won't this be democratic vote? could be. we'll find out in an hour. the argument against that is, a dynamic we have seen in this election is that the democratic early vote was so excited, so

enthusiastic, so eager to get out there, it was cast weeks ahead of time. it wasn't cast on the last day. it wasn't driven into the polls on the last day. that's the behavior going to the election place, that's republican voting behavior this year, so those are the arguments you're hearing people make. the trump campaign is making the last argument i made. no, those are republican votes that are about to come in. there's 420,000 republican votes about to come in. trump's going to win them by 26 points again, if he wins them by 26 points, he catches joe biden in maricopa county. he catches him state-wide. that's the question. what trump has to do, if he wants to catch biden in maricopa, if he wants to catch him in arizona, he's got to win the late early bucket by the same score that he won the same-day vote. he's got to be over 60%. he's got to win it by about 26. anything less than that probably not going to be enough to catch biden. that's the suspense we're building towards in arizona. >> steve, when that third

bucket, the early laets comes in, regardless of whether or not they're enough to put president trump in a lead, do you think that will be enough vote, again, which we might get in 45 minutes, to call arizona one way or another? >> so i am not authorized to speak on behalf of our decision desk, but i would say, i know that all of the folks looking at the elections, not anywhere in particular, want to know. the question everyone is asking when you start to get the votes is, is this a republican group or is this a democratic group? and if you establish it's a democratic group, you could probably extrapolate from there. >> okay, and i don't mean to ask too much of you, but let's say that president trump does well at the top of this hour when those votes come in in arizona. let's say president trump wins arizona. if joe biden wins georgia, do both candidates still have a potential path to 270? >> so let's take a look here.

the scenario you're talking about, here's where we are right now. oh, i got georgia colored in there. now, i want to make sure this is exactly where we are. alaska is also colored in. it shouldn't be. 253. 214. that's where we are right now. >> yeah. >> you're asking if trump overtakes biden in arizona. >> yes. >> let's assign that to trump, you can see what it does. now trump is at 225. >> mm-hmm. >> biden, yes, there are still a number of paths for biden at that point. if biden for instance were to get georgia, now you see biden -- wrong color. look at that. there you see biden at 269. and he would need one other electoral vote. could he get it in pennsylvania? could he get it in north carolina? he would practically speaking need pennsylvania. there's a scenario where he could pull out north carolina here, it involves ballots that were already put in the mail before election day and that we just -- that's what he's relying on to win north carolina. pennsylvania, the math i just

showed you, that's a more solid proposition for biden than north carolina. so if he does not, biden, get arizona or nevada, he could get nevada. that's the easier one. he could get nevada. >> nevada we don't expect to know, we think, until tomorrow given in terms of when they're go to put the votes forward. >> tomorrow around noon, we expect to get a read-out on nevada and see if biden can hold on to the lead twlrb their reporting these votes now very quickly in pennsylvania. we're watching them, just since we have been on the air, we have watched the trump lead in pennsylvania come down dramatically, so one thing we're trying to find out right now, are they processing these and are they reporting these out overnight in pennsylvania? because i think we have had some thinking here that nevada, noon tomorrow, you know, after you get through arizona tonight, nevada noon tomorrow might be the next kind of, you know, moment of truth. if they keep doing this overnight, what we're seeing them do right now in pennsylvania, you know, that could speed the process up in pennsylvania.

we could get clarity there sooner than we were thinking. >> lots of what ifs, lauments of gymnastics to put steve kornacki through. we only ask him questions we really need the answer to. joe biden tallied up major victories today. president trump tallied up some major legal fees. lawrence o'donnell will join us next to talk about all of it. stay with us. ♪ ♪

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once this election is finalized and behind us, it will be time for us to do what we have always done as americans, to put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us. to make progress we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies. we are not enemies. what brings us together as americans is so much stronger than anything that can tear us

apart. so let me be clear. we are campaigning as democrats, but i will govern as an american president. every vote must be counted. no one is going to take our democracy away from us. not now, not ever. my friends, i'm confident we'll emerge victorious. but this will not be my victory alone or our victory alone. it will be a victory for the american people, for our democracy, for america. >> that was joe biden earlier today. let's talk about what we just witnessed. especially compared to what we witnessed in the east room last night. lawrence o'donnell, the host of "the last word" is with us. lawrence, on the aaron sorkin scale, biden today was an eight. trump last night was between e o and one, but that's what we're accustomed to hearing from our

politicians. >> it is, and today's speech was joe biden's second shortest speech. last night was joe biden's really shortest speech. he came out there almost like an election analyst almost like a campaign staffer, reciting where he thought they stood in the various states and saying, you know, we think we're on the path to winning. and last night, i said here that i expected to hear a little bit more of what the campaign was about, a little bit more of joe biden's vision for the country. that's what we got today. and it didn't take much more. it might have added two minutes to the speech, and it was exactly, i think, the right note for the biden campaign to strike, for joe biden to strike. he's -- he was following his campaign manager, who gave detailed account in a conference call earlier in the day of exactly the way the biden campaign sees each state. and so he knew that we already had that information today from

the biden campaign itself. and it all, by the way, brian, sounds pretty solid because there's a huge difference between biden campaign staffers and trump campaign people. and that is that biden campaign staffers actually care what we think of them after this is over. and so they don't want us walking around saying they lied to us about what they saw in these various states. there's no one on the trump side who has that problem, least of all donald trump himself. and his silence today is really telling because as confused as he sounded last night, as kind of wandering around the emptiness of his own head, as he was speaking last night, talking about the election mysteriously ending in ways that he didn't seem to be able to comprehend, him saying absolutely nothing means that he cannot figure out anything. he can't figure out a single sentence to try to go out there

and sell right now. >> let me open a potentially painful door for the democrats watching right now. i think all of us in common got off the air last night and kind of went through our phones and laptops and caught up with what had happened or had not happened in the u.s. senate and the house last night. and let me ask it of you this way. what's the case chuck schumer makes that he should continue in leadership? what's the case nancy pelosi makes that she should continue in leadership? by a harsh view, they kaleidoscopically misread the electorate in a whole host of races they were beyond confident about. and in a harsh view, the senate and house democrats got shellacked last night. >> well, the senate story isn't settled yet. it seems to be going in the direction where mitch mcconnell will hang on to a republican

majority. we'll be hearic from senator klobuchar tonight in our coverage about this, but it is probably going to tighten a little bit. chuck schumer might very well pick up a couple seats. and you know, when you look at the senate side of it, for example, one way you would have to -- the only angle you could use to be critical of a democratic leader in the senate is to say that the candidates he recruited or the candidates he wanted to support were bad candidates. that's not the case. this was a very good crop of candidates. it is not easy to find a viable democratic senate candidate in kentucky to run against the majority leader of the senate. they found a candidate to carry that banner. didn't get all the way, but that's not surprising. no majority leader in the senate has ever been defeated in their re-election campaigns back in their home states. so you would have to look at these candidates and say why was chuck schumer so excited about,

you know, x, y, or z on this list? and it's all a very solid list. the house is a somewhat different story, and nancy pelosi actually made some comments a couple years ago indicating that this might be -- when there was a move against her leadership, especially by some younger members, didn't get very far. but in the public discussion of that, nancy pelosi gave some hints that maybe around now might be the time when she would announce she was going to move on from the speakership. i don't think that will happen. i don't think democrats will now want that to happen because i do think democrats in the house do believe that nancy pelosi did a masterful job of running the democratic house of representatives, which is what the real job is. and yes, election day, when they lose seats, it's always an issue, but some of the most powerful speakers in the history of the house of representatives

lost seats at different periods during their term as speakers. they lost seats in midterm elections, they lost seats in presidential elections. so this is not a great loss of seats in the house, so it's not the kind of thing that i think can reverse nancy pelosi's current level of support in the house. >> at least they now have a one-woman qanon caucus in the republican side of the house, so they got that going for them. a couple of stats here, lawrence. number one, i'm reminded, we just went over 100,000 covid cases today. we just set a new benchmark, dark, dark record. the president, of course, predicted this was the day we would stop talking about the coronavirus. this was the day that states and cities would completely throw the doors open and reopen. neither of those came true. also, let's talk about the popular vote. what does it get joe biden other than pride, other than bragging rights, and a new benchmark in

u.s. history, to have set a new record by a damn sight for popular vote? >> let's have a couple perspectives on it. as the numbers are up there, you see joe biden by two and a half percentage points is winning the vote. i call it the vote because that's what they call it everywhere else in the world. the electoral college vote is another vote, but this is a vote of the people of the united states. that's a much higher margin than john fitzgerald kennedy won the presidency by. jfk won the presidency by less than 1%. richard nixon won the presidency in 1968 by less than 1%. much smaller margin than joe biden. richard nixon went on to a re-election four years later, winning 49 states. and by the way, the periods that enjoyed presidents who won by less than 1%, those periods in

our history are named after them. it's the kennedy era. they gave the kennedy era its own fictional name, camelot. it was as if jfk had won by 100% by the time you were a few weeks after the election. so this is what in the 21st century has become a substantial victory, it's -- if this holds, and it's a victory no republican has been able to achieve in the 21st century. the margin that joe biden has won this vote by. >> and an important point. lawrence o'donnell, thanks for being with us all the way. we'll be watching tonight in addition. greatly appreciated. up next for us, another break, and then battleground pennsylvania. the president's lead is shrinking as we watch. he is trying to stop the vote counting while ahead. a neat trick, if you can pull it off. our coverage continues after this.

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coast. we're looking ahead of the top of the hour. we're expecting a lot of votes out of arizona. at this point, a critical battleground with a half dozen states yet to be decided. our own steve kornacki is at the big board where we have been looking at data in georgia in particular and in pennsylvania. steve, what are you seeing? >> let's take a look at the state-wide tally in georgia. you can see donald trump's lead over joe biden has fallen under 40,000 votes. 39,811. we continue to get votes, atlanta metro area, a scatterering of other counties around the state, heavily democratic. mail-in ballots, absentee

ballots. so every one of these updates we have been getting has been moving biden closer. we'll continue to keep an eye on that. the gap now down to 39,000 votes. eight tenths of one point. let's take a look at pennsylvania. a similar dynamic in pennsylvania. it's all mail-in ballots, absentee ballots thereat are left. this is the same as the last time we checked in, i believe it's under 200,000 votes. 195,000, is donald trump's lead in pennsylvania right now. again, those mail-in absentee ballots continue to be tabulated, added to this. there are a number of counties that say they're going to be counting overnight. they're going to count through the night. so this is a number i think through the night that will continue to tick down. it started the day this morning over 600,000. that was donald trump's lead. they have spent the day counting up mail-in and absentee ballots. it's now under 200,000. it will shrink in the coming hours. it will shrink overnight. will it shrink all the way? will joe biden pull ahead? we certainly showed you based on the raw math the potential there

seems to exist for biden. we'll keep looking at that, too, rachel. >> we have a bunch of things to talk about and a lot of things happening at once. joy, i have to ask you to jump in here. we have trump's lead down below 200,000 in pennsylvania. trump's lead down below 40,000 votes now in georgia. with the votes that are due to come in, coming in from the democratic strongholds, for the strongly african-american voting areas in georgia. >> yeah, and i think the same story is true in georgia, if it winds up, you know, becoming another state that flips into the biden column, you know, put some respect on these black voters who stood in the longest lines, who faced the largest impediments to voting, the most suppression, particularly in a state like georgia, but really all over the country because suppression is also these incredibly long lines. but you know, senate or peters needs to thank detroit. all of detroit needs to get a big fruit basket. it got really tight for him, but at the end of the day, it's

these big predominantly black counties that are delivering for democrats over and over again. there's this constant chait by the democratic party for working class white voters to call them back. there's a reminiscing that once these were our voters, but the fundamentals remain fundamentals. it's black voters, brown voters delivering in places like maricopa county, like arizona. if biden becomes president, he's going to owe it to the obama math that you're going to get, you mack out at 40% of white voters and you need about 8 in 10 nonwhite voters and that means 9 out of 10 black women always deliver. we never stop delivering. you're going to get a slight lower number of black men, but they're going to deliver. about 80% of black men are going to deliver, and you're going to get about two thirds to three quarters of hispanic voters. that's the margin for joe biden. if he wins, that is who won it for him. all of this chase for white voters still leaves you at 42%. >> mm-hmm. right, and if you can perform

electoral magic and get everyone from everywhere, great, but if it comes to a tradeoff where you're going to try to trade away some of of your support of voters of color, you're going lose. >> there was a lot of annoyance inside the biden campaign about black women hammering them to insist they have to pick a black woman nominee. another kudos to joe biden for putting aside whatever he felt about the kamala harris interaction during the debate and saying i'm going do that, because again, who delivered for you? black women. >> i said something wrong earlier this hour which i'm sorry about. i said the trump campaign had brought a lawsuit in wisconsin to stop the vote. that is not true. they have asked for a recount in wisconsin. they have not brought a lawsuit there. i appall yz. they have brought lawsuits to stop the vote in michigan, where they're behind. ron klain pointing out earlier this hour, if the trump campaign succeeds in their effort to stop

the vote in michigan, that's fine, i guess, because then biden will win. >> is that like a brief from the biden campaign? >> we actually believe in counting every vote, but if you really want to, we'll stand down. they brought a lawsuit to stop the vote in michigan, which is in a technical term, dumb. they brought a lawsuit just tonight to try to stop the vote in georgia. and they have brought a lawsuit to try to stop the vote in pennsylvania. well, joining us now is malcolm kenyatta, a state representative in the pennsylvania state legislature. representing city of philadelphia, representative kenyatta, thank you for being here. i have been looking forward to talking to you all night. thank you. >> aullways a pleasure, rachel. >> we have been talking about over time in recent weeks including you and me talking on the air about attempts in pennsylvania to basically monkey wrench the ballot counting process, to stall it as long as possible, to try to allow for false claims of voter fraud or

things going wrong in the voting process to be used as a way to shut down the vote. it does seem like what we thought was going to happen in pennsylvania is hanning in terms of what the trump campaign is trying to do. how do you feel things stand in your state overall right now? >> first of all, let me say this, rachel. we cannot in this moment allow donald trump to have our joy. you know, he can't take our joy. he can't steal it. we can only give it away. he's going to go down in history as one of a very small handful of incumbent president to lose re-election, and i think joy hit the nail on the head, and it's in large part because of the conscience of america, and that is black voters. and here in pennsylvania, what we're seeing with the delay is exactly what the republicans -- this is their fault that we're having a delay. the president is crying about a delay. he should have really just called in to the republican house caucus and told them to

pass the precanvassing bill that we wanted to pass, which would have allowed counties to begin counting ballots earlier, and we would have had a result, if not last night, we would have had a result early this morning. and when we get that result, that result is going to be a repudiation of donald trump, everything he stood for and his failure over the last four years. >> representative kenyatta, hey, great to talk with you. i have to say that ms. rachel maddow did the bomb interview with you the day after i had you on. i was so envious, i was hanging my head in shame her interview was so bomb. i'm glad to have the two of you together again. the other thing you talked about with rachel was just the legislature itself, which was the subject of a lot of fear, i think, from a lot of people who were watching pennsylvania. that they might go to the extreme to try to place the electors for donald trump, you know, to make those the electors

really kind of no matter what. there's been a lot of talk about what they might do in a partisan sense, what they might do. what do you think the boundaries are now of their ability to interfere going forward, regardless of what happens with these cases? >> well, you know, they wanted to do it. and it really was, you know, the coverage here and other national outlets who talked about this that stopped them from doing it. they basically said as much. they were willing to move forward with throwing a monkey wrench, joy, to use your words, into this election. and just imagine where we would be today if they were able to subpoena ballots as they wanted to, if they were able to subpoena whole polling machines as they intended to do with this election integrity committee. i think at this point, all they can do is what they're doing. i think it was eric trump came to philadelphia with baseless attacks, with another maskless event, whining about the loss

that his father is about to receive. and i think instead of crying and whining and complaining today, donald trump should have tried being a better president. but he was not. he failed at this like he's failed at everything else he's ever tried his hand at, and it's why joe biden has received more votes than any person to ever run for president. it's why he's going to win pennsylvania. it's why, you know, he's going to win states like arizona, because i have been seeing so much on twitter of people depressed. don't be depressed. no one election is going to solve all of the problems that we face. this election was about first securing our democracy. and we have done that. the second thing this election was about is opening the door to the next chapter. and then we're going to have to write that chapter together. so what i hope folks take away from this is that they're going to have to stay engaged. the engagement that drove them to stop that election integrity

committee is the same type of engagement that we're going to need to continue to have on issues from climate to gun control to health care, stay involved, but celebrate this moment because joe biden is going to be the next president. kamala harris is going to be the next vice president, because of the engagement we have seen all across the country. >> wow. you just preached the word. >> i'm telling you. >> that was the word. >> don't listen. i'm telling you, every time we put him on tv, people call and are like, who is he. >> he's a star. >> don't tell him. represent kv, we'll continue to talk about you behind your back after we go to this commercial break, but know that we are -- >> i'll take it. >> we're so happy to have you here and to hear from you. and good luck to you and your state over the next few hours as we wait to find out what happens there. thank you. >> i can't wait, rachel, for you to call pennsylvania, because it's going blue. >> i hear you. it won't be my call when that happens, trust me. all right, we're still watching the votes come in tonight,

including coming in at pace in places like georgia and as we mentioned earlier in the evening, as we're coming up on the 9:00 hour on the east coast, 6:00 on the west coast, we are expecting a big batch of ballots out of arizona. arizona ballots that there's a lot of suspense about. there's no certainty in terms of which way it's going to push the ultimate tally in that state. that's all coming up. and all coming in. we're going to take a quick break but we'll be right back with steve kornacki after this. [sizzling]

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everyday security. bankers here to help. for wherever you want to go. chase. make more of what's yours. we're all finding ways to keep moving. but how do we make sure the direction we're headed is forward? at fidelity, you'll get the planning and advice to prepare you for the future, without sacrificing the things that are important to you today. we'll help you plan for healthcare costs, taxes and any other uncertainties along the way. because with fidelity, you can feel confident that the only direction you're moving is forward. 8:52 p.m. and the election day that will not end. steve kornacki back on station at the wall with a tightening in georgia and a better idea, steve, i understand what we might be getting at the top of the hour from arizona? >> yeah.

let's take a look at a few things we're monitoring. again, that donald trump statewide lead in georgia under 40,000 votes right now. looking to see obviously does biden overtake trump. also does this land within half a point? that could be recount territory in georgia. continuing to keep an idea on pennsylvania. it's a similar story. biden chipping away at that trump lead. will he chip all the way the ait? just under 200,000 is the gap there. then in a few minutes, i think we're coming up, 8:53 right now. in the next 10, 15 minutes potentially, we are going to get a bunch of votes from maricopa county in arizona. the situation here is joe biden has the lead. they have the votes that come in sort of by voting method and voting time. so we're getting sort of -- we had the early vote. we had the vote that was cast same day. now there's sort of a hybrid bucket that's going to be coming out, and there's a big question here. there's real suspense. are these going to be

trump-leaning votes? if they are, then donald trump's going to have an opportunity to eat into that lead that joe biden has right here. you look at the electoral math. trump's got to find a way to win arizona if he's going to hold on as president or are these going to be more democratic votes in which case biden could pull away and win the state. >> thank you. by now, all of us have heard the trump campaign has begun a court offensive to try to stop the votes from being counted, lawsuits being brought in michigan and pennsylvania and georgia. aside from whatever the trump campaign is doing in the courts, there's another really consequential court drama playing out over the last 48 hours, affecting thousands of live ballots, and it has to do with the post office. the trump administration has been in court playing defense as a group of powerful civil rights organizations bring top-flight legal firepower to bear on their lawsuit to try to get ballots stuck in the mail service delivered so that they can be counted for this election.

the fight is ongoing. it is not just some backwards looking thing about what the trump administration should have done before election day. these are ballots that could still make a difference in states like nevada and pennsylvania and north carolina. if you've got balloted that were postmarked before election day, they can still be processed if they're received up to a certain point after election day itself. those ballots are potentially in play as civil rights group fight to free them from the postal service that has them stuck within it. joining us now is sherrilyn ifill, she's president and director counsel of the naacp legal defense fund, which is currently suing the trump administration over these delays in the postal system. thank you for joining us. i bet you haven't slept. >> not at all, but our lawyers on the front line have slept even less than i have, so i'm good. >> tell me about those lawyers on the front line and this lawsuit. obviously we all expected there to be small armies of lawyers fighting all sorts of fights in

the aftermath of this election and as votes were starting to be tallied. this is a fascinating case to me. this is the postal service, which has gone through such drama with the postmaster, the trump donor who was assigned to that position by the white house and then very quickly seemed to monkey wrench the operations of the postal service. today the judge hearing this case threatened to bring him personally into court, haul him up to explain why the postal service is even defying the court's orders in this case. >> it's really astonishing litigation, rachel. we filed this suit some time ago after louis dejoy made a number of changes to the postal service that it was clear were delaying the transfer of absentee ballots. we focused on the transportation decisions that the new postmaster general made. we wanted to make sure that every ballot would be delivered. we hoped to get every ballot delivered on time. we're still fighting to get every ballot delivered even

after the process. we have been at hearings every day, and i really must credit not only the attorneys at the legal defense fund and public citizen and covington for being in the courtroom, but judge emmet sullivan has been really on top of every aspect of this case. there have been hearings saturday, sunday, yesterday, today, and there will be tomorrow. and as you point out, i mean obviously it got very fractious yesterday. there was an order that was presented by the judge that required the postal service to do sweeps throughout the day, particularly between 12:00 and 3:00. in the evening, the postal service let it be known that they had not done the sweeps, that they did not feel they had the personnel to do so. obviously we were very distressed about this. we sought an emergency hearing last night. the judge didn't grant it but did have us come in this morning, and he's not happy either. he wants to know what happened. but right now what happened

today is that the judge actually issued another order requiring that there be a sweep in the texas facilities because texas' ballots could still be legally received today, and the postal service did comply with that order. we're looking now at the data that they provided about what they found. there will be another hearing tomorrow. judge sullivan has made it clear he wants to know why his order was not complied with. >> yeah, defying court orders is another -- is another level in terms of lawlessness here but a remarkable and ongoing fight and a consequential one. sherrilyn ifill, thank you so much. keep us apprised as this continues to develop. >> i will. thank you, rachel. >> we're approaching the top of the 9:00 hour on the east coast. we're going to take a quick break. again, we are expecting a lot of votes from arizona very soon. stay with us. if your dry eye symptoms keep coming back,

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