Transcript of We The People 2026: Post-election special coverage Part 1

One of the key Democratic Party chairmen in the incoming Congress is going to be joining us tonight to talk about what he plans to do, what Democrats plan to do in Washington to clean up the mess there. In our huge 50-state national voter poll last night, 90 percent of voters told us that the main issue driving their vote yesterday, more than the cost of living, more than anything else, the single issue voters identified more than any other yesterday as the single largest motivation for their vote was corruption.

And, you know, when a democracy is fighting for its life, when a democracy is trying to resist Democratic backsliding and an attempted authoritarian takeover, I mean, one of the things you need to do is protect and make use of the machinery of democracy, right? The technical democratic process. You have to take elections really seriously. You need to defend them. You need to protect them. You need to participate in them. You also need to compete in small-d democratic terms. You need a robust opposition party with credible, appealing, capable candidates who can run real campaigns and good campaigns and can govern when they win.

But the other thing you need to do to stand up for your constitutional republic when it is at risk is you need to rush to the proverbial barricades to insist on the rule of law, to defend the rule of law. You must police public corruption. You must police bribery and nepotism. You must police and punish ruling families looting the government. Well, tonight we're going to talk with one of the key Democrats who will be taking point on that in Washington, on cleaning up corruption.

We're going to talk with him about how they're going to do it and where they are going to start now that they are sweeping back into Washington with massive majorities. And we do not know the exact numbers yet because the counting is still underway. But in rough terms, we can safely say that for the last two years of Donald Trump's time in public office, Congress is about to go from what we've had this year, which is Republicans with a, like, roughly four or five-seat majority, to instead Democrats having a majority that looks like it's going to be somewhere in the vicinity of 80 seats.

They won that Florida U.S. Senate race, right? The last Florida U.S. Senate race, Republicans won it by 13. This time they won it by less than three. Republicans also won that Florida governor's race last night, right? Well, the last Florida governor's race, Republicans won it by 20. This time they won it by less than two. How about, like, the Arkansas governor's race? Yes, Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders won reelection last night, but Arkansas voters shifted more than 15 percentage points toward Democrats from where they were just two years ago.

And Arkansas voters flipped between eight and ten seats in the statehouse, which means Democrats in Arkansas broke the supermajority in that state. In Louisiana, this is the front page at the Advocate newspaper out of Baton Rouge tonight. Yes, this is a state where Republicans won last night in that Louisiana Senate race. But the headlines in the state are basically, "Oh my God, how was it that close?" In the last U.S. Senate race in Louisiana, the Republicans won it by 44 points.

Last night in Louisiana, yes, Republicans won again, but they did not win it by 44 points. They won it by less than two points. And I know you know that Jon Ossoff won the U.S. Senate race in Georgia. We called it so early last night. But do you know that Jon Ossoff won that Senate race in Georgia by 18 points? He won it by an 18-point margin in Georgia. Also, North Carolina, I know you know that Democrat Roy Cooper won that Senate seat and flipped that Senate seat in North Carolina for the Democrats.

But you should know that Roy Cooper won that Senate seat by 20 points. That was a Republican Senate seat. Roy Cooper won it for the Democrats last night with a margin of 20 points. The Senate races that Democrats won last night that we think of as having gone down to the wire, Democrats winning in, you know, really unlikely places, so it must have been really close, right? It wasn't really close. It wasn't. Josh Turek won in Iowa by more than four points. I mentioned we're going to have Annie Andrews here tonight who won in South Carolina.

It was not a squeaker in South Carolina. She won by nearly five points. Sherrod Brown, running against an incumbent Republican senator in what was supposed to be deep red, lost forever, Ohio, it was not close. Sherrod won in Ohio. Sherrod Brown won in Ohio by five points. Adam Hamilton in Kansas, an absolutely unattainable Democratic victory, unimaginable even months ago. It wasn't close. Adam Hamilton ousted another incumbent Republican senator in Kansas by five points.

Troy Jackson in Maine did not just beat Susan Collins. He beat her by what's looking like it's going to be seven points. Susan Collins was supposed to be unbeatable in Maine for life. She lost by seven. Troy Jackson beat Susan Collins so badly in Maine that I kid you not, at her campaign watch party last night, she was there. She was present in the building, but she never came out and conceded. She never came out and said anything at all to the crowd. Her staff literally put the song "Closing Time" by SemiSonic on the PA system and then just started packing up all the chairs without saying anything.

You know who else lost by seven points? Excuse me. You know who else won by seven points? Abdul Al-Sayed in Michigan. This, I should mention, was Abdul Al-Sayed six months ago, yesterday, promising that if he became the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, and I'm going to quote him exactly here, here is him six months ago promising, quote, "I'll smoke him by seven," meaning I will beat I will beat Mike Rogers by seven points. He said, quote, "Bet on it."

None of us bet on it. We are contractually prohibited from doing so. But if you did take Abdul Al-Sayed's advice on that, he was exactly right. It was not close in Michigan. Abdul Al-Sayed prevailed over Mike Rogers by, yes, he called it exactly, in the stands. I'm hitting it right there, seven points. In Minnesota, do you remember the flurry of Democratic worry about holding onto that Senate seat in Minnesota? It was like one or two shaky polls, and people were like, "Wow, Democrats are going to lose seats they thought they were holding."

Peggy Flanagan crushed that Minnesota Senate race. She won by ten. In New Hampshire, do you remember the flurry of Democratic worry about holding onto that Senate seat in New Hampshire? Chris Pappas crushed it in New Hampshire. He won by 14 points. The margins of victory here, I think, have not widely sunk in. But as my beloved colleague Lawrence O'Donnell talked about insistently last night during our coverage here, those margins of victory, whether or not the public really gets it yet, those margins of victory are sinking in indelibly into the minds of surviving Republican officials in these states.

Because there isn't a state in the country that feels safe Republican like it did before. Before Trump-era Republican politics brought about what Florida's governor today called a near-extinction-level event for that party. Thank you, Donald Trump. Texas has broken Democratic hearts in every election I have covered there in my adult life. Last night, when Democrat James Talarico won that Senate seat, it was not a squeaker. He won by 12 points.

And Democrat Gina Inohosa ousted the supposedly impregnable governor for life, Republican Greg Abbott in Texas, not in a close race, not narrowly. She beat him by a healthy seven-point margin with plenty of room to spare. In Texas, Democrats won the lieutenant governor's race, and they won the attorney general's race, and they won the railroad commissioner's race, and they won the comptroller race, and they won the land commissioner race, and they won the ag commissioner race. In Texas, Democrats appear to have flipped the statehouse, the state legislature.

There were four seats that were up last night on the Texas Supreme Court. All four Republican incumbents lost those seats on the Texas Supreme Court, and all four of them will be replaced by the Democrats who ran against them. A couple of years ago, Greg Abbott and Republicans created a whole new court in Texas, a three-seat criminal appeals court that they immediately stacked entirely, entirely, with Greg Abbott's Republican appointees. Last night, all three Republican appointee and incumbents on that court, all three of them were voted out and replaced by Democrats.

No Democrat had been elected to a seat on the Texas Supreme Court or the Texas Board of Criminal Appeals since 1994. But last night, every single one of the seats on those courts that was contested went to the Democrat who contested it. Every single one. Democrats may yet take control of the State Board of Education in Texas when all the counting is done. The Texas Tribune summed that up tonight by saying, quote, "No matter what happens in the remaining contest," the one that's still to be called, they said, quote, "Republican power on the board will not look like the majority that recently authored an Islamophobic rewrite of social studies lessons that greenlit mandatory Bible readings for all public school students and that approved classroom instruction downplaying the horrors of American slavery."

Yeah, that board is no more. It is almost impossible to get your head around the scale of the political change that just happened in Texas alone. Brandon Herrera, the Republican so-called AK guy who does Holocaust comedy on his gun influencer YouTube page, he lost in an absolutely safe Republican seat. He lost to this former teacher and first-time Democratic candidate. Beau French, the Republican who posted a poll online.

The poll said, quote, "Who is the bigger threat to America?" And then there were two choices, and the two choices were Muslims or Jews. Republican Beau French just lost in Texas. And yes, the Democrat he lost to is Jewish. Thank you very much. In Georgia, as you know, Jon Ossoff, yes. But you know what? In Georgia, Democrats won every statewide race in Georgia. And it looks like they flipped the Georgia Statehouse.

I need to also tell you specifically that it is Black women who won every single one of those races in Georgia for the Democrats. Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Agriculture Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, School Superintendent, Labor Commissioner, and Public Service Commissioner. Hello, Georgia. You have seen Black female Democratic political talent in Georgia growing over the course of this past 15 years in American politics, and this is the fruit of that tree.

In Michigan, yes, Abdul Al-Sayed. But Jocelyn Benson is going to be governor. And both Supreme Court seats on the ballot in Michigan yesterday went to the Democrats. And three Republican members of Congress have been ousted by Democrats in Michigan, and Democrats also just flipped the Michigan House. And in Ohio, yes, Sherrod Brown. But Amy Acton is going to be the governor in Ohio, and Democrats will hold every other statewide office in Ohio except auditor. Democrats in Ohio, Attorney General, Treasurer, Secretary of State.

It is the first time in 16 years that a Democrat will be the top elections official in the state of Ohio. And Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the Ohio House. And Democrat Marcie Kapeter held onto the congressional seat in Ohio that they tried to gerrymander her out of. And Don Leonard ousted Republican Congressman Mike Carey in Ohio. And Democrat Brian Poindexter ousted Republican Max Miller in Ohio. And Democrats just took most of Ohio's congressional seats. They took eight out of 15.

And Ohio, I'm telling you, Ohio is a blue state. In Wisconsin, Democrats won that governor's race with David Crowley. But they also flipped the statehouse, and they flipped the state Senate, both to Democratic control. Wisconsin has a Democratic governing trifecta. Democrats won new governing trifectas where they have both houses of the legislature and the governor's race in huge, huge, important big states.

Really influential states in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Nevada, in Minnesota. It looks like they may get it in Arizona too. Look at red state Indiana. Red state Indiana, Republicans saw their Speaker of the House lose his seat to a Democratic scientist, a woman named Lauren Cole. In Indiana, Democrats haven't won a statewide race since 2012, but last night they won the Secretary of State, and they won the state auditor's race, and they broke the Republican supermajority in the House, and they ousted a sitting Republican congresswoman.

I could go on. Democrats flipped both houses of the state legislature in New Hampshire. Democrats flipped every single imaginable thing and a lot of unimaginable things in North Carolina, and we are sequestering that and setting aside because we're going to talk more about that in a minute. Utah is sending a Democrat to Congress. Oklahoma Democrats picked up six new seats in the state legislature. Tennessee Democrats flipped six House seats. They may have ousted at least one Republican congressman in Tennessee.

Missouri Democrats flipped 16 statehouse seats, ousted a Republican congresswoman, smacked down a state abortion ban, and passed a new rule to stop Republicans in the Missouri legislature from overruling everything the voters keep voting for. Minnesota got themselves a Democratic governor in Amy Klobuchar and a Democratic senator in Peggy Flanagan, and they flipped the Minnesota House blue. Kansas got a Democratic senator in Adam Hamilton. They may yet get themselves a Democratic governor in Cindy Hulscher, although that one is not yet called.

It looks like Kansas may also oust the Republican Attorney General, Chris Kobak. And Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the Kansas House. Latinos in Kansas just roared in this race. Majority Hispanic counties in Kansas. Listen to me here. Majority Hispanic counties in Kansas shifted 45 points toward the Democrats. And don't get mad at me at home right now because I have missed the incredible Democratic leaps and bounds victories that happened in your state or in your county.

I know I have missed a bunch. All those congressional seats that Democrats flipped in Iowa, all those congressional seats that Democrats flipped in Pennsylvania, I know I have missed a bunch. I have left out more than I could leave in, and I am sorry. But we're still getting our heads around it too. The country has absolutely not absorbed the sheer depth and breadth of this force that just rewrote the map of American politics. But it is coast to coast, and it is still not done taking its final form.

And the only thing that we here can pledge to you about it for sure is that we will be here with you for the duration, covering every single second of it and everything it means. My beloved colleagues here, thank you for letting me spit some of that out because it was going to make me crazy if I didn't.

And I was working in the Senate at the time, and I had to move to a smaller office because we're suddenly in the minority and all of that. It was totally shocking. It was the shock level of last night. Two Democratic senators immediately just switched parties because they just look at this and say, we will never be in the majority again. We'll never be chairman again. We are abandoning this Democratic Party. That's the kind of wipeout you have here. And Ted Cruz is uniquely positioned in the wipeout. Every statewide election in his state, every single one of them went to a Democrat.

Now, he's the lone Republican standing in that ultra-important state. Ted Cruz isn't Ted Cruz anymore. He's not going to be the guy who insults James Talarico when he walks onto the Senate floor. He's going to be the guy who has his arm around him. It's going to be, you're going to see this movement. And you know, when we used to have, we used to have a lot of states that would have one Democratic senator, one Republican senator. New York had that for most of my life. When I was working in the Senate for a Democratic senator from New York, we had a Republican junior senator.

And that Republican junior senator was a conservative Republican. However, there were plenty of things for New York where he had to be with Senator Moynihan, and they were together on these things. And then that kind of softens the edges of everything else they do in the Senate all the time. And so, you know, you've got Tim Scott in South Carolina. How confident is he in his adoration of Donald Trump now? He's got a junior partner in the Senate now who just showed him, this isn't the South Carolina that voted for you.

Something has changed. And so it will change the behavior. I know people were thinking like, okay, these Republicans are just going to play, you know, tough guy, and they're just going to be street punks and yelling insults across the aisle. No, they're not. No, they're not. They are afraid of what happened in Michigan.

And you have to, it's inhuman. It's not the way we're wired, but you actually have to forget everything they've said. In many cases, everything they've specifically said about you as a human being, you have to forget. And what happens is that they come together in this way that is surprising to the point where when you think about the Senate trying to achieve a two-thirds vote to overthrow a Trump veto, that's possible. This is not out of the realm of possibility.

And in the House, they've got it. They've got it already. So the Trump veto that was supposed to be the sole remaining Republican power in Washington, DC, is not the power that they thought it was going to be.

What you do is you learn from the mistakes that you made. This was something that was very important in the Bush administration in that era, which is why they after '04, they made the conscious effort to move into immigration discussions and other things that they heard and learned what the American people were talking about. Republicans have this tendency to want to double down. I've heard some in the last 24 hours say, well, we weren't conservative.

Those voters will have until Tuesday, November 10th, to validate their ballots with their voter ID. And then there are the mail-in ballots or absentee ballots, about 3,600 of them in Mississippi. Now, mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day can arrive as late as November 10th. No wonder an army of, quote, army of lawyers has descended on Mississippi to watch over the counting across 82 counties. Every single vote matters. Earlier today, Scott Cullom told the press and supporters he was confident he would win once all the votes were tallied.

They're given an affidavit ballot, and then it is up to five commissioners, five commissioners to go through those ballots to see if they can confirm the eligibility of those voters against the state election management system. So a couple of examples. If you just got married and perhaps your maiden name is in the voter roll, but not your married name, that's something that these commissioners may be able to assess to see if they can accept your ballot. If you just moved recently, but you still live in the same county, another thing that they may be able to verify to accept those ballots. But again, there are only five commissioners tasked with doing that, working in these cubicles.

And there are 108 precincts in this county. So it just takes a bit of time. In addition to that, there is one group of ballots that these commissioners aren't even going to touch. And I actually want to ask the commissioner here about it, Commissioner Horton. Commissioner, let me ask you, if the issue is that a voter didn't have ballot ID and that's why they were given an affidavit ballot, where does that go? What happens?

They have to go to that clerk's office and provide ID. And if they don't, their vote is not counted. It's that simple. No if, ands, or buts. So again, it's why they've been reinforcing this message. You heard it from the commissioner. You have until November 10th. If you don't do that, your vote's not counted. And in this race, we know every single one of these votes, these affidavit ballots can make a difference in determining the outcome of this race.

That's a term that I've heard here in Mississippi. That's a term that I heard in Atlanta this morning when I had a conversation with Senator Warnock, who has spent a lot of time supporting the Cullom campaign here. And then I had a conversation with the executive director of Mississippi's NAACP chapter here. And I found out some fascinating stuff about the work that's been happening behind the scenes here. They have been quietly building and organizing, going door to door, holding real events with people. They've been working with about 14 different church denominations that represent about 2,500 different churches.

They themselves, just on their own, the NAACP here got 17,258 new people registered to vote over the course of about the past year. If you include some of their partner organizations, that number is more like 40,000 new African-American voters on the rolls. And they did a lot of this, not just because they knew what was coming down the pike in terms of state leadership and what lawmakers might attempt to do, but they did this because the Secretary of State, actual officials here in Mississippi, used what they described as faulty Experian data to start cleaning voter rolls.

And that helps explain a lot of what you're actually seeing unfold where Nomdi is right now. There was this effort to purge a bunch of people, thousands of people from the rolls. Many of them, experts say, are eligible real voters here, many of them Black people. They knew that this was happening. The NAACP tried to get ahead of it, go to doors. They got, they told me, at least 800 of those people actually back on and confirmed before Election Day took place. And now they're part of this effort to educate people so that they actually do go bring their ID and try to correct this with the final days at hand here.

But I think what it really tells you is that there has been a movement and a moment building here that perhaps actually the rest of the National Democratic Party, the rest of the country may not have felt. You have to remember, too, this is a state that's still mourning. The Black community is here mourning the death of Nolan Wells. There is this real feeling here of pain and pressure that goes so far beyond, Simone, the sort of backlash to Trump story. It's a backlash to your attempt to put me down, your attempts to make it harder for me to vote.

And they are showing up and they are sort of the heart and soul of what you're seeing as this sort of larger too big to rig story. But it's very personal for the Black communities here in Mississippi and all across the South.

All right. At one point last night, we looked at the returns out of North Carolina, and we saw Republicans trailing in pretty much every race in the state. By today, the dust had settled. The picture looks surprisingly, astonishingly great for Democrats. An architect of that particular blue shift is going to join us here live next. But first, actually, we do have a new call, a new call in a House race, a congressional race in California. Democrat Marnie von Wilpert has defeated Republican Jim Desmon.

This is yet another flip for Democrats and another congressional seat, California's 48th congressional district. We'll be right back.

Last year, the Republican-led legislature, at Donald Trump's direction, redrew the map with the aim of leaving Democrats competitive in just three of the state's 14 states, but it backfired badly. Democrats currently appear to have flipped six seats in a state where Republicans currently hold a 10 to 4 congressional advantage. It is the Democrats who have now won or lead in 10 seats.

North Carolina 13. North Carolina 13. I've never seen these people's names before. The Democrat, I'm like, who's this dude? No one before tonight had Paul Beringer and District 13 in North Carolina on the races to watch list.

I want to start with just recruiting candidates for every single seat, even the ones that weren't in the top or second or third tier. Like, how intentional was that up and down the ballot for the North Carolina Democratic Party?

Last night, there were spontaneous celebrations all over the country as the election results came in. In Texas, that looked like just a cacophony of beeping and cheering as the election results started to percolate into the public. At James Talarico headquarters in Austin, just pure jubilation. It wasn't just Texas, though. Democrats in Atlanta were on their feet, dancing with their hands in the air. Look at Keisha Lance Bottoms.

You will not want to miss this.