-Our next guest serves as national political correspondent
for NBC News and MSNBC.
He also hosts MSNBC's newest original podcast
"The Revolution with Steve Kornacki,"
which is available now. Please welcome back to the show
our friend Steve Kornacki, everybody!
♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
I'll just jump in.
I'll ask the question everyone would want me to ask.
How much sleep have you had?
-80 minutes. -An 80-minute nap.
When did the 80-minute nap take place?
-About an hour before I came over here.
If I'm a little groggy, I apologize.
-So you know, you have a reputation, a well-earned one,
of being able to process this data as it's coming in
in real time and helping explain it to those of us
who are laymen watching at home.
Do you ever worry about how fast it's going to come in,
or at this point, does adrenaline kick in
and you know you can do it?
-No, no, it's constant fear and panic.
It reminds me of studying for a test or something.
And it's just like -- As I was telling people
before the election, I'm the only person in America
who wishes we had another month of the campaign
because I needed the prep time to get ready for it.
-Can you put last night -- And again, obviously the grain
of salt, nothing really has been decided as far as
who's controlling the two chambers.
But historical context,
this does seem like a pretty good night for Democrats.
-I mean, the fact that a day later we're sitting here saying
we don't know yet officially
who's going to control the House,
we don't know who's going to control the Senate --
the Democrats certainly have a chance,
a path to controlling the Senate --
that in and of itself I think is just an achievement for them,
relative to how these midterm elections have gone in the past,
especially when the sitting president has
the approval rating that Joe Biden has.
Because you look at the presidents in the past who have
had good midterms and they've had like
65%, 70% approval ratings.
Joe Biden is sitting at 44%.
So I think that's the thing that caught people off guard
was you look at Biden, you look at his popularity,
you look at the attitudes about the economy,
you're just expecting his party to kind of take it on the chin.
And whatever happens, they may lose the House still,
they may end up losing 10, 15 seats or something,
but that's not historically taking on it the chin.
-So it did seem like a repudiation of Donald Trump.
Right? He picked a lot of candidates and the Republicans
who distanced themselves more from Trump,
certainly Ron DeSantis in Florida, I feel like that's what
you're going to be seeing Fox News crowing about
over the next couple of days.
They're going move the narrative over to that.
Do you think Donald Trump continues to be sort of
an anchor to the Republican Party
taking back a large majority?
-I really wonder what's going to happen now
because he literally, on the morning of the election, was
teasing this idea of a November 15th announcement
that he's running again in 2024.
I'm really curious after this.
Is he going to follow through with that now?
Are there folks around him telling him,
"Hey, maybe back off for a little bit here"?
And it does seem like there have been a bunch of moments
since 2015 when Donald Trump first emerged
where you kind of wondered is this the moment when sort of
the Republican establishment, whatever you want to call it,
can kind of coalesce around a different path?
Because a lot of them want to and have kind of, you know,
for various reasons have not done it.
And you wonder if DeSantis winning so decisively
in Florida, with Trump going after him,
now there's clearly separation between the two of them.
For that matter in Georgia with Brian Kemp, the governor there.
Trump came after him in the primary earlier this year.
Kemp survived that primary easily.
He won last night easily in Georgia.
Is there sort of a coalition that's kind of emerging there
that could move the Republican Party in a different direction?
I don't know, though.
That question's been raised many times since 2015.
The answer's been no every time.
-Exit polling, is it still too early to tell
or do you think we can say that abortion was a bigger issue
than maybe in the weeks leading up to it we thought it would be?
-Yeah, I'm kind of two minds.
I think it definitely could have been.
I think it definitely could have motivated a lot of Democrats,
who as I say, didn't think Joe Biden --
didn't think the world of Joe Biden to vote anyway.
I tend to think the Trump factor, though,
was big in this thing 'cause you can look at Republicans
who had success. You talk about DeSantis in Florida.
DeSantis is pro-life, so it didn't affect him.
It didn't keep him from doing incredibly well in Florida.
I think where you saw the real separation between Republicans,
a place like Georgia.
Herschel Walker, Brian Kemp.
They're both pro-life.
But Herschel Walker is the one who's underperforming
considerably here
and I think the Trump factor has a lot to do with that.
-And I guess candidates matter, right?
I think that we talk a lot about how divided the country is
and how people tend to vote along party lines.
But certainly, when you put Kemp against Herschel Walker,
for example, that's the same state, and you can tell
that's really just an issue of candidates, wouldn't you say?
-Yeah. Look.
There's a voter in Georgia, and in Georgia it's really
in the Atlanta suburbs, who is not nuts about Joe Biden,
really doesn't like the Democratic Party,
but really doesn't like Donald Trump.
And Kemp checks every box for them
because Kemp isn't a Democrat, he's a conservative,
but he also vouched for the 2020 election in Georgia.
Trump said, "Well, that's it.
That disqualifies you as governor.
I'm sending in somebody to run against you in the primary."
And Kemp stood his ground and won the primary.
And to that voter,
Kemp suddenly became a very attractive candidate.
Somebody like Herschel Walker, who's much more closely aligned
with Donald Trump, it doesn't have that kind of a story.
You could see these big Republican counties sort of
on the outskirts of the Atlanta metro area,
it was really striking.
You're seeing these 7-, 8-point differences
between where Kemp is running
and where Walker is running last night.
-How far could I zoom in on a district without you knowing
what district it was on one of those maps?
[ Laughter ] -Is this the setup for a test here?
-No, it's not.
If I just showed you the lines of a county,
you'd be like, "I know where that is."
-There's 3,100 of them. Trust me, a lot of them look similar.
[ Laughter ]
-You have this podcast, "The Revolution."
This is about Newt Gingrich. This is about 1994.
Was this something that has fascinated you for a long time?
-Yeah, I mean, '94 was one of the first elections, you know --
Believe it or not, I was kind of into this stuff as a kid.
[ Laughter ]
So '94 was kind of a formative one for me.
But it was a big deal because I just remember the Democrats had
controlled Congress, they controlled the House
for 40 straight years heading into '94.
And I remember my introduction to politics was that it was just
the idea of Republicans controlling Congress
was just unthinkable.
In '94, all of a sudden, it happens.
And as I look back -- It's a point of reference for me,
but as I look back over the last generation, I really think
it was the starting point of where we are today,
which is politics really is this nationalized thing.
I grew up in Massachusetts.
Tip O'Neill, when I was a kid, was a towering political figure.
He was the Speaker of the House in the 1980s.
He had this saying, "All politics is local."
And everyone would just repeat that as if it was --
This was the high understanding in politics.
It's not anymore. It's almost all national now.
People, Democrat, Republican, red, blue,
they follow national stories, national characters,
they're motivated by national issues, national storylines.
I think '94 was really the first nationalized midterm election.
And it's really kind of grown into what it is today.
-You mentioned you were interested
in this at a young age.
By the way, everybody laughed. I think they believe you.
But -- [ Laughter ]
I also want to point out, you have brought video evidence.
This is local-access television?
-Somebody dug this up. Yeah.
My high school in Massachusetts, there were two kids.
They hosted a comedy show. -Yeah.
-On the public-access channel,
which was in the basement of our high school.
And they asked me to sit down and just do commentary on --
I think it was the '94 election.
And I realized when they aired it, they thought --
I was playing it straight.
But they figured it was so boring, it would be funny.
[ Laughter ] -I should note --
When you go back and you watch people from high school,
it's always fascinating to see how they turned out.
You have been the straightest line of anybody I've ever seen
from who you were last night to who you are here.
Take a look.
-As mandated by the Constitution, 33 seats
or one-third of the Senate will be up for re-election in 1994.
Since it would be impractical for me to go over each race,
I'll only go over a few of the highlights this year.
The Senate balance is 56-44 for the Democrats as of this moment.
It is highly plausible that the Republicans could take over
the Senate for the first time since 1986.
That's all for now. There's other races.
Perhaps another time, I'll talk about more.
[ Laughter ] [ Cheers and applause ]
-I just wish -- I wish it ended with like, "And one day,
I'm going to have a giant map
and I'm going to be able to zoom in on that map."
Hey, it was really --
I mean this from the bottom of my heart.
Every time I go through this,
it's really lovely to have you sort of leading the way.
Thanks so much for making time for us
when you've had 80 minutes of sleep.
[ Cheers and applause ] Really appreciate it.
Steve Kornacki, everybody.
All six episodes of his podcast "The Revolution" available now.
We'll be right back with more "Late Night."