00:00Donald Trump was most definitely not on the ballot, but he sort of, kind of was.
00:06The Trump factor.
00:07He is looming large over everything.
00:10Voters across the country heading to the polls in what will amount to the first referendum on Donald Trump's second term.
00:17November 4th was election night in America.
00:20Not a presidential election, because we had one of those last year,
00:23but the first major elections across the United States since the election that put Donald Trump in power.
00:30The off-year election does not feature presidential or congressional races.
00:34They do serve as early tests for Democratic and Republican strategies.
00:39And so, in races that, at first glance, might seem to have very little to do with Donald Trump specifically,
00:45what you had was a political gauntlet, a series of tests for Democrats who see a path to bringing Trump's White House down
00:53by succeeding in far more local races.
00:56Let me show you what happened.
01:00And we have some actual votes coming in from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
01:08Spanberger is 2,609 votes ahead.
01:11For Democrats hoping for a big night, Virginia was always going to be the first real test,
01:17a race for the governorship, but also a race against history for Republicans.
01:22Because only once since the Nixon years, half a century ago, have Virginians ever picked a governor of the same party as the current president.
01:31You see how they've always flip-flopped.
01:34Virginians will elect a Democratic president one year, and literally the next, they'll pick a Republican governor, or vice versa.
01:40Every time but one, Virginians seem to signal they are unhappy nationally by voting differently in their state elections.
01:48And it's not a stretch to link a state race like this to a national leader like Trump.
01:54Take a district like Loudoun County, a part of Virginia where Democrats have just seen a big bump in support since Trump's 2024 presidential victory,
02:01and where just across state lines you'll find Washington, D.C.
02:06That makes parts of Northern Virginia effectively government towns.
02:11Hundreds of thousands of people there either work directly for the federal government or have contracts with federal agencies.
02:17And these are people who are directly affected by Trump's downsizing of the federal workforce and the ongoing government shutdown.
02:25Virginia has the second largest total of federal workers in the country.
02:31And every worker that's fired or furloughed has a family, friends, neighbors, all of whom are influenced by what's happened.
02:38And there's another side to the election in Virginia with national consequences.
02:43Virginia is one of several states that could attempt to gerrymander its congressional map.
02:48Literally redraw district boundaries in a way that tilts more of the state's 11 congressional districts towards Democrats in the upcoming midterms next year.
02:58In some red states like Texas, they've redrawn their congressional maps to potentially oust some Democrats.
03:03So to combat that, bluer states like California and Virginia are doing the same thing.
03:07Democrats picked up 13 seats in the lower house of the state legislature,
03:12which means they have an awful lot of room to maneuver when it comes to redistricting the state to squeeze out another two or three Democratic seats.
03:21I should say, on this election night, there was so much going on.
03:25Californians would also be voting on a very similar question called Proposition 50.
03:31Prop 50 is on the ballot. At stake, California's congressional map.
03:35The outcome of Tuesday's election could ultimately help decide the balance of power in Washington.
03:40But in order to redraw its boundaries to favor Democrats, California actually needed to ask voters for permission.
03:47And last night, in a blue state, it got it.
03:51Californians have voted yes on Prop 50 to implement the state's newly drawn U.S. House map.
03:58So an important victory for Democrats.
04:00But back in Virginia, it took less than an hour from the moment polls closed
04:05to the moment all the major networks announced a clear winner.
04:08NBC News can now project the winner of the Virginia governor's race is Abigail Spanberger.
04:14This is an absolute 100% USDA top choice repudiation.
04:18Nobody in the White House is walking around high-fiving each other, spiking the ball.
04:27That's a big lead. Don't expect it to stay that wide because the votes that we're seeing coming in so far
04:31are in the blue urban Democratic areas.
04:33If Virginia was a race against history for Republicans, this time around, New Jersey was going to be a race
04:40against history for Democrats, looking for an incredibly rare three-peat.
04:46Not since the 60s has any party won the governorship in New Jersey three times in a row.
04:51And leading up to election night, Republicans had at least two reasons to think Democrats would fall short.
04:57In the 2020 presidential election, Biden clobbered Trump here, winning by almost 16 percentage points.
05:04But in 2024, that lead shrank in a big way, down to just six percentage points.
05:11That was the best result Republicans have seen there in 30-plus years.
05:15So maybe there's a window for a breakthrough.
05:18That's reason number one.
05:19But the second reason, look at how close the last gubernatorial race was in 2021.
05:24Much tighter margins there, too. Except on this night, election night, November 4th, not tight at all.
05:32Democrat Mikey Sherrill is in the lead with 64% of the vote.
05:36Coming into this night, one of the questions was whether or not Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey,
05:43if she won, would she win by a couple of points? Would it be under five?
05:47And would that be considered a decisive win?
05:49I mean, that is so not even close to the conversation right now.
05:53But you know what was the question?
05:55As with the Virginia race, exactly how much of this contest had to do with the candidates for governor
06:01and how much had to do with Donald Trump?
06:04And I think the only person that feels that they are in a better spot because of Trump's administration
06:11is Trump himself and his billionaire friends.
06:13Now, I don't want to suggest that there weren't local and state issues at play in this election,
06:18but this also, very plainly, wasn't just a state election either.
06:24MAGA's coming for New Jersey with Trump-endorsed Republican Jack Cittarelli.
06:28Trump brags Cittarelli is now 100% MAGA. We've got to stop him.
06:33Democratic big guns like Barack Obama and Pete Buttigieg were called in,
06:37and Donald Trump attended a virtual rally for the Republican candidate.
06:41But within an hour and a half of polls closing in New Jersey...
06:46NBC News can project now that Mikey Sherrill is the projected winner of New Jersey.
06:53Both the outcome and the consequences were becoming very clear.
06:58If you are a Republican who represents a battleground suburban district,
07:01you're looking at Virginia and New Jersey, and you're saying, forgive me, holy shit.
07:06And significantly, Mamdani does have, at this early hour, more than 50% of the vote.
07:18The race to become New York City's next mayor was always going to be the marquee contest of the night.
07:25It is, in a big way, because of the city and the candidates themselves.
07:29New York City is the largest city in America, a cultural and economic keystone.
07:35And this election, in particular, was unlike what most New Yorkers alive today have ever seen in their lifetimes.
07:43His relentless focus on making the city affordable, talking about things like free buses and rent freezes,
07:51really seemed to resonate with voters.
07:53A win for Zoran Mamdani would make him both the youngest mayor New York has seen in more than a century,
07:59and also its first Muslim mayor.
08:02He also calls himself a democratic socialist, running on promises of universal child care,
08:07freezing rent, making public transit free, hiking taxes on the rich,
08:12even a plan to set up a chain of city-owned grocery stores that would set prices lower than the private sector competition.
08:19Every politician says, New York is the greatest city on the globe.
08:24But what good is that if no one can afford to live here?
08:27And leading up to election night, Mamdani was the clear frontrunner.
08:31Winning young voters 75%, winning the black vote by 15 points, 52% for Mamdani.
08:37More than 2 million New Yorkers have voted, that is the most, since 1969.
08:42This, by the way, is despite Donald Trump's efforts to undermine him,
08:47both directly through truth social posts like this,
08:49calling any Jewish person who votes for Mamdani a Jew-hater and stupid person,
08:55and calling Mamdani himself a communist, his record a complete and total failure.
09:00But also this indirect threat of withholding federal funding
09:04if municipal voters don't vote the way Trump tells them to vote.
09:08It is highly unlikely that I will be contributing federal funds
09:11other than the very minimum as required to my beloved first home
09:15because of the fact that, as a communist, referring to Mamdani there,
09:19this once great city has zero chance of success or even survival.
09:24Trump really does see federal dollars as largesse
09:29that he should be able to distribute according to his whim.
09:33So I don't doubt that he will try to find places where he can cut funding to the city of New York.
09:39But for Democrats watching from Congress,
09:41Mamdani's momentum also raised a very important question
09:44about what it even means to be a Democrat in the era of Donald Trump.
09:50He's the leader of the Democratic Party?
09:51Let's swear.
09:53What? There is no, who is the leader? Can someone tell me?
09:55So the Democrats heading into 2025 were kind of just like this broken party
10:01desperate for any sources of inspiration.
10:04I think they're looking for him as really what the transition maybe
10:08for the next generation of Democrats
10:11and the next generation of a winning formula for the Democratic Party.
10:15And this question has driven a real wedge through the political left
10:19because on the one hand, you have a much more progressive
10:22and in a lot of ways, much more combative flank
10:25in people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders
10:29pushing for large-scale change and backing Mamdani.
10:33No, we will not accept an oligarchic form of society
10:40where a handful of billionaires run the government.
10:44They scratch his back, he scratches theirs,
10:48and the rest of us are left behind.
10:51Then you have the more centrist incrementalists
10:54like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,
10:56House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries,
10:58the former who at no point endorsed Mamdani,
11:02and the latter who only did so very late in the game
11:05and only after weeks of questions and demands from the party's base.
11:10Since the 2024 election, the Democrats have kind of been wandering.
11:13What's the message that they need to put together
11:16to hold together lots of different parts of their party?
11:20Because the Democratic Party is less cohesive
11:22and less, let us say, disciplined than the Republican Party.
11:26I've seen the Democrats described as, right now,
11:30looking for their way out of the political wilderness,
11:33a party licking its wounds.
11:35It's possible, not just Mamdani's win, but his convincing win.
11:40Mamdani decisively took the lead in the mayoral race
11:43early in the night and ended with over 50% of the vote.
11:47It's possible this is like jet fuel for the party's left wing,
11:51which believes being even more unapologetically left wing
11:55is the solution to their current problem.
11:58Like, Mamdani is a prototype
12:00for how to wage an effective campaign.
12:02If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump
12:06how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.
12:11I think if you look at the, you know,
12:12Bernie AOC faction of the Democratic Party,
12:16they're going to point to Mamdani and say,
12:18this is our vindication.
12:19When you say, well, socialism doesn't work anywhere,
12:21these kids say, well, capitalism's not working for me.
12:24Somebody's got to do something to help me.
12:25But two thoughts on this.
12:27One, what works in New York
12:29doesn't necessarily work in the rest of the United States.
12:33Remember, New York City is almost always different.
12:36I've been around for many decades.
12:38We never looked at New York City to define American politics.
12:41I think he's the new face of the progressive socialist wing
12:45of the Democratic Party.
12:47He absolutely does not represent most Democrats.
12:50But two, as much as you have election observers
12:54trumpeting this big blue wave.
12:57Mayor! Mayor!
12:59History made tonight.
13:02It's worth remembering that Democrats
13:04were expected to win all of these races.
13:07Polling suggested as much.
13:09And if things hadn't gone their way,
13:11what a disaster that would have been
13:13for a party often seen these days
13:15as having no unified direction,
13:18no compelling sales pitch,
13:19and no effective strategy
13:21to unseat Donald Trump.
13:23They don't control the presidency.
13:25They don't control either of our chambers
13:27of our legislative branch.
13:29It's a majority on the Supreme Court
13:31and they seem to be favoring Trump.
13:33So it's that combination of, I'll call it,
13:35lack of positions of power
13:36and lack of a message
13:38that really puts the Democrats
13:40in the position that they're in right now.
13:42So it's hard to see these election wins
13:45as putting Democrats in a clear position of strength.
13:48But right now,
13:50they may be willing to settle for simply hope.
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