Romney's speech, what Plouffe got right and a message for Boehner and Obama

>>> not politics as usual . you elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. and in the coming weeks and months, i am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. reducing our deficit, reforming our tax code, fixing our immigration system, freeing ourselves from foreign oil . we've got more work to do. but that doesn't mean your work is done. the role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote. america has never been about what can be done for us. it's about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. that's the principle we were founded on.

>> good morning and welcome to a special edition of " morning joe ." it is wednesday, november 7th . a new day. the morning after the election. we're live from historic studio 8h in rockefeller center here in new york city in front of a live studio audience . a rocket crowd. president obama has won a second term in the white house , remaining the 44th president of the united states .

>> around 11:15 last night, the networks put the biggest swing state of the election, ohio , ohio , ohio , in the president's column. that pushed him over the 270 electoral vote threshold. at this hour, president obama has 303 electoral college votes to mitt romney 's 206. florida is the only state yet to be called.

>> president obama has a slim lead in the sunshine state , but it's considered too close to call. and with florida hanging in the balance , that might mean that you have to grow a mustache.

>> we'll see. we shall see. it wasn't until after 2:00 a.m . that the president was declared the winner of virginia. it was a state he won in 2008 . but where polling just days before the election showed that the race was incredibly close.

>> out west, obama took colorado and also prevailed in nevada. and in pennsylvania where the romney campaign was looking to make an 11th hour push, president obama was declared the winner. there fairly early in the night.

>> the only big battleground state that mitt romney won last night was north carolina , a state the president took in 2008 and where democrats held their convention this summer.

>> go ahead.

>> this morning, the president is also pulling ahead in the popular vote , currently leading nationwide, 50%-48%.

>> and aside from the race for the white house , republicans hoped to win control of the senate last night, but it was democrats who were able to flip several seats in their favor. democrats now hold 51 senate seats to the republicans ' 45 with races in montana and north dakota still undecided.

>> and as i said before, the only thing steve schmidt really wanted to win this year, along with me, was control of the house.

>> yeah.

>> and we did it! we won! does anybody believe me? anybody?

>> it's all right.

>> anybody taking the bait?

>> yeah.

>> i didn't think so. essentially, we are left with the same political structure in d.c. that we have enjoyed so much over the past two years. with us now to talk about that and more --

>> yeah. we have mark halperin and steve schmidt . and joining us now, the host of msnbc's "hardball," chris matthews , everybody. we also have contributor to "newsweek" and the daily beast and co-founder of no labels, mark mckinnon who was with us at the 92nd street "y" last night getting wasted.

>> just getting hammered.

>> it was embarrassing.

>> chris , i have a lot to ask.

>> congratulations. i love this room. i keep thinking how great this is to be here.

>> it is. it's so exciting. the crowd's great, too. and as i was saying in the break, this is the america that my mother warned me about if barack obama got re-elected. socialism and republicans forced to sit up in the balcony. there are four republicans . and they're sitting up there. it's going to be okay, mom, i promise.

>> this is what paul ryan promised two days ago, two days ago was the fall of the western world .

>> yeah.

>> the end of the judeo- christian tradition , of all that we care about. pretty frightening.

>> i love after anything that passes that the other side doesn't like, tonight, freedom breathed its final breath. and i actually believed it like the first couple months in the house. this is awful! and then the next day would come. you go, oh, wait, we still have freedom.

>> we're good.

>> we're going to be fine. so mom, and republicans --

>> it's going to be okay.

>> -- in the words of the reverend al green , "everything's gonna be all right." we're good.

>> it might be better.

>> but not as well as the president. chris , i've got a couple of quick questions to ask you. lightning round .

>> rapid fire . rapid fire .

>> the president's speech last night --

>> what?

>> the president's speech last night?

>> yeah.

>> what?

>> did you not like it?

>> what is wrong?

>> i didn't go for it, no.

>> why not?

>> what?

>> he talked about reaching out.

>> why do i have to do this now? i'm absolutely stunned by what happened last night. i thought it was stunning. a six-round knockout out of nowhere. you weren't the only one who didn't get it.

>> i'm stunned.

>> i thought this was the most unpredictable year. i don't want to say anything bad. i want to talk about the guy that you thought should win. can't i just answer the question a different way like people do?

>> just say what you want to say.

>> he gets to ask the question. you get to answer the answer.

>> i don't want to say anything negative about the president.

>> chris , hold on. let's start this over. we'll cut it in posts. hey, chris , what did you think about last night?

>> oh, great, thank you, chris . i thought -- and mika, we're all and this guy -- we're all romantic about politics at one level. we want to see something really fine happen. and i get very verklempt when i talk about it this way. it's not funny.

>> oh, my lord. okay.

>> romney -- i mean, i thought romney 's speech last night was a piece of wonder. i thought the way he came out alone and stood in one, as they say on broadway, right out there by himself, not with the wife, a shoulder to cry on, stood out there with manliness and grace and did absolutely everything right. i called the president. i wished him well. this is out of the book. this is how you do it. it's biblical. and every single thing was classic perfect. and the way he wished the president -- and he did every single thing right. he said his campaign staff were the best in the business. he said that his pick for vp was perfect. he didn't lay it off on anybody but himself. and i got the feeling when he said "we left everything on the field," in other words, that man was deliberate last night. i think he had a sense, i couldn't have done more. i campaigned even on election day . my dad tried to do this. i tried to do this. i couldn't have done more. and i mean this really spiritual, i think he's very believing in his religion. i think he felt that if this is the way it's got to be, this is the way god wants it, you know, the thunderstorm, everything that happened. he promised very -- what's the right word? he's calm about it. because he knows very few of us know what it's like to do everything to win.

>> with grace. and that will help him transition.

>> yeah. he did every single thing he knew he could do to win, and he -- how can you be any better person than that?

>> mark mckinnon , though, i remember watching al gore after he conceded after the recount. and three minutes into that speech --

>> that was --

>> -- i said, if this al gore had run, we would have lost. and you just wonder how losing a bittersome but frees up others at the moment.

>> i think it liberates candidates and to show a side of them that sometimes they haven't showed in the election, which is unfortunate. i think it would have been great if people had seen more of that mitt romney . i think that's who he really is.

>> i really appreciate so much what chris has said this morning because i think it speaks to reaching out. but mark mckinnon , you and me as republicans , just tell the truth about the rest of the campaign before that speech. mitt romney ran a cynical, cold campaign. he ran false, misleading commercials. and we said it on air in realtime, he lied about welfare reform . he lied about the auto bailout. these 30-second ads, he lied about medicare. he had a running mate who wanted to do practically the same thing. i know that sounds harsh, but it's the truth, and americans get it. and on top of that, stuart stevens decided, along with mitt romney , to run a campaign about nothing. they were going to run against the president. and i agree with chris . and i've been saying it all year. mitt romney is such a good man.

>> and i think --

>> personally, he's somebody that we should all --

>> they're a great family.

>> -- emulate. they're a great family. but his campaign was not great.

>> well, you have to lay most of that off on him, though.

>> he's the candidate, right.

>> i think we saw the real mitt romney last night. i think that is reflectively who he really is. but i think he's a guy who also is very transactional. he ran in 2008 . he saw what worked and what didn't. he saw what he needed to do to win the 2012 primaries. as a result, that's where he ended up in the general election .

>> so chris matthews , why do you look sad?

>> i'm stunned.

>> it happened so fast.

>> i've been thinking about this election for years. and i've been thinking about, you know, the first election of an african- american president blew me away in this country. i just figured in our history, for this to happen is just stunning.

>> i'm glad it was a decisive outcome.

>> this time i think it showed that advertising on presidential elections is a waste of money. anybody that spends $1, the koch brothers wasted their money. karl rove , you can't tell an american who to vote for for president with a 30-second tv ad . that's disrespectful to begin with.

>> i think we were stunned.

>> don't you think?

>> yeah, we were stunned last night as the results came in how quickly michigan came in, how quickly wisconsin came in, how quickly new hampshire came in and how decisive it was. i was stunned as well. i mean, i said before that if you're looking at the numbers, the president's going to win. but you think there might be something else there. it never came.

>> there was one legitimate romney campaign that we got a good lack at in the first debate. and i don't mean the fact that he came in overpowering and in command. it bothered me. but he said one simple thing that people were buying. i'm a businessman. i'm not a jack-of-all-trades. i hire people, create jobs. if he fought on that line, instead he went off on benghazi. you know what? we want jobs. that's what this country is about is self-reliance.

>> obama's for jobs.

>> if he'd have stayed on that one line. as you said, he didn't have the confidence in what he was doing. he didn't believe in it. he's going to go out tomorrow and start making business again, start doing the equity business again probably. that's what he does. if he'd have said you're not always looking for a guy like me, but you are.

>> i totally agree with you.

>> mark halperin , we're obviously going to be looking at strategy. republicans are going to be talking about what mitt romney did wrong. let's talk about not only what the president did right but what david plouffe and the rest of that campaign did right. you know --

>> again.

>> again. i mean, the targeting.

>> in hard times .

>> the targeting, the focused approach. i've always talked about what ken mehlman and karl rove did in 2004 . boy, what happened last night was nothing short of remarkable because the campaign events, they weren't that exciting. you look at the faces in the crowd , people weren't as moved by the president. but you know what? emotion at the end didn't matter. the hard numbers did.

>> the president said in his speech last night, i had the best campaign staff ever. and maybe some would take it hyperbolic. it may turn out to be true. they did a bunch of stuff they teased at. michael scheerer has a piece coming out in time.com and "time" magazine, inside some of the targeting they did that they didn't show. they didn't want the republicans to know. i had one republican source who signed up for a lot of their stuff to see what they were doing. and their targeting of getting these voters out in the nine states that mattered, not wasting time in the other states, reaching out to their base. they may be -- we may decide the best campaign of all time.

>> steve schmidt , do you agree?

>> absolutely. i think that the job that david plouffe and david axelrod did is they go down in history in the books. they're the greatest campaign consultant duo that's ever lived.

>> massena.

>> you worked with the great tip o'neill right after the ronald reagan landslide. and ronald reagan figured out how to work around the democrats sometimes, but also tip and ronald reagan , you're writing a book about it.

>> right.

>> learned how to work together. what lessons should john boehner and his staff draw from what happened last night? and what should the president learn?

>> there's a line i'm working on. when tip met gorbachev before reagan met gorbachev , gorbachev said what are you? i'm the opposition leader . he was delivering a message from reagan . he said no, actually, i'm the leader of the opposition . so the great question from gorbachev is, "what's that?" and tip's answer i think's going to be, "it means we don't disagree about everything," which is a profound statement. which means there's things right off the bat they can agree on. little things , foreign policy agreements, things like that we can agree on, reforms we can agree on. just start working together like we did with the soviet union . get used to little things . the other thing is you've got to realize the main result of this election. okay, we can argue what the division is, but it's something like 60/40 democrat. so when you cut the deal, it should be a 60/40 pro-democratic deal, but it's got to be a deal. and then when tip won the second election in '82 as you remember, they had a solution on social security , which is a 60/40 democratic deal. in other words, you respect each other's offers. you both won, you know? you know? mick mcconnell's still there. boehner's still there. and they got elected by the caucuses and by the people. you've got to respect them. and both of you respect the electorate. so you cut a deal. you don't mess around. you say okay, we're going to cut a deal. 60/40 your way this time, but you've got a deal. the trouble is if you have to deal with the tea party people, they're not the majority. you've got to work around them. that's all you have to do. if they're not going to cut a deal, you've got to work around them.

>> mika, i love the story that richard reeves writes in his ronald reagan biography about tip o'neill and ronald reagan . and maybe the defining moment of that relationship, reeves writes that after the marines were killed in beirut, tip o'neill called together a meeting at hc-5, got all the democrats down together. they thought he was going to give a political speech. instead tip o'neill said to the democrats gathered there, while the barracks were still smoldering, he said, you know, today we're not democrats . today we're americans. and if any of you speak out against the president of the united states , you're not going to have ronny reagan to have to deal with. you're going to have tip o'neill to deal with. and reeves -- richard reeves said that the democrats followed tip o'neill's leadership. and when the time came, they criticized ronald reagan . but they did it in time. these were two old irish politicians that knew how to work together, even though they disagreed as fundamentally as possible.

>> what we need is more people on both sides of the aisle like that. and before we go to a break, mark mckinnon , you've been on the cutting edge of this. co-founder of no labels. this is the issue.

>> there's a lot of encouraging news out there. we had a lot of people out there campaigning on the idea of problem solving rather than partisan politics . and we'll be announcing in january at least 40 members of roughly divided half and half between republicans and democrat, 40 members of the house and a few members of the senate that have committed to be part of a problem-solving caucus and committed to working across the aisle, working with one another in an effort to get these problems moving forward.

>> that's great.

>> excellent.

>> that's some good news.

>> all right. thank you.

>>> still ahead, the new u.s. senator -elect from massachusetts, elizabeth warren joins us. also, the moderator of "meet the press," david gregory , chuck todd and " washington post " columnist, eugene robinson . and next from richmond, winner of last night's u.s. senate race, tim kaine . also look who's coming down the hall. former pennsylvania governor ed rendell joins us here on set for