Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri. At long last, we’ve reached the end of this seemingly interminable election cycle. (Or is this merely the beginning of the “lawfare” portion of the election? We’ll know soon enough…)

As this email hits your inboxes, instead of standing around Mar-a-Lago—an Election Night gathering to which I was disinvited—I’ll be in the studio preparing to kick off Amazon’s first-ever live-news event, Election Night With Brian Williams, alongside my colleagues Baratunde Thurston, Peter Hamby, and a rogues’ gallery of all-star political talent like James Carville, Mike Murphy, Jessica Yellin, Poppy Harlow, Abby Huntsman, Erin McPike, Erin Perrine, and many more. You can join the livestream at 5 p.m. ET. Also, check out my final pod leading into the big day with Alex Thompson, where we discussed how both campaigns are feeling and, of course, the pre-results blame game. You can listen here and here.

In this jam-packed Election Night issue, Abby Livingston dissects the Virginia districts that could presage which way the battle for the House is headed; Dylan Byers chats with Don Lemon; and John Heilemann offers up some choice quotes from his conversation with Charlamagne tha God. Finally, we’ve got my conversation with former governors Tom Corbett (R-Pennsylvania) and Jim Blanchard (D-Michigan) about their bipartisan effort to stymie election certification chaos.

Let’s dive in…

• Lemon’s lessons: In today’s episode of Dylan’s excellent new podcast, The Grill Room, Don Lemon revealed what he learned about the electorate from his tour of America’s battleground states. Herewith…

  Dylan Byers: You’ve done these man-on-the-street interviews in the battleground states for several weeks now. Where did you go? What did you learn?

  Don Lemon: We started getting some eye-opening information, especially about Black men and their support, or lack thereof, of Kamala Harris and what people thought about both candidates. We quickly realized that the demographics that are traditionally counted on for certain types of candidates is just not happening this election…

  We decided we needed to do [another battleground state tour] before the election, and we found the same sorts of things. People you would assume are voting for Trump were like, There’s no way. This man is a liar. And then we’d ask Black women who were like, I’m not voting for her just because she’s Black; I don’t like her policies. I think the most eye-opening thing was that the people who supported Donald Trump, for the most part, had no idea about his policies. They were just parroting what they hear on conservative media. The folks who were supporting Kamala Harris, for the most part, really had an idea about her policies.

  It seems to me like there’s no greater time for man-on-the-street interviews, because something fundamental is changing, and we all sort of feel it happening.

  You know immediately when it’s happening. As soon as the Puerto Rican thing happened at Madison Square Garden, I knew immediately that it was sticky just by talking to people. We went to Lancaster County [in Pennsylvania] and spoke to Puerto Rican business owners, and they’re like, Nope, can’t do it. I was gonna vote for him. Women were like, I was going to support Trump, but now I can’t support him… I would much rather be doing man-on-the-street than man-in-the-studio because it’s much more real and much closer to the bone…

  🎧 Listen to the full conversation here.

• The Charlamagne forecast: Meanwhile, on John’s Impolitic podcast, radio superhost Charlamagne tha God expounded on whether Harris’s closing argument resonated with Black voters, and why he took issue with Barack Obama’s comments in Pittsburgh…

  John Heilemann: As someone with their finger on the pulse of America, and Black America in particular, how do you think Kamala has closed the election cycle?

  Charlamagne tha God: I think she’s closed pretty strong. She’s out there touching the people, holding her own rallies, and people seem energized. And I’m not a person who’s huge on celebrity endorsements, but man, they’ve been rolling in. For whatever reason, Trump didn’t do himself any favors [last week]. You got J.D. Vance on Joe Rogan saying, “We’re going to get the ‘normal gay guy vote’”; you got the Puerto Rican jokes at the MAGA rally—on top of everything else that Dr. Phil and Rudy Giuliani said; then you got Donald Trump talking about aiming guns at Liz Cheney…

  You took issue with Obama’s comments on the campaign trail in Pittsburgh, in which he projected disappointment in Black male voters’ support (or lack thereof) of Kamala Harris. Can you speak to that? Why do you find it problematic?

  First, because it’s not rooted in anything. Let’s start there. Black men have always been the second-largest voting bloc of the Democratic Party. And the other part I hate—he said he thinks a lot of Black men don’t want to vote for Kamala because they’re not feeling the idea of voting for a woman. In 2016, 85 percent of Black men voted for Hillary Clinton. In 2020, that number was definitely over 80 percent, maybe even closer to 90 percent, of Black men who voted for Biden. Guess what? I’m a Black man who didn’t vote for Joe Biden; I’m a Black man who voted for Kamala Harris because she was on the ticket.

  I feel like this whole conversation about Black men moving toward being conservative is very overstated. I feel like Black men are just like any other voting group. As Vice President Harris constantly says, you have to go out and earn your votes. And I think, over the last decade or so, Black men have started to express themselves, voice their concerns about the Democratic Party, and voice how we feel like we don’t get seen within the Democratic Party. I don’t think that Black men don’t want to vote for Harris because she’s a Black woman; I think Black men are just disappointed in the process. We’re disappointed that we’ve constantly shown up for this party and don’t get back what we put in.

  🎧 Listen to the full conversation here.

Indeed, the earlier these races are called—a Democratic insider told me not to expect a call before 8 p.m ET, but possibly after 9 p.m. ET—the more likely it becomes that the winning candidate’s party will pick up victories elsewhere. “First reports will be the smaller rural counties, so it will be G.O.P. heavy; don’t read too much into that,” the source said. “The larger localities will report later.”

• Virginia’s 7th District: The Republican battle plan for holding on to the House is predicated on winning a handful of Democrat-held, open-seat races, just like this one. The moment Spanberger announced her retirement, her old district, comprising the D.C. exurbs, became a high-priority Republican pickup opportunity. Republicans like their candidate, retired Green Beret Derrick Anderson, who’s facing off against a Democratic Resistance favorite, retired Army Col. Eugene Vindman, a Trump whistleblower from the 2019 impeachment. Should Republicans pick up this seat, they might be on their way to keeping the gavel. A Vindman victory would be a veritable Xanax for anxious Democrats.
• Virginia’s 2nd District: In this storied, perennially contested Virginia Beach-based district, analysts are giving Republican freshman incumbent Jen Kiggans the edge, in part due to the strength of her campaign. She’s up against Democratic challenger and fellow Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal. For Democrats to retake the House, they need to defeat Republican incumbents in tightly drawn districts like this one. An early Kiggans win could portend Republicans doing well elsewhere—but if Kiggans is in trouble, other Republicans likely are as well.
• And if they split…?: This would be an early sign that tonight’s race for the House will be neck and neck, won by a razor-thin margin. Of course, this would harken back to 2012, when both parties lost marquee House and Senate races in battleground districts. In such an environment, candidate quality and performance often carry the day.

In our conversation, Blanchard and Corbett discussed the steps they’ve taken to prevent presidential candidates from trying to get governors to do their dirty work—as Trump did in 2020; the alarming volume of social media chatter threatening election interference if the count isn’t going a certain way; the “double gender gap” in Michigan; whether Harris can match Obama’s numbers in rural and urban PA, and much, much more. (The following, which has been excerpted from a full episode of Somebody’s Gotta Win, has been lightly edited for clarity.)

Jim Blanchard: I’m not worried about those battleground states, nor am I worried about the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp. But you’re correct in raising that issue. There are another 43 states where governors could—under pressure, duress, or thinking they’re currying favor—try to hold up the process so we don’t have a timely tabulation of the Electoral College. The reality is people like former [Pennsylvania] Governor Corbett and others are going to take [Trump] to court and [issue a] mandamus, because this is not a discretionary matter. It’s not something to play games with. It’s really mandatory, and it’s administrative, and that can be enforced in court, and we’d have to do that in a timely fashion. Is that a fair characterization, Governor Corbett?

Tom Corbett: It is. The whole process of this was to remind governors that things have changed since 2020 with the Election Count Reform Act of 2022, which made it absolutely clear that this is a ministerial duty and you can’t change anything. This was a public letter; hopefully, they’ve communicated it to the general public, so they don’t believe that the governors can just willy-nilly say, I don’t like that slate of electors, so I’m not going to certify them. And it really applies to the counties; the counties have to certify. They have to certify it to the Department of State here in Pennsylvania, and the secretary there certifies it to the governor, then the governor sends it down to the archives and to the president of the Senate, which is the vice president of the United States at the time.

Blanchard: In 2020, Donald Trump called members of the Board of Canvassers in Wayne County and tried to get them to delay certification, and joining him on the call was Ronna McDaniel, the Republican Party chair. And they ended up resisting the call. Again, I think because they knew that what they were doing was ministerial. The numbers were the numbers. So the pressures here can be great on someone, particularly if they’re politically ambitious locally. And I think the key is to make sure they realize they’re going to lose in court and they’re going to be embarrassed.

Unlike last time, if Trump loses, he won’t be the president of the United States trying to hang on for dear life, when he had a lot of power as the chief executor of the country. In this case, he’d just be a politician with a MAGA army behind him. It wouldn’t be quite the same as 2020, right?

Corbett: Well, I hope it’s not the same as 2020. And part of the work that we’ve been doing to keep our republic is trying to talk to the states—particularly the battleground states—to be prepared in case they try to do something like that. But you’re right; Trump isn’t coming from the same position. He was president when January 6 happened. He’s not president now, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who are thinking they can do this again. So we’re educating the states that the rules have changed and to be prepared in case [Trump and company] do try it.

Blanchard: The social media traffic suggests that there’s even more discussion about holding up the election, that it’s going to be rigged no matter what, and that they’re going to be more active in trying to stop a count if it’s not one they like. But Democrats have the machinery, and the vice president, Kamala Harris, is going to preside over the Electoral College results. But the point is these states operate in good faith. This is democracy—trust and good faith are important. Trust is a coin of the realm. And they need to act in good faith and move this along without incident.

Corbett: In some states, we might. I think it’s more likely this time than it was four years ago. And, again, that has to do with the Electoral Count Reform Act, and the government giving money to the counties to get the equipment that will speed up the count, and a promise from the counties that they will stay open 24/7 and count. I think in Pennsylvania, except for Philadelphia, we’ll have a pretty good idea.

Blanchard: In Michigan, I think we’ll know by midnight. One reason is because we can process these mail-in and absentee ballots earlier. We can’t tabulate them, but they can be opened up, taken out of envelopes, fed into a machine and [made] ready to be counted.

Is there a pretty wide gender gap in Michigan?

Blanchard: It’s a double gender gap, too. Women are more for Harris than men are for Trump, and women also vote in higher percentages. And that’s true of Black women as well. So when you read about somebody trying to analyze young Black men, I don’t think they’ve got it right at all. I could tell you that Kamala Harris will do well among Black men, but we Democrats never do as well among men as we do women. I think Kamala Harris will carry Michigan by three or four points. I think women are the deciding factor, although I will say the share of white male college graduates moving over to Harris is a trend that I’m watching.

Do you think Harris can reach Obama’s levels with rural and urban voters in Pennsylvania?

Corbett: No, I don’t believe she will. And part of it has to do with the fact that she’s part of the prior administration. Obama was brand new. Even though Kamala wasn’t president, she has a record that, in some areas, is not going to play that well. And if Trump were to win, it’s going to be because of that record, not because they necessarily really like Trump.

Blanchard: Obama is really a once-in-a-generation phenomenon. I think Harris still has some room to grow. The question is: Can she convince people that it’s time for the new generation and time to turn the page and that you’re going to get change without changing parties? She’s 22 years younger than Joe Biden and 20 years younger than Donald Trump. It’s time for a new generation, a fresh look. In some ways, I think that’s a better argument than trying to list a bunch of programs. The more people see Harris and feel comfortable with her, the better she’s going to do. But there was still a lot of work in that area. People normally don’t know who the vice president is, and all of a sudden, she’s our nominee. So it’s been a remarkable thing.