Hello and welcome to How to Win 2024.

It's Thursday morning, September 26.

I'm Claire McCaskill and I'm here with my guest co-pilot today,

my buddy, MS NBC's own Michael Steele.

He's the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, former RNC chair, and now co-host the weekend with

Alicia Menendez and Simone Sanders Townsend. Hey Michael?

Hey Claire, it's good to be in your house. Wow, thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, no, look, we have a lot of fun when we're on together and I'm really looking forward to this conversation and red and blue, making a little purple.

There you go.

Although I would say in this particular election I wouldn't call you bright red.

Oh no.

In this particular election I think we are a very, very light purple trending towards blue.

In this particular election, look, I told the vice president and I told the president when I came out and supported him in

2020, I look forward to beating the upside to head on policy a little bit later on, but right now we

need to save the country.

So that's the goal and I stand with my friend Claire in that effort so.

We're now 40 days from the election and 40 days is nothing.

Michael, you've been there 40 days out when your name's on the ballot in a big race I certainly have it is exhausting

it is hard to keep track of where you are and what you're doing you know in a presidential

particularly it is chaotic and this is a super tight race.

Anybody who wants to believe that Kamala Harris is comfortably ahead and the worst is behind

us is not paying close attention to what's going on in these

battleground states. We're going to head into the room to share some insight on

...