0 looking like downtown? >> well, you can see, alex, the bands of rain coming through are making what is a difficult job that much tougher. we know there are at least ten people who are dead in new york city because of the storm. another three quarter million people without power and restoring that power and getting the mass transit system back up and running are the biggest issues facing new york city. we have some good news about mass transit. the bus service will resume at 5:00 this afternoon. it will be sunday service. they hope to have regular service restored by tomorrow. the subways on the other hand, as you mentioned, are completely different story. all the subway tunnels are flooded and, in fact, the state has asked and is receiving help from federal experts who come in to pump the water out of the subway tunnels to get back to that. those are the two big issues both mass transit and power and both are going to take several days to restore completely. back to you. >> sandy is now threatening inland states with blizzard conditions. let's go now to nbc meteorologist dillon dryer tracking sandy's path. >> it is amazing how many facets there are to this storm. we're talking about coastal flooding, inland flooding because of the rain and mountain snow. this storm is huge and enough cold air that portions of west virginia are dealing with blizzard-like conditions. the snow comes down at rates of one to two inches per hour and on top of that, winds gusting near 30 to 40 miles per hour and even though it's not snowing up across portions of south of lake erie, we are still seeing flooding issues out that way. davis, west virginia, has more than 26 inches of snow already on the ground. it's a town that is pretty much without power and its residents are mostly elderly. there are big concerns out that way. the roads are covered in snow because it's falling at such an something agreement. >> it's funny. steve kornacki was saying he thought romney would keep campaigning and the conventional wisdom was that's never going to happen. but i agree with you, martin, hearing him say bring your donation to our victory center and before that still campaigning yesterday, saying people, hey, early vote is still happening. >> an hour ago they were campaigning. >> it was billed by the romney campaign as a storm relief event but happening in ohio, as we have just reported the bulk of the damage is not in ohio, although ohio may be touched by this. i thought, richard, you know, we talked about this being time for a national unity. chris christie yesterday, one of romney's chief surrogates, someone who has been vocal in his support for the former governor of massachusetts, had this to say about the president yesterday. >> yep. >> appreciate that call from the president. very proactive and i appreciate that type of leadership. i spoke to the president three times yesterday. he's been incredibly supportive and helpful to our state and not once did he bring up the election. if he's not bringing it up you can be sure that people in new jersey are not worried about that primarily if one of the guys who's running isn't. the president has been outstanding in this and so the folks of fema, craig fugate and his folks have been excellent. >> overwhelmingly positive assessment of the president. >> he's not just a romney surrogate, the keynote speaker of the republican convention we saw and just to put it in context, one of the major premise sis of the romney campaign is barack obama came to power promising to bring the country together and, in fact, mitt romney is the guy do that. over this last three, four years, the president for all his efforts to reach out and find some compromise has been cornered into a position where he's been denied republican cooperation. so any endorsement, especially an endorsement at this point, even if it's an endorsement about a natural disaster, from a prominent republican, is really worth every piece of benefit that you can get because it says to independents, be it says to those moderate republicans, maybe this president isn't quite as polarizing as we thought. maybe there is a -- can't get the votes in congress what he wants to do he's not so unacceptable. that was mitch mcconnell's strategy. deny him a vote, make him look like a partisan figure and people will think he's unacceptble. chris christie who is not shy about calling people out, saying he's doing a good job and he's a democrat, then maybe he's not quite as extreme as some people on the right including mitt romney have said. >> you heard him say, chris fugate, not to bring him. chris fugate was jeb bush's hurricane guy. so, you know, for all this talk of obama being so polarizing he hired jeb bush's hurricane expert as his fema executive. >> i think to richard's point, this bipartisan bologna that mitt romney has been proposing over the last few days, is absolutely nonsensical when you look at his record in massachusetts, but also bear in mind mitt romney called republican governors yesterday. the president didn't. he called governors who are in states that are affected. and that's the big difference between these two men. and i think that that's what the audience, the public, sorry, and your audience, alex, are beginning to get hold of. this man is for the whole of america, the whole. >> that's the benefit presidents have. you can take the national perspective, you look like you're an executive at a time of crisis. you can do things. candidates are less on a stage with a microphone talking about doing things. there is an advantage at this point when for all the challenges that a natural disaster that presidents and governors get to do stuff. >> and nic, we know we just got a read out from the white house that the president was on the phone with local officials and state officials. he has a job to do at this time. mitt romney is for better or worse in the awkward position of having to kind of campaign but not really campaign at the same time. in the "boston globe" there is i think a realist editorial that says the kumbaya stage, apparently what we're in right now, won't last wrong. politics is an undeniable aspect of any catastrophe. >> i mean look if you're a key executive of the state in the hurricane path you were graded on one thing in the next week and that is the response to the hurricane. everything else out the window because if you mess it up, everything is out the window. let's recall that president obama is fairly popular in jersey and chris christie is not. and he needs a lot of help from the federal government. he needs fema help, red cross help and trailers and everything so for a state executive at a bipartisan time, the president, he has an advantage, he can conduct diplomacy so to speak on like two treks. he can have the full machinery of the white house and the disaster response and being statesman like. that campaign isn't over. that campaign is going on and on, both sides, romney and obama, they're putting out press releases, talking points, hitting each other ads are on the air so it hasn't stopped. >> the surrogates are still in motion. >> except for chris christie. >> that's true. >> he's switched sides now a surrogate for the president. sorry. >> and to bring it back to the reality of the situation, chris christie has an extraordinary amount of work on his hands. you know, the next few weeks or months of his life will be busy with nonpolitical activities. after the break workers are stranded, hundreds of businesses are closed, thousands of flights are canceled and the new york stock exchange is shut down. depending on what model you look at, sandy could cost the economy billions. we will examine the financial fallout when cnbc's an drew ross sorkin joins the panel next on "now." 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