Ronald Brownstein explains on camera how “Trump Is About to Betray his Rural Supporters” at Local 3 News. Brownstein also has a paywall article, “Many Trump voters still have doubts about him. Can he hold them?” at CNN Politics. And here’s a stub of another paywalled Brownstein article, “The Potential Backlash to Trump Unbound: A returning president who expects to govern without constraints leaves his opponents hoping to benefit from the blowback” at The Atlantic: “Donald trump will return to office facing far fewer constraints than when he entered the White House in 2017. The political, legal, institutional, and civic forces that restrained and often frustrated Trump during his first term have all palpably weakened. That will be a mixed blessing for him and for the Republican Party….There’s less chance that forces inside or outside his administration will thwart Trump’s marquee campaign proposals, such as mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, big tariffs on imports, and sweeping rollbacks of climate and other environmental regulations. But there will also be fewer obstacles to the kind of polarizing ideas that got stopped during Trump’s first term. On numerous occasions, his own aides intervened to prevent the president from, for example, deploying the military to shoot racial-justice protesters, firing missiles into Mexico against drug-cartel facilities without authorization from the Mexican government, or potentially quitting NATO. Republicans in Congress thwarted parts of his agenda, as when senators blocked his attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The courts ruled against some policies, such as separating the children of undocumented migrants from their parents at the southern border….This time, Trump’s fate will be much more in his own hands. If he can deliver greater economic stability for working families, while avoiding too many firefights on militant MAGA priorities, strategists in both parties agree that he will be in a strong position to consolidate the gains he’s made among traditionally Democratic constituencies, such as Black, Latino, and younger white men.”

An excerpt of “The Democrats Have a Crime Problem. Blame the Media. How news coverage fuels the widespread, misguided perception that crime is up and cities are unsafe” by John Pfaff at The New Republic: “In Democrats’ seemingly endless election postmortems—and in the postmortems on the postmortems—a persistent theme has been to blame the reddening of blue states like New York and New Jersey on crime in their big cities. On Pod Save America, the political commentator Ezra Klein emphasized the importance of taking crime seriously as a factor in voters’ decisions. To explain why he wasn’t surprised by blue states’ “sharp red shift,” he said: “Because if you just talk to anybody who lives in them, they are furious. And this idea that, like … ‘Crime is actually down, this is all just Fox News’—like, shut the fuck up with that.” Klein argued that when it comes to crime and criminal justice policy, fact-checking is a political dead end for Democrats. Instead, Democrats need to “talk to some people who live near you” and grasp “the sense of disorder rising”—a disorder fueled by migrants, homeless encampments, turnstile jumping, and crime in general. In San Francisco, he noted, “the fury is overwhelming.” As evidence, he pointed to the losses of reform prosecutors and the defeat of San Francisco Mayor London Breed….At bottom, Klein’s claim was that it’s bad politics to respond to people’s fears about crime by saying that crime is actually down (even though it is) or by pointing out that their fears are the product of misleading press coverage (even though they are). In other words, facts don’t matter, the vibes do, and we need to govern in response to the vibes….Crime is not like inflation, a phenomenon everyone experiences because everyone buys stuff. Instead, crime is densely concentrated geographically and among certain people, in the areas that suffer the most from poverty, unemployment, and government disinvestment.” Read more here.

Laura Jadeed shares some insights regarding “How Democrats Can Win Back the White Working Class: Moving left on economic issues may be the key to winning over blue-collar voters of all races” at New Lines Magazine, including: “If rising enthusiasm for unionization is any indication, the white working class is already more progressive than most pundits think. Support for unions — which culture war proponents have tried to brand as “un-American” for their Marxist and socialist roots — has gone from 48% in 2008 to 70% this year. While Democrats are still more likely to support unionization than Republicans, the majority of low-income Republicans now believe that America’s decades-long trend of decreasing unionization is bad for workers. While the proportion of unionized American jobs has remained at around 10% since 2021, union election petitions filed increased by 53% — from 1,638 to 2,510 — between 2021 and 2022 alone, suggesting that it is anti-union regulations, not worker preferences, that keep the number of union jobs from rising higher. Recent surveys suggest that working-class voters support progressive economic policies when the proposals are stripped of liberal jargon; a July poll in swing states showed that 59% of voters without a college degree support free college education, 63% support single payer healthcare, and 76% support a cap on rent increases. This may help explain why a quarter of white voters for President Barack Obama without a high school diploma defected to Donald Trump in 2016. These candidates have little in common but both effectively used the language of economic populism.”

In “Teamsters president reveals how ‘arrogant’ VP Harris lost the party, and the vote,” Joe Dwinell writes at The Boston Herald: “Democrats have an ego problem, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien says….The head of the nation’s largest union said the party that once stood for the working class has “somehow lost their way” and it just cost them the election….He told the Herald Tuesday that the party of AOC — New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and VP Kamala Harris failed to grasp today’s political climate….“They feel it’s a birthright that they would get our support,” he said. “It’s troubling. They can’t dictate how voters should think….“It’s the fault of some Democrats who just forgot where they came from,” the Boston native added. “They need to be a little humble about it.”….The Herald reached out to O’Brien on Christmas Eve as his interview with Tucker Carlson was going viral. In that sitdown, O’Brien confirmed he was told by Harris pre-election that she wasn’t going to abide by the Teamsters’ full set of questions and answers….That roundtable, held after President Biden announced he wasn’t going to seek reelection, was cut short with the VP only answering a quarter of their 16 questions. Trump answered all of them, the New York Post added. ….“On the fourth question, one of her operatives or one of her staff slips a note in front of me — ‘This will be the last question.’ And it was 20 minutes earlier than the time it was going to end,” O’Brien told Carlson….“And her declaration of the way out was, ‘I’m going to win with you or without you,’’ O’Brien added….“Damn. I thought I was arrogant. That’s really arrogant,” Carlson responded.”

Boston College historian and sub stacker Heather Cox Richardson comments on the Musk-Trump budget resolution meltdown: “Passing continuing resolutions to fund the government is usually unremarkable, but this fight showed some lines that will stretch into the future….First of all, it showed the unprecedented influence of billionaire private individual Elon Musk over the Republicans who in 2025 will control the United States government. Musk has a strong financial interest in the outcome of discussions, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he had included Musk as well as President-elect Trump in the negotiation of the original bipartisan funding bill….Then Musk blew up the agreement by issuing what was an apparent threat to fund primary challengers to any Republican who voted for it. He apparently scuttled the measure on his own hook, since Trump took about thirteen hours to respond to his torpedoing it….Musk expressed willingness to leave the government unfunded for a month, apparently unconcerned that a shutdown would send hundreds of thousands of government workers deemed nonessential into temporary leave without pay. This would include about 800,000 civilian employees of the Pentagon, about 17,000 people from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and those who staff the nation’s national parks, national monuments, and other federal sites….Federal workers considered essential would have to continue to work without pay. These essential workers include air traffic controllers and federal law enforcement officers. Military personnel would also have to continue to work without pay.”

At Common Dreams, Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution, the nation’s largest grassroots-funded progressive organization, argues that “The core of that reform message” Democrats deploy should being with: “Banning Dark Money in Primaries: Working-class voters have no reason to trust a party whose primaries are shaped by billionaire-funded super PACs. Eliminating dark money ensures that our candidates win based on voter support, not corporate influence. We’ve seen too many examples where races are flooded with big money to crush popular (progressive) candidates….Investing in State Parties and Grassroots Organizing: The first step to rebuilding working-class coalitions is investing in organizing infrastructure—direct voter outreach based on authentic solutions and supporting grassroots leadership in every state. A 50-state strategy means strengthening state parties and empowering organizers, not handing millions to out-of-touch consultants….Committing to a Progressive Platform: To win back working families, Democrats must champion and deliver on the issues that impact their lives—Medicare expansion, living wages, affordable housing, union rights, and climate justice, to name a few. These policies are not only popular; they are essential to solving the economic pain fueling Trump’s appeal….Increasing Transparency and Accountability: For too long, DNC resources have been squandered on expensive media buys and elite political insiders. A reformed DNC must be accountable to its base and transparent about how it spends its resources—resources that belong to grassroots Democrats.”

Dustin Guastella, research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623, writes at The Guardian  that “it will not be enough for the left to protest the billionaire economy. An honest assessment of progressive liabilities is in order. Those on the left must confront the cultural elite that has pushed the party away from workers on all sorts of non-economic issues. While Trump and his billionaires won’t be able to adequately represent the economic interests of the working class, liberals must recognize that their party doesn’t represent their values. The Democrats captured by highly credentialed clerics has led them to embrace the cultural values of an aristocratic elite. From crime, to climate, to gender politics, and the border, mainstream liberal opinion is much further from the views of workers than many liberals are willing to admit. And this too is a class story….s the Democratic party transformed itself from the party of the New Deal to the party of Nafta it embraced a new constituency: progressive professionals. Since Bill Clinton, liberals presided over the offshoring of high-wage blue-collar jobs in manufacturing. They watched as abandoned factories, and the towns that once relied on them, slowly oxidized. As the Rust belt stretched across the heartland, Democrats helped to subsidize the growth of a new elite primarily concentrated on the coasts. They pushed for policies that pulled the economy away from blue-collar industries and toward more “dynamic” sectors primarily in information technologies.”

Guastella continues, “They fashioned a “new economy” through public policy, and attracted a new constituency as a result. They hoped that as high-wage jobs disappeared, they would be replaced by new high-tech careers; as the party lost blue-collar voters, they invested in white-collar professionals. They got what they wished for….the folkways, mannerisms, and tastes of salaried high-income professionals have come to define the party, and now serve as a powerful repellent for working-class voters. Indeed, not only has the embrace of the knowledge class led to the economic neglect of the working class but the aggressive advocacy of professional class cultural values has played a major role in pushing working-class voters away….Simply put, progressive elites have remade the party to reflect the cultural and aesthetic preferences of blue-blooded liberals, and then made these preferences the priority. Ironically, some highly educated Democrats now embody the definition of “conservative” in their defense of these “woke” priorities: they defend the status of the affluent and the educated, the stand for the preservation of a profoundly powerful elite. If Democrats have any hope of winning back working-class voters they will need to confront this liberal aristocracy as much as they protest the corporate money grab of Republican plutocrats….There is promising evidence that workers may be more progressive on economic issues than in the recent past, and in relation to their professional-class peers. As a forthcoming analysis from the Certified Workers’ Compensation Professional program shows, workers do embrace progressive economic positions. Meaning, those on the left have an opportunity to develop an appealing populist economic program. Such a program would confront the very structure of the job market, ending mass layoffs, automation, and offshoring. It would advocate for rebuilding the industrial heartland, providing high-wage jobs for workers at all levels of education, not just for professionals in “smart” coastal hubs. And it would seek to strengthen union rights, revitalize social programs, lower costs and improve education.”

The following post, “MAGA Republicans Dodge Questions About Their Own Party’s Plans To Gut Social Safety Net” by Emine Yucel is cross posted from Talking Points Memo:

Some House Republicans in recent weeks have not exactly been shy about their interest in reviving the party’s longtime passion for gutting the social safety net in the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection and the coming Republican trifecta.

Reports have surfaced indicating that some congressional Republicans are in talks with Trump advisers about making cuts to programs like Medicaid and food stamps to offset the cost of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. Others are openly suggesting that Medicare and Social Security may be on the chopping block as part of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s performative venture into government spending cuts through the new Department of Government Efficiency.

But MAGA Republicans on Capitol Hill who recently spoke to TPM were unwilling to be pinned down on the issue.

When asked if he was supportive of the cuts to federal safety net programs being discussed by members of the Republican conference and DOGE enthusiasts, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told TPM that they would look at cuts at other programs first.

“The low hanging fruit is the DoD, which has failed an audit for the seventh year in a row,” Norman said last week. “Low hanging fruit is the DEI things in it.”

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) expressed a similar sentiment.

“I think there’s so much fraud and abuse in health care, so we can have trillions of offsets for reconciliation just in healthcare,” Spartz told TPM.

The “fraud in health care” line has become a go-to for Republicans in recent weeks. When Trump announced that failed Republican Senate candidate and TV doctor Mehmet Oz would serve as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in his incoming administration, he said Oz would “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency.” Since then, Republicans on the Hill have been using the rhetorically creative line to discuss potential spending cuts to tackle in the new Congress, emboldened by the supposed Musk/Ramaswamy mandate to cut down government spending by $2 trillion.

“You look at improper payments — that’s a big issue — where the government sends money to people fraudulently in Medicare, in Medicaid, where they send money fraudulently in unemployment insurance,” House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told CNN in an interview. “All of these improper payments are also on the table.”

“Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, you got to look at all that,” Norman told TPM when asked about the DOGE agenda. “Farm bill, you got to look at it.”

Read more…

If anyone needs further corroboration that Trump emphatically does not have a ‘mandate,’ this headline from The Hill should help: “Less than half of Americans say opinion of Trump is favorable: Poll” The article, by Tara Suter, says in part: “Less than half of Americans said their opinion of President-elect Trump is favorable, according to a recent poll….In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, about 41 percent stated their opinion of the president-elect is favorable. About 55 percent stated their opinion of the president-elect is unfavorable.” It’s only one poll, yada yada, and he hasn’t even taken office yet. In a saner political arena, however, the poll would buck up Democrats and maybe even discourage more groveling on the part of Republican elected officials. However, Suter also notes that “President Biden did not fare well when it came to public opinion in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, garnering an approval of 38 percent,” so let’s not all get on the high horse just yet. Suter notes, further, that “The Reuters/Ipsos poll took place Dec. 12-15, featuring 1,031 people and a 3 percentage point margin of error.” OK, not a huge sample, and it’s only one poll. Given all available polling evidence, Trump would be smart to pull off the political equivalent of a football reverse, and appoint Democrats to his inner circle, just to show that he is more bridge-builder than wall-maker. And he probably ought to give some serious thought to dumping his so yesterday dead weight staff and advisors, those charmers who are hell-bent on revenge and retribution, which are not  public priorities.

All of the GOP’s problems notwithstanding, “After the 2024 election, Democrats are at a steep disadvantage in the Senate: Polarization and incumbent losses make it harder for them to win the chamberr,” according to 538 writer G. Elliot Morris, who shares this grim outlook: “Much of the coverage of the outcome of the 2024 election has focused on how President-elect Donald Trump will wield executive power to pursue his political goals over the next four years. Trump, however, will not be alone in Washington: Voters elected Republican majorities in the U.S. House and Senate as well. The two chambers could help Trump levy taxes on imports, close the U.S. border and begin the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. And with 53 seats in the Senate, in particular, Republicans will be able to approve a long list of Trump’s judicial nominees, approve (or withdraw from) any treaties and, of course, sign off on his Cabinet nominees….The coming, sudden U-turn in the policy output of the U.S. government is a reminder that elections have serious consequences in the short term. But the impact of the 2024 election could be felt for years in another important way: It may have relegated Democrats to long-term minority status in the Senate. According to a new 538 analysis, barring significant changes in the party’s coalition, it will be tough for them to win a majority in coming elections — and implausible, verging on impossible, to win the 60-seat majority needed to overcome a filibuster (assuming that parliamentary maneuver isn’t abolished).” Of course, all bets are off if Trump flunks most of his major tests in his term ahead, which is not beyond the realm of possibility, given his self-defeating opposition to the notion of broadening his support, instead of shrinking it.

“The trickiest problem for Democrats and progressives in the coming months will not be finding a new electoral strategy,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes in his Washington Post column, “Progressives should defend Biden’s legacy to protect their future: Trump’s victory should not be used to erase Biden’s policy achievements.” Dionne, adds, “There’s plenty of time for that, and the 2024 outcome was close enough to allow multiple paths to the White House. A far more pressing imperative is to prevent Donald Trump’s victory from discrediting Biden’s genuinely impressive accomplishments and the course he set for the country, which was broadly correct….Legacies are not just about bragging rights or a politician’s self-esteem. How a president is judged can affect the direction of policy for decades. Public anger over Herbert Hoover’s mismanagement of the Great Depression opened the way for the dominance of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal liberalism for a half-century — even when Republicans held power. Frustration over inflation under Jimmy Carter led to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 counterrevolution in favor of lower and less progressive taxes, regulatory restraint, and a celebration of the social role played by wealthy entrepreneurs…the truth about the Biden economy should not be lost in the mire of political defeat and messaging failure. It’s a reality that will make it much easier to defend his domestic policy legacy than it was to stand up for Hoover’s or Carter’s: The economy Biden leaves behind really is in good shape. Unemployment and, now, inflation are both low. The initial effects of Biden’s investment programs have been positive, and their impact will grow over time.”

Ryan Cooper explains how “Democrats Lost the Propaganda War: The party used up about $5 billion on political ads in 2024. There’s a better way” at The American Prospect, and writes that “the Trump campaign was so badly overmatched money-wise that they found a clever technique to maximize their ad spending. There is no price regulation for political ads on streaming services, so super PACs pay the same as campaigns. Streamers, particularly the free ones like Tubi, are also disproportionately used by the working-class, less-white swing demographics, and unlike broadcast or cable, ads can also be microtargeted using the surveillance data the platforms collect. The Trump campaign went hard on this approach, and claims it was dramatically more efficient than Harris’s tsunami of spending. It’s hard to argue with the results….Once again, Trump’s governing approach will benefit his political project. Hollywood can’t wait to consolidate the space, reducing the number of streaming channels and magnifying the data each of the remaining ones has access to. Without congressional legislation—a good bet—the streaming loophole will make super PACs even more powerful, and conservative billionaires are eager to capitalize….Putting this all together: The typical Democratic approach of funneling billions through sporadic ad campaigns on traditional television channels is plainly not working. There are cheaper and more reliable ways to get the party’s messaging in front of persuadable voters, consistently. This would probably require at least partly cracking up the cartel of well-connected party consultants who cream off a large chunk of the spending, as Minnesota Democratic Party chair Ken Martin argues in a case for why he should be chair of the Democratic National Committee….In any case, business makes for an instructive comparison. Does Ford try to convince drivers that it makes trucks for rugged manly men in the American heartland for only a few months every four years? Of course not. They are doing that every minute of every day, on every conceivable communications medium. It’s a big reason why the Ford F-series has been the best-selling line of personal vehicles in this country for the last 47 years straight….The Democrats, by contrast, have not had the same consistency. It’s time to rethink things.”

In “Is This How Democrats Win Back the Working Class?Embracing populism could help the party build a lasting political coalition—if the Republicans don’t do it first,” Tyler Austin Harper writes at The Atlantic: “The politics of the average American are not well represented by either party right now. On economic issues, large majorities of the electorate support progressive positions: They say that making sure everyone has health-care coverage is the government’s responsibility (62 percent), support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour (62 percent), strongly or somewhat support free public college (63 percent), and are in favor of federal investment in paid family and medical leave  (73 percent). They also support more government regulation of a variety of industries including banking (53 percent), social media (60 percent), pharmaceuticals (68 percent), and artificial intelligence (72 percent). Yet large majorities of this same American public also take conservative positions on social issues: They think the Supreme Court was right to overturn affirmative action (68 percent), agree that trans athletes should compete only on teams that match their gender assigned at birth (69 percent), believe that third-trimester abortions should be illegal in most circumstances (70 percent), and are at least somewhat concerned about the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country (79 percent).” There is not a lot of “buyer’s remorse” on the part of Trump supporters quite yet, but he hasn’t even been inaugurated. Democrats should now focus on getting their own ship in shape, and not waste a lot of time gloating about Trump’s troubles.

Dustin Guastella and Bhaskar Sunkara argue that “The US needs more working-class political candidates” at The Guardian, and write that “there is evidence that people want to vote for workers across the country. A study by the Center for Working-Class Politics found that among working-class voters, hypothetical candidates with elite or upper-class backgrounds performed significantly worse than candidates from humbler backgrounds….Yet, in reality, there were few working-class candidates to vote for. Only 2.3% of Democratic candidates worked exclusively in blue-collar jobs before entering politics. Even if we broaden out the category to professionals like teachers and nurses, the number is still under 6%. Why? Mainly because it’s extremely expensive to run for office. Most workers simply do not have the fundraising networks or the ability to take time away from their jobs to run for office….The lack of working-class representation in government is also one major factor in explaining the dysfunction in our politics and the persistence of economic policies that seem to only benefit the rich. Working-class voters have been cut adrift. Their views and voices are invisible in Washington, and they see no real champions for their interests. One reason these voters are likely to prefer working-class candidates is that these candidates are much more likely to advance an economic agenda that benefits them.” The authors add that Dan Osborne, an independent U.S, U.S. Senate candidate who lost in Nebraska “outperformed Kamala Harris by 14 percentage points, is “starting a new political action committee, Working Class Heroes Fund, to support working-class candidates, something our national politics direly needs.”

Zachary B. Wolf explains “Why hasn’t the US been trying to fix its health insurance problems?” at CNN Politics: “A Gallup poll released this week but conducted before the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, found that most Americans, 62%, think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure that all Americans have health care coverage. A minority, 36%, said it’s not the government’s responsibility….Gallup has been asking this question for years, and this new data reflects a gradual reversal from 11 years ago, during the troubled rollout of private health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Back then, a minority, 42%, said it was the federal government’s responsibility to make sure people have health coverage, and a majority, 56%, said it was not….There’s a partisan story behind those numbers, since nearly all Democrats, 90%, now say the government is responsible, compared with a little more than two-thirds in 2013. Just about a third of Republicans hold the same view today, although that is up from just 12% who said the government had a responsibility in 2013….The upward shift in Americans who say the government has a responsibility to make sure its citizens have coverage has tracked with a downward shift in satisfaction with the health care system overall in Gallup’s polling….Any number of studies say similar things, that the US pays a lot more per person and as a percentage of its gross domestic product, or GDP, to cover a much smaller portion of its population and achieve a much lower life expectancy – although life expectancy in the USis also affected by gun deaths, suicides and drug overdoses.”

Steve Liesman reports “Majority of Americans are ready to support Trump and large parts of his agenda, says CNBC survey,” but notes that “the public is flashing yellow and red warning lights on some parts of the Trump agenda.”: Despite public support for Trump’s plan to deport large numbers of undocumented immigrants and cutting taxes, “Where the potential agenda gets more contentious is most obviously in President-elect Trump’s plans to pardon those convicted of crimes from the Jan. 6 protest. Just 43% support the move, with 50% opposing it, including 87% of Democrats, 46% of independents and 18% of Republicans. It’s the issue with the single largest Republican opposition. Support for tariffs is also more lukewarm with 27% backing them outright and 24% saying it can be done later in the term. It’s opposed by 42% of respondents….Americans overall are more upbeat about the economic outlook for the second Trump presidency than they were the first. More than half, or 51%, say they expect their personal financial situation to improve, 10 points higher than when he was elected in 2016; the same percentage, 51%, also say they expect the U.S. economy to improve, up 5 points from 2016….There were also gains in the percentage believing they’d be worse off, suggesting Trump is even more polarizing now than he was in his first term.”

It looks like a toss-up for today’s top news story, between the capture of alleged assassin Luigi Mangione and the resignation of Christopher Wray from the helm of the F.B.I. The Mangione story has a somewhat surprising reverberation – the revelation of a shocking level of public sympathy for the man accused of the cold-blooded murder of Brian Thompson,  CEO of United Health Care, the nation’s largest health insurance company. There will be no polls showing majority support for Mangione. But people have made financial contributions totaling more than $30,000 to his defense and many more have shared their anger at private health insurers on social media. Vanessa Friedman reports in the NYT,  “Even before a suspect had been named, much was written about the killer’s elevation to folk hero status. He was cast in the role of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm called the “social bandit” — one man seeming to take a stand against an unfair system….what forensic psychologists call the “halo effect.” And there is suddenly more media coverage of the abuses of health insurance companies. Some say it arises from Mangione’s supermodel look. But there has also been an explosion of expressions of contempt for private health insurers, which may or may not morph into a more rational debate over “Medicare for all” and “public option” health care reforms, as well as the G.O.P.’s utter failure to provide any viable health care reform alternatives whatsoever, preferring as always to whine ad nauseum about Obamacare.

Many liberals are bummed by the resignation of F.B. I. director Christopher Wray, who Trump wants to replace with Kath Patel, a right-wing radical who has said he wants to transform the F.B.I. building into a “Museum of the Deep State” and launch a campaign of retribution against Trump’s political opponents. Wray, who was originally appointed by Trump during his first term, but became one of many Trump appointees who fell out of his favor, must have concluded that he would be fired anyway, so why go through an exhausting media circus to no avail. But the storm around Wray’s resignation enhances focus on Patel, who may be a red herring among Trump’s appointees, designed to distract attention from Trump’s other unqualified cabinet picks. It’s not hard to imagine Trump’s inner circle arguing in essence “let’s create a few media storms downstream so we can sneak most of our infected cows across upstream.”  It may work to some extent, or it may backfire, if some of the crazier downstream cows get confirmed and make a mess of their assignments.

The most controversial of Trump’s upstream cows, Pete Hegseth, may muddle through the confirmation process and be confirmed to head the Department of Defense, with its 800+ billion dollar budget and 3 million employees. Hegseth’s nomination may be aided by sweeteners in the form of proffered federal contracts, strategically-designed for states repped by senators who have expressed skepticism about Hegseth, as he makes the rounds in the Senate halls. To paraphrase Mencken and P. T. Barnum, nobody ever went broke betting on the lack of integrity of politicians. The Democratic worry about the appointments of RFK Jr. to HHS, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Kristi Noem to head Homeland Security may prove to be needless hand-wringing. Kennedy may quit before long, forced to do so by the urgings of the pharmaceutical industry, or, who knows, he may prove to be a force for more humane health care in a reactionary Administration. He comes from a highly-political family, and may temper some of his more controversial views to accommodate political reality. Gabbard and Noem have been nominated to head agencies that have seen more relevant days, although there is no hope that Musk and Ramaswamy will recommend the termination of these impotent agencies. These two are largely symbolic appointments, and we can hope that seasoned military and intelligence officials will pay them little attention if they get confirmed. The Hegseth, Gabbard and Noem nominations reflect Trump’s obsession with mediagenic appeal and loyalty to Trump over relevant experience and qualifications.

if you are looking for a bit of good news about political appointments, read “Biden to block Trump from appointing dozens of judges as GOP seethes” by Morgan Stephens at Daily Kos. As Stephens writes, “In a move that reflects the ongoing tensions between the White House and Congress in the lame-duck session before the new administration is sworn in, President Joe Biden issued a statement saying he’d veto the bipartisan JUDGES Act. The legislation aims to address a long-standing judicial shortageand has led to a backlog of cases….The act, which had passed through the Senate with overwhelming support and was on its way to the House, would create 63 permanent judicial positions. If enacted, it would have given Donald Trump the authority to appoint 22 of those new judges when he returns to the White House—an outcome that has raised significant concerns among Democrats….“The bill would create new judgeships in states where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies,” said the statement from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday. “Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.”….The White House also sharply criticized the bill’s rushed timing. While the Senate passed the measure in August, the House didn’t take it up until after the election—giving lawmakers only a few weeks to finalize such a significant piece of legislation before the 118th Congress concluded….The fight over the JUDGES Act isn’t just about the number of judges—it’s a high-stakes battle over the ideological direction of the judiciary.” Well done, President Biden.

There’s an old saying that, when you point your finger at someone else, your thumb is pointing back at you. In a perverse way, it characterizes the Democratic search for scapegoats following losses to Republican presidential candidates.

“It’s the crazy progressives who tanked Democratic prospects, with their looney woke policies.” Or, “No, it’s the pandering to conservatives which makes Democrats look corrupt to working-class voters.” If you suspect that both are partly true, you may be guilty of rational analysis.

Democrats have screwed up badly on a range of “cultural” issues, implementing unpopular policies like lax enforcement of America’s borders. On the other hand, palling around with Liz Cheney did not secure the coveted 270 EVs for the Donkey Party leader.

I may be wallowing in the false equivalency fever swamp here. But really, there is rarely a one-dimensional explanation for big political changes.

One factor that gets overlooked in pundit analysis is that people expect more from Democrats, and they don’t expect much from Republicans. It’s a lot easier for Democrats to disappoint voters, than it is for Republicans to do likewise. The bar is a lot lower for Republicans. A great many of their voters expect them to do nothing, and they almost always meet these low expectations.

Nearly all of the significant social and economic reforms passed during the last century were passed and signed into law by Democrats, frequently over the opposition of Republicans. If you think this is an exaggeration, quick, name a popular legislative reform that was passed by Republicans over the opposition of Democrats. That’s why you see memes like the one below, and there are zero memes depicting ‘Great Republican Contributions to the Lives of America’s Working People.’

Yes, Democrats have recently screwed up this legacy with excessive wokism. Think of the recent presidential election as a painful and costly course correction. But it’s more likely that Democrats will learn the lesson and recalibrate than it is that Republicans will become the enduring party of American workers and their families.

“The hoary phrase “loyal opposition” still means something, and that loyalty is to the country and its Constitution, not to one person,’ E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes in his column at The Washington Post. “This is where thinking about how to contain Trump should start. Resisting his most egregious policies will remain appropriate, but defending, rebuilding and renewing should be the keynotes this time….The first priority must be to minimize damage to the nation, protect constitutional rights whenever they’re threatened and safeguard the institutions of democratic government. Next, his administration should be exposed whenever it uses lovely words such as “reform” and “efficiency” to disguise the wholesale dismantling of popular and necessary programs. And Trump must be held accountable to the working-class voters who helped him win….But his choices for so many key jobs already signal that Trump 2.0 is on track to be far more extreme than the original. That should call forth more activism, not less….The national Democratic Party should play its part by backing the state parties already doing effective organizing down to the precinct level — the Wisconsin and North Carolina parties are among the standouts — and embedding such efforts elsewhere, especially in places where the party is in tatters. Writing off nearly half the states is no way to win the Senate. To create models for rejuvenation, the party should start with Iowa, Montana, Nebraska and Kansas, all of which have Senate races in 2026….And a heretical thought: As they rebuild, Democrats should acknowledge that in places where their brand is badly broken, independent candidates, particularly for the Senate, might have a better chance of building an alternative coalition to Trumpism. Senate candidate Dan Osborn lost in Nebraska this year running as a pro-worker independent, but his nearly 47 percent of the vote should be seen as a prologue, not a failure….The seeds of progress will be planted by those who respond forcefully, creatively and fearlessly to Trump’s second act.”

Irie Sentner reports that “Democratic governors (and 2028 hopefuls) gather to chart path under a Trump administration” at Politico, and writes: “Democratic governors are preparing to thread a fine line between standing up to President-elect Donald Trump’s Republican trifecta in Washington and collaborating with the incoming administration….Immediately following the election, some Democratic governors launched plans to “Trump-proof” their states, and in a memo released this week, Meghan Meehan-Draper, DGA’s executive director, wrote that Democratic governors would be the “Last Line of Defense” against the incoming GOP trifecta in the federal government….Blue-state governors have been explicit that they intend to try to block some Trump policies — efforts that will also likely raise their own profiles. Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis are leading an organization to “back against increasing threats of autocracy and fortifying the institutions of democracy that our country and our states depend upon” — and although the privately-funded group is non-partisan, the implications are clear….But with the election loss still smarting, the event implicitly raised the question of who might have the right formula for the next one. Inslee said the governors are “focused on the election cycle for governors right now.” Still, he acknowledged that “the day after every election is the beginning” of the next one.” And with congressional politics bogged down in  partisan divisions, Democratic governors will likely have more opportunities to distinguish themselves as presidential candidates.

Some astute observations from Ilyse Hogue’s “Are Those Young Men Gone Forever?” at Democracyjournal.org: “Like their female counterparts, white men voted at margins comparable to 2020, and Black men’s support for the Democratic ticket dropped off only slightly. The biggest swings were a massive 35-point shift by Latino men toward Trump, according to CNN exit polls, and a 13-point shift to Trump by voters under 30, powered overwhelmingly by young men….How the Trump campaign pulled off this victory—by sidestepping on abortion, redefining freedom, and aggressively courting men—not only explains what just happened. It tells us a lot about the state of the MAGA coalition and where they intend to go next….Trump’s backers voted for him in spite of his position on abortion, not because of it. Support for abortion rights remains strong in this country, with men tracking only slightly behind women in how highly they rank their importance. Ballot measures strengthening abortion rights won in seven out of ten states the day Trump won the election, including in Missouri, where Trump won with over 58 percent of the vote….In state after state where the ballot measures showed up, a significant number of voters split their tickets, voting for abortion rights and for Donald Trump….The future of GOP power, Trump’s team sensed, lay elsewhere. Part of that future is a subset of Latino men and women who historically supported Democrats but are more comfortable with traditional masculinity and patriarchy….The Trump campaign deeply internalized the seismic shift going on among men under 30….Millennial and Gen Z men went into COVID experiencing declines in educational outcomes, upended social status, and high rates of depression. They emerged from quarantine to record-high inflation, a bleak jobs outlook, and a vast surplus of time banked in online forums. There they discussed a liberal culture that had embraced an identity-based hierarchy of oppression that left them at the bottom and a #MeToo movement that many felt made them guilty until proven innocent.”

A bit of election postmortem wisdom from “Why Did Trump Really Win? It’s Simple, Actually” by Michael Mechanic at Mother Jones: “But why, you might ask, would someone living on the edge vote for Republicans, whose wage-suppressing, union-busting, benefit-denying policies have only tended to make the poor and the middle class more miserable?….And why in the name of Heaven would they vote for Trump, a billionaire born with a silver spoon in his mouth who has lied and cheated his way through life? A man whose latest tax-cut plans—though some, like eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security income, can sound progressive—will be deeply regressive, giving ever more to the rich and rationalizing cuts that will hurt the poor and middle class and accelerate global climate chaos….The reason, my friends, may well be that those on the losing end of our thriving economy don’t see it as thriving. Historically, every election cycle, when reporters fan out to ask low-income voters in swing states what they are thinking, the message has been roughly the same: Presidential candidates, Democrats and Republicans, come around here every four years and talk their talk, and then they leave and forget about us when it comes to policy….Now that’s not entirely fair, because the Biden administration actually has done a good bit for working people and families of color, and has proposed all sorts of measures to make the tax code fairer and reduce the wealth gap (both the racial one and the general one)—including increasing taxes and IRS enforcement for the super-rich. But one can only get so far with a split Senate, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on your team, and a rival party that would just as soon throw you into a lake of fire as support your initiatives.”

Tom Vilsak on “Why Democrats Don’t Get Rural America” at Politico: “I think the challenge that we have in rural America is that we talk a lot about programs and not about vision. And I will, if you don’t mind, take you all the way back to my first race for governor in 1998. I ran and I was way behind and nobody thought I had a chance of winning. And I went out and I talked about making Iowa the food capital of the world. And I had a media guy who at the time was not well known [David Axelrod]. He and my pollster were not very happy with me for talking about the food capital. They basically said, nobody understands what it is and you should be talking specifically about class size reductions, property tax relief and expanding access to health care. I continued to talk about it. I won that race by 6.5 to 7 percent. I’m pretty sure that 7 percent were the people I was talking to who knew the vision. They didn’t quite understand what it was, but when you have a vision, it is what a leader does. A leader takes you from here to there, tells you where you’re going to go and allows you to fill in the detail….But if you want to be president of the United States, if you want to represent this country and you want to do what everybody says they wanna do which is to bring the country together and end this us-and-them thing, you’ve got to be able to reach out and reach across and be credible. But you can’t be credible if what you’re selling is a program. You’ve gotta be selling a vision and that vision has to not be what you think but based on what you know about these people, you know matters to them. And what matters to them is the ability to say to their kids: you don’t have to leave. You can come back. And you can have a good life here.”

“For years, Democrats have wrestled with declining support from non-college-educated voters, a demographic that once formed the party’s backbone,” Brianna Westbrook writes in “Why Democrats lost in 2024: Lessons from Phoenix and the working class” at The Arizona Mirror. “This trend was starkly evident in the 2024 presidential race, where turnout among working-class Democrats hit historic lows….While the party centered its campaign on social issues and climate initiatives, it failed to adequately address the economic struggles that dominate the lives of millions. The result was widespread alienation among working families, many of whom opted to sit out the election….

To win back this critical demographic, Democrats must:

1. Focus on universal economic policies: Policies like Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage (adjusted for inflation) and robust labor protections remain immensely popular across the political spectrum. Democrats must make these initiatives central to their platform.
2. Challenge corporate power: A bold stance against corporate monopolies, as championed by Warren, can galvanize voters frustrated by rising costs and stagnant wages. Breaking up monopolies and regulating Wall Street should be presented not as niche issues but as critical to the everyday lives of working families.
3. Invest in grassroots campaigning: Hernandez’s victory underscores the importance of building trust through local organizing. Rather than relying on consultants and glossy ads, Democrats should empower community leaders to engage directly with voters.
4. Reframe the narrative: The language of class struggle, long championed by Sanders, resonates with voters who feel left behind. Democrats must articulate a clear vision of economic justice, uniting voters around shared struggles rather than dividing them with identity-focused messaging alone.”

At Brookings, John J. Dilulio writes in “The 4 working-class votes,” “If Democrats are determined to fret and sweat about where they stand with working-class voters, the exit poll data would justify them worrying—not about some pro-Trump or pro-GOP multiracial working-class coalition, but about Latino voters….Trump was a landslide winner with working-class white evangelicals, but his single biggest gain in 2024 over 2020 was among white evangelical women with college degrees….Democrats who emphasize pro-worker/pro-family policies and messages do better with voters than otherwise comparable Democrats who don’t.”….exit polls show that working-class voters, defined as voters without a college degree, split 56% for Trump to 42% for Harris. The same polls tell us that white working-class voters favored Trump over Harris by 66% to 32%, and that Trump won a larger share of working-class Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020…..The white working-class electorate consists of two distinct voting blocs: white evangelicals without college degrees and all other whites without college degrees. The latter bloc, which encompasses working-class white catholics and other non-evangelical whites without college degrees, is slightly larger than the former bloc….As I have documented elsewhere, in 2016 and 2020, Trump won a majority of white evangelical working-class voters, but he lost a majority of white non-evangelical working-class voters. He lost them again in 2024….Among Latinos, the only subgroup that did not bolt from the Democratic fold was college-educated Latino women, who favored Harris 63% to 33%, a 30-point margin identical to the one they gave Biden in 2020….But Trump’s victory in 2024, his more than 76 million votes and his swing-states sweep, is owed the most to white evangelicals. White evangelicals voted for Trump more than four to one, constituting more than a third of his 49.9% share of the popular vote….his single biggest gain in 2024 over 2020 was among white evangelical women with college degrees…. Having suffered a double-digit drop in college-educated white evangelical women’s vote between 2016 and 2020, in 2024 he turned a 6-point spread in Trump’s favor against Biden (53% to 47%) into a 50-point spread in his favor against Harris (74% to 24%)….So, in the 2024 election, a majority of white evangelicals without college degrees once again favored Trump, but majorities of blue-collar Black, Latino, and non-evangelical whites did not.”

Dilulio adds, “Still, I believe that there are at least three things one can credibly say about the 2024 presidential election results at this stage. First, as we have already established, contrary to so much of the commentary, Trump won a vast majority of white evangelical voters without college degrees, but Harris won majorities among blue-collar Blacks, Latinos, and non-evangelical whites; second, Harris did better with the electorate as a whole than has hitherto generally been acknowledged; and, third, it would seem that, other things equal, Democrats who emphasize pro-worker/pro-family policies and messages do better with voters than otherwise comparable Democrats who don’t….Despite being the first Black woman to run for president as the nominee of a major party; despite running in place of a highly unpopular first-term sitting president whose record she could neither easily run on nor run from; and despite running what many observers judged to be a tactically mistake-ridden campaign yoked to easy-to-attack anti-majority opinion positions on hot-button issues such as transgender women being allowed to compete on women’s teams in sports; Harris won more than 74.3 million votes, constituting 48.3% of the national popular vote to Trump’s 49.9%; and lost Pennsylvania by 1.7%, Wisconsin by 0.8%, and Michigan by 1.4%….So, a less than 0.8% shift her way in the national popular vote would have tied Trump’s tally, and a less than 1% shift her way in the three “blue wall” states would have added 44 electoral votes to the 226 she received and made Harris the next president…. In addition to winning working-class majorities among non-evangelical whites, Blacks, and Latinos, Harris beat Trump among union workers 57% to 41%. As I have explained elsewhere, most Americans now see the decline in private-sector unionization (from about a third of all workers in the mid-20th century to 17% in the mid-1980s to just 6% now) as bad for America; 70% of working-class Americans approve of unions; and an estimated 60 million nonunionized workers would like to have the opportunity to join a union.”

Nathaniel Rakich and Amina Brown explain why “The 2024 presidential election was close, not a landslide” at 538/abcnews.go.com. An excerpt:

As we’ve gotten more data and had the time to put the 2024 election in perspective, the truth has become clear: Yes, the 2024 presidential election was close. With more ballots counted, Trump’s national popular vote lead is down to 1.6 points, and Harris could have won if she had done just a couple of points better in just a few states. Any argument that the 2024 election was a “landslide” is misleading. It relies on a combination of recency bias and using the wrong measuring sticks.

High expectations for Democrats in the popular vote, along with the widely circulated maps showing big swings toward Trump in virtually every county in the country, may have played a big role in setting those early narratives that Trump had notched an overwhelming win. Another was probably the media’s repeated warnings before the election that it might take days to project a winner. While that very easily could have come to pass, we may have overemphasized the point. It was also always possible that a winner would be projected on election night, which is of course what happened.

After it took until the Saturday after Election Day for media outlets to project that Biden had won the 2020 election, the relatively early projection in 2024 (ABC News projected him as the winner at 5:31 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday) probably made Trump’s win seem more decisive. But once again, that’s recency bias at play. The 2024 election actually took longer to project than all but three presidential elections since 1976. Apart from the interminable 2000 (when the race came down to a recount in Florida that didn’t end until Dec. 12) and 2020 elections, only 2004 kept us in more suspense.

….All in all, the idea that Trump won an overwhelming victory in 2024 is less grounded in the data and more based on a sense of surprise relative to (perhaps miscalibrated) expectations.

Why perceptions of the 2024 election matter

The debate over the closeness of the 2024 election may seem academic — Trump won; who cares if it was a landslide or not? — but it could have a very real impact on the ambitiousness of Trump’s second term. Boasting about the scope of his win, Trump claimed in his victory speech that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to govern — a narrative that caught on in the media and with many voters, too. In a mid-November poll from HarrisX/Harvard University, 71 percent of registered voters said that Trump had a mandate to govern, including 50 percent who said he had a “strong mandate.”

Trump is just the latest in a long line of presidents-elect trying to convert electoral success into political capital to pass their agendas. There’s just one problem: Political scientists who have studied the idea of presidential mandatesgenerally agree that they’re made up. It’s basically impossible to ascertain what voters had in mind when they went to the ballot box and whether a candidate’s win was an explicit endorsement for a specific policy or approach to governing.

And according to research by 538 contributor Julia Azari, a professor at Marquette University, there is no relationship between how often a president-elect claims a mandate and how big their victory was. In fact, Azari even found that presidents are more likely to claim mandates when they are in a politically weak position, as a sort of act of desperation to claim that their policies have public support.

But research has also found that, much like Tinker Bell, mandates can exist if enough people believe that they do. According to political scientists Lawrence Grossback, David Peterson and James Stimson, when there is a media consensus that an election carries a mandate, Congress responds by passing major legislation. Azari and Peterson have further found that politicians themselves, like Trump, can push Congress to action as well, simply by insisting that they have a mandate. And per Azari, when a president-elect insists that he has a mandate, it is often accompanied by major expansions of presidential power.

In other words, regardless of how close the 2024 election was in reality, Trump’s claims to a mandate suggest that Republicans are planning to govern like they won in a landslide.

Democrats would also likely claim a mandate, had they won the popular vote by 1.6 percent. But that wouldn’t be true, either. And with a margin of victory that small, you can blame almost any issue for Harris’s loss.

Trump should have nominated more Democrats and Independents for his cabinet to give non-Republican voters at least some buy-in. That would have been the smart move. Instead, he went the other way, the “in-your-face, Dems” route, pushed by the hyper-partisan ideologues in his orbit. Any hope that having Musk and Kennedy in his inner circle might temper their influence appears to be unfounded.