The Guardian: “Looking at the results of the 2020 election at the more granular level of counties and precincts, it can mostly be defined by one thing: stasis. But beneath that stasis the results of this election and the changes from previous elections say an enormous amount about where the country is and is going. The counties that swung the most mostly fall into two categories: Latino areas swinging strongly towards Trump, and white-majority suburban areas swinging towards Biden.”
Member Briefing with H.R. McMaster
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Joe Biden’s Team of Careerists
John Harris: “The most prominent appointment President-elect Joe Biden has made for his new White House team is Chief of Staff Ron Klain — a long-time Biden adviser who went to Harvard Law School and won a prestigious Supreme Court clerkship.”
“The most prominent appointment he has made so far to his cabinet is Secretary of State-designate Antony Blinken — a long-time Biden adviser who went to Harvard as an undergraduate and then moved through decades of prestigious posts in the Washington foreign policy establishment.”
“Wait, you may wonder about this apparent Harvard focus, where is the diversity?!”
“Not to worry. The choice to lead the National Security Council, Jake Sullivan, is a previous Biden adviser who went to Yale, before winning a Rhodes scholarship. And there is still lots of speculation about a likely spot for Bruce Reed, a veteran Biden aide who went to Princeton, before winning a Rhodes scholarship. His choice for Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, is not a long-time Biden adviser but is someone he has known for years. She went to Brown and Yale.”
Inside Ranked Choice Voting In Alaska
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Roger Stone-Tied Group Threatens Georgia GOP
Daily Beast: “Conservative operatives and a super PAC with ties to infamous GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone are calling for Trump supporters to punish Republicans by sitting out Georgia’s crucial Senate runoffs or writing in Trump’s name instead.”
“And though their efforts remains on the party’s fringes, the trajectory of the movement has Republicans fearful that it could cost the GOP control of the Senate.”
Quote of the Day
“At the end of the day, it’s great for news. The news cycle is red-hot, and Newsmax is getting one million people per minute, according to Nielsen, tuning into Newsmax TV. I think it’s good… Well, I believe that Donald Trump’s been great for the news business. And I think there’s nothing wrong in saying that.”
— Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy, in an interview with the New Yorker, admitting that broadcasting speculative voter fraud claims is great for business.
Trump Fundraising Amounts to Political Slush Fund
CNN: “All these missives from President Trump’s political operation landed in supporters’ inboxes Monday morning claiming to solicit funds to help Trump fund recounts and legal challenges to overturn the election results.”
“But the legal fine print on each shows that a new Trump fundraising arm, Save America, actually will get the first cut of any money that comes in. And because spending rules for leadership PACs are so loose, campaign-finance experts warn that Save America could easily become a political slush fund for Trump and those close to him.”
New Lawmaker Wants to Carry Gun In U.S. Capitol
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R), who owns a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle, Colorado, has already asked Capitol Police about carrying her weapon on Capitol grounds, NBC News reports.
“The practice is allowed for lawmakers, with some limitations, under decades-old congressional regulations. The public is barred from carrying weapons in the Capitol, its grounds and office buildings.”
Charles Koch Says He ‘Screwed Up’
Billionaire Charles Koch told Axios that he “screwed up by being partisan,” rather than approaching his network’s big-spending political action in a more nonpartisan way.
Trump’s National Security Adviser Floats 2024 Bid
“No national security adviser has ever run for president. Few people outside of Washington policy circles even know who the White House’s national security adviser is at any given moment,” Politico reports.
“Yet Robert O’Brien, President Donald Trump’s fourth — and least well-known — national security adviser is telling friends and colleagues he is considering a presidential bid in 2024.”
Tweeting and Not Much Else for Trump
“In the three weeks since Election Day, President Trump’s most visible presence has been on Twitter. Since Nov. 3, he has posted some 550 tweets — about three-quarters of which attempted to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election results,” the New York Times reports.
“As Mr. Trump’s attacks continue, the coronavirus pandemic rages on, worse than ever. At least 24,000 people in the United States have died from Covid in the past three weeks.”
“Mr. Trump’s public calendar, meanwhile, has been remarkably light, especially relative to his pre-election schedule, when he often attended multiple campaign rallies in a single day.”
Park Avenue Helped Biden Win More than Scranton
USA Today: “Months before Election Day, the Biden campaign adopted an economic populist message aimed directly at white working-class voters, convinced they could peel off a small portion of President Trump’s base.”
“Yet despite Biden’s election victory, this demographic – white voters without college degrees – remained just as loyal as ever to the president, defying public polling before the election that suggested Democrats were poised for small inroads.”
“For Biden, wins in battleground states came thanks to growing support in affluent suburbs around cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit where the president-elect expanded margins with a new Democratic stronghold: white voters who graduated college.”
Thanksgiving Could Be Make-or-Break In Virus Response
Associated Press: “As governors and mayors grapple with an out-of-control pandemic, they are ratcheting up mask mandates and imposing restrictions on small indoor gatherings, which have been blamed for accelerating the spread of the coronavirus. But while such measures carry the weight of law, they are, in practical terms, unenforceable, and officials are banking on voluntary compliance instead.”
“Good luck with that. While many are undoubtedly heeding public health advice — downsizing Thanksgiving plans, avoiding get-togethers, wearing masks when they’re around people who don’t live with them — it’s inevitable that a segment of the population will blow off new state and local restrictions and socialize anyway. Experts say that could put greater stress on overburdened hospitals and lead to an even bigger spike in sickness and death over the holidays.”
A new Axios-Ipsos poll finds 39% of Americans did not change their Thanksgiving plans due to the pandemic.
Stocks Rally on News Transition Moves Ahead
Financial Times: “Global stocks rallied after Donald Trump said his administration would co-operate with president-elect Joe Biden’s transition team.”
Lame Duck Term?
Playbook; “Joe Biden is 78 and expected by many to serve only one term. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has all but said this is her last term. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is up for reelection in 2022.”
“When you’re on your way out, it typically means you have less power. But if everyone’s on their way out…”
Tensions Rise Amid Scramble for Biden Jobs
Ryan Lizza: “It is still early in the Biden transition. There are thousands of jobs to fill. But a similar sense of dread is starting to bubble up from veterans of the Biden campaign, particularly those who were there with the president-elect from the Philadelphia announcement speech to the Wilmington victory speech. The target of their ire? The Obama establishment, which has eclipsed the Clinton name as shorthand for yesterday’s Democratic Party.”
Said one senior Biden official: “The Obama staffers are now cutting out the people who got Biden elected, None of these people found the courage to help the VP when he was running and now they are elevating their friends over the Biden people. It’s fucked up.”
Flournoy for Defense Chief Faces Progressive Pushback
“President-elect Joe Biden named a slate of experienced hands for his national security team on Monday—but stopped short of selecting a defense secretary,” Foreign Policy reports.
“Now, backers of Michèle Flournoy, his likely pick for defense secretary, are trying to head off a last-minute push by some left-leaning Democrats trying to derail her selection, with many progressives seeing her nomination as a continuation of what critics refer to as America’s ‘forever wars.'”
Trump Was Pushed to Let Transition Begin
New York Times: “Mr. Trump had been resisting any move toward a transition. But in conversations in recent days that intensified Monday morning, top aides — including Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel; and Jay Sekulow, the president’s personal lawyer — told the president the transition needed to begin. He did not need to say the word ‘concede,’ they told him.”
“Some of the advisers drafted a statement for the president to issue. In the end, Mr. Trump did not put one out, but aides said the tone was similar to his tweets in the evening, in which he appeared to take credit for Ms. Murphy’s decision to allow the transition to begin.”
John Bennett: Trump goes out with a whimper and a tweet. It was always going to be that way.
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