A Kansas county commissioner referred to the “master race” as he addressed a black city planner presenting a land use analysis to county officials at a board meeting, the Kansas City Times reports.
Said Commissioner Louis Klemp: “I don’t want you to think I’m picking on you, because, we’re part of the master race.”
As he brought his fingers to his own teeth, he added: “You know you got a gap in your teeth, you’re the masters, don’t ever forget that.”
CNBC: “Among other results, this year’s midterm elections affirmed this much: in Washington, the two parties now speak for dramatically different segments of the American economy.”
“Republicans represent the smaller, fading segment, with less-educated, more-homogenous work forces reliant on traditional manufacturing, agriculture and resource extraction. Democrats represent the larger, growing one, fueled by finance, professional services and digital innovation in diverse urban areas.”
Pew Research: “The public is generally positive about the outcome of last week’s midterm elections. Yet most Americans think that neither Democratic congressional leaders nor Donald Trump will be successful in getting their policies passed into law during the next two years.”
“And after years of growing political divisions in Congress and the nation, the public expects little improvement in relations between Republicans and Democrats in Washington in the coming year. Most expect partisan relations will get worse or stay the same. Just 9% expect that partisan relations will improve.”
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“As Ohio Republicans won the race for every statewide executive job from the governor on down this year, something different happened in lower-profile races. The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.
“It’s a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn’t the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio’s government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races. But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.”
“This is a lot like what happened in Ohio’s 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.”
A federal judge said he would take another day to decide whether to at least temporarily restore CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s White House credentials, extending the drama over the network’s lawsuit against President Trump until Friday, CNN reports.
A federal judge upheld a federal indictment against the Russian troll farm accused of meddling in the 2016 election, handing a victory to special counsel Robert Mueller, CNN reports.
It was the second time that Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, sided with Mueller and let the case proceed.
Jared Golden (D) was declared the winner of Maine’s 2nd congressional district race over Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-ME) following a historic tabulation of ballots using ranked-choice voting, the Portland Press Herald reports.
“This is the first time in U.S. history that a congressional race was decided using ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to cast ballots for their favorite candidate but also rank other candidates in order of preference. Those ranked-choice votes only come into play, however, when no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote on the initial tally.”
Roll Call notes there are no GOP congressmen left in New England.
A new Magellan Strategies (R) poll finds that Colorado’s unaffiliated voters “turned out for last week’s election in record numbers and turned their backs on Republicans by wide margins.”
Pollster David Flaherty said the poll’s findings “can only be described as extraordinary… because in the past 20 years, never has one political party been so overwhelmingly rejected at every level of representative government by the electorate.”
Doug Sosnik gives Axios his warning signs for Republicans in 2020:
His warning signs for Democrats:
“The White House is looking for ways to remove an enemy of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. in order to placate Turkey over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” NBC News reports.
“Trump administration officials last month asked federal law enforcement agencies to examine legal ways of removing exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen in an attempt to persuade Erdogan to ease pressure on the Saudi government.”
“A federal judge slammed Florida on Thursday for repeatedly failing to anticipate election problems, and said the state law on recounts appears to violate the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that decided the presidency in 2000,” the AP reports.
Said U.S. District Judge Mark Walker: “We have we have been the laughing stock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this.”
“A major GOP money group is getting ready to slam Mike Bloomberg with negative talking points if the billionaire Democrat makes a run for the White House in 2020,” CNBC reports.
“America Rising is preparing an opposition-research blitz against Bloomberg that would focus on a range of topics, from his close relationships with Wall Street executives to controversial comments he made about women.”
A federal judge rejected Rep. Bruce Poliquin’s (R-ME) request to force the Maine Secretary of State to stop the ranked-choice run-off on Thursday morning, the Portland Press Herald reports.
“Less than an hour earlier, elections officials finished scanning all of the remaining ballots that were cast in the Nov. 6 election and announced plans to run the results through the ranked-choice software.”
Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) told the Washington Post that she has been “overwhelmed” by the support from many of her colleagues for her possible entry into the race for House speaker, becoming the first Democrat to publicly acknowledge a challenge to longtime party leader Nancy Pelosi.
Said Fudge: “Over the last 12 hours, I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of support I’ve received.”
She added that there are “probably closer to 30” Democrats who have privately signaled that they are willing to oppose Pelosi.
“It is the year of the woman, all right. But only for Democrats,” the New York Times reports.
“The number of Republican women in Congress next year will actually drop, even as the ranks of Democratic women swell to record heights. With a few races still undecided, the new Congress will have at least 105 Democratic women and 19 Republican women.”
“But that is not all: From Congress to governor to state legislatures, far more Democratic women ran in this cycle than Republican women. And that means fewer Republican women on the bench, gathering experience and credentials to move up to the next level.”
Texas Monthly: “The allure of San Antonio’s Castro brothers has been building for years and their status as the crown princes of a new era of Texas Hispanic politics is now well established. As one longtime Democratic consultant said, they have successfully established themselves as the next generation of leadership in Texas, with an Ivy League pedigree and reputation for strategic thinking. But something happened this election cycle: Beto O’Rourke.”
Said the Democratic consultant: “Julián and his brother are like Bing Crosby and Perry Como—who just saw Elvis.”
“Before Beto, there has been a well-choreographed buildup to the will-he-or-won’t-he moment when former San Antonio mayor and former Obama cabinet member Julián Castro announces his decision about a presidential run in 2020.”
The 1965 bestselling novel Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel has been re-released by the publisher as What Would Happen if the President of the United States Went Stark-Raving Mad?
Senator Jim MacVeagh is proud to serve his country—and his president, Mark Hollenbach, who has a near-spotless reputation as the vibrant, charismatic leader of MacVeagh’s party and the nation. When Hollenbach begins taking MacVeagh into his confidence, the young senator knows that his star is on the rise.
But then Hollenbach starts summoning MacVeagh in the middle of the night to Camp David. There, the president sits in the dark and rants about his enemies, unfurling insane theories about all the people he says are conspiring against him.
I’d never heard of this book but it’s a must-read over the holidays.
First Read: “Before Election Day 2018, Republicans held 13 of the 40 congressional districts with the highest share of adults over 25 with a college degree.”
“After the midterms, however, that’s now down to just four. And if Rep. Mimi Walters in California ultimately loses her still-uncalled reelection race, as expected, it’ll be just three Republicans remaining.”
“That surge of Democratic enthusiasm from college-educated voters was captured in the exit polls, too. Overall, college graduates broke for Democrats in the midterms by 20 percentage points, while those with no college degree were equally split. Among only white college graduates, Democrats had an advantage of 8 percentage points. And among just female while college graduates, it was 20 points.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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