“In campaign world, rapid response is vital. In governance, it can be lethal if it’s in reaction to things small and unimportant. It just strikes me as crazy that the soon-to-be leader of the free world would be waking up each morning this weekend and tweeting comments about what someone said at a play in New York.”
— Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), on Facebook.
“Advertisers are grappling with a stark realization: After spending years courting U.S. consumers with aspirational images of upscale urban living, they may have misjudged the yearnings of much of their audience,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president with a wave of support from middle American voters, advertisers are reflecting on whether they are out of touch with the same people—rural, economically frustrated, elite-distrusting, anti-globalization voters—who propelled the businessman into the White House. Mr. Trump’s rise has them rethinking the way they collect data about consumers, recruit staff and pitch products.”
According to a new Pew Research survey, Donald Trump is the first president-elect in 26 years to be graded lower than the candidate he beat.
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“If we don’t have Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, we can’t win elections. That is an unsustainable model.”
— Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), quoted by the Washington Post.
Greg Sargent: “Donald Trump vowed to “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington. But experts on governmental ethics are increasingly worried that Trump’s presidency, and his refusal to place his global business empire in a blind trust, risk producing a conflicts-of-interest cesspool that is far more dense and rancid than anything we’ve seen before.”
“Whether they prove right about this or not, one thing is inarguable: There are specific steps congressional Republicans can take at the outset to make such an outcome less likely — and to force the sort of transparency that could make it easier to evaluate the Trump presidency on ethical terms. If they are so inclined, that is, which they probably won’t be.”
New York Times: “Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead surged above 1.72 million on Sunday night, with millions of votes still to count. At 1.3 percentage points, she has built a lead not seen in a losing campaign since Rutherford B. Hayes’ bitterly disputed election of 1876.”
“The 2016 results have no such disputes, however. Mrs. Clinton’s lead keeps rising on her strength in California, where her margin stands at 29 percentage points, up from President Obama’s 23 percentage points 2012. She has failed to close the gap in any of the swing states that she lost, though Mr. Trump’s lead in Michigan has dwindled to 11,612 votes, a bad night in Tiger Stadium.”
“Donald Trump’s popularity is rising in the days since his election, according to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll of registered voters. Forty-six percent of voters now have a very favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of the president-elect. Twelve percent have a somewhat unfavorable opinion and 34% have a very unfavorable opinion of him. It’s a dramatic uptick since the election.”
“Trump’s favorability has grown 9 points, 37% to 46%, compared to a Morning Consult poll right before the election — while his unfavorability has dropped 15 points, from 61% to 46%.”
Thomas Friedman: “Steve Jobs and Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, starting the smartphone revolution that is now putting an internet-connected computer in the palm of everyone on the planet. In late 2006, Facebook, which had been confined to universities and high schools, opened itself to anyone with an email address and exploded globally. Twitter was created in 2006, but took off in 2007… In time, 2007 may be seen as one of the greatest technological inflection points in history. And we completely missed it.”
“Why? 2008.”
“Yes, right when our physical technologies leapt ahead, many of what the Oxford economist Eric Beinhocker calls our ‘social technologies’ — all of the rules, regulations, institutions and social tools people needed to get the most out of this technological acceleration and cushion the worst — froze or lagged. In the best of times social technologies have a hard time keeping up with physical technologies, but with the Great Recession of 2008 and the political paralysis it engendered, this gap turned into a chasm. A lot of people got dislocated in the process.”
“In the days since Hillary Clinton’s stunning electoral defeat to Donald Trump, the vacuum she left atop the Democratic Party hasn’t gone unfilled,” Politico reports.
“Elizabeth Warren has moved aggressively to occupy the space, a timely reminder to the party and its most ambitious members that all roads to 2020 — not to mention 2018 — go through her.”
The New York Times quotes from Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, published in 1998:
Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
President-elect Donald Trump “has turned the vital, but normally inscrutable, process of forming a government into a Trump-branded, made-for-television spectacle, parading his finalists for top administration positions this weekend before reporters and the world,” the New York Times reports.
“The two days unfolded like a pageant, with the many would-be officials striding up the circular driveway at Trump National Golf Club here, meeting Mr. Trump below three glass chandeliers at the entrance and shaking hands while facing the cameras. To build suspense, Mr. Trump offered teasing hints about coming announcements.”
“President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal workers have received for a generation,” the Washington Post reports.
“Hiring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the government’s dime and less generous pensions — these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control of Washington in January.”
“House Republican leaders, looking to jump-start Donald Trump’s presidency, have already begun to map out an ambitious agenda for early next year. On the early to do-list, according to leadership insiders: repealing a host of late-issued Obama administration regulations, muscling through tax reform and dismantling Obamacare,” Politico reports.
“House members and staffers can say goodbye to their three-day weekends and lengthy recesses — at least for a while. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who’s currently devising the 2017 House schedule, is likely to keep lawmakers in D.C. on Mondays and Fridays, a stark departure from the three-day weeks that have become routine in the chamber.”
“President-elect Donald Trump will live in the White House, he said Sunday, ending speculation about whether he might opt to stay in New York City and reside in Trump Tower or at one of his other properties,” Politico reports.
“His wife, Melania, and 10-year-old son, Barron, will likely join him after Barron finishes the school year this spring, Trump added.”
Marc Ambinder: How Trump will retrofit Midtown Manhattan as a presidential getaway
“He was in. And then he was out. And now, he’s — well, it’s hard to tell exactly where New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stands in the intrigue-filled orbit of those who surround the president-elect of the United States,” the Washington Post reports.
“What is clear is that Christie has become an object lesson of the perils that face those who try to navigate Donald Trump’s world, a place where loyalty is demanded, but not always one where it is returned in kind.”
“Nine days after the public humiliation of being unceremoniously dumped as the head of Trump’s presidential transition, Christie on Sunday showed up among the parade of potential Trump administration job seekers to meet with the president-elect at his New Jersey golf course.”
President-elect Donald Trump “asked him to serve as secretary of defense, retired four-star Army Gen. Jack Keane told NPR — but Keane declined the offer, citing personal reasons.”
“Keane says he recommended retired generals James Mattis and David Petraeus for the job.”
Said Keane: “I was asked to serve, but I’m not able to. I have some personal issues surrounding the death of my wife recently, and I explained all that to Mr. Trump, and he was very gracious and understanding, and quite supportive.”
Vice President-elect Mike Pence said he “wasn’t offended” after the cast of the Broadway hit “Hamilton” called for the Indiana governor to uphold the country’s values in a personal message after a show, The Hill reports.
Said Pence: “I know this is a very disappointing time for people that did not see their candidate win in this national election. I know that this is a very anxious time for some people. And I just want to reassure people that what President-elect Donald Trump said on election night he absolutely meant from the bottom of his heart — he is preparing to be the president of all of the people of the United States of America.”
Los Angeles Times: “The most immediate battle is for leadership of the Democratic National Committee. The contest will pit Washington insiders against Beltway outsiders, liberal backers of Bernie Sanders against more centrist Hillary Clinton holdovers, and advocates of a full-time chairman versus those who feel it is fine to hold another job as well — serving in Congress, for instance.”
“The broader fight grows out of Clinton’s stunning defeat. (Few will very loudly criticize Obama for having failed to strengthen the party, or lay down a firmer foundation, during eight years as Democrat in chief.)”
“Instead of expanding the political map against Trump into the Republican-leaning reaches of Arizona and Georgia, Democrats are reckoning with the loss of Michigan and Pennsylvania, states they won in the last six elections, and Wisconsin, which had not voted for a Republican for president since 1984.”
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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