First Read: “With Democrat Maggie Hassan the apparent winner of New Hampshire’s Senate contest, Republicans will most likely enjoy a 52-48 majority in the Senate next year. It’s striking that the three GOP Senate candidates who lost on Tuesday — Kelly Ayotte, Mark Kirk, and Joe Heck — were the ones who distanced themselves from Trump. Guess that didn’t work out so well.”
Trump Won’t Need Congress for Immigration Measures
“Since launching his presidential run a year and a half ago with a speech describing Mexican immigrants as rapists, Trump has made a bevy of promises about how he’d overhaul U.S. immigration policy,” Bloomberg reports.
“Many of those pledges—such as tripling the ranks of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and building a wall along the southern U.S. border—require cooperation from Congress, which some of his Republican allies will be eager to provide. But what worries pro-immigrant activists the most are the things President Trump can do by himself.”
“That starts with cancellation of President Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which has provided work permits and deportation relief to hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants, some of whom have used their newfound legal status to buy homes or start businesses.”
What a Difference Two Percent Makes
Nate Silver: “What would have happened if just 1 out of every 100 voters shifted from Trump to Clinton? That would have produced a net shift of 2 percentage points in Clinton’s direction.”
“Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida flip back to Clinton, giving her a total of 307 electoral votes. And she’d have won the popular vote by 3 to 4 percentage points, right where the final national polls had the race and in line with Obama’s margin of victory in 2012.”
Russia Was In Contact With Trump During Campaign
“Russia said it was in contact with President-elect Donald Trump’s team during the U.S. election campaign, despite repeated denials by the Republican candidate’s advisers that any links existed,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov: “There were contacts… We continue this work of course.”
Trump Was Shocked He Won
New York Times: “For all his boisterousness during the campaign, Mr. Trump was more muted than exuberant in its aftermath, according to people who spoke with him throughout the day. His victory over Hillary Clinton caught even him by surprise: Like Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump tracked the race through private polling that indicated he was headed for defeat, and he went all but silent in his apartment on Tuesday night as the returns from Florida turned in his favor.”
“A startled Mr. Trump fielded conciliatory phone calls from political dignitaries, including Republicans who resisted his candidacy, like Presidents George Bush and George W. Bush, and from Democrats with whom he may clash in office, like Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House of Representatives.”
How Trump Can Get His First Legislative Win
Playbook: “Remember we all said that a tax and infrastructure deal would’ve been a slam dunk for a President Hillary Clinton in the first days of her White House? Well, it’s not a bad idea for Trump, either. Trump, Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be, roughly, in the same ideological space in reforming the tax code. Trump is a former donor to and acquaintance of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the future Democratic leader who has worked with Ryan on tax reform. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants an infrastructure package — and has already said so. The infrastructure package actually spooks Republicans more than it spooks Democrats. This wouldn’t be easy, but could be a win in Trump’s first 100 days.”
Protests Swell Across Country In Wake of Trump Win
“Vigils and protests against Donald Trump spread from coast to coast early Thursday as crowds burned effigies of the president-elect, blocked highways and warned of wider backlash — underscoring the difficult task Trump faces in uniting a fractured country,” the Washington Post reports.
“Despite Hillary Clinton and President Obama urging their backers to accept Trump’s victory and support his transition into power, thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets decrying his crude comments about women and attacks on immigrants.”
Politico: “From New England to heartland cities like Kansas City and along the West Coast, demonstrators bore flags and effigies of the president-elect, disrupting traffic and declaring that they refused to accept Trump’s victory.”
Trump Begins to Remake the Republican Party
“Overnight, President-elect Donald Trump has reshaped what it means to be a Republican, leaving some longtime party officials scrambling to find their places in a new political era,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Throughout Mr. Trump’s populist campaign, Washington Republicans sought separation from some of Mr. Trump’s proposals on trade and foreign policy that broke from party orthodoxy. Establishment Republicans demurred when he promised to build a border wall and send the bill to Mexico.”
“Now, though, Republicans in Washington and across the country are beginning to start adopting the Trump agenda as their own.”
Ryan and Trump Work to Get On Same Page
Playbook: “It’s no secret that Trump and Ryan haven’t exactly gotten along, but they’re inching closer together now. They spoke by phone twice immediately after the election, and the lunch today will be another sign that they’re readying to work together. Ryan, frankly, can use Trump’s help as he readies for an internal election for House speaker. Ryan has to run in a closed-party election next week, and again on the House floor in January. If the incoming president is seen as being supportive of Ryan’s speakership, it’s far less likely anyone will run against him. Ryan’s allies already feel like Trump is — and should be — on board. Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy know how to move things on the Hill — a useful tool, since Donald Trump has never been elected to anything. Ever. And he’s president of the United States.”
“Trump has a lot of big plans. A wall with Mexico. Repealing Obamacare. Tax reform. Regulatory reform. Most of this stuff is going to take legislation, and 218 votes in the House of Representatives. It’s probably smart for Trump and Pence to get on the same page with Ryan on their priorities.”
Trump Staff Line Up for White House Jobs
“The political cast-offs, never-have-beens and backbench legislators who surround Donald Trump were warned that their work for the nominee would forever stain their resumes. Now they’re in line for the most influential jobs in Washington,” Politico reports.
“Resumes are rolling in from operatives looking for administration work — offering one of the surest signs that whatever wound was opened during the ugly GOP primary has been healed by Tuesday night’s stunning victories that handed both the White House and Congress to the Republican Party.”
The Trump transition has a new website.
The Polls Dramatically Missed Trump
FiveThirtyEight: “The more whites without college degrees were in a state, the more Trump outperformed his FiveThirtyEight polls-only adjusted polling average,1 suggesting the polls underestimated his support with that group. And the bigger the lead we forecast for Trump, the more he outperformed his polls.2 In the average state won by Trump, the polls missed by an average of 7.4 percentage points (in either direction); in Clinton states, they missed by an average of 3.7 points. It’s typical for polls to miss in states that aren’t close, though.”
“The most important concentration of polling errors was regional: Polls understated Trump’s margin by 4 points or more in a group of Midwestern states that he was expected to mostly lose but mostly won: Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.”
It Begins With a Meeting
New York Times: “Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump are set to get together at the White House, a significant step in the handoff and a meeting between men who have had little good to say about each other. Mr. Trump has famously and falsely questioned Mr. Obama’s birthplace and citizenship, and Mr. Obama has scalded him as unfit for office and worse, including during a roasting at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. But the two seem to have agreed to let bygones be bygones to secure the nation’s traditional peaceful transition of power.”
Priebus Built the Machine Trump Used to Win
Politico: “The cast of characters behind Donald Trump changed repeatedly during the course of his improbable presidential campaign as the rookie candidate struggled to strike the balance between Republican politician and anti-establishment crusader, but one person remained constant: Reince Priebus.”
“And now, the Republican National Committee chairman, whose efforts to rein in Trump at times made him the butt of jokes, is getting a lot of the credit for helping the president-elect pull off the most shocking upset in modern political history.”
Predicting a Trump Victory
Michael Moore, writing in July 2016:
Well, folks, this isn’t an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen – and in order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we’re in.
Read the whole thing. It’s really quite prophetic.
Polls Underestimated Trump’s Support
Vox: “The polls were quite close in their forecast for Clinton’s support. Clinton was expected to get 47 percent of the vote; she’s got 47.7 percent so far. On average, the polls understated her state-level support by about a percentage point.”
“Trump, however, was expected to get 44 percent of the vote, and he now has 47.5 percent; the polls undershot his support considerably… As the undecided made up their minds, and as third-party supporters moved toward the major party candidates (as they tend to do in a campaign’s final days), it looks like Trump picked up almost all of them.”
Trump Campaign Thought They Would Lose
Yahoo News: “RNC staffers thought Trump would win 240 Electoral College votes, 30 short of the 270 needed to win. They cautioned reporters that these numbers could change. And it was noteworthy that their projections were more optimistic than much of the public polling. But Trump was down 2 points in Florida, down 2 points in Iowa, down 2 points in New Hampshire and down 3 points in Wisconsin. Trump won Florida, won Iowa, won Wisconsin, and as of the publishing of this story was in a tight race for New Hampshire.”
“The best data inside the Trump campaign was just as pessimistic. Even the most optimistic models run by Cambridge Analytica for Trump showed him losing.”
Key factor: “Trump’s support and turnout among rural voters was 10 percentage points higher than they had expected.”
Trump Still Faces Trial
“Within a few weeks of winning the White House, President-elect Donald Trump could face another group of U.S. citizens, a federal jury in California, courtesy of a lawsuit by former students of his now-defunct Trump University who claim they were defrauded by a series of real-estate seminars,” Reuters reports.
“A hearing in federal court in San Diego is set for Thursday, and the trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 28, barring any delays or if Trump decides to settle the case.”
Gingrich Wants to be Trump’s ‘Chief Planner’
Newt Gingrich told Fox News Radio that he wanted to take on a “chief planner” role in the new Trump administration.
Said Gingrich: “I want to be able to work strategically.”
Instead of day-to-day tasks, Gingrich said, he wants to focus broadly on how to “get an American government into the 21st century” and “make it responsive to the American people.”
