Ashwin Ramaswami (D), who unsuccessfully ran for a state Senate seat in November, has filed a lawsuit against his Republican opponent, state Sen. Shawn (R) for making “outrageous, false, and malicious” statements, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

Landmark Communications, a political consulting firm that worked on Still’s campaign, is also named in the lawsuit.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told CNN that Democrats turned their backs on the working class.

Said Sanders: “I like Kamala, she’s a friend of mine. But her core consultants, you know, were very influenced by wealthy people.

He added: “How do you run for president and not develop a strong agenda which speaks to the economic crises facing working families?”

Washington Post: “Democrats are eager to turn the page on their 2024 losses — but their central figures from the last election keep stepping back into the spotlight, complicating their efforts to forge a new identity.”

“Many in the party are wary of elevating the people who led them to defeat in 2024 and exasperated to see the drama of that election repeatedly relitigated when they want to keep the focus on pushing back against Trump’s second-term agenda and identifying new leaders.”

“Former President Biden’s top political aide Mike Donilon told congressional investigators Thursday that he was paid $4 million for his work on Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and would have made an additional $4 million if Biden had won,” Axios reports.

“Donilon’s testimony shows he had a financial incentive for Biden to run for re-election even as the majority of voters expressed doubts about the president’s ability to do the job another four years.”

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he’ll pack his bags and flee to Florida if he loses the NYC mayoral race to socialist Zohran Mamdani, the New York Post reports.

Said Cuomo: “It’s all or nothing. We either win or even I will move to Florida. God forbid!”

Time: “While the idea of a secret ‘Epstein client list’ became a fixation for far-right influencers and members of Trump’s base, the candidate himself rarely brought up Epstein unprompted in campaign speeches or rallies. Instead, it was Trump’s official and unofficial surrogates—many of whom now occupy top posts in his Administration—who repeatedly stoked expectations that explosive revelations were imminent, often suggesting prosecutions were coming and that thousands of pages of damning material would soon be released.”

“Now many in Trump’s base are accusing him of falling far short of what they expected him to do with the Epstein case, partly because of years of rhetoric from his allies that neither Trump nor his campaign did much to refute.”

“Hunter Biden, in his first interview since the 2024 election, denied there was a ‘grand conspiracy’ to cover up issues with his father’s health and said Democrats only lost the race because they abandoned President Joe Biden,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Biden: “We lost the last election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party. That’s my position. We had the advantage of incumbency, we had the advantage of an incredibly successful administration, and the Democratic Party literally melted down.”

“In another life we would be friends and go golfing.”

— Donald Trump, quoted by Axios, speaking to Joe Biden after the 2024 election.

Cook Political Report: “For most of modern American political history, one thing about presidential elections was gospel: When more people vote, the Democratic Party benefits.”

“But in 2024, President Donald Trump’s dramatic gains among typically lower-propensity and Democratic-leaning voters — notably voters of color and young people — turned that truism upside-down.”

“A comprehensive new analysis of voter data from the Pew Research Center estimates that if every eligible voter in America had shown up to the polls in November, Trump still would have won the popular vote.”

“In fact, his overall margin of victory may even have been slightly higher.”

CNN: New research shows Trump’s 2024 support became more ethnically and racially diverse.

Mark Cuban told The Bulwark that Vice President Kamala Harris’s team had asked him to submit vetting materials to be considered for vice president during the 2024 campaign, but he turned her down.

Said Cuban: “I’m not very good as the number two person. And so if the last thing we need is me telling Kamala, you know, the president that, no, that’s a dumb idea. Right. And I’m not real good at the shaking hands and kissing babies.”

He added: “She would have fired me within six days.”

President Trump was making comments in the Oval Office and Elon Musk was responding in real time:

TRUMP: I would have won Pennsylvania regardless of Elon.

MUSK: Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.

Nate Cohn: “While the history books will rightfully dwell on whether Democrats could have forestalled another Trump presidency, the question of whether Mr. Trump cost conservatives a more decisive victory might be the more useful one to understand American politics today.”

“Voters wanted change, badly. They were repelled not just by Mr. Biden’s faltering condition, but also by rising prices and perceived failures of Democratic governance on everything from immigration to energy. While it didn’t yield a more decisive Republican victory, the backlash against pandemic-era restrictions, rising prices and ‘woke’ all help explain why a close election felt like a conservative ‘vibe shift.’”

“The race was close for one reason: Donald J. Trump. He was an unpopular felon who had alienated millions of Americans with his comments and actions over nearly a decade. Obviously, President Trump possesses important political strengths, but his weaknesses plainly made a landslide victory more challenging. To the extent the election offered the Republicans an opportunity to win big, he was not the candidate to capitalize on it.”

Tim Walz on Saturday delivered blunt advice to fellow Democrats in an address to party activists and officials: “We’ve got to find some goddamn guts to fight for working people,” Politico reports.

He added: “The party of the working class lost a big chunk of the working class. That last election was a primal scream on so many fronts.”

Of Republican control, he acknowledged: “Some of it is our own doing.”

“As Elon Musk became one of Donald Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known,“ the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.”

“It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.”

“At the same time, Mr. Musk’s family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children.”

Nate Silver: “As you can see from the Catalist data, it’s actually common for most dropoff voters to be Democrats: this also happened to the party in 2012, 2016 and 2020. In some sense, that’s a sign of being a victim of your own success. If you’re good at turning out marginal voters, you’re happy to book the win — but they might not vote again next time.”

“In past elections, however, new voters were also Democratic, enough to more or less cancel this out. This time, however, the majority of new voters picked Trump.”

“Put another way, Democrats performed poorly among marginal voters in general: people who don’t read the news that much, and whose political views don’t match the ideologically ‘consistent’ views of strong partisans. Young voters, voters of color, and voters without college degrees are overrepresented in this cohort, all groups that Democrats struggled with in 2024 compared to previous elections.”

Jessica Yellin has a very interesting interview with former Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and why he ultimately tried to challenge President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary.

Said Phillips: “This was an issue of nobody, Vice President Harris, who was in the room, who’s known Joe Biden for years, who attacked him vigorously in 2020, who met with him weekly, a woman of color. You know, she wouldn’t run. I called Gretchen Whitmer directly. Her very thoughtful political director said, please do not mention this. Do not mention her name. And as a result, you know, we can’t have you talk. I called JB Pritzker directly, same thing. His team was rude and I thought reprehensible.”

He added: “I tried to encourage everybody, Newsom, Klobuchar, anybody. Of course, I knew they wouldn’t do it, though, Jessica, because they wouldn’t give up. They wouldn’t risk their personal futures for the country’s.”

It’s worth watching.