Welcome to the online version of From the Political Bureauan evening newsletter featuring the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News Politics team from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, chief political analyst Chuck Todd explains why the 2022 midterm election results were a mirage for Democrats. Plus, ‘Meet the Press’ moderator Kristen Welker has more on her interview with Donald Trump. And political reporter Adam Edelman looks at how Democratic governors in blue states are already starting to push back against the incoming Republican administration.
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The Democrats’ midterm mirage
By Chuck Todd
The biggest difference between the successes of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom were re-elected, and the failure of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris team to win for four more years was their interim experiences.
Both Clinton and Obama were beaten up, forcing them to rethink some of their policies and figure out how to sell them.
Biden and the party as a whole viewed Democrats’ “better than expected” performance in the 2022 midterm elections, when they still lost the House of Representatives but gained a seat in the Senate, as a sign that they are on to something were and that they didn’t need it. to make as many course corrections as the polls actually told them to.
Despite Biden, Democrats did well in the 2022 midterm elections, not because of him or his pro-democracy message.
The reality is that Democrats have done better than expected in the 2022 midterm elections for two reasons: the backlash against the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and the Republican Party’s disastrous slate of candidates in swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Add to that the fact that more Democrats are now regular voters, while more Republicans are irregular voters, thanks to the two parties’ realignment on education and class, and it was a recipe for Democratic overperformance.
When Republicans were more the party of the upper middle class in the suburbs, they almost automatically had the turnout advantage in the medium term. Not anymore – which is why Democrats tend to perform better in special elections, with more committed voters in “every election” right now. Presidential elections equalize medium-term turnout benefits.
If Dobbs had not happened or if the Republican Party had nominated more electable candidates, Republicans would most likely have won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2022 simply because of the response to post-Covid inflation and the belief that Biden’s policies expanded the issue, as well as negative sentiment about the job Biden was doing in general.
And a blow in 2022 for Biden and the Democrats that was more in line with 2010 (Obama’s first midterm) or 1994 (Clinton’s first midterm) would most likely have forced a trade-off on whether Biden should run again ( perhaps even inviting primary challengers) or forcing Biden to correct course earlier and more forcefully on economic and border security.
But that’s not what happened. In fact, Trump’s resurrection as the Republican Party’s 2024 frontrunner — which began in earnest in late 2022 — has only hardened this (mis)belief among Democrats that anti-Trumpism, coupled with Dobbs’ response, would continue and the easiest and easiest way safest path to re-election.
In retrospect it is clear that this was a gigantic miscalculation.
Read more from Chuck →
Here’s what else Trump told me during our interview
By Kristen Welker
Headlines from my 15-minute phone interview Thursday with President-elect Donald Trump included his statements that there is “no price tag” on his mass deportation plan, and that the mandate of his victory is to “bring back common sense.”
But there is much more he told me.
Trump boasted about the magnitude of his victory and his achievements among key demographic groups: “It was such an honor to have gotten the kind of votes that we did, with Black Americans, with Asian Americans, the Hispanic, Hispanic population was so incredible. Women. You know, I’ve heard this much: Ultimately, women wanted safety. They wanted certainty.”
National exit polls showed Trump making gains among Latino voters, young voters, women and Asian American voters from 2020, while his support among Black voters remained about the same.
He discussed his jackets, which helped some (but not all) Republicans: “I’m honored to have helped all these senators get in.” … I worked very hard on the Senate. And I know that we won certain seats in the House of Representatives that we were not expected to win. But what it really tells me is that it’s a mandate for the entire country, because women, men, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans. I mean, it did so well with Hispanic Americans – what an honor. It is truly an honor.”
Trump endorsed many of the Republican candidates in critical races in the Senate and House of Representatives. Republicans regained control of the Senate, thus far losing three Democratic-held seats in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio. But Democrats managed to retain Senate seats in two states that Trump held: Michigan and Wisconsin. NBC News has not yet predicted winners in the Senate races in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada.
In the House of Representatives, Republicans held a 212-201 lead with 22 races remaining Friday afternoon.
Trump distinguished between the crackdown on “murderers” and “drug lords” and legal immigration: “We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, at the same time, we have to want people to come into our country. … I’m not one to say, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in. Many companies will come to our country. … But we want people who aren’t necessarily in jail because they killed seven people. And I think part of what someone said really well was that it was established that when they got into the box that they agreed with Trump, they didn’t want murderers, they didn’t want drug lords, they wanted that. I don’t want any gang members.’
And he talked about the concession calls he received from Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden: “Very nice calls, very respectful in both directions. I got a call from the vice president and she talked about the transition. She would like it to go as smoothly as possible. And of course I agree with that 100%. It was a very, very kind phone call. And the same goes for the president. He and I have agreed to have lunch very soon, before or after his trip [to South America].”
Resistance 2.0: Democratic governors promise to protect their states from Trump and his policies
By Adam Edelman
A group of blue state governors are already preparing a litany of political and legal actions to protect their states’ policies and residents from federal action under the new administration of Donald Trump.
The plans of Democratic governors across the country — including a handful of potential candidates for president in 2028 — offer both a repeat of the way leaders of liberal states opposed Trump during his first term and a snapshot of the backlash against him from the left will look like this this time.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that he would convene a special session of the Legislature explicitly intended to “protect California’s values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration.”
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called his state “a haven for those whose rights are denied elsewhere,” including those seeking political asylum, reproductive health care or to avoid persecution because of their sexual orientation or gender.
“To anyone who plans to come and take away the freedom, opportunity and dignity of the people of Illinois, I want to remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior,” he said Thursday. “You come for my people, you come through me.”
And New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this week announced an effort — called the “Empire State Freedom Initiative” — that she said was intended to address “policy and regulatory” threats that could emerge during the Trump administration .
Read more →
🗞️Today’s top stories
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📝 Dismantling: The judge overseeing Trump’s federal election interference case has granted a request from special counsel Jack Smith to pause the trial and give him a month to formally ask how to proceed — likely the first step in the end the persecution. Read more →
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⚫ Foiled Plot: The Justice Department has charged an Iranian man and two others in a murder-for-hire plot against then-candidate Trump and others. Read more →
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➡️ Election Day Threats : Bomb threats sent Tuesday to polling places and precincts in at least five battleground states across the country primarily targeted Democratic counties, an NBC News analysis shows. Read more →
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⚖️Packing the track: Republicans are gearing up to cement their remake of the judiciary under Trump and a new Senate majority, including possibly installing some more conservative Supreme Court justices. Read more →
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😨 Fears for the second term: Former intelligence officials say they worry that U.S. spy agencies could be prompted to distort their findings to suit Trump’s agenda or, in worst-case scenarios, be used to spy on domestic political opponents. Read more →
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🤝 You will be hired: Trump named campaign co-chair Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, making her the first woman in the role. Read more →
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🗄️The outsiders: Trump is expected to give a bounty to people outside the government, as opposed to sitting lawmakers, as he builds a new Cabinet. Read more →
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🔴 Blue to red: Trump won Nevada and NBC News projects — the first time a Republican presidential candidate has done so since 2004. Read more →
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🔵 Red to blue: Aside from Harris’ defeat, North Carolina Democrats won nearly every other statewide election race on the ballot Tuesday. Read more →
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Follow live updates after the elections →
For now, that all comes from the Political Bureau. If you have any feedback – like it or not – please email us at politicsnieuwsbrief@nbcuni.com
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
