The Wide World of News, the only morning tip sheet that consistently answers (or, at least, dodges head on) the top questions that are on your mind.
So please become a voluntary paying subscriber today.
Or pick your own amount and method and make a contribution via:
* Buy me a cocktail (at Palm Beach prices….), tax and server tip included, by clicking here.
* Buy me a cup of coffee (or a week’s worth) by clicking here.
* Check. Send a simple email to markhalperintalk@gmail.com and ask where you can send payment.
• PayPal. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
• Venmo. Mark-Halperin-4 (telephone number ends in x3226)
• Zelle. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
Thank you for your support.
Now, onto the Q&A!!
****
QUESTION: Do Republicans have any chance of winning two of the three Senate seats in Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia to take the majority?
ANSWER: You be the judge.
First of all, no one knows who the favorite is to win the Georgia runoff next month. The terrain and stakes are different, of course, if we know by then that Senate control will be determined by the Peach State outcome. I think Warnock is the slight favorite now, but he is by no means a sure thing.
As for the other two, see this pair of Arizona updates, with the emphasis added:
Arizona Democrats maintained small but dwindling leads over their Republican rivals in the races for U.S. Senate and governor, contests that could determine control of the Senate and the rules for the 2024 election in a crucial battleground state.
The races remained too early to call two days after the election, with some 600,000 ballots left to count, about a quarter of the total cast.
Among those that officials started processing early Wednesday were some 275,000 early ballots that voters dropped off at polling places on Election Day in Maricopa County, which encompasses the Phoenix metro area.
Those ballots have to undergo signature verification before they are counted. That process should be almost complete by the end of Friday, officials said.
The results released from Election Day followed a pattern set by how partisan affiliations affected attitudes on early voting.
The early numbers released at 8 p.m. Election Day came from those who voted early. Those leaned heavily Democratic, giving U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly around a 14 percentage point advantage over his Republican challenger, the venture capitalist Blake Masters.
And here is Nevada:
So I would say 2 of 3 for a Republican majority is not out of the question, by any means.
Stay tuned.
****
QUESTION: Will Donald Trump remain on track to announce his candidacy for president next week?
ANSWER: Unknown.
On the one hand, Trump suggested Wednesday he won’t back down.
On the other hand, he could blame Hurricane Nicole (and the potential disruption to his daughter’s weekend wedding). Trump is often cast as stubborn (which he is) but don’t forget he can also be very flexible.
And note the strikingly open, on-the-record postures of Jason Miller and Kayleigh McEnany, and the views of other unnamed Trump advisers, as via the Washington Post:
“Everything is about Herschel. I’ll be advising him to put it off until after the runoff,” said Jason Miller, a longtime adviser and sometime spokesman for Trump. “I’m not alone when I say President Trump’s best moves are to put all his efforts to get Herschel Walker elected.”
Miller said Trump would decide soon, and that he was not aware of anyone in his orbit who wanted him to stick with the original plan. Five advisers in regular touch with Trump said they hoped he would wait until after the runoff.
Much the same in the Associated Press story, “Trump urged to delay 2024 launch after GOP’s uneven election”:
“I’ll be advising him that he move his announcement until after the Georgia runoff,” said former Trump adviser Jason Miller, who spent the night with the former president at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “Georgia needs to be the focus of every Republican in the country right now,” he said….
Former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who now works for Fox News, advised on air that Trump should hold off on an announcement until after the Georgia Senate runoff.
“I think he needs to put it on pause,” she said. Asked whether Trump should campaign in the state, she said: “I think we’ve got to make strategic calculations. Gov. DeSantis, I think he should be welcomed to the state, given what happened last night. You’ve got to look at the realities on the ground.”
Under the “delay” scenario, Trump could make it about Georgia, not the repudiation of the midterms, but note, also, the widespread blind and on-the-record quotes from Georgia and national political strategists suggesting that any Trump involvement in the runoff would hurt Walker.
****
QUESTION: What accounts for all of these Dave Urban quotes?
ANSWER: You read them and decide.
Republican strategist David Urban, a former Trump adviser, said the Trump brand is wounded no matter what the former president says.
“Of course, he’s going to claim victory, right? The president touts an accomplishment record that includes victories in uncontested races. He can say whatever he wants. But how do people feel in America? I think people feel not great about the Trump brand right now,” Urban said. “It’s bad.”
“Republican chairmen across a wide spectrum of states were counting on Donald Trump to deliver victory for them last night and he didn’t, they are let down,” David Urban, a top adviser to Trump’s winning 2016 campaign in Pennsylvania and a longtime ally, said Wednesday. “It is clear the center of gravity of the Republican Party is in the state of Florida, and I don’t mean Mar-a-Lago.”
“Republicans have followed Donald Trump off the side of a cliff,” David Urban, a longtime Trump adviser with ties to Pennsylvania, said in an interview….
“Americans tend to support candidates who look forward and not backward,” said Mr. Urban, the former Trump adviser. “If Trump can do that, people would be excited. But can he? If history is any judge, I don’t think he can and it’s shame. He’s an incredibly skilled politician in many ways, but in other ways, he just doesn’t get it.”
Mr. Urban, Susie Wiles is on Line 2. And the President is on Lines 1 and 3.
****
QUESTION: Will Republican members of Congress join the “No Trump in ’24 chorus” when they return for the lame duck?
ANSWER: Not en masse, and probably barely at all.
Most currently elected pols are not Pat Toomey, Judd Gregg, Peter King, Chris Christie, Rupert Murdoch, or Paul Gigot.
Nor are they from the thinking Red pundit class:
On the other hand!
Mr. Trump has built a deep well of loyalty with Republican voters, and party officials cautioned that it was too soon to tell whether he would suffer any lasting political damage beyond a flurry of bad headlines, or whether a rival will emerge to challenge him. Mr. Trump has built a career on outlasting political controversy, and Trump aides insisted that any suggestion of weakness was a media confection.
“I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for president in 2024,” Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, said in a statement. “It is time for Republicans to unite around the most popular Republican in America who has a proven track record of conservative governance.”
Senator-elect J.D. Vance, Republican from Ohio and an early choice of Mr. Trump, said he believed Mr. Trump would be the nominee if he runs. “Every year, the media writes Donald Trump’s political obituary. And every year, we’re quickly reminded that Trump remains the most popular figure in the Republican Party,” he said. And Representative Jim Banks of Indiana said he supported Mr. Trump, who “transformed our party.”
Ms. Stefanik, Mr. Vance and Mr. Banks all provided statements after The New York Times sought comment from an aide to Mr. Trump.
“All of these Republican power-brokers and donors and thinkers and talkers, for seven years they’ve wanted to be rid of Trump, but they never do, and they’ve never said anything,” said former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020. “Now they’re hoping, ‘Oh, my God, a miserable midterm and Ron DeSantis had a great night, this will finally take him out.’ It’s wishful thinking, it’s bullshit.”
So even if Trump announces he is running, the best bet is that most Republicans, still afraid of the implications of crossing Trump, will dodge, bob, weave, deflect, and delay saying what they really think.
Among those who do take a stand, here is a pretty safe bet: More will endorse Trump for ’24 than denounce him.
The reality is, despite the impression that the Pat Toomeys of the world want to create, Trump was only part of the reason that there was no massive Red wave. And Republican officials who want to avoid blaming Trump in full (or, even, in part) have plenty of other options/excuses/reasons to tell themselves, their families, their fundraisers, their donors, and their voters.
Here are three essential reads for you, with more nuanced views on why the Republicans fell short, with reasons provided that aren’t about Trump.
* The Wall Street Journal news section
****
QUESTION: Will the kind of senior Republicans who blew up my phone yesterday with messages saying that now is the time for DeSantis or Youngkin to act fast get their way?
ANSWER: Nah.
Here’s the New York Times, quoting the unofficial Gang of 500 spokesperson for the Stop Trump Movement:
Scott Jennings, a longtime adviser to Mr. McConnell, the Senate minority leader, pointed to exit polls that showed Mr. Trump was less popular than President Biden. He said if Mr. Trump wanted to see a Republican elected president in 2024, he should not run.
Mr. Jennings suggested Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia as potential alternatives. He called for those Republicans to move urgently, pointing to the former president’s rapid political recovery after his supporters rioted in the Capitol, after Mr. Trump had falsely told them that his re-election victory had been stolen.
“The void has to be filled,” Mr. Jennings said. “After Jan. 6, the G.O.P. hesitated and he quickly recovered. DeSantis cannot hesitate.”
And here’s the reply sure to disappoint (but not surprise) the savvy Mr. Jennings, via the Washington Post:
Two DeSantis allies predicted the governor would wait until Florida’s legislative session ends in May to announce a White House bid, and in the meantime would campaign for Walker in the Georgia Senate runoff. A spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about DeSantis’ plans for the Georgia runoff or the 2024 race.
People who’ve worked with DeSantis say gaming out his moves is difficult because he keeps decision-making to himself, his wife and his chief of staff. A longtime legislative aide in Tallahassee said Tuesday’s results showed that DeSantis is a viable alternative to Trump, but that may not matter if Trump barrels ahead anyway.
“Nobody thinks the path for DeSantis is taking Trump head-on at this point,” the aide said, expecting Trump would “run the party to the ground.”
****
QUESTION: Will Joe Biden be the 2024 Democratic nominee?
ANSWER: First, read this exchange from the president’s Wednesday press conference:
Q. Obviously, a lot of attention on 2024 now that the votes have been cast in the midterms. Two thirds of Americans in exit polls say that they don't think you should run for reelection. What is your message to them? And how does that factor into your final decision about whether or not to run for reelection?
THE PRESIDENT: It doesn’t.
Basically, among the senior ranks of the Democratic Party, there are two pairs of two schools:
School 1: Biden will run unopposed and be the nominee.
School 2: Biden will not run and the nomination fight will be a cluster.
AND
School A: Biden is the only Democrat who could lose to Trump.
School B: Biden is the only Democrat who can beat Trump.
Lots to resolve on this one.
Pretty safe bet: Biden will freeze the Democrats’ 2024 situation for the indefinite future, and probably past the “antsy” point.
****
QUESTION: Will Kevin McCarthy’s path to the Speakership be smooth, bumpy, or non-existent?
ANSWER: Yes.
****
QUESTION: What is Kevin McCarthy’s posture towards Joe Biden?
ANSWER: Complicated and/but not that important (unless Mitch McConnell becomes Majority Leader).
****
QUESTION: What is Joe Biden’s posture towards Kevin McCarthy?
ANSWER: Different now than it will be in February.
****
ESSENTIAL READING
* The Washington Blade on Lauriol Plaza, the Sunday HQ of the Gang of 500.