To our veterans and to those who actively serve in our nation’s armed forces, thank you for your service.
Audrey Fahlberg, National Review’s political reporter, here filling in for Jim Geraghty. He’ll be back tomorrow. On the menu today: The Democratic Party’s recriminations continue, and Senate Republicans brace for this week’s high-profile race to succeed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in American history.
Democrats’ Post-Election Meltdown
After their decisive loss last week, Democrats are freaking out over the toxicity of their party’s brand and how to move forward. The finger-pointing is about to look a lot uglier when lawmakers return to Washington, D.C., this week and begin litigating those complaints through the congressional press corps.
One major problem that many Democrats can agree on is that they need to confront the perceived elitism and high-handedness of their party that is turning off working-class voters. For some, that means acknowledging as a party that they overestimated the political effectiveness of leaning into abortion rights and the anti-Trump “democracy-versus-chaos” argument, and didn’t meet voters where they are on the economy, border security, and a host of hot-button culture-war issues. After last Tuesday’s result, there is a lot of nervousness and confusion among Democrats about the rightward shift among Latino and black voters this cycle, particularly men (read more about that here).
Popular explanations for the outcome of the election seem to include white supremacy, patriarchy, misogyny…
I am going to state the obvious here: vilifying voters of color as white supremacists will not attract them back to the Democratic Party. It will drive them further…
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) November 6, 2024
Popular explanations for the outcome of the election seem to include white supremacy, patriarchy, misogyny…
I am going to state the obvious here: vilifying voters of color as white supremacists will not attract them back to the Democratic Party. It will drive them further…
10/ Those are hard things for the left.
A firm break with neoliberalism.
Listen to poor and rural people, men in crisis. Don’t decide for them.
Pick fights. Embrace populism.
Build a big tent. Be less judgmental.
But we are beyond small fixes.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 10, 2024
Former senator Doug Jones (D., Ala.) thinks the party needs to seriously reevaluate its condescension toward white rural voters. “Democrats have often had this, ‘We know better than you, you are voting against your interest, and we are trying to help you,’” mindset for a while now, Jones said in an interview with National Review. He added that while he served in the Senate, this tension often came up during closed-door caucus meetings, where members would express frustration that voters, in their view, were voting against their own economic interests by voting for Republicans.
“My response has been for a while: ‘Look, people have different views of what their priorities and personal interests are,’” he recalled. “‘Who the hell are you to say what their interest is? And it may be that their religious beliefs or their moral beliefs or whatever, have a certain priority over even an economic sacrifice that they might make.’”
Another problem is figuring out how to better engage with voters through podcasts and independent media, an area where Trump made significant inroads this cycle. Add to that list not falling into the trap that a ground game will get your candidate across the finish line.
“Democrats have always believed that the ground game and the knocking on the doors and the calls and the postcards can make the difference,” Jones says. “But the fact of the matter is, that is [the] old school people don’t care anymore. I don’t think they particularly care to have strangers knocking on their doors anymore. And much less, three, four times, maybe more.”
Harris is already positioning to anoint herself the head of the anti-Trump “Resistance” movement, telling her supporters during her concession speech last week that she will not “concede the fight that fueled this campaign.” Let’s just say there’s a large slate of ambitious Democrats who are already jockeying for that mantle.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro certainly dodged a bullet after not being picked as Harris’s running mate. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer spoke in D.C. yesterday at the pro-Israel “Stand Together” rally against antisemitism. And of course, California governor Gavin Newsom has already called for a special session of his state legislature to “Trump-proof” California’s laws.
Rick Scott Gains Grassroots GOP Momentum in Senate-Leader Race
For months now, the race to succeed retiring GOP leader Mitch McConnell has been perceived as a closely contested race between two long-serving veterans of the upper chamber: Senate GOP whip John Thune (R., S.D.) and former conference whip John Cornyn (R., Tex.), who also served two terms as Senate GOP campaign chief.
Dark-horse candidate Rick Scott is also running. (Recall that Scott, who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the lackluster 2022 midterms, challenged McConnell for the Senate GOP leader mantle last time around and lost by a 37-10 vote.) As I reported Friday, “Scott’s team insists he is running to win. But even if he loses, the goal is to set himself up as the leader of the ‘MAGA’ flank, and, through ginning up protest votes, help the rightmost flank of the conference gain concessions from whoever comes out on top.” (He scored some points in that department over the weekend, when he won public support from Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlie Kirk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Matt Schlapp, and Elon Musk, as well as two Republican senators who are expected to be tapped for high-profile posts in the Trump administration — Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.))
It’s still unclear as of this writing whether Trump will endorse in this race. But he did make one demand of all three candidates on Sunday:
Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner. Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2024
As I reported for NR over the weekend:
Senators are scheduled to hash out their priorities during a leadership forum next week. For the rightmost flank of the conference that has long butted heads with McConnell, the goal is to get a bigger seat at the governing table by highlighting key priorities in the next leader, such as passing fewer high-dollar spending and Ukraine-aid bills, an open amendment process, more time to debate legislation, and limiting the next leader’s power. That lattermost agenda item – which is being spearheaded in part by Utah senator Mike Lee (see here) — has frustrated McConnell allies like Senator Thom Tillis (R., N.C.), who say this quest to weaken the next Senate GOP leader will only serve to undermine GOP priorities given Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s chokehold over his own members. . . .
Many on Capitol Hill see Thune and Cornyn as ideologically comparable, meaning much of this contest will end up coming down to personal relationships.
I predicted a few days ago that this exact sort of grassroots pressure campaign would pan out:
Privately, many sources push back on the likelihood that the rightmost flank of the conference will get much out of their demands during next week’s pre-election forum. When ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy was seeking the gavel in January 2023, he had to concede to a list of concessions from House GOP hardliners, most notably lowering the threshold for a snap vote of confidence to just one member (which of course led to his ouster later that year). The Senate is a completely different animal, and the closed-door nature of this vote limits the influence of any outside grassroots pressure campaign, intra-conference concession fight, or even (still hypothetical) Trump endorsement.
This social-media pressure campaign boosting Scott is reminding a lot of folks on the Hill of last year’s MAGA pressure campaign boosting House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan’s speaker bid, which backfired spectacularly. But the House is the House, and the secret-ballot nature of this week’s GOP-leader vote insulates senators from these sorts of outside political forces.
In the end, the personal nature of this leader election means the race will come down to relationships. And as one Senate aide put it in a candid text to NR Monday morning: “If people thought Rick Scott was a serious candidate, the outside noise would have more of an impact internally. He played this hand in 2022 already and lost.”
ADDENDUM:Democratic senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania still has not conceded to Republican Dave McCormick after the Associated Press called their race. This is getting a bit awkward considering that new-member orientation is right around the corner:
Schumer spox on whether McCormick will attend new member orientation
“With over 100,000 ballots left to be counted in Pennsylvania, the race has not been decided. As is custom, we will invite the winner once the votes are counted”
Gallego not invited yet (until race called)
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) November 10, 2024
In 2018 my race wasn’t called for 6 days. I jumped on a redeye to DC to make senate orientation-I learned so much & made lasting relationships that week.
Dave McCormick & Ruben Gallego will be Senators for PA & AZ. They should be invited to orientation & start learning the job.
— Kyrsten Sinema (@kyrstensinema) November 10, 2024