Welcome to the online edition of From the Politics Desk, an evening email that provides you with the most recent coverage and commentary from the campaign trail, Capitol Hill, and the White House by the NBC News Politics team.
Senior national politics reporters Natasha Korecki and Alex Seitz-Wald analyze the current status of the contest for the position of next head of the Democratic National Committee in today’s edition. Chuck Todd, chief political commentator, also examines how Donald Trump is rapidly depleting his political capital.
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After a stinging election defeat, the race to lead the DNC kicks off
By Natasha Korecki and Alex Seitz-Wald
Two weeks after losing badly to Donald Trump once more, Democrats are still trying to figure out what went wrong and how to move ahead.
And choosing a new national party committee chair is already the first tangible step in starting their future chapter.
Particularly in the lead-up to the 2028 presidential race, when the new chair will have to supervise the party’s primary and its contentious new schedule enforced by President Joe Biden, the position will assume enormous significance for a defeated party without a clear leader.
In the last 48 hours, numerous candidates who are interested in taking over as DNC chair in lieu of Jaime Harrison have either formally entered the contest or had their names put out as potential candidates.
It began on Monday when former Maryland Governor Martin O. Malley, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration and a previous presidential contender, entered the contest. After serving as the vice chair of the DNC and as the head of the Association of State Democratic Committees, Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin formally announced his candidacy on Tuesday.
Continued investments in state parties were emphasized by both Martin and O Malley as being essential to their plans for advancing the DNC.
Chuck Rocha, a Latino Democratic consultant, also revealed his candidacy on X on Tuesday. According to Politico, Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow is the only woman to have surfaced as a potential contender thus far. After she defied a Republican who used her as a groomer in a fundraising drive, she received widespread praise on the left in 2022 and was given a speaking position at the Democratic National Convention this summer.
Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party and a known master fundraiser and field organizer, is still looming large.
According to someone familiar with Wikler’s thoughts, Ben is very seriously thinking about going for a run, NBC News said Monday.
In addition, there has been discussion about Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, and the chief of staff to former President Barack Obama. According to two people close to Emanuel, he has gone out to other DNC members to gauge interest.
Attention is also being paid to the DNC vice chair position. Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, is thinking about running for the position again after failing in 2017.
In a statement to supporters that NBC News was able to receive, Parkhomenko stated, “I am seriously considering stepping back into the race, and I promise to take the time to weigh this decision carefully, with the same dedication to our party and values that I’ve always carried.”
James Zogby, the founder of the Arab American Institute and a veteran former DNC member who has voiced left-wing criticism of the party, is also considering a candidacy for vice chair.
The 50-state approach might be one of the fault lines that will characterize the DNC leadership contests, but it’s still too early to tell. Martin in particular has fully embraced this strategy, which calls for investment in swing, blue, and red states alike. Emanuel notoriously rejected the idea, even engaging in a public dispute with Howard Dean about it, claiming that the party should concentrate on battleground states if he were to enter the race.
The contest may also reveal differences between the previous age, which included Obama, who significantly reduced the influence of the DNC and state parties by establishing Organizing for America as a parallel organization, and the new faces who would infuse a party with new ideas in search of a path ahead.
Trump is burning his political capital quickly
By Chuck Todd
Donald Trump’s choices for the Cabinet and other positions are causing him the following political issues: He is now fully in charge of the entire bureaucracy. His failure to keep his commitments is not due to fiction or a hypothetical deep state. He is selecting people who he claims share his vision, so there won’t be any justifications for being blocked by the GOP establishment side, as was the case during his first term.
He needs to deliver this time, and his capacity to do so rests on his ability to assemble a reliable group of political players who will not only carry out his orders but also, in some way, fulfill his pledges to a brand-new demographic of people who are experiencing Trumpism for the first time.
Trump will face more criticism for his contentious choice of defense chief than for his actual choice for the position if the next six months at the Pentagon are more about who can and cannot defend the nation and whose restrooms people can and cannot use.
Trump and the newly strengthened GOP must steer clear of numerous possible land mines. On the cultural front, one is misinterpreting their mandate.
Culturally, a lot of voters seemed to be voting to express that they dislike having their behavior dictated to them. This nation has a strong libertarian strain that can lean either left or right depending on the party in power. Republicans will be committing the same sin they accused coastal elites of committing—imposing their own culture on a populace that disagrees with their every belief—if they stop preaching against DEI and instead start enforcing their own culture, requiring Bible study in public schools (see Oklahoma), or determining whether someone should serve on the front lines of battle based on gender stereotypes rather than merit.
And by appointing the most divisive extremists to fill some of these important roles, Trump has already put himself at jeopardy. The public will reject this administration sooner than he anticipates if his choices lead to instability.
The fact that Trump was elected in spite of his personal unpopularity is one aspect of his alleged mandate that Trump and the GOP are already misinterpreting. In other words, he was elected because of who he was not, not because the voters who pushed him over the brink intentionally chose him.
Voters did not make this choice because they support Trump. Conversely, they made this choice because they believed the Biden-Harris government was unaware of their way of life. Is Trump aware of it? Maybe he doesn’t, but he sure knew how to turn their annoyances into a message that would win votes, and he undoubtedly showed that the Democrats had no idea how the working class was doing in this economy.
However, these bursts of political capital are short-lived, and they disappear when they do. Ask Biden.
Read more from Chuck.
Trump transition watch
-
Members of the House Ethics Committee met behind closed doors Wednesday
but did not reach an agreement
on whether to publicly release a report detailing their sweeping investigation into former Rep.
Matt Gaetz
, Trump s pick for attorney general. -
Outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said
in an exclusive interview with NBC News
that women were vital to the strength of the military. The comments come after Trump s pick to lead the Pentagon,
Pete Hegseth
, has cast doubt on placing women in combat roles. -
The president-elect named
Linda McMahon
, a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive who served in the first Trump administration, as his pickto lead the Education Department
.
-
Former acting Attorney General
Matt Whitaker
is Trump s choice to be the nextambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
, a key alliance that Trump derided for years.
Today s other top stories
-
Bathroom ban:
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he supports restricting single-sex facilities in the Capitol, including restrooms, to individuals of that biological sex which would effectively ban the first transgender congresswoman, Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, D-Del., from using women s bathrooms.Read more
-
Trump on trial:
Trump’s attorneys demanded the judge who presided over his New York hush money trial and conviction immediately throw out the case, saying it would be “uniquely destabilizing to the country” otherwise.Read more
-
Latest race calls:
Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur defeated Republican Derek Merrin in Ohio s competitive 9th District, NBC News projected. Republicans currently have won a218-213 majority in the House
, with four races yet to be called.
-
Latest race calls, cont.:
California voters have narrowly rejected a ballot measure that would have gradually increased the minimum wage in the state to $18 per hour, NBC News projected. It s the first time a ballot measure proposing to raise the statewide minimum wage has failed nationwide since 1996.Read more
-
Power play:
North Carolina Republican lawmakers voted to strip the state s incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of key powers, passing a sweeping bill before the GOP likely loses their veto-proof supermajority in the legislature next year.Read more
For now, that’s all from the Politics Desk. For comments, likes, or dislikes, send an email to [email protected].
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