. By acknowledging and digging into the increasing evidence that Russia helped — or at least attempted to help — tip the scales in Trump’s favor, they risk raising questions about whether Trump would have won without Russian intervention.
Trump, after all, won by a margin of about 80,000 votes cast across three states, winning each of the decisive states by less than one percentage point. So even a slight influence could have plausibly made the difference
.. A poll released Friday by Democratic pollster Democracy Corps showed 55 percent of Trump voters and Republicans who didn’t vote for Trump say it’s probably true that stories alleging Russian interference in the election are conspiracy theories pushed by Clinton.
2016 Election Thank You Notes
Jimmy Fallon: How did you manage to shine a nonthreatening light on someone who alarms so many women, frightens so many undocumented families and slurs so many minorities? Can’t have been easy! Thanks! Maybe now you could have the Grand Wizard on your show: He leans his head to you, you slip his hood off and ruffle his hair. Could be a cute bit!
Reince Priebus’ moment
The RNC chairman spent years — and tens of millions of dollars — quietly building the machine that paved the way for Trump’s upset win.
The RNC’s get-out-the-vote infrastructure was by far the most robust in the party’s history, consisting of 315 field offices staffed by 7,600 paid employees and fellows who knocked on 24 million doors and logged 26 million phone calls. Without the RNC operation, Trump’s ground game would have been dwarfed by that of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, since his campaign invested relatively little in field staff.
For instance, as of the beginning of September, Trump’s campaign had only one field office in the pivotal state of Florida versus Clinton’s 51. The RNC, by contrast, by Election Day had 62 offices and 1,173 paid staff and organizers in the Sunshine State, which Trump narrowly carried.
.. When the billionaire real estate developer’s campaign appeared to be spiraling toward a landslide loss during a dreadful summertime stretch, Priebus rejected callsfrom Republican insiders to redirect funding away from Trump to instead save down-ballot Republicans.
.. “Despite being ridiculed and criticized by some quarters, the chair stood by his nominee — defended him, counseled him and helped him — all the attributes that many in Washington lack,” said veteran GOP strategist Chris LaCivita.
.. some of Priebus’ top RNC aides — past and present — held a conference call with reporters to make the case that Priebus’ ground game and data surge was a big risk that brought intense criticism but ultimately paid off.
.. The resultant $175-million investment in voter data and modeling, as well as heavy spending on field offices and online fundraising, allowed the Trump campaign to plug into a fully operational campaign infrastructure.
.. “They targeted rural white voters to blow the turnout model,” Duga said. “Reince Priebus didn’t win this election. He led an effort to place a candidate in as many rural venues as possible using fear as a tactic to divide and conquer.”
What the Markets Can, and Can’t Tell Us about a Trump Presidency
Politico reported that Treasury and Federal Reserve officials were monitoring the situation closely, prepared to take extraordinary action, if needed, to save the U.S. economy from free fall.
.. Pharmaceutical companies and private prisons saw their values rise, presumably rooted in a belief that President Trump will abandon efforts to rein them in. Gun stocks fell—a sign that Americans no longer fear a gun-control advocate in the White House.
.. Or, as John Maynard Keynes wrote, “We devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.”
.. Trump has attacked every one of these foundations. How much should you pay for Apple stock, say, if we have to worry about the dollar plummeting in value and the President declaring a trade war on China, which is both Apple’s chief supplier and its fastest-growing market? There is no financial model, right now, for that many levels of structural uncertainty.
.. Markets are designed to make relatively minor adjustments on a fundamentally sound base. They never perform well when the base itself is under assault, as it was during the financial crisis of 2008.
.. Donald Trump’s proposed policies are, in this technical sense, toxic.
.. The repeal of Obamacare, alone, would force many people to forgo their riskier, entrepreneurial ambitions for the safety of a job with a health plan. Curtailing immigration will redirect the world’s most ambitious citizens elsewhere. A trade war with Mexico and China would be damaging in ways that are hard to fathom or measure. Trump’s tax plan will turn America’s serious but manageable debt burden into a crisis weighing on future generations.