Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics in a Thanksgiving edition.
What are Republicans and Democrats thankful for this holiday season?
Democrats are thankful for three Republicans named Mehmet Oz, Don Bolduc and Blake Masters, who lost three winnable Senate seats in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, allowing Democrats to keep their majority. Democrats keep the majority; it means they can continue to confirm judges and confirm any executive branch nominees that President Biden puts forward should there be any openings. These were clearly winnable seats for the Republicans in this cycle that should have strongly favored them, but we saw Trump aligned nominees like these three give up winnable seats.
Republicans are thankful that there are alternatives emerging to President Donald Trump in the Republican primary in 2024. President Trump has declared his intention to run. However, three Republican governors, Brian Kemp, Ron DeSantis, and Greg Abbott had very strong showings in their reelection cycles this year and that's going to embolden challengers to Trump in the primary, and this could be a very competitive primary, giving them some alternatives to Trump, given that there's a growing number of Republicans who think he can't win a general election. Now, of course, the challenge will be, can these guys win if Trump decides that he's not going to support them should he lose the primary? But that's a question for another day.
Now, Republicans and Democrats are thankful that they're not going to be spending their holiday seasons relitigating false claims of election fraud the way they did in 2020. President Trump in 2020 claimed that the election was rigged and stolen from him. He refused to concede, and that really dominated the news cycle from Thanksgiving all the way through the January six riots, which were a terrible day for most lawmakers that were present. That's not going to happen this cycle. No one's really questioning the results of these elections. There were some questions about some voting machines malfunctioning in Arizona, but for the most part, this is a pretty clean election, and everyone understands that the legitimate ballots that were cast led to a legitimate outcome, a good day for American democracy. It's something that we should all be thankful for.
