"Is there a market for an anti-Trump Republican Party now?” said one prominent member of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “I would say no.”

By Laura Barron-Lopez & Holly Otterbein @ Politico.com, Dec. 17

[....] More than a dozen leaders of the never-Trump movement said in interviews that they see their work as far from over once Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20. They want to keep the heat on Republicans who serve as Trump foot soldiers and to provide cover for those who reject far-out conspiracy theories and attacks on democracy [....]

Just keeping the coalition that elected Biden together “will be a challenge in and of itself,” said Evan McMullin, who mounted a conservative third-party presidential bid in 2016. Moving forward, the movement has to “bring more Republicans on to our side of this fight.”

Some said they intend to shield Republican lawmakers who stand up to Trump. Others floated forming a third party. And still others want to direct their energies toward rebuilding trust in government and using Trump’s ouster as momentum for reforms on government ethics, taking a page from the post-Watergate playbook.

“Can we recruit never-Trumpers to run? Can we find moderate candidates to run, is that the best thing to do? Is the best thing to do to be more helpful to Biden? I don’t think there’s any clear answers right now,” said Tim Miller, a former spokesperson for Jeb Bush and a leading never-Trumper who left the Republican Party in November [....]

[....] If he runs again, that would keep the activists united, but many are skeptical he’ll follow through. Polls show that two-thirds of Republican voters think Trump didn’t legitimately lose [....]

Some never-Trump leaders said their biggest potential impact is within the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, not the GOP. They’re looking to leverage friendships they’ve forged within Biden’s circle to pull the new president toward the center — all but ensuring he will be squeezed by the left and right. Biden’s coalition included a record number of crossover endorsements from past Republican officials at all levels of government [....]

SUPER DUPER highly recommended overall national election analysis summary from final numbers, in highly readable form with plenty of charts!

by Jed Kolko and Toni Monkovic @ The Upshot @ NYTimes.com. Dec. 7

With most of the slow-to-report votes tallied, we finally have a clearer picture of last month’s presidential results. Despite the high polarization in the country that carried over to the reaction to the results — with 70 percent to 80 percent of Republicans still saying they disbelieve that Joe Biden won — in some respects the vote itself was less polarized than in 2016.

Compared with 2016, in 2020 there was less difference by race or ethnicity, and urban areas and suburban areas voted more alike. But the economic and education partisan divides widened. Mr. Biden gained in well-educated suburbs and exurbs, often in places that have tended to vote Republican in recent decades, like the Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix areas.

In addition to these broad patterns, some specific shifts reflected local political loyalties.

As of Monday, reporting was complete enough to look closely at nearly all individual counties and metropolitan areas (which consist of one or more counties). Though some important patterns may show up only in more fine-grained precinct or individual survey data, counties make it easy to compare the entire country, over time, though many lenses.

These near-final county totals confirm a few patterns in the 2020 vote [....]

by ‘weaponising fake news’ and ‘fighting wokeism’

By Jordain Carney @ TheHill.com, Dec. 15, 10:45 pm

Congressional leaders said Tuesday night they are making progress on a sweeping deal to fund the government and provide coronavirus relief but hadn't yet clinched an agreement.

The top four congressional leaders met twice Tuesday as they race the clock to try to fund the government by Friday and break a months-long stalemate to provide more coronavirus aid.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters that they were "close" to a deal, but didn't say if he thought it could be reached Tuesday. "I think it's going really well," McCarthy said as he left Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office.

McConnell told reporters as he was leaving the Capitol for the night that he was "optimistic" they would reach an agreement "soon." He declined to say if that would be on Tuesday. "We're making significant progress and I’m optimistic that we're gonna be able to complete an understanding sometime soon," McConnell told reporters [....]

[MORE NEWS IN COMMENTS] Haaland is Native American.

Republicans spent most of 2020 rejecting science in the face of a runaway pandemic; now they’re rejecting democracy in the face of a clear election loss. What do these rejections have in common? In each case, one of America’s two major parties simply refused to accept facts it didn’t like. Notice, by the way, that I’m not including qualifiers, like saying “some” Republicans. We’re talking about most of the party here. 

see Dr. Eric's full twitter thread for laymen's translation of linked press release, by clicking on tweet below