A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

It’s Happening Already

The most chilling moment of the election night carnage came a little before 1 a.m. ET.

It wasn’t yet confirmed that Donald Trump would win, but the writing was on the wall.

Assessing the newly transformed MAGA-friendly political landscape, the pro-Trump lobbyist and political commentator David Urban said on CNN: “Democracy is a luxury when you can’t pay your bills.”

Democracy as a luxury. Democracy in good times only. Democracy when it suits you.

This mindset – a precursor to fascist regimes in other countries – is why it feels like a white-wash to ascribe Trump’s victory to economic issues. It feels like a safe, socially acceptable reason to cite for rejecting Kamala Harris and the Biden baggage she carried.

It’s easy for political reporters and TV commentators to slip into gentle analysis of the election results by focusing on the economic factors (to the exclusion of misogyny, racism, and host of other drives of the electorate). But it doesn’t necessarily follow that Biden-era inflation and post-pandemic backlash means jettisoning democracy. That’s a choice.

When we talk about democracy as a luxury that means everything that comes with democracy: free and fair elections, majority rule, and the rule of law.

And so America’s experiment in autocracy begins …

Jack Smith Prepares To End Trump Prosecutions

In the most stinging post-election development, the Justice Department let it be known publicly Wednesday that it plans to wind down the prosecutions of Donald Trump in the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases before Inauguration Day. The move is a reflection of a long-standing DOJ position that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, a position cited favorably by the Supreme Court in its horrendous decision on presidential immunity.

Among the developments:

• “Justice Department officials began signaling that they are eyeing how best to shut down the cases.”–Politico
• “Now that Trump will become president again, DOJ officials see no room to pursue either criminal case against him — and no point in continuing to litigate them in the weeks before he takes office, the people said.”–NBC News
• “The mechanics of how the cases will wind down will become clear in the coming days as court deadlines approach.”–Bloomberg
• While it’s not clear if Smith will issue a final report on his investigations, Attorney General Merrick Garland has said he would make special counsel reports public if they reached his desk.–WaPo

Jan. 6 Defendants Seek Delays In Hope Of Trump Pardons

Some Jan. 6 defendants seized on Trump’s election victory to seek delays in their cases so that they can be pardoned once Trump is sworn into office. One such request has already been already denied by a federal judge in DC.

Hush Money Conviction May Go Away, Too

It’s not clear whether Donald Trump will ever be sentenced for his conviction in the New York state hush money case. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 26. Judge Juan Merchan is expected to issue his decision Tuesday on whether to throw out the conviction.

Who’s To Blame For Trump Dodging The Law?

Ankush Khardori: “We have just witnessed the greatest failure of federal law enforcement in American history.”

‘An Already Battered Democracy’

“Donald Trump’s return to the White House signals a significant breakdown of an already battered democracy, experts say. Almost as dangerous, they contend, much of the electorate sees him as democracy’s savior.”–WaPo

Quote Of The Day

“America has revealed to us her true self, and we have to decide what we do with her from here.”–Waikinya Clanton, founder of the organizing group Black Women for Kamala

THE TELL: MAGA Election Denialism Disappeared

“As soon as it started to look like Trump was going to win, the election denialism went very, very quiet,” said Welton Chang, CEO of a company that monitors fringe social networks, told the NYT.

Biden Extends Courtesy Trump Never Gave Him

In a phone call Wednesday, President Biden invited President-elect Donald Trump to the White House for a transition meeting in the next few days. Trump accepted.

Harris Concession Speech

Hard to watch:

House Prospects Not Looking Good For Democrats

It’s increasingly looking like Donald Trump will return to office with Republican control of both chambers of Congress:

• “House state of play: Republicans have a more robust path to 218 seats than Dems. Roughly 15 races left w/ a decent amount of uncertainty, and the midpoint outcome is pretty close to the current House breakdown, 221R-214D.”–Dave Wasserman
• “Democrats’ path to retaking the House now hinges on winning nearly all of the still-uncalled races, mostly in the West.”–Semafor
• “Democrats are increasingly concerned that California may not bring the wins they need.”–WaPo

Picking Through the Wreckage

• White women: Trump won a majority of white women.
• Latinos: Harris barely won majority support among Latinos.

Silver Linings?

• Abortion: “Seven of the 10 states with abortion on the ballot chose to protect the right Tuesday — and Florida would have too, if it wasn’t subject to a 60-vote supermajority threshold.”–TPM’s Kate Riga
• VA-07: Former Army Lt. Col Eugene Vindman, a key figure in the first Trump impeachment, won election to the House.

Says It All

Trump win sparked a record $64 billion gain in the fortunes of the world’s 10 richest people as U.S. stock values soared.

GOP Biggest Win: Extending Trump’s Tax Cuts

“With full control of Congress, [Republicans] could push through tax changes without needing Democratic votes, just as they did in 2017. Back then, they set the bulk of those tax cuts to expire after eight years—at the end of 2025—teeing up next year’s debate and gambling that a future Congress would extend them. That bet is on the brink of paying off.”–WSJ

Gitmo Pleas For 9/11 Plotters Are Back In Effect

A military judge ruled that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acted too late and beyond his authority in cancelling the plea agreements of three accused 9/11 plotters housed at Guantánamo Bay, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

ICYMI

“North Korean troops have entered the fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine, clashing for the first time with Ukrainian forces who are occupying a large chunk of Russia’s Kursk region, according to a senior Ukrainian official and a senior U.S. official.”–NYT

The Biggest Election Impact Of All

Trump’s victory is a catastrophic development for the energy transition and the effort to avert the most cataclysmic effects of climate change. As if on cue, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Wednesday that 2024 is almost certain to surpass 2023 as the warmest year on record.

Not The Fight We Wanted

I went on Greg Sargent’s podcast to discuss yesterday’s Morning Memo, the election results, and the threats posed by a Trump II presidency. You can listen here:

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A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

The Morning After

For several months I’ve thought about what I would write for you this morning under these circumstances. As I rolled it around in my head, I kept bouncing around between capturing the emotional weight of the moment and looking ahead to what comes next. I’ll try to do both here. In doing so, I followed my usual practice of not drafting Morning Memo in advance so that it would feel fresh and immediate, not contrived or prepackaged.

What doesn’t seem warranted any longer are the warnings, alerts, and cautions about what lies ahead. You’ve heard those from me for more than a year. The whole country heard similar warnings from multiple quarters. It was loud and clear. The campaign was fought directly over the issues of democracy, rule of law, basic decency and respect, and protection for the marginalized. Those principles and values lost and lost badly.

You might be taken aback by me finding silver linings in this result but I do think there are two of them. First, the dark path ahead was chosen clearly and unequivocally: With 51%, Trump is on track to win a majority of the popular vote. Second, Trump will win without undue reliance on the quirks of our 18th century anti-majoritarian constitutional structure.

There is clarity in that result. This is who we are. Not all of us, but a majority of us. It presents a stark picture of America in 2024, without sugarcoating or excuse. It makes it harder to fool yourself about the task at hand, which is an enormous cultural one more than a political one.

Donald Trump’s win isn’t the product of a constitutional quirk. It’s not the result of a poorly conceived or executed campaign by Kamala Harris. It’s not a messaging failure or a tactical error or a strategic blunder. Other broader dynamics at play – like a post-pandemic revulsion toward incumbents or an anti-inflation backlash – are too limited in their scope and specific in their focus to account for the choice that was made: Donald Trump. It would be a category error to ascribe our current predicament to a political failure.

If politics is merely a reflection of culture, then we get to see that reflection clearly and sharply as the sun comes up this morning. If you don’t like what you see, don’t blame the mirror.

Political change is slow; cultural change is glacial (an anachronistic metaphor in an age of rapidly retreating ice). But it’s doable. We’ve seen remarkable cultural changes in our own lifetimes. Cultural change starts small, with the brave, resolute, and individual choices we make in our own lives and communities. It’s reflected in how we live, where we live, and what we live for. These myriad choices we make over the course of conducting our private lives speak more clearly about who we are and what we’re about than the occasional casting of a ballot in an election.

I don’t feel inspired to rally you to action quite yet, and it feels hollow to try. If you need to decompress and recover, I get it. But in our heightened emotional state this morning, some of us are going to be tempted to cast blame all around us for this electoral outcome. It might make us feel good in the moment. But if you’re looking for a political fix to the cultural problem, I’m not sure you’re going to end up fixing much of anything. Politics alone will not save us.

For those of us who believe in the rule of law, a pluralistic society, and standing up to unkind people who engage in hurting others as public blood sport, we’re going to have to take a long view toward promoting those principles in all aspects of our culture so that they are ultimately reflected in our politics in a way they simply are not now. I recognize that many of us have already been doing this slow and steady work, which makes the overnight result even more discouraging. It remains an enormous, decades-long task, but it is something each of us can engage in without uprooting our lives or changing professions or moving abroad.

None of this is to counsel abandoning politics or the public square. We need to create and sustain a cultural imperative to continue to engage in the political realm, too. The many political battles ahead are essential to fight and to fight well. We will need a fresh crop of reserves to begin to spell those who have been fighting these battles for a long time.

In past elections that led to stinging defeats, you could take some solace in knowing that the pendulum of American political life swings back and forth with some regularity. The latest reversal, while seemingly devastating, could be reversed within the span of one election cycle. We sit here this morning with justifiable fear and trepidation that the mechanisms for such reversals of fortune – free and fair elections, majority rule, the rule of law itself – may not be available to us this time.

Still, the clarity of the present moment is itself a gift. It has already given me a feeling of expansiveness from not having to engage in tiresome talk about optimal campaign messaging, or argue over the shortcomings of the Democratic Party, or spend precious time hoping, wishing, and praying that people in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin will do the right thing.

I didn’t start today’s Morning Memo intending to rally you toward some vague cultural revolution, hand-waving at civic engagement and personal virtue. So let me bring this back down to earth a bit.

There is immediate and hard work to do in politics. The marginalized and the disenfranchised are always hurt first and most with the kind of upheaval that we expect to come, but it is worse this time because hurting them has been advertised as the point. People who have been doing their jobs under the rule of law and in support of democratic and civil society institutions – investigators, prosecutors, judges, the press, government workers, librarians, teachers, opposition party leaders – have been promised retribution. Protecting those under threat will be amongst the most noble work of the coming years.

The powers of federal officeholders, we have been told repeatedly and plainly, will be abused to exact revenge against perceived foes, which means anyone who presents a challenge to Trump and MAGA Republicans holding unbridled and absolute power. I take these promises at face value. Countering those efforts, upholding what’s left of the rule of law, fortifying what remains of the democratic system will be similarly noble work.

All of this work will be made infinitely more difficult if Trump is sworn in with Republicans controlling both chambers on Capitol Hill. While he has the Senate, the House may remain too close to call for several more days.

The challenge before us is enormous. It is not a challenge any of us signed up for. It’s been foisted upon us. The past decade has felt like a detour from the lives and aspirations we had hoped to have. I feel a special empathy for those who came of age in the 1960s at the peak of Great Society reforms and have spent their adults lives witnessing their erosion. Those of us with an act or two left, and especially those with their whole lives still to dedicate to making America better than she is presenting right now, owe it to those whose time is ending to summon our essential optimism, roll up our sleeves, and get to down to the hard work that our current predicament demands. That may sound like a rallying cry, but I’m also trying to convince myself.

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