The Playbook Podcast

As we all pack up and take a quick break for Thanksgiving, the Peach State is still abuzz with activity as voters prepare to settle the final Senate race of this cycle. 

On Tuesday, a new poll by the AARP — the first major public survey since the November general election — showed the race remains inside the margin of error, with incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock pulling in 51% to Republican Herschel Walker's 47%. 

One key data point: “Warnock has a commanding lead of 54% to 39% over Walker among independent voters — an important bloc that once reliably voted for Republicans in Georgia.” 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

It’s one of the slowest weeks in politics as our elected leaders slip into the Thanksgiving break, when they have a chance to assess the fallout from the surprising midterm results and ponder the way forward.  

As you prepare your own holiday plans, you’ll probably want to be armed at the dinner table with something smart to say about the meaning of the midterms. If you want to filter out a lot of the noise in the results and focus in on the signal, this morning’s Ron Brownstein piece at CNN is a good one to clip and save for Thursday.

He identifies a few key trends present in the 2022 results that tell us a lot about 2024. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Playbook editor Mike DeBonis and deputy editor Zack Stanton break down the weekend in politics, including the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas, NV. 

“2024 Republican rivals put Trump on notice,” by Alex Isenstadt in Las Vegas: “If former President Donald Trump thought his early 2024 announcement would cow prospective Republican primary rivals into submission, he clearly miscalculated.

“At this weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition conference, a parade of ambitious Republicans hit all the notes that politicians eyeing future campaigns for the White House typically do. Their tones and messages varied — few called out Trump by name — but collectively they made clear they are not going to back down to the former president after a third consecutive poor election with him at the helm.

What the contenders sound like: “Mike Pompeo, Trump’s hand-picked secretary of State and CIA director, warned that for Republicans to win elections, they can’t simply ‘go on Fox News or send tweets.’ Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who ran Trump’s transition, said Republicans were losing because ‘Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else.’

“Nikki Haley, Trump’s U.N. ambassador who said last year she wouldn’t run if her former boss did, has apparently changed her mind. She used her Saturday evening speech here to say she was looking at running in a ‘serious way,’ and to call for ‘a younger generation to lead across the board.’ …

“‘He’s not going to have the financial support he had anymore, he’s not going to have the internal support that he had before,’ said New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, whose state hosts the first-in-the-nation GOP primary. ‘And so therefore, there’s opportunity there. That political weakness is blood in the water for some folks.’”

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

On Thursday, as the 5 p.m. deadline approached for employees to decide whether they were “hardcore” enough to stick it out at Elon Musk's Twitter, reports started to trickle out that Musk’s ultimatum had backfired spectacularly.

The second big development was that six Democratic senators wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate whether Musk broke the law. 

“We write regarding Twitter’s serious, willful disregard for the safety and security of its users, and encourage the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate any breach of Twitter’s consent decree or other violations of our consumer protection laws,” the senators wrote.

Tech reporter Rebecca Kern stops by the recap the latest in Twitter world and whether the platform is headed to the blue checkmark in the sky. 

Fortune Magazine’s Kylie Robison said up to 75% of Musk’s employees had decided to abandon the company.

The Verge reported that “given the scale of the resignations this week, they expect the platform to start breaking soon,” adding: “[T]he team that maintains Twitter’s core system libraries that every engineer at the company uses is gone after Thursday. ‘You cannot run Twitter without this team,’ the employee said.” 

Twitter’s offices were closed until Monday, and reports suggested Musk was paranoid that departing employees might try to sabotage the company.

Insider’s Kali Hays reported “that the entirety of Twitter’s payroll department has resigned/not elected to sign up for Elon’s Twitter 2.0.”

The Times reported that Musk frantically tried to retain top talent in hastily arranged Zooms. “As the 5 p.m. deadline passed, some who had called in began hanging up, seemingly having decided to leave, even as Mr. Musk continued speaking,” according to NYT’s Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac and David McCabe.

The second big development in Twitter world was that six Democratic senators wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate whether Musk broke the law. 

“We write regarding Twitter’s serious, willful disregard for the safety and security of its users, and encourage the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate any breach of Twitter’s consent decree or other violations of our consumer protection laws,” the senators wrote.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

On Wednesday night, just before 11 p.m., Nancy Pelosi's longtime spokesperson Drew Hammill announced on Twitter that today, the speaker will finally announce her plans for the future — putting an end to mounting speculation about whether she’ll retire (a possibility Hammill has batted away), stay on as the top House Democrat or step down from leadership but continue to serve in Congress.

“@SpeakerPelosi has been overwhelmed by calls from colleagues, friends and supporters,” Hammill wrote. “This evening, the Speaker monitored returns in the three remaining critical states. The Speaker plans to address her future plans tomorrow to her colleagues. Stay tuned.”

The tweet came just a few hours after the House was called in favor of Republicans — sending the rumor mill already churning over Pelosi’s future into warp drive. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

You’ve heard allies of Rep. Kevin McCarthy say it a gazillion times — and they’ll say it another gazillion times over before the House speaker vote in January: You can’t beat somebody with nobody.

But what if history repeats itself? What if McCarthy, as in his 2015 bid for the speakership, fails to appease the renegade right and falls short of the 218 votes he needs to seize the gavel?

With 31 House Republicans spurning McCarthy in Tuesday’s nominating vote — and with McCarthy likely able to afford no more than three or four defections based on current election returns — the question is more than academic. 

To be clear, Team McCarthy and most GOP lawmakers tell us they believe the California Republican will get 218 — eventually. But if he can’t, Playbook co-author Rachael Bade stops by the show to discuss the most likely alternative members mentioned during our travels on the Hill this week.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

As the Republican Party wrestles with whether it should stick with its three current leaders — Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell — today is crucial, especially for the first two. 

McCarthy faces a vote of House Republicans on whether he will be their nominee for speaker in January. He should easily pass that test, but the margin will tell us how much trouble he’s in. (More on McCarthy below.)

And then tonight at 9 p.m., Trump is scheduled to announce his third campaign for president. The best way to understand the context of this announcement is to take a spin through the last 24 hours of Trump news. The big takeaway is that the movement on the right to abandon Trump is the strongest it’s been since the days after Jan. 6, 2021. (But, then again, it wasn’t very strong back then.)

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

For Republicans, Festivus comes early this year. In fact, it starts today at 4:30 p.m.

That’s when House Republicans kick off their candidate forum for leadership positions next Congress — the first formal event in what is expected to be a weeklong, party-wide Airing of Grievances following Republicans’ abysmal Election Day performance. 

Plus Mitch McConnell, we hear, is confident of his own reelection as leader — even as he faces mounting pushback from Trump allies in the chamber. On Sunday night, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) became the latest Republican to back a delay of Wednesday’s scheduled leadership elections — citing the Dec. 6 Georgia runoff.

And Trump’s scheduled Tuesday campaign announcement is still moving full steam ahead despite fellow Republicans begging him to hold off in light of the pending Georgia contest.

GOP drama aside, Speaker Nancy Pelosi might actually be the pivotal character of the week. With control of the House still in the balance, House Democrats have been left twiddling their thumbs as they await a long-anticipated retirement announcement — or news that she plans to seek another term as leader.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

The sun has now risen three times since GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy assured Americans that they would wake up to a House Republican majority. Yet we still don’t know who won either chamber of Congress — and each day, the sun has set with the projected number of Republican seats dimming.

This morning, our colleague Steve Shephard even points out that while it may be unlikely, Democrats still actually have a very narrow path to holding the majority. There are a bunch of uncalled races where the results are expected to go one way or the other. But it all comes down to about 11 true toss-ups where forecasters really aren’t sure what will happen — and of those, Dems would need to win nine to maintain power.

Given that narrow path, Republicans are "still favored to take a narrow House majority,” Steve notes. But even in a best-case scenario, the GOP is looking at a mere 226 seats. A chaotic scenario where their majority consists of just a handful of seats is even more likely.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

When John Boehner suddenly retired in 2015, members of the House Freedom Caucus showed up at speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy’s office with a list of demands: In exchange for their support, they wanted McCarthy to name one of their own to a senior leadership position and embrace rules changes that empowered conservatives. 

If he refused, they told him, they would band together to block him from securing the needed 218 votes to be speaker. But McCarthy was unwilling to subjugate his power in order to appease a splinter faction, and ultimately, the California Republican dropped his bid for his dream job, paving the way for Paul Ryan's rise. 

Yet seven years later, McCarthy once again finds his dream held hostage by the same group of hardliners. Thanks to the GOP’s lackluster midterm performance, he is seeking to preside over what appears likely to be an extremely thin majority — a scenario that hands massive leverage to the far right.

And on Tuesday night at the election watch party for Nevada Democrats on the Vegas Strip, aides to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto were cautiously optimistic about her prospects for victory.

The campaign’s main concern was whether their Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, would prematurely declare victory and throw the post-election vote-counting period into chaos. As Laxalt’s strong rural vote came in, he overtook Cortez Masto in the count, and Democrats’ concerns increased. But so far their fears have been misplaced. 

In 2022, this counts as a positive development for American elections. Candidates are largely refraining from using the seesaw nature of vote-counting to sow doubts about the results, as Trump infamously did in 2020.

What hasn’t changed since 2020 is that Nevada (and Arizona and California and many other states) take days to finish counting. While still trailing Laxalt, Cortez Masto’s chances of victory improved Wednesday, with the majority of the outstanding vote consisting of mail ballots from Nevada’s urban centers, which are Democratic strongholds.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.