James Taranto: Obama's Risky Campaign Strategy

Sen. Sherrod Brown, who was defeated Nov. 5 in his reelection bid, said he won’t rule out running for the Senate again or for governor of Ohio in 2026, Politico reports.

A new CBS News poll finds President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration starts off with mostly good will from the public: a majority of Americans overall are either happy or at least satisfied that he won and are either excited or optimistic about what he’ll do as president.

Axios: “While President-elect Trump’s 2016 win sparked shock, outrage and massive protests, the response to his 2024 victory has been more muted.” “2016 birthed The Resistance, a political movement to protest Trumpism online and in the streets. There’s still plenty of resistance to Trump across the country, but little mass mobilization.” “That could change as Trump moves to implement his agenda.

“The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.” — Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi, quoted by the Washington Post in 2023.

“President-elect Donald Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term,” the New York Times reports. “Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition.

“Since the election, Jared Bernstein, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has often found himself in a down mood — dealing, he says, with ‘confusion, guilt’ and ‘cognitive dissonance,’” the New York Times reports. “President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping victory was fueled in part by lousy consumer sentiment and working-class Americans’ frustration with the underlying state of the economy.