Tangle News

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 17 minutes.

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The close race turned into a decisive victory for Republicans.

Our election coverage.

We live streamed the election results as they came in for over six hours last night, bringing in guests from across the political spectrum for their analysis. If you want to get more clarity on this morning’s results, or go back to look for early signs of how the night would eventually break, you can check out our coverage here.

Of course, we want to give a huge thank you to our in-person guests here in Philadelphia and all of our online viewers to our live stream, which stayed above 5,000 throughout the night and totaled 35,000 viewers.

Quick hits.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, citing a difference in opinion over the country’s strategy in the war in Gaza. The announcement prompted protests across Israel. (The dismissal)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said bomb threats targeting polling places in battleground states appeared to originate from Russian email domains. All of the threats were determined to be non-credible. (The latest) Separately, U.S. Capitol Police arrested a man carrying a torch and a flare gun at the U.S. Capitol who “smelled like fuel” on Tuesday afternoon. (The arrest)
Senior Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian troops have engaged with North Korean forces for the first time. (The clash)
U.S. stocks hit all-time highs and the dollar rose at its highest rate since March 2020 on Wednesday morning. (The numbers)
Ohioans rejected a ballot measure that would have established a citizen commission to draw congressional and state legislative district maps. (The vote) A ballot measure in Florida that would have legalized recreational cannabis fell short of the 60% threshold needed to pass. (The vote) Californians passed a ballot measure strengthening criminal penalties for certain theft and drug-related offenses. (The vote)

Today's topic.

The 2024 election result. Former President Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States, with all major news outlets calling the race in his favor as of Wednesday morning. Trump is poised for a sweep of all seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and holds a 51%–47.5% lead in the popular vote with a large percentage of the vote in West Coast states still to be reported.

Trump appears likely to surpass his performance in the 2016 election, when he won 306 Electoral College votes but lost the popular vote by roughly 2%. He is also on track to flip every swing state President Joe Biden won in 2020. In a victory speech at 2:30am ET on Wednesday morning, Trump declared that his return to the White House will usher in a “golden age of America.”

Vice President Kamala Harris was set to address her supporters late Tuesday night from Howard University, her alma mater, but postponed her speech in the wake of mounting results as the night progressed. Harris will reportedly deliver a concession speech at 6:00pm ET tonight.

Republicans also flipped the Senate, picking up three seats held by Democrats to clinch a majority of at least 52 seats. Tim Sheehy (R) defeated three-term Senator Jon Tester (D) in Montana, Bernie Moreno (R) defeated three-term Senator Sherrod Brown (D) in Ohio, and Jim Justice (R) defeated Glenn Elliott to win retiring Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia. Republicans also successfully defended all their incumbencies, including decisive victories in what were expected to be competitive races in Nebraska and Texas.

However, five close races have yet to be called. Republicans lead over incumbent Democrats in Pennsylvania, where Dave McCormick could unseat Bob Casey, and in Nevada, where Sam Brown is running ahead of Jacky Rosen. Democrats maintain razor-thin margins in Michigan and Wisconsin, while Ruben Gallego (D) has a moderate lead over Kari Lake (R) in Arizona. If the current uncalled senate races do not change from the current results, Republicans will end up with 54 Senate seats.

Meanwhile, the race for control of the House of Representatives will be incredibly close, with Decision Desk HQ giving Republicans a 78.9% chance of winning the chamber with a 220-215 majority. Late Tuesday night, Democrats looked poised to flip control of the House, but Republicans have rallied — especially in Pennsylvania, where Republican challengers are projected to flip three districts in the state while Democrats will not flip any. The balance in the House could end up being decided by California’s 47th district, where Scott Baugh (R) leads Dave Min (D) 50.6%–49.4% for the seat held by Rep. Katie Porter (D), who left the seat to run for Senate.

Elsewhere, ballot measures to create a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to an abortion passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana, while voters repealed a ban in Missouri and protected abortion access in Nevada and New York. Efforts to repeal bans in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota failed.

In today’s edition, we’ll look at what the left and right are saying about the election results, then I’ll give my take.

What the left is saying.

The left is dejected by the result, with many saying the country faces a hazardous path ahead.
Some worry about how Trump’s foreign policy will impact American allies.
Others frame the result as a sound rejection of the Biden administration.

The New York Times editorial board said “America makes a perilous choice.”

“The founders of this country recognized the possibility that voters might someday elect an authoritarian leader and wrote safeguards into the Constitution, including powers granted to two other branches of government designed to be a check on a president who would bend and break laws to serve his own ends. And they enacted a set of rights — most crucially the First Amendment — for citizens to assemble, speak and protest against the words and actions of their leader,” the board wrote. “Over the next four years, Americans must be cleareyed about the threat to the nation and its laws that will come from its 47th president and be prepared to exercise their rights in defense of the country and the people, laws, institutions and values that have kept it strong.”

“Whatever drove this decision among these voters, however, all Americans should now be wary of an incoming Trump administration that is likely to put a top priority on amassing unchecked power and punishing its perceived enemies, both of which Mr. Trump has repeatedly vowed to do,” the board said. “Those who supported Mr. Trump in this election should closely observe his conduct in office to see if it matches their hopes and expectations, and if it does not, they should make their disappointment known and cast votes in the 2026 midterms and in 2028 to put the country back on course. Those who opposed him should not hesitate to raise alarms when he abuses his power, and if he attempts to use government power to retaliate against critics, the world will be watching.”

In Bloomberg, Andreas Kluth wrote “America deserves Donald Trump. The world doesn’t.”

“Come January, we’ll find out if Trump’s fellow strongmen ask for permission from his White House as they make their moves in geopolitics. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, with his KGB-trained mind, has always known how to flatter and manipulate Trump, and that’s what worries Ukraine. China’s Xi Jinping has taken note of Trump’s inconsistent statements about Taiwan, and is ready to wage the trade war that Trump promises to launch,” Kluth said. “America’s allies, meanwhile, have no idea what’s coming but fear the worst. Trump has, after all, threatened to pull out of NATO and to abandon partners if they don’t buy enough chips or cars or steel from the US.”

“The optimistic spin on Trump’s approach is that it’s a new and amped version of the ‘madman theory’ that was once attributed to Richard Nixon (although Machiavelli long ago suggested that it can indeed be a “wise thing to stimulate madness”). By that logic, America’s foes and friends alike will be docile out of sheer fear: What might this man do, with or without a nuclear button,” Kluth wrote. “But the madman theory — never properly elaborated or tested — assumes a leader who has a compass and a mental map, and feigns occasional derangement tactically to navigate to his strategic destination. Trump has neither compass nor map.”

In New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait argued “it’s not that people love Trump. Democrats simply failed.”

“Because Trump is so abnormal, so grotesquely narcissistic and cruel, his success seems to upend conventional political assumptions and render his triumph into a kind of black magic. Reality is more banal. The American public has not embraced Trump. The decisive bloc of voters always evinced deep misgivings about Trump’s character and rhetoric, even if they didn’t fully recall all his crimes and offenses (who could?). Trump didn’t win by making people love or even accept him. He won because the electorate rejected the Biden-Harris administration,” Chait said. “Harris surged ahead of Biden’s moribund position, but her momentum stalled. She could never quite overcome the toxicity of her old positions or the administration in which she served. Her only chance to win given the baggage she inherited required her to run a perfect campaign, and she did not.

“The Democrats’ only chance of winning, in retrospect, was to pick a nominee who could credibly run as a complete outsider untainted by either the 2020 primary left-a-thon or the Biden administration’s record on inflation and immigration,” Chait wrote. “Why is it important to understand all this? Because their defeat is fundamentally rooted in concrete events and decisions, many of which lay in their control. There is no mystical bond between the public and Trump they cannot sever. The Democrats allowed themselves to be prodded, and sometimes bullied, into either fooling themselves about the true nature of public opinion or fooling themselves into thinking public opinion didn’t matter.”

What the right is saying.

The right believes Trump’s win is a vindication of his movement and a repudiation of the left.
Some say the anti-Trump media is an even bigger loser than Harris.
Others say Harris ran a disastrous campaign.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board said “Trump wins the election and a second chance.”

“To say the former President has been a portrait in resilience is the political understatement of the 21st century. He was all but written off as a future candidate after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, including by us. But Democrats helped to revive him with their one-sided Jan. 6 investigation and their partisan use of lawfare. The Bragg indictment in New York on jerry-rigged charges may have sealed Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination. The courage he showed after the first assassination attempt was also a defining campaign moment,” the board wrote. “His victory on Tuesday in the end wasn’t as close as the polls suggested. He won back states he lost in 2020, and he did so with a coalition that included more young voters, and more black and Hispanic men.”

“Yet Mr. Trump’s comeback wouldn’t have been possible without the policy failures of the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats. He won again because President Biden failed to deliver the unity and prosperity he promised, and because over four years voters have soured on the results of his progressive policies,” the board said. “Democrats tried a late course correction by pushing Mr. Biden out of the race when it became clear he would lose, and it almost worked. Kamala Harris tried to pitch herself as a ‘new way forward,’ but she couldn’t escape her four-year association with Mr. Biden. In the end she also failed to persuade enough people she was up to the job as President in a world of growing geopolitical danger.”

In The Federalist, Elle Purnell called “the corporate media industrial complex” 2024’s biggest loser.

“The corporate media industrial complex has spent Donald Trump’s entire political career trying to destroy him. Hand-in-hand with triple-letter government agencies and Democrats, they ran a hoax painting Trump as a Russian stooge based on ridiculous rumors commissioned by his opponent’s campaign in 2016. They continued to spread the lie for the duration of his presidency, awarding each other Pulitzers for it,” Purnell wrote. “The problem they’re reckoning with tonight is this: those efforts didn’t work. They’re no longer able to control Americans by controlling their information intake.”

“Americans saw the Russia collusion hoax fall apart. They saw Trump govern for four years and peacefully transfer power to Joe Biden without fulfilling their authoritarian predictions. When Covid mania broke out in 2020, they saw the media and their Big Tech allies religiously shut down true information and spread lies — about the virus’ origins, Democrats’ lockdowns, mask mandates, and forced vaccines,” Purnell said. “The less Americans bought their lies, the more the media piled on the rhetoric. But that isn’t working anymore. Instead, the more maniacally the media amp up their attacks, the less they appear to be sticking.”

In Reason, Robby Soave argued “Donald Trump won because Kamala Harris is Joe Biden but worse.”

“Pundits trying to understand how Trump could have possibly achieved this unthinkable comeback will focus on his message, his issues, and his campaign strategies. They will investigate the aspects of Trump that make him so appealing to throngs of Americans. But they might overlook the single most important contributing factor in Trump's victory: not an affirmative vote for the candidate, but rather a negative endorsement of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris,” Soave wrote. “Simply put, Harris was a disastrous candidate. Admittedly, she had a tough job… But the fundamental mistake of the Harris campaign—the one that assured Trump's reelection no matter how improbable it seemed to elite tastemakers—was assuming that a simple candidate swap would be sufficient.”

“Biden was not merely unpopular because he was too old to serve as president. He was unpopular because the American voters dislike his policies. On the issues that mattered most to voters—the economy, inflation, and immigration—majorities of voters solidly preferred Trump over Biden,” Soave said. “Harris never ran from Biden's record or pretended that she represented some actual sea change in policy. Her pitch was: Biden's second term, overseen by a younger and more capable person. This pitch did not merely come up short—it vastly underperformed expectations. That's because voters wanted to part ways with both Biden and his inflationary policies.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

I couldn’t possibly cover all the election results in a single newsletter, so instead I’ll give 22 thoughts about what this massive Republican victory means.

In 2016, Trump lost Starr County in South Texas (a 96% Latino county) by 60 points. In 2024, he won it by 16 points. That's a 38-point swing in Trump's support. His numbers improved dramatically in Hispanic-majority towns in Pennsylvania. He came closer to winning New York than Harris did to winning Florida. According to exit polls, Harris won the Latino vote by just 8 points after Biden won that demographic by 32. Harris won 18 to 29-year-olds by just 13 points after Biden won them by 24. Trump's support among black voters skyrocketed, doubling in Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, Trump was +7 among voters concerned about the state of democracy. These results have totally obliterated so many lenses liberals were using to view this election through.
The Democratic Party has no scapegoat this time around — no Comey letter, no Russian disinformation plot, no Jill Stein, and probably not even the Electoral College (Trump looks like he'll win the popular vote, too). They lost by wider margins than people expected in every single battleground state and won with less room to spare in blue ones. They are going to have to reckon with that between now and the next election cycle — and the party will have to have some very real and very tough conversations.
I'm unsure who Democrats are going to fault for their loss. Yes, the uncommitted vote kept its word, and Harris lost all the predominantly Muslim towns in Michigan. But the margins far surpassed what could be explained by any one protest-vote movement. Yes, Harris did worse with non-college white voters, but she also lost support with black voters, Hispanic voters, and even women. The party will blame the left. The left will blame the center. It will be a total mess of finger-pointing with no clear resolution or answer.
Trump has made a lot of promises: Mass deportations, historic wage growth, the end of the war in Gaza, the end of the war in Ukraine, no taxes on tips, no taxes on social security income, replacing Obamacare, expanding the child tax credit, and cutting federal funding for schools with critical race theory or trans-friendly curriculum — he has literally promised to “fix everything.” One of his mottos is “promises made, promises kept.” As with the border wall, these are largely promises we'll be able to measure in pretty definitive terms. He's thrown a lot out there to try to win over voters and now will have to fulfill a lot of promises he made to a lot of different people.
Trump has also promised to not do a lot of things: No abortion bans, no federal limits on IVF or birth control, no new wars, no Project 2025 agenda, no Social Security cuts, no Medicare cuts, no expanded taxes, no inflation. We’ll be able to assess those promises definitively, too.
Here are my biggest concerns about a second Trump presidency: He's vindictive, aging, and unbound by any need to get re-elected. He’s easily consumed by grievance and his campaign is staffed with charlatans — and if he’s surrounded by yes men affirming his worst instincts, we could be in for some very scary times. I think some of his stated economic policies (like across-the-board tariffs) would be catastrophic for the economy, and if he attempts a mass deportation, I think we'll see civil disobedience and violence unlike anything we saw during his first term. His brand of politics invites people to relish in the misery of others, a kind of "own the libs" and "destroy the enemy" mentality that I think is going to bring us four more years of increasingly awful divisions — and an especially bad environment for trans people or immigrants, who became the focus of his campaign’s ire. This all creates an especially dangerous social environment.
I'm more worried about extremism among Republicans at the state level, where radical policies are easier to advance, than I am about it at the federal level with Trump. Several Republican-led states across the country have passed dangerous restrictions on abortion that have made it harder for doctors to provide adequate care to women, and other states have been pushing censorious book bans up until very recently. These kinds of infringements on freedom — of women and families to make difficult personal decisions and for what content individuals can access in libraries — concern me much more than the vast majority of Trump's policy proposals.
Here's what I'm not concerned about in a second Trump presidency: I'm not worried about democracy collapsing or Trump attempting to stay in office beyond his term or creating some kind of fascist state. We will have elections in 2026 and 2028, and they will probably be just like the one we just had — free and fair, competitive races where voters turn out and demand change from incumbents. I suspect Democrats will take back the House in 2026 (if they don't win it back this year). Trump has reshaped the political alignment in the country, but he is not eternal, and I don't even think other politicians can replicate his political movement. I'm not worried about us getting into a massive global war with powers like China or Iran, and I'm not worried about some kind of civil war here. I think we are in for a few months of instability before Democrats start strategizing about how to work with the Trump administration.
Here’s what I’m hopeful about: Trump will inherit a strong, growing economy, like he inherited a similarly stable economy in 2016. Before Covid, he managed that economy well, and we saw record wage growth and record low unemployment. That improved the lives of Americans from all walks of life. We are also well positioned for (and in need of) austerity and a reduction of government waste, which Trump has pledged to focus on. During his first term, his unpredictability resulted in relative stability in the Middle East, which we are also in desperate need of in 2025. He's consistently shown a willingness to buck his own party if he senses a majority of Americans support a position, which means he should be receptive to the feedback loop coming from the country while he's in office. All of this gives me hope for a successful second term.
Let's not start rewriting history: Harris did much better than Biden would have (or could have) done. Her performance mirrors what we are seeing globally, with incumbent leaders struggling mightily in the post-pandemic world. This isn't all that complicated. Inflation skyrocketed, masses of people have migrated, and we're living through major global disruptions in the Middle East and Europe. In the most basic sense, it is an incredibly difficult environment for whatever political party that is holding power to win in.
If you're looking for an illustration of how hard it is to be the incumbent party right now, consider this: Compared to Biden in 2020, Harris lost support from both men and women, both Arab-American and Jewish voters, both Republican and Democratic voters, both white and non-white voters, and both college-educated and non-college-educated voters.
One reason Trump may have won in such dominant fashion is that — on issues like abortion or working-class appeal that Republicans do worse on — he is the most liberal. I do not think Trump is a "pro-life" president, I don't even think he is particularly conservative. That is what is so interesting about what he has done to the Republican Party: He's an ultra-rich former Democrat from New York City, a moderate on abortion, a hardliner on immigration, and an anti-globalism populist. If you were to chart all of Trump's genuine views on a Venn diagram with traditional Republican and Democratic views, I think he’d overlap nearly as much with Democrats as with Republicans. So, Democrats are now forced to rebuild, but are they going to pick some Trumpist positions to build from? Will Republicans leave some behind? It is an odd dynamic.
Speaking of odd dynamics: What’s going to happen over the next few months? An incumbent president is sharing the White House with a vice president who replaced him on the ticket against his wishes, and then lost. The president-elect (Trump) is returning to the White House to serve a non-consecutive second term, taking the White House back from the same person he lost it to (Biden). And, of course, Biden will now have to oversee the peaceful transfer of power to Trump after Trump refused to do the same after the 2020 election. Oh, and Vice President Kamala Harris will have to preside over the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2025, to certify Trump's election victory.
In December of 2021, I predicted that Kamala Harris would not hold any political office in 2025. I can bank that prediction now. Indeed, I'm entirely unsure where she actually goes from here. It is genuinely hard to imagine her running for any office — and her career in politics might literally be over. I made that prediction in 2021 because Harris has always been a pretty underwhelming politician on the national stage, and I think the electorate sent a very clear signal last night that our country is not interested in seeing her as president.
Some free advice for Democrats: Maybe telling people the economy is great when prices are skyrocketing is not a great way to message on the issue. Maybe signaling to white men (a massive share of the voting population) that their very existence is inherently racist, sexist, or somehow in need of correction is not a good idea. Maybe trotting out Liz Cheney, the daughter of the architect of the U.S.’s prolonged Middle East presence, and Bill Clinton, the architect of NAFTA, as surrogates for your party is disastrously silly. Maybe not holding legitimate, open, and fair primary elections is still a bad strategy for picking your presidential candidate. Maybe decent chunks of this country are perfectly willing to accept high levels of immigration but refuse to accept a disorganized, chaotic system that provides no resistance for millions of people to enter the country illegally or through a broken asylum process.
Some free advice for Republicans: Political fortunes change quickly in our country, and the biggest changes often come in the wake of unbridled over-confidence.
Think of Bernie Sanders today. He did his best to warn the party that this wave of populist sentiment was coming. In my opinion, he had the absolute best countervailing message to the rising wave of conservative populism in 2016, but he was ridiculed and boxed out by the establishment — and in the eight years since he's been trying desperately to wake Democrats up to the realization that Trumpism is here to stay, and that Democrats don't have a good alternative vision. He was and is correct, and while Democrats are struggling in races across the country, he won last night by 31 points. I think a simple read on last night is not so much about any particular Democratic failures, but that voters just like a lot of what Trump is selling. Democrats might do well to pursue a Bernie-esque brand for the party going forward.
It’s funny how massive election fraud and "cheating in Philadelphia" just magically disappeared around 10:00pm ET last night, isn't it? I guess Democrats just forgot to "rig" this one.
For all the talk of how strong the Democrats’ ground game is, Trump has once again sent a shockwave to the communications system. Democrats spent way more money and focused heavily on TV ads and well organized get-out-the-vote campaigns. Trump hit every podcast and media opportunity he could while employing a bunch of political novices in his get-out-the vote campaign. And Trump cleaned Harris's clock. The new media is here, and the new dynamics of these campaigns are live.
2028 is going to be fascinating. Trump's party will be the incumbent with an electorate always desiring change, but they won't have Trump. Democrats will have a new bench of leaders vying for a spot in the White House, and won't have Trump to run against (maybe JD Vance instead?). It's really, truly hard to imagine what will happen.
Three of our final newsletters about the election have now become basically meaningless footnotes: The Iowa poll was a massive miss. The "Puerto Rico is garbage" story was a total nothingburger. The Arab-American protest vote in Michigan happened, but it’s now clear that Harris was going to lose Michigan regardless. Here are a few other narratives that are now dead: JD Vance being a bad running mate, Tim Walz being a good one (Trump ate into Democrats' lead in Minnesota), Republicans were "flooding the zone with garbage polls," and pollsters correcting for past misses.
Many Americans are feeling scared and furious today. Many are elated and relieved. This election will impact some people more than others (both emotionally and practically), and we’ll all be better off if we conduct ourselves with humility and give each other some grace.

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Your questions, answered.

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Numbers.

1:21am ET. The time Decision Desk HQ called the race for Donald Trump.
5:35am ET. The time The Associated Press called the race for Donald Trump.
4,829,057. Donald Trump’s lead in the popular vote, as of 11:30am ET.
20. The number of years since a Republican presidential candidate won the popular vote (George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004).
55%. The percentage of voters aged 18-29 that voted for Kamala Harris, according to a BBC exit poll.
62%. The percentage of voters aged 18-29 that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
5%. Harris’s lead over Trump in New Jersey with 94% of the vote counted.
16%. Joe Biden’s margin of victory in New Jersey in 2020.
54%. The number of first-time voters that cast a ballot for Trump in 2024, according to a CNN exit poll.
64%. The number of first-time voters that cast a ballot for Biden in 2020.

The extras.

One year ago today we covered Sam Bankman-Fried’s conviction.
The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was a link to Isaac’s election predictions.
Nothing to do with politics: All the big results from yesterday’s headline event: the NFL’s trade deadline.
Yesterday’s survey: We did not have a survey in yesterday’s pre-election special edition — but in case you missed it, you can take our post-election survey here.

Have a nice day.

Insulin is the key chemical that allows humans to transform sugar into fuel for the body. Individuals with type 1 diabetes, however, have immune systems that destroy the body’s insulin-producing cells and thus need external insulin injections. Recently, scientists in China released the results of some promising new work: By reprogramming one woman’s fat cells into insulin-producing cells, the researchers reversed her type 1 diabetes. Insulin injections were no longer required within 75 days of the patient’s stem cell transplant, a finding that led the lead study author, Hongkui Deng, to say, “This finding suggested remarkable potential of this therapeutic strategy.” Live Science has the story.