WSJ on new NBC/WSJ poll:
Poll Finds Americans Believe Trump Will Bring Change but Are Divided Over What Kind
Majority of those surveyed believe Donald Trump will change the way business is conducted in Washington
President-elect Donald Trump marches toward his Jan. 20 inauguration with nearly seven in 10 American adults convinced he is the change agent he promised, but with the public divided over the kind of transformation he may bring to the federal government.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that 68% of Americans believe Mr. Trump will change the way business is conducted in Washington. But one-third of that group—or about 20% of all adults—believe it will be the wrong kind of change.
Including the 32% who said business will continue as usual in Washington, more than half of Americans believe Mr. Trump will effect the wrong kind of change or none at all.
Half of Americans said they approve of the way Mr. Trump is handling his transition, while 41% disapprove. That’s not nearly the honeymoon President Barack Obama enjoyed during his transition. At this point in 2008, 73% said they approved of how Mr. Obama was preparing to become president, while 13% disapproved.
More polling below. Russian meddling remains one of the reasons to think Trump is a damaged president form the start. Domestic meddling by James Comey is another.
Kevin Drum/Mother Jones:
Why Are Democrats So Damn Timid About James Comey and the FBI?
Because there’s nothing you can do about it. Replacing him will get us a Rudy Giuliani, or worse.
WaPo on Qaultrics poll:
In a nationally representative online survey of 1,011 Americans conducted by Qualtrics between Dec. 6 and 12, we asked respondents, “In last month’s election, Donald Trump won the majority of votes in the electoral college. Who do you think won the most popular votes?”
Twenty-nine percent said Donald Trump won the popular vote. This is a slightly larger proportion than in a recent Pew survey in which 19 percent said Trump won the popular vote.
Respondents’ correct understanding of the popular vote depended a great deal on partisanship. A large fraction of Republicans — 52 percent — said Trump won the popular vote, compared with only 7 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of independents. Among Republicans without any college education, the share was even larger: 60 percent, compared with 37 percent of Republicans with a college degree.
Elle:
Ivanka Trump Will Not Fix "Women's Issues"—She Will Distract From Them
But before we get into the powerful symbolic role she's set up to play, it's worth revisiting Ivanka's actual contribution to Trump's "women's issues" policy, namely the family leave and child care proposal put forth by Trump during the campaign. By many estimates, it was a sexist mess: The paid-leave portion of the plan provided leave only after childbirth, and only for biological mothers; it did not cover paternal leave, same-sex or adoptive couples, or parents who requested leave to care for a sick child. The plan was credited to Ivanka, with Trump claiming she'd personally begged him to introduce it.
The plan was also something that Ivanka appeared unable to defend, or even describe. When Prachi Gupta of Cosmopolitan pressed her on a controversial provision in a now infamous interview, Ivanka repeated her prior statements word-for-word several times and then abruptly ended the interview. "I think that you have a lot of negativity in these questions, and I think my father has put forth a very comprehensive and really revolutionary plan to deal with a lot of issues," she sputtered. The point isn't just that Ivanka Trump was defensive about "her" plan; the point is that she seemed unfamiliar with it. Nor did she seem familiar with the issue itself, outside of her few preset talking points. What, exactly, did she think the interview would be about?
Matt Pearce/LA Times:
American presidential elections are generally orderly affairs. People vote, somebody wins and life goes on. It’s our proud tradition of democratic self-governance.
And yet: The whole thing is controlled by a cabal of elites who actually pick the nation’s commander-in-chief, and who, theoretically, have the power to defy voters and stop Donald Trump from becoming America’s president.
We are talking, of course, about the electoral college, a 229-year-old contraption of democracy that the Founding Fathers had to cobble together because they couldn’t figure out a better way to pick presidents.
On Monday, 538 electors from the 50 states, including three from the District of Columbia, will convene across the country to cast the votes that decide who will sit in the Oval Office in January.
Trump is expected to win when the electors vote, even though more Americans cast ballots for Hillary Clinton. Trump was more popular in states that control more electoral votes. That’s the system. Regular Americans don’t get a direct say in who becomes president, and not all Americans’ votes are equal.
That’s the very intent of the electoral college, albeit a design forged from an 18th-century political struggle over how to balance freedom and slavery, elitism and populism, independence and accountability.
Guardian readers:
How people are preparing for Trump's presidency