WSJ What’s News - Victory for Trump as Democrats’ ‘Blue Wall’ Crumbles

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

A.M. Edition for Nov. 6. WSJ Washington chief Damian Paletta and editor Aaron Zitner say Donald Trump’s historic comeback gives him a powerful mandate and sets up a bitter fight inside the Democratic Party over how to move forward after Kamala Harris fails to make inroads with key voter groups. Plus, investors pile into assets likely to benefit from Trump’s presidency, but WSJ finance editor Alex Frangos says the race to control the House will be critical to his ability to implement his policies. And we look at how abortion-rights ballot measures fared across the country. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Wow, that's good. We'll hear from Journal editors about the change coming to Washington and major movement in Bitcoin and the U.S. dollar as investors pile into trades likely to pay off in a Trump presidency. It's Wednesday, November 6th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. In a historic political comeback, former President Donald Trump has defeated Vice President Kamala

Harris and will reclaim the White House in January, becoming just the second candidate ever to win non-consecutive presidential terms. Here he was addressing supporters in Florida. But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. Trump charted his path to victory by leveraging anxieties about the cost of living and illegal immigration, a message that helped him to flip a series of states won by President Biden four years ago. Tailwinds for Republicans also helped the party to reclaim the Senate from Democratic

control while the House remains too close to call. And joining me now with much more on last night's result, including what it tells us about the mood across America and what we can expect to see in Congress. I'm joined by Journal Washington coverage chief Damian Paletta and editor Aaron Zittner. Damian, let me start with you. We expected a very close race, but almost immediately last night things started to go Trump's direction and that just continued. Yeah, everything really broke in his direction, starting with Georgia and North Carolina. Those are states that were really supposed to be razor thin and he just really built up his margins

as the night went on. And then we saw him just make incredible progress in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the storyline that played out in those initial states continued to play out as the night went on. He just really overperformed all over the place and Harris just really struggled to break through, did not build up any substantial margin in the urban areas that she would need to counter his success in the suburbs

and rural areas and so she just really couldn't make inroads and he essentially ran the table. Aaron, there was this theme in 2020 that let's say Biden loses rural areas and battleground states like Pennsylvania, but wins big in cities. And there was a hope on the Harris campaign overnight that maybe that would repeat itself. But the margin, it just seemed was too great for a Philadelphia vote count, for instance, going her way to really make a difference. Is that right? Well, it looks like she didn't do what she needed to do, not only in Philadelphia, but in those upper income,

very populous professional class suburbs outside the city. Look, this is a pretty broad repudiation of the Democratic Party and of President Biden. It's hard to find any voter group or any place where Kamala Harris improved on her party's showing in 2020. We use a broad survey of the electorate called VoteCast to look at the different voter groups. And she declined everywhere among college voters and non-college voters, among Latino voters, among black voters.

And if you look at the margin, the difference between Trump and Biden compared to what Trump did now, Biden won women by 12 points. She won them only by eight. And at the same time, Trump expanded his lead among men from five points to 10. Look, we're throwing a lot of numbers around, but these are the biggest building blocks you have at the electorate, men and women. And Harris walked backwards with both groups. Nat.

Damien, what do you make of the map as it stands now just looking nationwide? Where are these parties in terms of their national appeal? The Republican Party had a great night in the upper Midwest, in the Southeast, in the Southwest. Trump was able to not only secure his own victories in these states, but he was able to bring Republican candidates on his coattails. It is amazing. He's essentially now knocked the Democratic Party completely on its back. There is no standard-bearer. There is no

anointed leader. The party has to somehow pick up the pieces in a moment when he could, through his party, have complete control of Washington in the House and the Senate. That'll make it much easier for him to get his agenda approved. It'll make it much easier for Republicans to do the things they want to do on immigration, on the tax code, on trade. If there are no Democrats in power in Congress to check him, to stop him, then he can do things that he really struggled to do in his first term. The House is still up in the air. We don't know who's going to control the House. The Democrats did pick up a couple seats in New York, but it's possible they're going to lose a couple seats elsewhere because

Republicans controlled the House going into the night. So I think it might be several days before we know. But Democrats seem like they could be playing defense in the House as well. Dave Korsunsky Damian, Aaron, I'll leave the last word to both of you. What else should people know about what's likely to come following this historic election? I would just say the Donald Trump we're going to see as president in 2025 will probably be the most powerful, unrestrained political Donald Trump we've ever seen. He will have

a cabinet that has probably going to have much more loyalty to him than the cabinet he had in 2017. He's kind of learned the ropes. He's learned Washington. He's learned the ways that people can try to stop him and so have his allies. And so I think we're going to see someone who's much more focused on their agenda, has much more support probably from the public and from voters and who is going to try to get things done that he might have struggled to do before. He's going to be very focused on getting them done quickly in 2025. I'll add two things, Luke. The outcome we could get is Donald Trump winning the national popular vote.

It was only twice since 1988 and 1988 and 2004 that Republicans won the national popular vote. So to Damian's point, this president could have a mandate, a majority of Americans voting for him, which he didn't have in 2016. And the second thing I'll add is, this is a repudiation of Joe Biden. Remember, Joe Biden got those three big pieces of legislation passed early in his term,

the infrastructure bill, the chips and science bill, and a climate change bill. And he went around the country talking to working class voters saying, look at this plant that's going up. These are six figure jobs and you don't even need a college degree. And he said that again and again, great jobs for people who didn't go to college. He was not rewarded for that strategy. The working class shifted further away from his party. And now the Democrats are going to have

to decide, do they swing to the middle and try to win these voters back somehow? Or do they think the best way forward is by sticking with a more progressive agenda and trying to energize the remaining Democratic base. And it's going to be a fight within the Democratic party about how to handle this loss. I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal editor, Aaron Zittner and Washington coverage chief Damian Paletta. Aaron, Damian, thank you both. Thanks Luke. My pleasure. Thanks a lot. Coming up, we'll look at how markets are reacting to Trump's victory and get an update on ballot measures to enshrine abortion rights after the break. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special.

Three neurosurgeons, two scientists, and a After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons, two scientists, one movement disorders coordinator, 58 answered questions, two focused ultrasound procedures, one specially developed helmet, thousands of high intensity focused ultrasound waves, zero incisions. And that very same day, two steady hands. From innovation to action, Sunnybrook is special. Let's get a pulse check on markets now as Trump's victory reverberates around the world and across all sorts of asset classes. For that, our Kate Bulevin spoke to Journal Finance Editor Alex Frangos and began by asking what he's been keeping an eye on this morning. Well, as it became clear that Donald Trump was nosing ahead and taking the lead in the vote count, you saw markets really react. Stock futures are up, bond yields are up,

DJT, the Trump media company that owns Truth Social, is up, Bitcoin is up, all the things that people think will benefit from the policies of a Trump administration or that will be affected. In the case of bond yields, that's people thinking that borrowing costs have to go up because you're going to have more borrowing from the government and less tax revenue and maybe some faster growth in there as well. So basically all the so-called Trump trades that people have been talking about for the last couple of weeks are really coming into their own. And Alex, what do these moves tell us about investor sentiment?

Well, I mean, the big thing is that this is a change, right? If this had been a Kamala Harris win, it would have been continuity. But Trump represents change. We know a lot about his policies because he's been president before and he's telegraphed them. The major one is on trade. He's promised 60% tariffs against China, 10% tariffs across the board against all other trading partners. So that's why you've seen the dollar surge because that's generally the thing that happens when you impose tariffs. So this is a change election and so market needs to absorb that.

Okay, so with that in mind, what can we expect going forward? Expect the unexpected. The timing of things isn't as simple. It's not that he comes in on day one and necessarily gets to do all these things that he's promised. While the Republicans look like they've won the Senate, the House might not be known for days, and that could be critical. If the Democrats control the House, that's where spending bills start, then there has to be negotiations, and then there's going to be some sand in the gears of anything that

Trump wants to do. Alex, is there anything else investors should be keeping in mind today and in the coming days? Yeah, I mean, I think one thing is for people out there looking at markets and thinking they know what's going on is just to be humble that a lot of these things seem really clear in the moment and then things turn in other directions. So presidential elections obviously matter for markets, but a lot of other things matter for markets too. The economy, corporate profits, things that are out of the control

of the White House. So while we all get very excited for these moments and indeed the markets are reacting, it's not everything. That was journal finance editor Alex Frangos. And also moving off hours, Tesla stock with shares up more than 10 percent, the EV maker's chief executive Elon Musk threw his weight behind Trump's campaign. And in response, the former president has pledged to appoint him to a task force to recommend how and where to slash government spending and regulation. to recommend how and where to slash government spending and regulation. And finally, let's get a quick update now on the results of abortion rights measures,

which were on the ballot in ten states last night. The most notable among them was Florida, where a bid to amend the state's constitution to protect abortion rights until fetal viability received around 57% support, but fell short of the 60% needed to pass. The journal's Laura Casisto has more. The issue of course in Florida was that they had this higher, essentially super-majority threshold to pass. Abortion rights groups in that state had raised more than $100 million. Florida had a six-week ban, which was polling as very unpopular.

It seemed like they might be able to clear that threshold, but in the end they came close but failed to do so. Elsewhere in the country we did see wins for abortion rights measures. Arizona, which was a key state both because it's a large state and because it's a very kind of politically sensitive, a swing state, saw an abortion measure pass easily there. In something else that I think would have been a big surprise to people just a couple of years ago, we saw a broad abortion rights protection measure pass in Missouri, one of the deepest red, most anti-abortion states in the country. Elsewhere, abortion rights measures passed in New York, Colorado, Maryland, and Nevada,

and failed in South Dakota and Nebraska. And that's it for What's News for Wednesday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Kate Boulevant with supervising producer Christina Rocca, and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. You can keep checking wsj.com for live updates throughout the day, and we'll be back here tonight with a new show featuring the latest election headlines and analysis. Until then, thanks for listening.