The Democratic Party is soul-searching in the wake of last week’s stunning setbacks both in the presidential election and the down-ballot races.

A wave of incriminations and finger pointing is well underway, and more earnest autopsies of what went wrong and how to make corrections will soon commence.

Concurrent with those efforts are talks about who will steer the Democratic Party going forward, and looking down the road, which potential contenders may eventually make a bid to lead the party in the next presidential election.

While 2028 may seem like a long way away, recent history shows that the early moves in the next White House race start – well – very early.

The unofficial starting gun for the 2024 race was fired by former President Donald Trump less than two months after leaving the White House, with a CPAC speech that teased his eventual 2024 presidential campaign.

A few weeks later, the first visits to the key early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire by potential GOP presidential contenders were also underway.

Fast-forward four years and expect similar actions by Democratic politicians who may harbor national ambitions. With the soon-to-be 82-year-old President Biden exiting the national stage, and Vice President Kamala Harris, in the wake of her sound defeat last week by Trump, retrenching, the road to the 2028 nomination appears wide open.

‘The jockeying for 2028 took a brief pause when Harris became the nominee and looked to be in a strong position, which would have meant shutting out potential candidates for the next 4 to 8 years. Now, though, it’s wide open, and it won’t be long before we see clear maneuvering from a litany of candidates,’ seasoned Democratic political strategist Chris Moyer told Fox News.

Moyer, a veteran of a handful of presidential campaigns, noted that ‘this will include travel to states like New Hampshire and South Carolina and Nevada, presumably under the auspices of helping candidates in the midterms. Democratic voters in the early states will soon want to find someone they can get excited about and a future to look forward to in the midst of the misery of another four years of Trump in the White House. These potential candidates will be more than happy to oblige.’

The results of the 2026 midterm elections will have a major impact on the shape of the next White House race.

For now, however, here is an initial look at Democratic Party politicians considered to be potential 2028 presidential contenders.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was a top surrogate for President Biden during the president’s re-election bid. With the blessing of the White House, the two-term California governor debated then-Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year on Fox News. 

Newsom’s travels on behalf of Biden brought him to New Hampshire and South Carolina, two crucial early voting states on the Democratic Party’s nominating calendar.

After the vice president, his friend and fellow Californian, replaced Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket, the governor continued – after a pause – his efforts to keep Trump from returning to the White House.

With Trump’s election victory last week, Newsom became one of the Democratic Party leaders getting ready to lead the opposition. The governor announced that California state lawmakers would meet to quickly take legislative action to counter Trump’s likely upcoming agenda.

The 57-year-old Newsom’s second term in Sacramento will finish at the end of next year, right around the time the 2028 presidential election will start to heat up.

Illinois Gov JB Pritzker, similar to Newsom, is already taking steps to Trump-proof his state.

‘You come for my people, you come through me,’ Pritzker told reporters of his efforts to protect Illinois.

Pritzker was also a high profile surrogate on behalf of Biden and then Harris during the 2024 cycle. Those efforts brought Pritzker to Nevada, a general election battleground state and an early voting Democratic presidential primary state, and New Hampshire.

However, before he makes any decision about 2028, the 59-year-old governor must decide if he will run in 2026 for a third term steering Illinois.

Two-term Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer grabbed plenty of attention and became a Democratic Party rising star in 2020 when she feuded with then-President Trump over COVID pandemic federal assistance and survived a foiled kidnapping attempt.

Trump, at the time, called her ‘that woman from Michigan.’

Along with Newsom and Pritzker, Whitmer’s name was floated as a possible replacement for Biden following his disastrous debate performance against Trump in late June, before the president endorsed Harris and the party instantly coalesced around the vice president.

Whitmer was a leading surrogate for Biden and then for Harris and made a big impression on Democratic activists during a stop this summer in New Hampshire on behalf of Harris.

The governor is term-limited and will leave office after the end of next year.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, the 51-year-old first-term governor of Pennsylvania, was on Harris’ short-list for vice presidential nominee.

Even though the vice president named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Shapiro remained a top surrogate on behalf of his party’s 2024 national ticket. 

However, his two-day swing in New Hampshire during the final full week ahead of Election Day did raise some eyebrows and 2028 speculation.

After Harris lost battleground Pennsylvania to Trump, there was plenty of talk within the party that Harris had made the wrong choice for her running mate.

Shapiro, who has a track record of taking on the first Trump administration as Pennsylvania attorney general, is expected to play a similar role with the former president returning to the White House.

The governor will be up for re-election in 2026.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is considered by many to be another Democratic Party rising star.

The 46-year-old Army veteran, Rhodes Scholar and CEO of the charitable organization the Robin Hood Foundation during the coronavirus pandemic was elected two years ago.

Moore will be up for re-election in 2026.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who surpassed expectations during his 2020 Democratic presidential nomination run, was a very active surrogate on behalf of Biden and later Harris, during the 2024 cycle.

He helped raise a lot of money for the Democratic Party ticket, including heading a top-dollar fundraiser in New Hampshire.

The 42-year-old former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and former naval officer who served in the war in Afghanistan, is considered one of the party’s biggest and brightest stars. He was known as a top communicator for the administration, including making frequent appearances on Fox News.

The 46-year-old Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who was elected governor in 2019 and then re-elected in 2023 in red-state Kentucky, was also on Harris’ larger list for running mate.

Beshear made plenty of new friends and contacts as he ventured to New Hampshire last month to headline the state Democratic Party’s annual fall fundraising gala.

Beshear served as Kentucky’s attorney general before running for governor.

Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, 55, will likely be a major player in Washington as the Democratic minority in the Senate fights back against the second Trump administration.

Warnock, who won Senate elections in 2020 and 2022 in battleground Georgia, served as senior pastor at the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.

He is up for re-election in the Senate in 2028.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is considered one of the party’s most talented orators.

Thanks to his 2020 run, Booker made plenty of friends and allies in such early states as New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The senator is up for re-election in 2026.

Rep. Ro Khanna, 48, was a tireless surrogate on behalf of Biden and then Harris. 

He has been a regular visitor to New Hampshire the past couple of years, including a high-profile debate last year against then-GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, 67, who is finishing up his eighth and final year as governor, took his name out of the Harris running mate speculation early in the process this summer.

Cooper served 16 years as North Carolina attorney general before winning election as governor.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, 65, is halfway through her second term steering New Mexico.

The governor, a former member of Congress, was a high-profile and busy surrogate on behalf of Harris during the final weeks of the 2024 campaign.

No list would be complete without including the vice president.

The 60-year-old Harris finishes up her term as vice president in just over two months, with no concrete plans for what’s next.

However, while the party wants to move on from the Biden/Harris era following Trump’s sweeping victory, and there is little history of Democrats yearning for past defeated presidential nominees, potential buyers’ remorse of a second Trump administration could boost Harris in the years to come.

The 60-year-old Minnesota governor has two years remaining in his second term in office.

While his energy and enthusiasm on the campaign trail the past three months impressed plenty of Democratic strategists, the final results of the election will make any potential future national run for Walz difficult.

President-elect Trump named Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., as the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Fox News has confirmed.

First reported by the New York Post, the appointment is one of the first announced in the early days of Trump’s transition period.

‘I am honored to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter,’ Trump said in a statement to the Post. 

Stefanik, chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, provided a statement of her own to the outlet. 

‘I am truly honored to earn President Trump’s nomination to serve in his Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,’ Stefanik told the Post. ‘During my conversation with President Trump, I shared how deeply humbled I am to accept his nomination and that I look forward to earning the support of my colleagues in the United States Senate. President Trump’s historic landslide election has given hope to the American people and is a reminder that brighter days are ahead — both at home and abroad.’ 

Stefanik, the fourth-highest ranking House Republican, is a frequent figure on television where she advocates for the GOP side on a number of issues, including Israel and what she refers to as the ‘Biden Crime Family.’ 

By contrast, the Biden-Harris administration’s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, does not seek much press coverage. 

Stefanik, who was elected to her sixth term in the House last week, made national headlines for grilling the presidents of Ivy League universities about the rising antisemitism on college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. 

‘The work ahead is immense as we see antisemitism skyrocketing coupled with four years of catastrophically weak U.S. leadership that significantly weakened our national security and diminished our standing in the eyes of both allies and adversaries,’ Stefanik added in her statement to the Post. ‘I stand ready to advance President Donald J. Trump’s restoration of America First peace through strength leadership on the world stage on Day One at the United Nations. ‘

The Democratic blame game is at a fever pitch after Vice President Kamala Harris was swiftly defeated by President-elect Donald Trump at the ballot box in an election that had been anticipated to drag out for days as polling indicated the match-up was razor-thin. 

Trump sailed to victory in the early morning hours last Wednesday, after locking down key battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Georgia and clearing 270 electoral votes. He concluded the race with 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226, and won the popular vote. 

In the final days of the campaigning cycle, polling indicated that the results for the election would likely be very close, which could have resulted in state recounts and lawsuits before the winner was announced. 

Following Trump’s clear victory, Democrats across the nation issued statements accepting the results and congratulating the president. Fallout from the devastating loss, however, has reverberated across the party as members point fingers at each other for the Trump win. 

Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi spar over claims Dems ‘abandoned working class’

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pinned blame for the loss on the Democratic Party for ‘abandoning’ the working class, sparking rebuke from former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. 

‘It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,’ Sanders posted to X last week, accompanied by a press release on the election results. ‘And they’re right.’

Pelosi responded that the party has not left the working class behind in favor of kowtowing to ‘big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party,’ as Sanders had argued in his press release. 

‘With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him [Sanders], for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class families. That’s where we are,’ Pelosi told The New York Times’ ‘The Interview’ podcast on Saturday.

‘Under President Biden, you see the rescue package, money in the pockets of people, the shots in the arm, children in school safely, working people back to work. What did Trump do when he was president? One bill that gave a tax cut to the richest people in America,’ she continued. 

Sanders doubled down on his remarks Sunday, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker that ‘the working people of this country are extremely angry.’ 

‘Nancy is a friend of mine,’ Sanders said. ‘But here is the reality. In the Senate in the last two years, we have not even brought forth legislation to raise the minimum wage to a living wage despite the fact that some 20 million people in this country are working for less than $15 an hour.’ 

‘Bottom line, if you’re a working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the max, taking on powerful special interests and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no,’ Sanders said.

Harris, Biden campaigns pin blame on each other 

The Harris campaign and Biden campaign have reportedly pinned blame for the loss on each other, Axios reported last week. 

‘The 107-day Harris campaign was nearly flawless. The Biden campaign that preceded it was the opposite,’ one Harris campaign member told the outlet. 

‘We did what we could. I think the odds against us were insurmountable,’ another individual involved with the Harris campaign said, referring to President Biden’s exit from the presidential race in July and his low approval ratings. 

Biden dropped out of the race over the summer following his disastrous debate performance against Trump, where he frequently lost his train of thought and stumbled over his words. The debate opened the floodgates to both conservatives and traditional Democrat allies calling on the president to pass the torch to a younger generation as concerns mounted surrounding his mental acuity and his age. 

Many of those who worked on the Biden campaign also joined the Harris campaign following the president’s endorsement of his VP to take up the mantle as Democratic presidential candidate. 

A person who worked on the Biden campaign shot back in comment to Axios that the Harris team was to blame: ‘How did you spend $1 billion and not win? What the f—?’

‘The Harris team benched [Biden], and then they lost, so now the people who represent Biden are saying, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have benched him,” another person familiar with the dynamics between the teams said. 

White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the outlet, ‘Anyone criticizing the vice president’s campaign is at odds with President Biden.’

Pelosi points to Biden for loss 

Pelosi appeared to pin blame for the loss on the president, claiming that Biden had dropped out of the race too late in the game and that that hadn’t provided an opportunity for an open primary. 

‘Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,’ she told the New York Times podcast. 

‘The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,’ Pelosi continued. ‘. . . Because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.’ 

Biden dropped out of the presidential race on a Sunday afternoon in July via a social media post. He endorsed Harris minutes later in a follow-up X post, sparking other Democrats to rally around the VP. 

Pelosi did defend Biden in June, when the Wall Street Journal ran an article doubting Biden’s mental fitness as president.

​​’Many of us spent time with @WSJ to share on the record our first-hand experiences with @POTUS, where we see his wisdom, experience, strength and strategic thinking,’ Pelosi wrote on X at the time. ‘Instead, the Journal ignored testimony by Democrats, focused on attacks by Republicans and printed a hit piece.’

Pelosi, as well as other high-profile Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, also notably called on Biden to run for a second term ahead of the 2024 cycle kicking off in earnest. 

Obama to blame?

Other Democrats and insiders pointed to former President Barack Obama for the loss, after Obama reportedly worked in the background over the summer to encourage Biden’s ouster from the race. 

A handful of Obama’s allies and former advisers helped lead the charge in calling on Biden to drop out of the 2024 race earlier this summer, including former Obama adviser David Axelrodsaying that Biden was ‘not winning this race;’ longtime Obama friend George Clooney calling on the president to drop out of the race in a bombshell op-ed; and Jon Favreau, who served as former director of speech writing for Obama, also calling on Biden to drop out of the race ahead of his eventual departure. 

‘There is no singular reason why we lost, but a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn’t even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviors of the campaign, only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama,’ one former Biden staffer told Politico.

DNC National Finance Committee member and Harris campaign fundraiser Lindy Li told Fox News this weekend that Obama’s seemingly delayed endorsement of Harris after Biden dropped out added to Harris’ defeat. 

​​’I want to point out they waited three days – Michelle and Barack Obama waited three days to endorse Kamala Harris,’ Li said on ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ on Saturday. ‘It was the silence heard round the world.’

‘The truth is, this is just an epic disaster – this is a $1 billion disaster,’ Li added during the interview. 

Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, with the Obamas endorsing Harris in a video message posted to social media on July 26, five days after Biden’s announcement. The silence was not lost on the media, as headlines spread across the nation on Obama’s ‘silence.’ 

David Axelrod says Dem Party morphing into ‘smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party’

Similar to Sanders, longtime Democratic strategist David Axelrod appeared to pin blame for the loss on the Democratic Party’s shift away from blue-collar, middle class voters. 

‘You can’t approach working people like missionaries and say, ‘We’re here to help you become more like us.’ There’s a kind of unspoken disdain, unintended disdain in that,’ the CNN contributor said last week. 

‘The only group … Democrats won among were people who make more than $100,000 a year,’ Axelrod said. ‘You can’t win national elections that way, and it certainly shouldn’t be that way for a party that fashions itself as the party of working people.’

‘I think Biden has done programmatically some good things for working people. But the party itself has increasingly become a smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party, and it lends itself to the kind of backlash that we’ve seen,’ he continued.

Claims of underwhelming VP choice 

After Biden’s exit from the race, Harris simultaneously launched her campaign as well as her search for a running mate, combing through a list of high-profile Democrats and lesser-known allies before choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Democrats ultimately rallied behind Walz, but another choice, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, was viewed by many as the better candidate to get the Democratic Party across the finish line victoriously.

‘As a founding member of She Shoulda Picked Shapiro, I think it’s relatively clear now that she made a mistake,’ statistician Nate Silver told the New York Times ahead of Election Day. 

‘Pennsylvania seems to be lagging a little behind the other blue-wall states. Meanwhile, Walz was mediocre in the debate, and he’s been mediocre and nervous in his public appearances.’

Li told Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich from Howard University, where Harris held her election night party, that Shapiro would likely have aided the Harris campaign’s efforts to notch a massive victory. 

‘One of the things that are top of mind is the choice of Tim Walz as vice presidential candidate,’ Li said. ‘A lot of people are saying tonight that it should have been Josh Shapiro. Frankly, people have been saying that for months.’

Considering Pennsylvania’s battleground-state status, the popular first-term governor was viewed as a potential key for the Harris campaign to reach the coveted 270 electoral votes to lock up the election. Shapiro, who is Jewish, was also touted as a potential bridge for the Harris campaign to court Jewish voters amid backlash over her previous comments defending anti-Israel protesters who rocked college campuses last year during the war in Israel.

James Carville says Harris campaign fail could boil down to one interview 

Longtime Democratic political consultant James Carville said the Harris campaign’s loss could boil down to her interview on ‘The View,’ when co-host Sunny Hostin asked Harris to identify an example of anything she would have done differently from Biden. 

‘I think if this campaign is reducible to one moment, we are in a 65% wrong-track country. The country wants something different. And she’s asked, as is so often the case, in a friendly audience, on ‘The View,’ ‘How would you be different than Biden?’ That’s the one question that you exist to answer, alright? That is it. That’s the money question. That’s the one you want,’ Carville said on ‘The Bulwark Podcast’ on Saturday. 

‘That’s the one that everybody wants to know the answer to. And you freeze. You literally freeze and say, ‘Well, I can’t think of anything,’’ Carville continued. 

Hostin had asked Harris in the October interview, ‘If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?’ 

‘There is not a thing that comes to mind,’ Harris answered.

Harris’ comment stands in stark contrast to how voters were feeling: They were unhappy with the current administration’s leadership.  

Preliminary data from the Fox News Voter Analysis, a survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide, found that the majority of voters headed into the polls believing that the country was headed in the wrong direction. 

Voters, ahead of casting their ballots, reported that the country was on the wrong track (70%, up from 60% who felt that way four years ago) and that they were seeking something different. Most wanted a change in how the country is run, with roughly a quarter seeking complete and total upheaval.

Fox News Digital’s Taylor Penley and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report. 

Vice President Kamala Harris paid Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions $1 million, just one example of millions the campaign spent on various entertainers during the vice president’s failed bid for president.

The Harris campaign paid $1 million to Winfrey’s company on October 15, according to a report in the Washington Examiner, coming after a star-studded town hall that Winfrey hosted for the vice president in September.

Winfrey also appeared at Harris’ final rally in Philadelphia on the eve of Election Day, with the talk-show star offering a rare endorsement of a presidential candidate.

‘We’re voting for values and integrity,’ Winfrey said at the rally. ‘We’re voting for healing over hate.’

But Winfrey wasn’t the only star the Harris campaign spent big money on, with the Washington Examiner report also revealing that the campaign spent big on the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast. 

‘A source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner that the Harris campaign spent six figures on building a set for Harris’s appearance on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast with host Alex Cooper,’ the Examiner wrote. ‘The interview came out in October and was reportedly filmed in a hotel room in Washington, D.C.’

The campaign also spent up to $20 million on swing state concerns on the eve of the election, according to a report in the New York Post, a sum that could have been more if a planned performance by Alanis Morissette had not been scrapped.

The campaign had seven swing-state concerts on Monday, the report noted, including performances by Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas, Katy Perry in Pittsburgh and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia, and a 2 Chainz performance at a rally three days before the election in Atlanta.

‘Money can’t buy you love or a good candidate,’ Republican political strategist Brad Todd told the Examiner, with regard to the massive spending.

‘Advertising is a pretty important source of information for swing voters,’ Todd said. ‘It no doubt matters, but it’s not enough. It doesn’t matter if you have the wrong message and it’s not delivered in a compelling way. What her campaign was missing was any effort to break with the unpopular administration she has been a part of.’

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Sunday endorsed lawmaker Rick Scott for Senate majority leader, joining a growing list of MAGA figures who are throwing their support behind the Florida Republican. 

‘Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader!’ Musk wrote in a post on X Sunday afternoon, days after Republicans won back control of the Senate on Election Day. 

Musk’s post came in response to a post from Scott, who was responding to President-elect Trump’s demand that ‘Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.’ 

‘100% agree,’ Scott responded. ‘I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible.’ 

Musk is the latest Trump-ally calling for Scott to be the Senate GOP leader. Scott’s senate Republican colleagues, including Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Rand Paul of Kentucky have each pledged to vote for Scott. 

Scott, whose bid for the position is seen as a long shot by some observers, is up against fellow Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, and John Thune of South Dakota for the job McConnell has held since 2007. 

Scott has expressed hope that Trump will publicly endorse his bid for the top job, though some reports have indicated the president-elect has been hesitant to weigh in on the race. 

Fox News Digital’s Michael Lee contributed to this report. 

Florida Sen. Rick Scott touted his experience in business when asked why his Republican colleagues should back him for Senate Majority Leader.

‘I built businesses all my life,’ Scott said during an appearance on ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. ‘I built the largest hospital company, I built a variety of manufacturing companies, I ran the state of Florida.’

The comments come as Scott finds himself in a three-way race to become the GOP Senate leader, battling fellow Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota for the job held by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., since 2007.

Scott, whose bid for the position is seen as a long shot by some observers, has earned the endorsement of Republican Sens. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida.

‘I will be voting for my Florida colleague @ScottforFlorida to be our next Senate GOP leader,’ Rubio said on X on Sunday.

But the Florida Republican is also seen by some as the friendliest candidate to President-elect Trump, something Hagerty noted when making his endorsement of Scott.

‘Any leader of this new majority must be able to work hand-in-hand with President Trump to advance his America First agenda,’ Hagerty posted to X on Sunday. ‘That’s why I want to see a Senate Majority Leader who can join me in embracing the Trump agenda, which will unify Senate Republicans. On Wednesday, I will be voting for Rick Scott.’

Scott himself hinted at the alignment with Trump during his appearance on ‘Sunday Morning Futures,’ arguing that the Republican Senate should reflect the will of the voters.

‘Washington ought to represent the Republican voters around the country,’ Scott said. 

‘We have a mandate for change … who is going to represent all the Republican voters? I ran two years ago because I knew we needed to make a change in the Senate.’ he continued, referring to his failed 2022 attempt to oust McConnell for the Senate GOP’s top job ‘I’ve talked to my colleagues, I think everybody realizes we need to make a change. So the question is going to be: Who is going to make sure we get those things done?’

Scott has expressed hope that Trump will publicly endorse his bid for the top job, though some reports have indicated the president-elect has been hesitant to weigh in on the race.

Thune, meanwhile, has encouraged Trump to stay out of the race.

‘Obviously, if he wants to, he could exert a considerable amount of influence on that, but honestly, I think my preference would be, and I think it’s probably in his best interest, to stay out of that,’ Thune, who has at times had a rocky relationship with Trump, said during an appearance on CNBC last week.

‘These Senate secret ballot elections are probably best left to senators, and he’s got to work with all of us when it’s all said and done,’ Thune, who currently serves as Senate minority whip, added, ‘but whatever he decides to do, that’s going to be his prerogative, as we know.’

Cornyn, who also previously served as the Senate’s GOP Whip, has touted he held the role when Trump’s tax cuts were passed through the Senate, arguing he would once again be able to work with the president-elect to help pass his agenda.

Republicans return to Washington this week, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is expected to host a forum with the candidates on Tuesday. The election, which is done by secret ballot, will take place on Wednesday with incoming GOP Sens.-elect Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Tim Sheehy of Montana and Jim Justice of West Virginia also being able to participate in the vote.

Only a simple majority is required for a winner to be chosen. If no candidate achieves a simple majority in the first round of ballots, the candidate with the least number of votes will be eliminated and there will be another round of voting between the top two candidates.

Scott argued that a vote for him on Wednesday would be a vote for a candidate who could ‘bring people together.’

‘What it’s going to take is somebody is going to take the time to sit down and bring people together. We’ve got to get, for a lot of things, 60 votes in the Senate, so we’ve got to have somebody that’s going to sit down with Democrats and say, ‘How do we balance a budget? How do we do these things?’’ Scott said. ‘That’s all I’ve done. I’m a deal guy. That’s what I did all my life.’

Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donald slammed Democrats for promoting and spreading ‘lies’ about what President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration will look like, saying that Trump is focused on creating ‘success’ for all Americans. 

‘For the American people who have been listening to these lies from the Democratic left: I will tell you, this is not something that Donald Trump has ever spoken to or he’s committed to whatsoever. There’s no enemies list. I mean, yeah, there are people who’ve been opposed to him, but he is focused on the American people,’ Donalds told Shannon Bream on ‘Fox News Sunday’ when asked about Americans who report being fearful of a second Trump administration. 

‘Job number one is securing our border and beginning the process of deporting illegal immigrants out of our country. Job number two is getting our economy thriving again, becoming energy dominant again. That’s his focus. His focus is the American people, not some enemies list that only gets talked about in the Daily Kos or Salon.com or any other place like that,’ he said. 

Trump locked down the presidential election in the early morning hours last Wednesday, after he won battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia. He ultimately secured 312 Electoral College votes to Harris’ 226, and also won the popular vote. Amid his campaign and afterward, Democrats and left-wing media pundits claimed that Trump would re-enter the Oval Office armed with an ‘enemies list’ of those he would allegedly target once inaugurated as president.

Donalds said that American success is Trump’s top concern, arguing that that metric will be used to demonstrate that Trump is ‘back in charge of running this nation.’ 

‘He’s focused on making our country great. And what will happen in our country is, success is going to be the measurements that he will use to demonstrate he’s back in the White House and back in charge of running this nation. The metric is success. There is no other measure,’ he continued. 

Donalds continued in his interview Sunday morning on Fox News that Trump’s victory had been aided by Black and Hispanic voters. Trump made substantial in-roads with minority communities this year over 2020, with a Fox News Voter Analysis finding he earned a six-point gain among Hispanic voters this year over 2020, and a seven-point gain among Black voters. 

‘What you heard from Black men, and you heard also from Hispanic men, you heard also from, in part, suburban women: They want a country that is safe. They want an economy that is thriving. And Donald Trump is going to deliver on all of those promises,’ he said. 

‘I heard the same thing talking to Black men that I heard talking to anybody across our country. How are we going to get ahead and make more money, be able to pass something on to our children? How are we going to secure this southern border? It’s not fair that you have illegals coming in, getting gas cards, getting hotel stays and all the like. That’s not right. And actually, you’ll notice that the city of New York is now announcing not giving out any more food cards, these food cards. That’s because of Donald Trump and the fact that he won,’ Donalds said. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who won a fourth six-year term last week, doubled down on his claim that the Democratic Party’ lacks appeal to the working class, and responded to pushback from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. 

In appearances on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ and NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ Sanders was pressed about his statement, released after President-elect Trump decisively defeated Vice President Harris in the 2024 presidential election. 

The left-wing lawmaker, who is listed as a member of the Senate Democratic caucus, said Wednesday, ‘It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.’ 

Pelosi shot back against the criticism of her party on Saturday, telling The New York Times’ ‘The Interview’ podcast that while she has ‘a great deal of respect’ for Sanders, ‘I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class families.’ 

‘Under President Biden, you see the rescue package, money in the pockets of people, the shots in the arm, children in school safely, working people back to work,’ Pelosi said. ‘What did Trump do when he was president? One bill that gave a tax cut to the richest people in America.’

NBC’s Kristen Welker played the podcast clip on NBC and asked Sanders to respond. 

‘Nancy is a friend of mine,’ Sanders said. ‘But here is the reality. In the Senate in the last two years, we have not even brought forth legislation to raise the minimum wage to a living wage despite the fact that some 20 million people in this country are working for less than $15 an hour.’ 

The progressive senator listed his grievances with the Democratically controlled Senate, saying that in the past two years the chamber failed to pass legislation to make it easier for workers to join unions. He also claimed that the Senate has not been talking about benefit pension plans ‘so that our elderly can retire with security,’ and that Democrats are ‘not talking about lifting the cap on Social Security so that we can extend the solvency of Social Security and raise benefits.’

‘Bottom line, if you’re a working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the max, taking on powerful special interests and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no,’ Sanders said.

‘Look, the working people of this country are extremely angry,’ Sanders told Welker earlier. ‘They have a right to be angry in the richest country in the history of the world. Today, the people on top are doing phenomenally well, while 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Millions of families worry that their kids have actually got to have a lower standard of living than they do.’ 

‘You got the top 1% owning more wealth than the bottom 90%. We’re the only major country not to guarantee health care to all of our people. Twenty-five percent of our seniors are trying to live on $50,000 a year or less. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. And the gap between the people at the top and everybody else is getting wider and wider. And then, of course, that on top of all of that, we’ve got a corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaires to buy elections. So if you’re an average worker out there, you’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m working longer and longer hours, go nowhere in a hurry, worried about my kids.’ And yet the people on top, ‘I’ve never had it so good.” 

Arguing that Biden had followed through on his promise to be the most progressive president in terms of domestic policy, Sanders lodged a dig at Trump regarding the Republican’s success in reaching working-class voters. 

In the aftermath of President-Elect Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory, both the left and the right have a strong interest in believing, or at least claiming, that ‘new media,’ such as social media platform X and Joe Rogan’s podcast was the secret to Trump’s success.

The problem is, that from what voters told me over the last three months, it just isn’t true.

First, let’s look at why both sides are motivated to believe that these alternative media sources were decisive. After all, wrong though they may be, it is a rare thing that Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on.

For the Harris camp and its media allies blaming Elon Musk’s X platform, or the universe of edgy, allegedly right-wing podcasts for flooding the zone with ‘disinformation,’ is a perfect excuse for how spectacularly incorrect they were about this election.

Instead of acknowledging that their incessant yammering about threats to democracy and Trump being a felon landed on voters’ deaf ears because those voters were worried about the economy and the border, the MSNBCs of the world want Elon Musk to be the problem.

Likewise, on the right we hear claims that legacy media is dead, that it is the age of citizen journalists and that this sea change portends long-lasting power for the populist GOP of Donald Trump.

To both sides, I would say not so fast.

It was the American people who decided this election, not podcasts, not X posts, and not influencer campaigns. It came down to two basic things; 70% of voters think the country is on the wrong track, and Kamala Harris was a horrible candidate.

‘I spent $100 on two bags of groceries,’ Carol, in her 70s, told me in Bedford, Pa., back in early October. That very day, she was mailing in her normally non-voting husband’s registration.

Among the hundreds of voters I spoke to, it was by far the top issue, and in places like Bedford, they don’t need the old media or the new media to tell them what they can plainly see on their grocery bills.

As to Harris’ laughable lack of political chops, it was like the soundtrack of my travels through the election. 

‘I do wish she would do more interviews,’ one Democrat, a photographer in his 60s, told me in August in Harrisonburg, Va. 

Fast-forward to late October and in Scranton, Pa., I had a paid Harris canvasser say to me, ‘I don’t know why she can’t answer any questions.’

But what about Trump’s success with Gen Z men? Surely, it is insisted, that was down to the Dark MAGA universe of podcasts and influencers, right?

Well, I spoke with a lot of men in their 20s voting for Trump, and none of these internet celebrities ever came up. What did come up was their frustration with a woke culture that had demonized them just for being men.

But they knew that before any streamer ever told them.

Allow me to strongly suggest that it wasn’t popular podcasters and influencers who made Gen Z more conservative, it was Gen Z already being more conservative that made these podcasters and influencers popular.

Who or what gets credit or blame for an election result only matters insofar as it offers lessons going forward, and it is fairly obvious that the left blaming Elon Musk and new media is the wrong lesson to draw.

But as easy as it is for the losing side to learn the wrong lessons, it is far easier and more consequential for the winning side to do so. Victory, they say, has a thousand fathers, but about 950 of them didn’t really contribute much.

It would be a grave mistake for Republicans to think that new media won them this race. In fact, this turned out to be a pretty standard bread and butter issues election that Harris would have lost in any media environment. 

Voters handed Republicans this big win so that they would do two basic things: bring down prices and secure the border. They don’t really want to hear about moving the Department of Environmental Protection to Oklahoma, or decimating the deep state, as fine as those ideas may be.

Presidential mandates such as the one Trump has now, are like hiring a guy to fix up stuff around your house. If you tell him the sink and toilet are broken and he proceeds to improve your roof, refinish your basement, and widen your deck, but the sink and toilet still don’t work, you get a new handyman.

If Republicans can make life cheaper and fix the border then voters will reward them, no matter where they get their news. If not, then Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, will not be enough to stave off eventual defeat.

Leading pro-life activist groups are already shifting from celebrating former President Donald Trump’s victory to drawing up plans for his second term, Fox News Digital has learned.

A memorandum shared exclusively with Fox News Digital by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA), one of the country’s largest and most influential pro-life groups, lays out the group’s plans and priorities for the upcoming administration in what they hope will serve as the beginning of a roadmap for pro-life victories in the years to come.

It states that while Democrats spent $570 million on abortion advertising, Trump’s blowout victory is evidence that the American people do not support the unrestricted abortion access endorsed by Vice President Kamala Harris and many top Democrats.

‘Democrats’ abortion fearmongering campaign was a spectacular failure in the first presidential election since the reversal of Roe,’ the memo says. ‘Meanwhile, President T

rump did what he’s done better than anyone since 2016: he effectively cast the Democrats as the real extremists on abortion who support abortion even in the seventh, eighth and ninth month of pregnancy and even refuse to support giving basic medical care to children who survive attempted abortions.’

‘With victory in hand,’ the memo asks: ‘What’s next?’

First, the memo states that the Trump administration must immediately undo every abortion policy instituted over the last four years under the Biden-Harris administration.

‘The accomplishments from President Trump’s first term become the baseline for the second term,’ the memo continues. ‘However, in order to even get to the baseline, there is much that must be undone from the Biden-Harris regime, which worked tirelessly to promote abortion in every nook and cranny of the federal government. It all must be undone.’

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA, told Fox News Digital that her group will push for the ‘cleansing’ of tax funding of abortion during the first 100 days of the Trump administration through the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services and other government agencies, as well as through grants to groups like Planned Parenthood.

Dannenfelser added that the Trump administration should clarify what resources and options are available to women who do not want to choose abortion during the first 100 days. She also said Trump should reinstate the ‘Mexico City Policy’ that prohibits the government from pushing or paying for abortion internationally.

Dannenfelser did not take a national abortion limit off the table, though she admitted it is ‘not a day one’ issue.

While the pro-life movement had a lot to celebrate this past week, seven states passed sweeping amendments to enshrine abortion into their state law, significantly expanding abortion in those states. This followed a series of similar amendments being passed by voters in California, Ohio, Michigan and Vermont.

Dannenfelser acknowledged that she understands Americans are not ready to accept the protection of all unborn life after 50 years under Roe v. Wade, but said she believes there should be at least a ‘minimum standard’ of protection for the unborn across the nation. 

SBA noted in its memo that ‘to go on offense and truly defeat the abortion industry in the long term, we must strengthen the pro-life, pro-woman, pro-family resolve of the Republican Party, centered on the unalienable right to life for the unborn child that exists under the 14th Amendment.’

Dannenfelser said that the job of the pro-life movement over the next few years will be to help advance the cultural conversation about what minimum standards the country should enact to protect unborn life.

She pointed to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who she said provides a model of a leader who is effectively engaging in and promoting cultural conversation about abortion.

Florida, along with South Dakota and Nebraska, became the first states to defeat any abortion initiative since the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Dannenfelser said that DeSantis’ leadership ‘showed exactly what you do’ to win pro-life victories.

‘You don’t pretend it’s not happening; you go on offense against extremism,’ she said. ‘DeSantis showed that when you go full-on, you defy all the prognosticators and fend off that horrible initiative.’ 

SBA is not the only pro-life group mobilizing since Trump’s victory. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America (SFLA), told Fox News Digital that her group has also developed a plan titled ‘Make America Pro-Life Again’ that ‘encompasses both federal action as well as state actions.’

For the early days of the administration, Hawkins said SFLA would prioritize four main policies: 1) Appointing pro-life officials to federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, FDA and DOJ, 2) Releasing pro-life activists imprisoned under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, completely defunding Planned Parenthood and to investigate the harmful chemicals used by chemical abortion pills.

Hawkins also said that she will continue to advocate for abortion restrictions on the federal level, but like Dannenfelser, she granted that will not be likely to happen soon.

For now, she said that Trump’s ‘day one’ priority should be defunding Planned Parenthood.

‘Students for Life America has always been very clear; abortion is 100% federal. The pro-life movement is clear that abortion is 100% federal. Why? Because your right to not be killed because you’re simply inconvenient to another does not begin and end at state lines,’ she told Fox News Digital. ‘We disagree with President Trump on this point. However, we are able to work with President Trump at this point and the first thing he must do is defund and debar Planned Parenthood.’

Also looming large behind both these groups’ plans is the possibility of a Supreme Court justice retiring or passing away. Neither Dannenfelser nor Hawkins divulged who they might support for a Supreme Court nomination, but, like before, Hawkins said she expects Trump to appoint justices supporting the unborn.

‘Our ask of President Trump in 2015 and 2016 will be the same ask of President Trump in 2025 or whenever that happens in this administration, that if there is a Supreme Court vacancy, no matter if it’s a Sotomayor or it’s a Justice Thomas, that the person that he nominates, the person that will be confirmed by the US Senate, will not be an abortion activist, they will be a constitutionalist, and they’ll know what’s in the Constitution and what’s not in the Constitution. One of the things that’s not in the Constitution is the right to end the life of an inconvenient human child.’