A key question now worth contemplating -- right before everyone goes home for Thanksgiving (and the inevitable family political squabbles) -- is how many of the promises Donald Trump made to his supporters can he break before they'll abandon him? Because so far, Trump has been doing some pretty serious backpedaling on some of his core applause lines, as he prepares to shift from campaigning to actually governing. Will his fans accept these broken promises, because they actually liked Trump's style more than they believed all his grand assertions, or did they take them all seriously and now are beginning to feel betrayed that they're not actually going to happen? This could be a crucial question, going forward, when assessing Trump's political capital and the effectiveness of his presidency.

Today's big news is that Trump apparently was just kidding about all that "Lock her up!" stuff out on the campaign trail. He's not going to sic his Justice Department on Clinton after all, it seems. Kellyanne Conway explained Trump's new position with a statement that might just send chills through Trump supporters everywhere:

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Deficit hawk sightings used to be quite common in Washington, D.C., but early indications are that this bird's about to become a lot rarer. It may even wind up on the endangered species list, in fact. This sort of thing normally happens every time a Republican is in the White House (remember Dick Cheney's infamous "deficits don't matter" line?), but this time around it's already looking like the deficit hawks could disappear entirely from within the Beltway.

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We have one prediction for Donald Trump's presidency that we haven't noticed elsewhere, so we thought it worth mentioning up front. Donald Trump will quite likely use the "bully pulpit" of the presidency better than anyone since the man who coined the term, Teddy Roosevelt. Well, Franklin Roosevelt certainly connected with the people, so maybe that's an unfair omission, but no matter who you put on the list of presidents who effectively used public opinion against Congress, Trump is very likely going to wind up pretty high on that list.

Think about it. Trump loves rallies. He loves the crowd's adulation. He's just announced he's going to take a 30-state victory lap before he's even sworn in. Why would anyone think that's all going to change after he takes office?

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Change is coming soon to the Democratic National Committee. The D.N.C. will elect a new chair soon, and so far the two frontrunners for the position seem to be Representative Keith Ellison and ex-D.N.C. Chair Howard Dean. Both bring interesting skills to the table, but both also have their drawbacks. Who the party elects is going to be crucial to their chances of rebuilding and fielding good candidates for the next few elections. It will also be crucial for the Democrats' chances of getting a clear and strong message out to the public of what, precisely, they stand for. Since Democrats will have no president or congressional majority leaders for the next two years, the D.N.C. chair will become not only the leader of the party, but also likely the most prominent voice in the media as well.

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The Democratic Party is currently struggling with the question of who should be leading it, heading into the future. Should they stick with known leaders, or is it time for fresh blood? Most notable in this power struggle are the questions of who should lead the Democrats in the House, and who should lead the Democratic National Committee. The Senate had largely decided their own leadership question before the election, since Harry Reid had already announced his retirement. The Senate leadership handoff that just happened had already been worked out months ago, and Senator Chuck Schumer will (starting in January) be known as Minority Leader Schumer for the next two years. Over on the House side, a fierce debate is taking place as to whether Nancy Pelosi should continue as the Democratic leader or whether someone younger might be a better option. The D.N.C. leadership may be the biggest fight of all, though, as multiple candidates have already thrown their hats in the ring.

In all these questions of leadership, some have noticed that the Democratic "bench" is pretty downright thin these days. Partly, this is Beltway-insider "conventional wisdom," since there are plenty of Democrats in the House and Senate who are young, committed, and eager to lead -- but, alas, their names are not on the insiders' lips when they gather at their cocktail parties. At the same time, it is indisputable that the House Democratic leadership is rather advanced in age, especially when compared to the young guns currently in charge of the Republicans. Even the lefty wing of the Democratic Party is best represented by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, neither one of whom is exactly a spring chicken.

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Democrats are, to put it mildly, in disarray right now. There's a very open debate taking place as to which direction the party should head, and who should be leading it. This is all normal after losing an election. The 2016 election was a disaster at the top of the ticket, but wasn't so bad further down. Democrats actually picked up some House seats, and flipped two Senate seats back. Of course, this was disappointing because they had expected to pick up a lot more seats in both houses, but it could have been much worse -- Republicans might have expanded their majorities.

Democrats lost the presidency for a multitude of reasons, but one big one was the further erosion of support among white blue-collar workers. This frustrates many Democrats who quite accurately point out that Democratic policy ideas help these people much more than Republican ideas. But part of the problem is that few Democratic ideas seem all that concrete to the average voter. So maybe what Democrats need to do is to focus on just one big idea, and define the party as the champion of that idea -- while painting the GOP as the prime reason it hasn't happened.

To me, the simplest idea to rally behind would be to push to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and build in a cost-of-living adjustment as well. This would have the greatest impact on working people's lives, and the idea has strong support which cuts across party lines. So it could achieve two things simultaneously -- helping people out, and helping to rebuild the Democratic Party.

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In the past week, Democrats lost the presidential election while America suffered the ultimate loss of two unique public voices: Leonard Cohen and Gwen Ifill. Ifill was co-anchor of the nightly news show PBS NewsHour (which some still refer to by its original name, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, showing how influential this show's anchors have been in the past). Ifill will be greatly missed, as she was not only a voice of reason with great intelligence behind it, but also a voice for people not normally heard from in broadcast news. Ifill once remarked that she made more money in a week than her father made in a year, and she never forgot her humble beginnings in her reporting, as she consistently pressured politicians on what their policy positions actually meant for people on the lower economic rungs of the ladder. She was, in a word, authentic -- something even rarer in national journalism than it is in the world of politics. I join millions of Americans now mourning the loss of one of the most relatable journalists on the national scene. Ifill will be greatly missed, that much is certain.

So will Leonard Cohen, for different reasons. Cohen's music spoke to millions, and provided the most moving tribute to both his work and the campaign of Hillary Clinton this weekend, when Saturday Night Live opened with Kate McKinnon (dressed as Hillary Clinton) playing the piano and singing Cohen's best-known work, "Hallelujah."

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool ya
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

To me, at least, this was one of the most poignant "cold open" scenes ever, in the long and storied history of SNL -- right up there with Rudy Giuliani and Lorne Michaels addressing the nation after 9/11. In one heartfelt moment, McKinnon summed up the loss millions were feeling not only because of Cohen's death, but also because of the outcome of the election.

Now, losing elections is a part of the political process. Nobody wins all the time -- and shouldn't. It's what keeps parties from getting out of touch, to be blunt. But I was reminded today of not just Hillary Clinton's loss for the Democrats, but of the inevitable loss for our country of the presidency of Barack Obama. I say this because I just finished watching Obama's press conference, and couldn't help but wonder what Donald Trump press conferences will be like in the near future.

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Last week, we pre-empted our usual Talking Points format for a pre-election column. This week, we're going to do the same for a post-election column. The shock has not worn off, and it just feels too soon to return to analyzing Democratic politics. Democrats are in disarray right now, which is probably a good thing in the long run, at least if it leads to some major course corrections. But the wounds are still too raw for us to rub any further salt in them, so instead today we'd like to take a detour into history instead. If history bores you in general, we'd suggest you skip the rest of this column. For everyone else, let's take a look back today.

Does any of this sound familiar? A presidential candidate presents himself as a "man of the people" who will fight the entrenched elitists who are running the country. He launches a campaign the likes of which America has never seen before -- a campaign which absolutely horrifies those elites. His opponents call him patently unfit for the job, as well as boorish, crude, violent, unsophisticated, illiterate, and downright dangerous for the future of the country. The candidate himself complains of a president who is corrupt and illegitimate, rails against a totally rigged electoral system (direct quote: "there was cheating and corruption and bribery too"), and vows he will "clean the Augean Stables of Washington." He also promises a government attuned to the needs of the people rather than the elitists. His campaign is denounced in the media as "the most rude and ruthless political contest that ever took place in the United States," complete with charges (from both sides) of bigamy, adultery, slave-dealing, pimping a virgin to be raped by the Czar of Russia, bloodthirsty murder, tyranny, a stolen and rigged election, military despotism, the impropriety of buying a billiard table for the White House, and both sides warning that they were going to "save the Temple of Liberty from pollution." After running a campaign closer to a cult of personality than anything previously seen in America, he wins the election.

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Program Note: At the bottom of this excerpt is the original program note I ran earlier today, just for continuity. The following excerpt had to be typed out manually, which took me a while to complete (I thought I had done so a long time ago, when taking historical notes, but it turns out I was mistaken). I am posting it in full here for regular readers as a preview of tomorrow's column. I would be willing to bet that now that Donald Trump has won the presidency, a whole lot of people are going to start noticing parallels between him and Andrew Jackson, the first truly populist president ever elected. I'm too tired tonight to provide any context or any of my own personal commentary, which I will add to the following to create tomorrow's column. But, as I said, I thought regular readers would appreciate the core story in advance.

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For the past eight years, America has had an African-American president. Faced with the prospect of a white woman succeeding him, America instead just elected an angry white man as president. Call it the triumph of angry white men everywhere. Millions of Americans are about to find out what it's like to be led by the equivalent of the drunk uncle at the Thanksgiving table who refuses to follow the rules of politeness and political correctness. Was it a backlash against our first black president? Or rampant misogyny towards Hillary Clinton? Or just free-floating rage against a changing culture that is becoming more tolerant and multicultural by the year? It's impossible to accurately say, really. The only thing that can be said for certain is that angry white men are now dominant.

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