Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

If the election result is still sinking in, you’re not alone. I can report that there’s been a bit of a delayed reaction for both the candidates and their teams, as well. Democrats are busy shivving each other inside the tent, playing the cable news blame game, or quietly drowning their sorrows far from Le Dip. Even Trump’s team, giddy as they may be, can hardly believe they swept the swing states, too. They outperformed their own expectations, internal models, and polling.

Now comes the name game: Will Ric Grenell get State, or will Sen. Bill Hagerty make a play for that plum seat if Grenell gets National Security Advisor, instead? (Doug Burgum is eyeing the top diplomatic post, too…) Trump seems to be moving quickly. Late today, he announced Susie Wiles as chief of staff. Watch this space…

Tonight, I’ve got some fresh reporting on the remarkable debt the Harris campaign racked up in its final, frantic weeks, and how they plan to pay it down. Plus, dispatches from Abby Livingston on the midterm hype already building around Abigail Spanberger (the Dems’ Glenn Youngkin?) and Mike Lawler (the next Lee Zeldin?) and a post-Selzer post-mortem from John Heilemann.

But first… a brief 2024 autopsy from a veteran G.O.P. strategist…

I want to get into “woulda, coulda, shoulda” in the Democratic Party. Should she have chosen Josh Shapiro, who won by more than 15 percentage points when he ran for governor of Pennsylvania? Democrats were privately worried about stoking the flames of the Gaza War by choosing a Jewish running mate—was that a mistake?

I think Shapiro probably would’ve helped them carry Pennsylvania. I’m not ready to say that...

But within 24 hours of her landslide loss, as anyone who received...