Stevenson’s army, November 11

Honor veterans today!
I have long argued that the only thing election returns can tell is who won, who got more votes, not how or why it happened. That’s especially true this year when the two national exit polls had significant differences in the numbers of voters they found. Given that caveat, here’s a big collection of the data.  And note that Nate Cohn of the NYT has a long story trying to tell why the polls were wrong.
David Ignatius reports a bitter interagency fight over declassifying some materials about Russia which Esper, Haspel & others warn would reveal key sources and methods.
This is new information which might explain why Esper was fired this week and Haspel may be.
Meanwhile, the national security community suffers more firings, resignations, and burrowing in of Trump loyalists.
WSJ explains the Biden-McConnell relationship.
I have a piece in The Hill urging the new administration to speed the naming of all the top 1200 nominees so they can start planning together.
As you know, it’s the season for think tanks to make their suggestions to a new administration, Here’s CFR on how to revitalize the State Dept.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).