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Rep. Elissa Slotkin is the only Democrat in the country to represent a district that voted Republican in the last three presidential races. | Erin Kirkland for POLITICO | As election results started to trickle in from Michigan's 8th congressional district on Tuesday, an odd scene took place: Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin was behind, her campaign manager told a crowd of supporters packed into a hotel conference room — and they cheered. No, there wasn't a mass hallucination going on. Slotkin's fans knew it was all part of her plan to "lose better," a strategy that, despite its defeatist-sounding name, led Slotkin to victory over Republican Tom Barrett and carries important lessons for Democrats nationwide. Slotkin flipped a Trump district in 2018 and won again in 2020, becoming the only Democrat in the country to represent a district that had gone Republican in the last three presidential races. She's used to campaigning among Republican and split-ticket voters, which is where losing better comes in. Slotkin believes that Democrats should accept that the reddest parts of the district are unwinnable — and then go and knock on doors anyway. Shaving a Republican's 45 percent tally down to 40 percent — or even polishing a 30 percent lead down to 29 percent — could be just the margin Democrats need to win, Slotkin argues. She hopes that reaching out to the GOP's Trump-weary voters can score wins for the party and lower the national political temperature at the same time. "I hope that Michigan is the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country, and that it's the beginning of a statement that the politics of division will not cut it anymore," she told Kathy Gilsinan, who spent Election Night with Slotkin. Following a surprising midterm election cycle in which an oft-predicted red wave never materialized, Slotkin's lose-better approach sounds like a winning motto for the Democratic Party nationally. And especially in the Midwest, where Democrats have hemorrhaged working class voters and failed to counter Donald Trump's appeal, her win provides a sliver of hope for moderate candidates across the board. Read Gilsinan's story. | | | | 
| "What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass." Can you guess who said this about Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
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"Joe Biden is one of the greatest statesmen of our times," said Amy Gutmann, then-president of the University of Pennsylvania, back when the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement was established in 2018. | Win McNamee/Getty Images |
No Presidents On Campus … U.S. presidents used to take pride in their alma-maters, and universities used to celebrate their commander-in-chief graduates. Well, not anymore, writes Michael Schaffer in this week's Capital City column . Many politicians, and Republicans in particular, are loath to advertise their elitist curriculums vitae. That's just fine for their universities, which don't want their divisive alumni angering students and scaring off donors.
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| 62 percent … of conservative voters say they would not pay for social media verification, compared to 54 percent of liberals.
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Brittney Griner in Russian court in Moscow, Russia on July 27, 2022. | Washington Post/Getty Images | What's Next for Brittney Griner? … The bleak news that WNBA star Brittney Griner is being moved to a Russian penal colony has many wondering what life inside these successors to Soviet-era gulags is like. Anastasiia Carrier spoke with Olga Romanova, who works with people incarcerated in Russia, about what might await Griner . "Americans won't believe me, but human rights don't exist in Russian colonies," she said. "No right to health, dignity or life. Nothing, forget it."
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| If you only moved to Washington in the 21st century, you probably think of the local football team as the NFL's unloveable losers, mired in off-the-field turmoil while playing in an unpleasant stadium that is often overrun by fans of the visiting team. If so, old locals' abiding fascination with the franchise now known as the Commanders may seem confusing. This week, amidst news that the longtime (and much hated) owner Dan Synder might be about to sell, perhaps to a group of investors including Jeff Bezos, Jay-Z and Matthew McConaughey, here's how to sound like you're in the know (from the magazine's own Michael Schaffer): - Glory days nostalgia: Name-check RFK (the stadium), Riggo (the running back) and Dallas (the bastards). Bonus points if you claim to have watched the victory parade after Super Bowl XVII, when Ronald Reagan gave the federal workforce time off to celebrate. - Ownership angst: Dan Snyder's booboos and scandals make news, but the correct Beltway-insider posture is to also mourn the fact that the team's woes have rendered the franchise irrelevant on the big stage of capital-city schmoozing. - Fanhood politics: Yes, supporting the local team might seem like going native in a city transients claim to hate. Ya know what's even more Washington? D.C. VIPs who ostentatiously champion the squad back in Buffalo or Pittsburgh or whatever town suits their personal brand. - The glorious future: With fellow NFL owners reportedly ready to boot Snyder, the team says they're looking at sale offers. The correct reaction is to join fans in their glee and perhaps ponder other Beltway billionaire saviors (David Rubenstein, for instance). Whatever you do, don't spoil the mood by talking about how ugly it would be if Bezos used owners-box invites to schmooze power brokers on Amazon's behalf. | | | | 
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Cincinnati, Ohio mayor Aftab Pureval. | Andrew Spear for POLITICO | The Next Obama? … Worrywort Democrats like to complain that there's no "bench" of talent ready to step into leadership — but they might want to take a page out of Democratic strategist Lis Smith's playbook (she ran Pete Buttigieg's upstart presidential campaign) and look for tomorrow's top Dems in city governments, especially those leading blue urban islands in red state seas. They'd find the 40-year-old, immigrant-born, Bengals-loving mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, Aftab Pureval , who some Dems are calling a "rising star" and even "Barack Obama, Jr.," reports Michael Kruse.
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Library of Congress | This Veterans Day, we're revisiting an under-appreciated bit of military (and sports) history: Did you know that servicemembers used to make up the equestrian team that the U.S. sent to the Olympics? From 1912 to 1948, Army cavalrymen represented their country in front of the entire world. In this audacious photo, which the Library of Congress estimates was taken sometime in the 1920s, the equestrian team shows off trick jumps, with one of them on horseback leaping over a table of five, at the old Fort Myer (now a historic landmark) in Virginia, where shows were held every year. As it turns out, the boys weren't half bad: In the few decades they spent trotting on the world stage, the Army Equestrians earned five team medals — two of them gold — and six individual medals.
| | | **Who Dissed answer: It was John Adams, who admired Paine's insistence on separation from Britain, but balked at his "democratical" plans for government, such as a unicameral legislature, and countered his ideas with a pamphlet of his own, Thoughts on Government. Paine later retorted: "Some people talk of impeaching John Adams, but I am for softer measures. I would keep him to make fun of." politicoweekend@email.politico.com
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