In yet another “how could this be?” moment for liberals and Never Trumpers of all stripes, we’re now seeing polls on the president-elect’s transition, and he’s getting, you guessed it, pretty good marks. When asked by Pew recently whether they approve of the policies and plans for the future authored by the man who wanted Matt Gaetz to run the Justice Department and still wants a Putin fan-girl to be in charge of U.S. intelligence and a former congressman who pushed the idea that vaccines cause autism to lead the Centers for Disease Control, 53 percent of respondents said they do, while 46 percent said they disapprove.

More: Pew asked the same respondents whether they have warm or cool feelings toward Trump. “Cold” and “very cold” still combined to top “warm” and “very warm,” 47 to 42 percent, but his warm rating today is considerably higher than it was in 2016 or 2020.

This means one obvious thing: The independent voters whom the exit polls say he narrowly lost to Kamala Harris (49-46, says CNN) have decided to give him a chance.

And that, in turn, means something else. Our efforts to paint Trump as a sui generis extremist failed. All those warnings about the unique danger he poses to this country, so obviously true and dire to us, didn’t really register with swing voters. Or maybe they registered to some extent, given how close the election was. But they didn’t prove to be........

© New Republic