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Now, onto the news….
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1. EVERY ELECTION DEBATE SHOULD END WITH 15 MINUTES DEVOTED TO FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS TO PREVIOUS QUESTIONS DODGED BY THE CANDIDATES: Too often those running for office simply don’t answer the queries put to them, choosing instead to pivot to something else. Moderators should devote the closing segment of every debate to returning to those ducked topics.
“Mr. X, you were asked earlier if you support Y. You did not answer the question. So let me ask you again, plainly: yes or no, do you support Y? After your one-word answer for clarity, I will ask you why that is your position.”
There should be no false equivalency in this segment; if one candidate deflected most or all of the prior questions, she or he should get the applicable number of follow ups.
2. WE NEED NATIONAL AND STATE BIPARTISAN GROUPS THAT FOCUS ON MAKING SURE THE ELECTION RULES ARE FAIR AND SAFE: Now, all we have are partisan lawsuits, press releases, and legislative efforts. Until we shift these organizations and attempts to change (or protect…) the status quo from hyper partisan to bipartisan (or, better, nonpartisan) we will never achieve the two essential and paramount goals: elections that are safe and fair, and public confidence across the spectrum that our elections are fair and safe.
3. STOP HAVING OUR POLITICAL DIALOGUE REVOLVE AROUND A BELIEF THAT POLLS, AGGREGATION OF POLLS, AND EXIT POLLS ARE GOSPEL TRUTH: I could fill the Internet with my views on this, but suffice to say/ask, do you really think Nate Silver can divine from one day to the next that the chances of Democrats holding the Senate majority have dropped from, say, 57% to 55%? What balderdash.
Please stop treating these surveys with laughably small samples, let alone the averaging of such surveys, as some sort of stone tablets from which we can understand the past, present, and future.
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It should go without saying, but I will say it to make sure you all understand:
I’m not rooting for or predicting any outcome for the midterms.
My job is to tell you what I’m seeing in the quantitative and qualitative data out there.
SPOILER ALERT: The Republicans are still poised to do very well in the midterms.
Here are your latest touchstones.
1. Democratic bigwigs are all using the same talking points:
* Their own party needs to do a better job messaging.
* Abortion is on the ballot, but so is inflation, which is a global issue caused by Putin and other factors outside Joe Biden’s control – and not by Democrats’ government spending.
* If Republicans get back in power, they will take away Medicare and Social Security, favor special interests, and cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.
* We are crime fighters.
We are hearing these things from President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Val Demings, and the rest.
Per the Associated Press:
President Joe Biden will visit Democratic National Committee headquarters on Monday as he looks to pep up staff and volunteers with just over two weeks to go before Election Day.
Biden is expected to deliver remarks that look to contrast his plan to lower drug costs for Americans while taking aim at a Republicans who he says will look to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits and look to make permanent the GOP’s 2017 changes to tax rates, according to a Democratic official.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview Biden’s remarks, said Biden will also discuss job growth, an unemployment rate that hovers near 50-year lows, and declining gasoline prices during his remarks to the DNC’s Washington offices.
Here’s Demings, in an Associated Press story about how Florida has gone Red:
“We have to do a better job of telling our stories and clearly demonstrating who’s truly on the side of people who have to go to work every day,” she said.
Here’s Sanders, from his Sunday turn on CNN:
“I am worried about the level of voter turnout among young people and working people who will be voting Democratic.”
Sanders continued to suggest that Democrats should frame their midterm approach around economic talking points — and not abortion — to drive turnout.
“I think, again, what Democrats have to do is contrast their economic plan with the Republicans’. … They want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at a time when millions of seniors are struggling to pay their bills,” he said….
“Crime is a real issue. Violence is a real issue,” he said. “I go all over the state of Vermont. There is a drug problem and the addiction to drugs and the violence drugs causes, it’s a huge problem all over this country.”
“How do you deal with the growing addiction, the opioid crisis? That means making investment in our young people in good education, in good job training, and making sure we have good law enforcement doing the right job all over this country,” he added.
*
2. Read this story highlighted by Newt Gingrich if you want to
a. Understand how the most optimistic members of Team Red are seeing the midterms.
b. You want to be ready – if there is a massive Republican tsunami (+30 House seats and 53 or 54 Senate seats in 2023) -- to explain all the demographic, historic, and policy reasons why it happened. NB the parts about Hispanic, Black, and female voters.
3. Prediction: We are about to see a flood of anonymous quotes from Democratic strategists explaining why they are going to get wiped out and either (1) pointing fingers of blame in various directions or (2) saying it was inevitable.
The Washington Post kicked it off thusly:
“The entire issue set is working against us. It is really hard for a Democrat in a marginal district,” said another Democratic House strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly. “There was a lot of attention on abortion immediately post-Dobbs. As time has passed the immediacy has dissipated. The everyday reality of buying gas and buying groceries has overtaken it.”
4. This email from a Wide World of News reader of my acquaintance tells you more than any newspaper story you could read about, again, what is likely to happen and why:
Mark,
I appreciate your daily newsletter/posts.
I was a life-long Democrat. Since before I could vote. (Posters against the Vietnam War, etc.).
I changed to being an Independent two years ago with Defund the Police. I appreciate how horrible the George Floyd murder was. But I think Defund the Police is a ridiculous idea. I’m not looking for a social worker if someone is breaking into my home. Yes there are bad cops. And in this case, he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail. But there are also “bad” people everywhere. And when Cori Bush talks about Defund the Police while having hundreds of thousands of dollars of security; well that’s nuts.
I’m a white, middle aged, middle class/upper middle class, Catholic suburban woman and I know that politicians have completely forgotten or overlooked me as I know I’m not the only one that feels this way.
I have never voted for a Republican in my life. I may this time.
I agree with your recent reader/writer that being pushed on the subway trumps (no pun intended) democracy any day. I spend $500 a month on Uber family as I don’t want my two young adult children taking the subway after dark. Even if one of them is 27 and 6’3” and an athlete. If my daughter is attacked, abortion is the last thing on her mind or mine. And she has been attacked (not seriously) by a homeless person at 4pm in Union Square. Out of control. I don’t want anyone held in Rikers for months for stealing a backpack because they don’t have money for bail. But I don’t feel like that is the current situation. And the Democrats own this.
On immigration, I am incredibly sympathetic to the situation that led people through the jungle and to risk everything. But what is the plan on our end. When you see that there are hundreds of kids in NYC schools without any teachers who can speak Spanish; well how is that helping and what is the plan? (And who is paying for the 1B for NYC for housing and services for the immigrants?)
On inflation, I get that the Russian war and the Covid supply chain issues were unavoidable. But yes, the Democrats loaded way too much into all the bill. And people like me, and probably you, closer to retirement than not, can’t afford the years to make back all the money we’ve lost in (seemingly safe) retirement funds.
I’m grateful my children are out of school. I think [Terry] McAuliffe deserved to lose for his ridiculous statement about parents not having a right to a say in their children’s education. Randi Weingarten should just disappear now.
And the college forgiveness program. Really? How is this helping the fundamental problem of college expenses going crazy? And should my son, before he applies to graduate school in a year, take out a loan with the idea that it will be forgiven in a decade. And beyond the flawed policy, what about the political issues? The people who didn’t take out loans, the people who went to community or state colleges, the people who paid them back? Will this send them to Trump? This is crazy!
Thanks for listening to me rant.
I have fairly good instincts (spidey-sense!). I knew Obama was a keeper early on. I don’t know if you remember, I told you (I guess in 2008) that my uncle in Bay City Michigan (at the time in his 60’s, Vietnam vet, Catholic, working/middle class) was for Obama. I voted for Hillary over Trump. (Anyone over Trump) in 2016, but knew she was a very very flawed candidate. It didn’t have anything to do with her being a woman.
All my best,
REDACTED
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If you don’t thirst to better understand why Donald Trump won in 2016, how he got more than 10 million additional votes in 2020, and why he has better fav/unfav polling numbers than Joe Biden in the latest New York Times poll, you are not doing your job as a citizen.
I’m coming up on a decade thinking about the key underlying question here, which, of course, is less about Trump than it is about something more fundamental.
One of the main answers involves the tragic/comic bias of the Dominant Media.
Don’t underestimate how big a deal this will be in shaping the midterm results. And don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just a factor that juices up Red base turnout. This phenomenon also drives non-MAGA Republicans and independents into the arms of the right.
There are so many examples every day of the worst practices that propel this, but here are two from the current cycle:
1. There is a lot in this New York Post story, but the main thing to note is how much coverage this kind of case would get if it were about, say, George W. Bush (let alone about Donald Trump…):
A little noticed federal lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, is uncovering astonishing evidence of an entrenched censorship scheme cooked up between the federal government and Big Tech that would make Communist China proud.
So far, 67 officials or agencies — including the FBI — have been accused in the lawsuit of violating the First Amendment by pressuring Facebook, Twitter and Google to censor users for alleged misinformation or disinformation.
Victims of the Biden-Big Tech’s “censorship enterprise” include The Post, whose Hunter Biden laptop exposé was suppressed by Facebook and then Twitter in October 2020 after the FBI went to Facebook warning them with great specificity to watch out for a “dump” of Russian disinformation, pertaining to Joe Biden, with an uncanny resemblance to our stories.
“We allege that top-ranking Biden administration officials colluded with those social media companies to suppress speech about the Hunter Biden laptop story, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks, and election integrity,” is how the lawsuit was summarized by the intrepid Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is leading the action.
2. I almost cannot believe this Associated Press story – and yet it is neither shocking nor surprising. It just is what it is:
One handshake, one hug and one selfie at a time. If President Joe Biden could greet every American this way, longtime allies say, his approval ratings would soar….
Aides say the 79-year-old has perfected his selfie arm, the products of which are widely shared on social media….
“He outlasts us,” White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon told The Associated Press of Biden’s penchant for spending 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes longer shaking hands.
“He’s going to take as much time as he wants,” added Stephen Goepfert, Biden’s former personal aide, or “body man….”
“He just instinctually knows how to show up for what that person needs in whatever way that is,” said O’Malley Dillon….
“It just truly is who he is,” said O’Malley Dillon. “He’s been in many of the shoes that the American people are in.”
If you are a Blue Team reader, please try to understand how my Red readers will receive that AP story…..
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A few things here:
* Kudos to the Biden adviser who thought to rename “fundraisers” as “receptions.”
* Another weekend in Delaware.
* Rallies, where are the rallies?
*
The only debates in what could end up being two of the biggest elections of the year: Oz versus Fetterman and Hochul versus Zeldin (which was agreed to Sunday night).
Per the Washington Post:
The U.S. economy is expected to have grown robustly in a sharp rebound from the first half of the year, but most Americans are unlikely to notice anything about the turnaround.
Persistent inflation continues to weigh heavily on both economic growth and household budgets, and has become a key flash point ahead of the midterm elections. A strong reading on the next gross domestic product report, scheduled to be released Thursday, would be welcome news for Democrats, who have been struggling to convince voters they have a plan to contain rising prices and put the economy on more stable footing.
Although the newest numbers are likely to look like improvements on paper, economists say they don’t reflect major changes in the economy, which could be headed for a recession in the next year.
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*
The Arizona Republic:
Republican candidate for Arizona governor Kari Lake touted her plans to secure the border, expand trade skills training for high schoolers and reform elections in a 30-minute televised interview on Sunday.
The interview, filmed Saturday at the studios of AZTV7 in Phoenix, was the culmination of weeks of back-and forth-over whether Arizona's two gubernatorial candidates, Lake and Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs, would meet on a debate stage.
Hobbs has refused to do so, and Lake has not let voters forget — bringing up the issue in the first minute of her interview, saying Hobbs "was not courageous enough to show up."
Instead of a debate, Lake fielded questions from Mike Broomhead, a conservative commentator who hosts a show on Phoenix talk radio station KTAR. He opened by asking about elections, saying it was the topic most people asked about in questions submitted to the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, which sponsors the two-decade-old debate series….
Lake has not answered a question from The Arizona Republic since late July.
Essential reading:
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* Trump versus DeSantis, as it plays out in the Colorado Senate race:
* Trump versus DeSantis, as it plays out in the NFL (via the New York Times):
Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl champion, has for years been the subject of public affection from former President Donald J. Trump.
But according to Tim Michels, the Republican nominee for Wisconsin governor, Mr. Brady is now on texting terms with another Republican seen as a White House contender: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Mr. DeSantis attended a Green Bay Packers football game last month and spent part of the game texting with Mr. Brady, according to Mr. Michels, who hosted the Florida governor in Green Bay and told supporters in Wisconsin last week about their time together. Mr. Brady first expressed support for Mr. Trump in 2015, when he was quarterback of the New England Patriots. He signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020.
“I took Governor DeSantis to the Packer game at Lambeau Field,” Mr. Michels told a gathering of the Lake Country Patriots, a far-right group, on Thursday at a brewery in Oconomowoc, Wis. The New York Times was denied entry to the publicly advertised event, but obtained a recording of Mr. Michels’s remarks.
Mr. DeSantis, who on the day of the Packers game had appeared at a rally for Mr. Michels and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, “had never been to Lambeau Field before and he wanted to go,” Mr. Michels said. “We’re sitting there, you know, we’re watching the game and all of a sudden, I look over and he’s texting and he says, ‘How do you spell Lambeau?’”
Mr. Michels continued: “I say, ‘Who are you texting with?’ He says, ‘I’m texting with Tom Brady.’ The governor of Florida gets to text with Tom Brady.”
Mr. Michels added, “I’m hoping that when I’m governor of Wisconsin, I can text Aaron Rodgers,” the longtime Packers quarterback.
What Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Brady were discussing by text, beyond the governor’s location at that moment, remains a mystery. Representatives for Mr. Brady did not respond to requests for comment. A DeSantis spokeswoman declined to comment.
* Not worth the paper it is printed on (and it wasn’t printed on paper):
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If you didn’t watch the Phillies beat the Padres, you probably don’t know that the Phillies are one of those teams of destiny. Unless you are a lifelong Astros fan, you should be rooting for the Philadelphia in the World Series.
