the DON JONES INDEX…

 

 

GAINS POSTED in GREEN

LOSSES POSTED in RED

 

  10/8/22...      14,990.82

  10/1/22...      14,944.25

   6/27/13…     15,000.00

 

 

(THE DOW JONES INDEX:  10/8/22… 29,296.79; 10/1/22… 29,131.57; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

 

 

LESSON for October 8, 2022 – “POLL VAULTING!”

 

Midterm elections are now less than a month away. 

Since the One Six, and coast to coast attempted legal (and illegal) coups, certain down-ballot offices have become almost as important as the Governorships, Senate and Congressional races.  Some of the downballot races (from State Secretaries of State all the way down to local officials who either monitor or appoint monitors to promulgate ruls that will either help or hinder the dwindling but still potent election-denial militants who have had their fill of democracy and strive for something stronger, something like Mussolini might have advocated.  Discipline.  Or maybe like something that Vladimir Putin has (or, perhaps now, had) in mind for Ukrainians... submission, slavery or, well, replacement.

Post-democratic solutions to the gnarly problems of money, race and power will be propounded during the 2022 campaign... usually obliquely, sometimes overtly.  For this Lesson, we’ll focus on the numbers of the Federal upballot contests... Senators, Congresspersons and the such as hoovered up by Wikipedia from assorted pollsters and trollster, ranging from the Cook Political Report to Fox News as of October 4th.  (There are nine sources for the Gubernatorial races, seven for Senators, all of which rated the potential margin of victory on a scale of zero... and, in one case, below zero to a maximum of three.  Our pointspread-sheet is attached below as Attachment One.)  Next week the state and local races from the Governors, in thirty five states, to the downballoteers... and the implications of a few more or less hidden faces that keep the system jukin’... as well as a few of the most egregious campaigns and propaganda.

And, of course, the money.

Pollsters and pundits, prophets and profiteering special interests have more or less consensed that there are only a few “flappable” Senate races as might reaffirm or overturn the fifty – fifty deadlock that, with Vice President Kamala Harris as tiebreaker, constitutes a Democratic majority (if and when they can hold it, depending on the vagaries of Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin).  Essentially, most of the hotly debated and disputed issues in America... economy and war, abortion and crime, baseball and Ballantine... boil down to partisan loyalties (to the agenda, if not only the person) of President Joseph Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Neither man commands the absolute loyalty of the Senate and Congressional partisans, but, for the sake of appealing either to the Trump base (the G.O.P.) or the necessity of preventing President Joe from diving off the deep end of the neo-liberal board into the waters of wokeness and Socialism (the donkeys), otherwise good and decent persons, Christians, even and self-designated humanitarians are compelled to say and do things in order to get things down, even if the consequences may lie in wait for their terms and then reach out and bite them.

And now, as with football, the weather turning colder and the day of reckoning approaching nearer – biting season is just around the corner.

Politico (a journal and website by an agglomeration of... well... political animals – not the statesmen and women themselves, but a ragged legion of hangers-on, reporters and consultants and academics who make a living off those who make their livings off the taxpayers) cast the widest net of influence; identifying ten Senatoria contests as the closest (and, thus, most publicizable) races in these 2022 midterms, which, in most cases, will be decided on November 8th. 

Or perhaps later... a few days in the really tight throwdowns, longer where the rules and regulations require a fifty percent plus one majority or a rematch ensues between the top finishers.

Politico’s “Ten Most Wanted”, appearing early tomorrow morning but included in our findings today (see Attachment Two) promulgates a list of suspect races in places, where the committed and curious will be following in thirty days.  These fortunate states are:

Arizona

Colorado

Florida

Georgia

Nevada

New Hampshire

North Carolina

Ohio

Pennsylvania

and... last but not least...

Wisconsin

 

Other internal organs of profit and politics pick and choose from among this lot, and the most critical races theorized at and upon... according to Politico and competitors like Cook, Five Thirty Eight, Real Clear Politics and a butcher’s dozen of surveys (some as tilt their findings left, others... Rasmussen, for example... elephant friendly; even a few as play straight) as well as independent pollsters working for print, broadcast and social media... from big boys like the New York Times, the networks, CNN and cable squawkers and talkers to lone wolf rants... tend to focus on about half of these, irregardless of bias.

 

For our purposes, six of these ten state Senatorial (Federal Senators, that is, most states have their own State Senate as are also elected by the people, some on November 8th, some later) contests have garnered the most analytical analyses – these being Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire and North Carolina... better luck later, pending developments.  There were some recent outliers: Politico itself elevated New Hampshire into its sweet six and dumped Ohio (October 3, Attachment Three), Cook listed only five of the above, also dropping Ohio from its gunsights (Attachment Four), People Magazine proffered views on Florida and North Carolina (October 6, Attachment Five), the Moony-right Washington Times determined that “Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin races are considered the closest Senate races — rated toss-ups by nonpartisan race analysts... (t)hese races could result in “razor-thin margins of victory” (September 30, Attachment Six). 

 

Each state in which a Senatoral abutment at the seat of power has its own flock of media ravens... local rags, for the most part, the occasional big city or big market pronouncers... but, as the political stars rise and set with their own regularity according to the pollsters whose determinations comprised Attachment One contend, well over half these elections will be blowouts – barring any October (or November) surprise short of nuclear war, a 1929-ish economic crash, or the knocked-off-course little Dimorphos asteroid charting a new sunward death spiral whose orbit intersects the Earth’s.

What factors affect the competitiveness of these races?  Well... race, itself, for one thing; also demographics writ large, history and prejudices, faith and culture and gerrymandering (at the Congressional level... see the ongoing RCP poll of pollings as of October 5, Attachment Seven); culminating in the sort of queasy inertia as makes the Don Joneses of the voting public pull their lever (or insert their key cards) for the same party and, often, the same candidate year after year after year.

Unless the stench arising out of a contest is so overpowering that they’d rather stay home and huff  gasoline (if they can afford it).

 

So let’s have at it at: first, our six wild card states... then, the issues that are on Don Joneses’ minds (at least until November 8th).

 

THE POTENTIAL “FLIP-IT” STATES...

Philip Eliot of Time Magazine fingered “Five Senate Races That Will Test Trump’s Influence and Determine Control of Washington” and tossed off a popcorn ball of respect to a usual villain.

“There are a lot of ways to describe Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,” Eliot euphamized. “Gaffe-prone is not one of them.

“So when the top Republican in the Senate told reporters that it’s more likely that his party takes the House than his chamber in November’s elections,” much of Washington paid attention to his classically understated warning. “Senate races are just different. They’re statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell said ominously on Aug. 18.

Eliot’s D.C. Brief singled out five Senate races that “lay bare in spectacular fashion how contests that once looked ripe for Republican successes may instead turn rotten for the GOP, due in large measure to the party’s inability to block problematic candidates endorsed by ex-President Donald Trump.”

Sorry, cheeseheads.  

Ohio: The Trump Convert

In the bitterly competitive contest among Ohio GOP Senate hopefuls for Trump’s endorsement, the 45th President eventually chose an ex-NeverTrumper—a choice that will test the thesis that the former Apprentice host is an all-powerful kingmaker inside the party. As J.D. Vance told TIME’s Molly Ball: “I’m not just a flip-flopper, I’m a flip-flop-flipper on Trump.” He trashed Trump for years, but when it looked like Trump’s support could be helpful, he toned it down and praised Trump’s version of the truth. And in an early test of his potency post-White House, Trump helped Vance emerge victorious with the Republican nomination.

Now, the Hillbilly Elegy author and venture capitalist is locked in a tight race against Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan for the seat being vacated early next year by Sen. Rob Portman.

Vance has the advantage in the polls, although in fundraising Ryan has been lapping him. While the official campaigns give Ryan a 7-to-1 money advantage, much of the Vance operation has been outsourced; while both candidates have had about $13 million in attack ads run against them, Ryan has had just a little under $1 million in supportive ads at his back, while Vance has seen $13 million in outside ad spending to prop him up, according to fundraising reports. Having mega-donor Peter Thiel as a pal certainly has its perks for Vance in a race that already has seen more than $100 million in outside spending, according to ad agencies. Having McConnell-aligned groups book $28 million helps, too.

The Vance-Ryan race is a curious one to watch, as Ryan is testing a theory that a version of Bidenism can still have resonance in the Midwest. His first ad can only be described as anti-China. He’s leaning heavily on unions, which still have sway in the state. And his populism is along the lines of Ohio’s incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has proven successful at winning campaigns as a happy warrior fighting for workers.

Then there’s this reality: Ohioans may have twice voted for Trump, but many did so more on a feeling than any actual policies. In a way, Ryan shares workers’ frustration and grievance of being left behind, but he’s not angry about it. That posture was the thesis of Hillbilly Elegy, which is why so many—including McConnell—thought Vance would have been an attractive candidate. But then he did the full-pivot to Trumpism, which may end up costing him support among independents and traditional Republicans. Just ask former Portman chief of staff John Bridgeland and legislative director Jonathan Petuchowski; they’re both working to elect Ryan.

Pennsylvania: The TV Doc

It’s hard to imagine a Trumpier move than nominating a celebrity TV doctor who may or may not even live in the state. Yet that is exactly what Pennsylvania Republicans did when they picked Dr. Mehmet Oz, who prevailed in the primary by fewer than 1,000 votes over a former top official in the George W. Bush-era Treasury Department.

It was another early indicator of the power of Trump’s thumb on the scale of this cycle’s electorate. Too few Republicans took it as a warning that they could be fielding first-time nominees who haven’t been through the grind of a campaign. As the campaign hits its final march toward Election Day, plenty of consultants are second-guessing that decision.

Oz struggled, even with his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, away from the trail to recover from a stroke in May. Oz and his campaign have preferred to question Fetterman’s health rather than keeping the focus on Fetterman’s progressive policies like reducing prison populations. Conservative pundits have seemed obsessed with Fetterman’s tattoos and preference for hooded sweatshirts, yet again a dismissive detour from substance.

For his part, Fetterman successfully leveraged his social media footprint to hit back at Oz. His campaign was merciless in mocking Oz’s trip to a grocery store for crudité. This week, his campaign tossed on its social channels a video comparing a quack doctor on The Simpsons with Oz, who has faced serious questions about his credentials. Meanwhile, Fetterman’s campaign has touted the Lieutenant Governor’s record on criminal justice.

The race has tightened as Election Day has gotten closer. Polls show Fetterman’s lead shrinking; some are within the margin of error. Since 1992, a Republican nominee for president has carried the state just once—Trump in 2016 over Hillary Clinton. But Pennsylvania is a complicated state: seven times in that window, have voters elected or re-elected Republicans to the Senate. Smart strategists in both parties are calling this one a coin toss, an outcome that could well come down to dumb luck more than either candidates’ promises or airtime.

Arizona: The Moviegoer

The official story behind Trump’s endorsement of Blake Masters is that he is the strongest believer that the ex-President actually won Arizona in 2020. Unofficially, the truth is probably closer to this: Masters showed up at Mar-a-Lago in May for a screening of a conspiracy theory -based film about election fraud that has been widely debunked.

As TIME’s Eric Cortellessa reports, Arizona was seen as a prime pick-up opportunity for Republicans, who had counted on Sen. Mark Kelly to be an easy candidate to cast as out-of-touch with the proudly quirky state with decidedly Trumpy tendencies. Immigration was supposed to be the issue that tanked Kelly. But the former astronaut proved a killer fundraiser , raising $52 million and banking almost $25 million, according to his July report. Masters, a venture capitalist, raised $5 million and had $1.5 million on hand, according to his September report.

Masters, meanwhile, also has a spotty record that includes calling the gender pay gap a liberal fantasy, opposing the United States’ involvement in World War II while in college at Stanford, and more recently calling for a national abortion ban, before walking it back. Republicans fret that these were exactly the kinds of errors that should have been part of Trump’s vetting of candidates, but were secondary to the ex-reality star’s own gut or ego. Already, McConnell’s super PAC abandoned the state and withdrew millions of dollars in ads as Kelly has maintained a persistent lead.

The candidates are set to meet on Thursday for their debate. It’s a safe bet plenty of staffers here in Washington will be watching closely—with their media buyers ready to boost or pull whatever reserved ad time is left on the books.

Nevada: The Golden Boy

On paper, Nevada GOP Senate nominee Adam Laxalt matched all of Trump’s criteria: an election denier who led the effort in Nevada to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. He thinks prosecutors are too aggressive in chasing members of the Jan. 6, 2021, mob at the Capitol. He comes from a long line of Nevada politicians, had won a statewide race before, and served as the state’s attorney general.

Plus, he was way ahead in the polls, and Trump doesn’t mess with losers.

These days, the polls are much closer, though even the Senate Democrats’ chairman of their official election arm has warned Nevada is one of two very real risks for loss. (The other, Georgia, comes next, so keep reading.)

There remains, however, an obvious problem for Laxalt: money. The Democratic incumbent, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, had raised close to $30 million through the end of July, according to her last public filing, while Laxalt’s updated filing showed he had raised more than $7 million in early September. Laxalt’s $2 million cash on hand doesn’t buy many ads, which explains why outside groups have spent at least $26 million to promote him or to oppose Cortez Masto.

The Latino vote in Nevada will play a key role in this race. Democrats have a broader problem with Latino and Hispanic voters, but Cortez Masto, the first and only Latina elected to the Senate, has a built-in affinity and ground game with the community. During a recent visit to a seafood restaurant in Las Vegas, we watched as she was greeted in a Latino-owned business as an old friend. And, in a surprising deviation among Latino voters, polling suggests a community long-assumed to be conservative on abortion doesn’t much care for the recent moves against abortion rights.

Still, immigration and the economy are areas where Republicans think they can make inroads, especially among Latino voters. Also, some $2 million in Spanish-language ads are heading to Nevada airwaves from an anti-spending outside group, an outlay the Club For Growth claims is the biggest bucket of advertising aimed at Hispanics from any GOP group this cycle.

Republicans now see Nevada and Georgia as their path to the majority. But Democrats aren’t ready to write off Nevada’s seat that’s been in their party’s hands since former Sen. Paul Laxalt—grandfather of the current nominee—retired in 1987, and is the former foothold of former Majority Leader Harry Reid, who died last year. For veterans of Reid’s orbit, this one is personal.

Georgia: The Predicted Problem

For months, Republicans in Washington have groaned that their path back to a majority may hinge on a former football star-turned-first-time candidate avoiding a fumble. They were not optimistic, even as Herschel Walker rocketed in polls, cleared the field of potential rivals, and in May roared to a primary victory by 55 points.

Trump is a big Walker booster—after all, Walker was a contestant on Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice. Most Republican leaders, including McConnell, fell in line despite their doubts in pursuit of a majority.

But Walker and his campaign committed a cardinal sin in politics: knowing there’s a bad story that can break at any time and betting it doesn’t. The latest was a Daily Beast report that Walker impregnated a woman and then paid for her abortion—which could be an issue even without Walker’s near-absolute opposition to abortion rights. As proof, The Daily Beast examined a get-well card and a check deposit, interviewed the woman and protected her anonymity, and corroborated the story with a friend who was told about the events contemporaneously. Walker’s campaign has denied the report, and the Republican Party and its organs have rallied around him.

The Daily Beast abortion story is hardly the only damaging story to come out about Walker. There were reports of business shadiness, falsified biographies, bogus charities, secret kids , allegations of assault, stalking, pointing a gun at a woman… At this point, anything seems plausible for a candidate who misled his own campaign about his past.

It’s too soon to know if or how the news might reshape the Senate race in Georgia, where Walker faces incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock. Despite a constant drumbeat of bad stories about Walker, his support appears to have a floor that correlates to partisan identity. So far, no dodgy comment or eye-raising history seems to shake Republicans’ affinity for their party’s choice. Georgia may be changing, but it’s still a Southern state.

Republicans and their allies have dumped $66 million on ads, McConnell’s super PAC has another $20 million teed up, and the official campaign arm of Senate Republicans released a statement sticking with Walker after The Daily Beast’s abortion story. (Democrats and their allies have already spent $76 million on the race.)

GOP consultants still think the race is winnable. After all, Georgia is a runoff state; any candidate needs more than 50% to win, meaning this could well be heading to a Dec. 6 runoff. Once again, control of the Senate may be decided by the winner of an exceedingly close race in Georgia.

Elliott further emphasized that the “national mood is iffy at best, facing a coin toss for which party will emerge victorious this election season.”  Polls show both parties are competitive in key races, the money race is an afterthought, and airwaves are backfilled with super PACs’ spending when the candidates themselves forget to dial for dollars. And enthusiasm among voters is high... unless the ugliness of campaigns drive Don Jones away from the polls... even if the motivators for each party to head to the polls are as different as can be.

“Still,” Elliott muses, “elections are not national affairs. Each hamlet of roughly 700,000 Americans gets to pick its representative to the U.S. House, a few miles can separate a liberal stronghold in Washington state and a libertarian foothold in Idaho, and deep-blue Illinois and hard-red Indiana share a border. Anyone predicting a huge wave election would do well to consider this: a rising tide may lift all boats, but only if all boats are of the same size. And, to put it mildly, not all candidates or contests this midterm season are even in the same swimming pool. Localities matter in politics, and this year is a prime example of how just a few miles can make all the difference.

A running theme throughout is how the national mood may be completely irrelevant to each race and what makes sauce for one office may not make sausage for another. After all, Elliott forecasts, voters in Ohio may well split their ticket and support Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and Democratic Senate hopeful Tim Ryan with the same ballot. It is looking more and more like New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Sen. Maggie Hassan could each be taking victory laps at respective GOP and Democratic headquarters this fall. And Oregon could find its first Republican governor since 1975.

And then there is Georgia...

“This political moment is one that feels oddly uneasy, but that’s not inherently a bad thing. Predictable politics make for a weak democracy. The partisans who are treating November as a fait accompli are missing the undercurrents in parochial races, where highly qualified candidates have already fallen to lesser rivals. While voting is underway in a handful of places already, the political landscape is still a live one, and the outcomes are far from settled.”

See more at Time, October 4th.

Some of the other political intelligence (and whatever word you choose to represent its opposite) on the shady six states comes from...

Arizona

Incumbent Mark Kelly (D), Blake Masters (R), and Marc Victor (L) are running in the general election for one of Arizona's U.S. Senate seats on November 8, 2022.

Kelly took office in December 2020 following a special election in November 2020. Before joining Congress, he served as a U.S. Navy pilot and a NASA astronaut. He and his wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), founded Americans for Responsible Solutions (now known as Giffords) in 2013.

Masters is a venture capitalist. He became president of the Thiel Foundation in 2015 and served as COO of Thiel Capital from 2018 to 2022. Masters' campaign website said he was running "because the same old establishment politicians and the same old establishment candidates have failed us. (Ballotpedia, Attachment Eight)

 

Georgia

 

Although other pollsters disagree, the comfortably conservative (but denialist denializing) Wednesday’s Forbes Magazine (Attachment Nine) alleged that Georgia’s Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has opened up a 12-point lead against his Republican challenger Herschel Walker, according to a SurveyUSA poll released that morning amid mounting scandals accusing Walker, a staunch anti-abortion candidate, of paying for his girlfriend’s abortion in 2009 and not providing for his four children.

Disclosures heightening Walker’s history of mental illness (perhaps a consequence of concussions undiagnosed or ignored at the time of his football glory), his violent attacks against relatives, strangers and threats to shoot others, including policemen, have become so numerous that it has become an article of faith for Republican politicians to mouth platititudes about change and forgiveness and God to defend, such as they can, a candidate whose only qualification was anointment by Saint Djonald,

Nonetheless, the accusations showered upon him by Christian Walker... one of his four known, legitimate children... cannot be ignored.

Google some of the Christianity urls like these:

https://people.com/politics/herschel-walkers-son-christian-breaks-ties-with-father-amid-senate-run/

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3676143-christian-walker-to-his-father-wear-a-condom/

https://abc7.com/christian-walker-herschel-paid-for-abortion-daily-beast/12299986/

 

It may well be that Walker is as close as five points to incumbent Rafael Warnock.  For the time being, it seems that anti-abortion religious-right-to-lifers, when pressed, will contend that it is all a mirage being fostered upon America and especially Georgia by deep state conspirators.

More than a few alleged political experts now say that, rather than vote for a pro-life hypocrite or a damned, devil-dancing warlock like Warnock, they’ll just stay home.  (This prospect alarms Gov. Kemp, who holds a comfortable but not insurmountable lead in his second go-round with Stacey Abrams, nor is comfort afforded the many down-balloteers who need a strong turnout to prevail.)

Mathematical sorts say that Republicans stand a good chance of taking over the Senate if Herschel can somehow evade the tackling of the Democratic squad and sprint to the end zone this election.  But a loss would seriously dampen those chances.

 

Nevada

 

Speculating that the gambling state could be “Senate Republicans’ Ace In The Hole”, Five Thirty Eight’s prime prognosticator Nate Silver contends that a Silver State victory by Adam Laxalt, a Republican and scion of a powerful Nevada family over Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez-Masto could provide that all-important “flip” that will give the G.O.P. Senatorial veto power over the despised President Joe.  (Attachment Ten)

Barack Obama carried the state by a whopping 12.5 percentage points in 2008, and, Silver notes, “Democrats have won the state in every presidential election since.”  Nevada’s senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, are both Democrats, as is its governor, Steve Sisolak, and three of its four U.S. representatives.

So, Nevada is usually a pretty reliable state for Democrats, right? Well, not so fast. Cortez Masto, up for reelection this year, is narrowly trailing in the polling average against her Republican opponent, Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general.1 Our forecast has this race at about as close to 50/50 odds as it gets. 

The math is fairly simple. If Democrats pick up a seat in Pennsylvania, where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is favored to win, Republicans will need two pickups to gain control of the Senate, and Nevada and Georgia are the easiest targets. If Fetterman loses, they’ll need one of the two.

Noting that “narrow Democratic wins are punctuated by big losses”, Silver contends that Nevada “isn’t a great fit for the new Democratic coalition.”

Paired together as tipping-point states this year, Nevada and Georgia are moving in opposite directions.

Georgia has a sizable share of Black voters and a multiethnic coalition of increasingly college-educated voters in Atlanta and its suburbs. The Black vote there has held up relatively well for Democrats, and they’ve been gaining ground with college-educated professionals in almost every election. Nevada does have a considerable share of Hispanic and Asian American voters, but they are often working-class — subgroups that Democrats have increasingly struggled with in recent years.

Indeed, Silver concludes, “this may be a race where Democrats need the turnout edge because the other dynamics of the campaign don’t work in their favor.” Though he’s an election denier who served as one of then-President Donald Trump’s Nevada campaign chairs in 2020, Laxalt has a relatively traditional resume as the state’s former attorney general and, although abortion is a strong issue for Cortez Masto in a relatively irreligious state like Nevada, voters in the Silver State, like most elsewhere, rank the economy as their top issue.

And in a state that was hit hard by the housing bubble and that relies on highly cyclical industries like the casino business, which suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nevada is, as they say, “in play.”

 

Ohio

 

Esteemed and best-selling author J. D. Vance (“Hillbilly Elegy”) has found the transition from fiction to fact somewhat inelegant. (See Attachment Ten)

People Magazine contends that the Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance has become “one of the most controversial figures in the 2022 midterm elections, propelled to the spotlight due to his name recognition as the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir turned divisive Oscar-nominated film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.”

Vance has routinely made headlines in what People calls head-scratching comments about things like abortion, the war in Ukraine, and staying in abusive marriages. Once a critic of Donald Trump, he came full circle to earn the former president's endorsement, an important get for candidates on the outer reaches of the Republican Party.

To get to D.C., though, Vance will have to go through Democratic candidate Tim Ryan, a longtime House representative who briefly ran for president in 2020 before withdrawing from the primary race and endorsing Biden. Ryan — an outspoken critic of how members of the GOP reacted to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots — has held a lead over Vance in the polls for most of the year, but only by a smidge... People puts the deficit at 1.6 points.

NBC, for its part, published an expose, citing cheap donkeys as the reason why this race is close.  (See Attachment Eleven)

Although the Republican, “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, has struggled to raise money, national groups have propped up his campaign by pouring in more than $30 million worth of advertising.

Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, has been a more prolific fundraiser. But because national Democratic groups have provided comparatively little help on the airwaves, Ryan has had to spend cash as fast as it comes in just to keep up with the GOP onslaught.

The lopsided funding has unnerved Democrats in Ohio and across the country, according to interviews with a dozen party leaders and operatives. Many worry that Democrats will regret not doing more to try to pull Ryan ahead of Vance, a right-wing ally of former President Donald Trump.

“Tim Ryan is running the best Senate race in the country and having to do it all by his lonesome,” said Irene Lin, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist who managed Tom Nelson’s Senate primary campaign in Wisconsin this year. “If we lose this race by a few points, and the Senate majority, blame should squarely fall on the D.C. forces who unfairly wrote off Ohio.”

Another Democratic operative who is closely watching the race was blunt when asked about the lack of Democratic funding. 

“It’s malpractice,” said the operative, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

In an interview with NBC News after a campaign appearance Saturday in Cleveland, Ryan sounded resigned to going it alone.

 

Pennsylvania

 

Polls show a tightening race between Republican celebrity television doctor Mehmet Oz and Democrat Lt. Governor John Fetterman. Despite suffering a stroke in May and not publicly campaigning for several months, Fetterman has remained ahead in most polls.  (See WTM, Attachment Twelve)

Five polls conducted between mid-August and mid-September all showed Fetterman with a five-point lead. The largest lead Fetterman has seen was an 18-point lead in an August poll sponsored by Pittsburgh Works Together and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies.

Polls in late September have shown the race even closer than the late Summer/early Fall results.

WHTM/Emerson College Polling/The Hill’s poll released at the end of September of 1,000 likely Pennsylvania voters, Fetterman led Oz 44.6% to 42.6% with a +/-3% margin of error. Third-party candidates received 5% and 7.9% were undecided.

 

Wisconsin

 

Until late September, polls widely suggested that Wisconsin's Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes would unseat a prominent Trump ally, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. More recently, Johnson has taken the lead, although the pollsters at 538 smashed the state for not providing enough polls.

According to the FiveThirtyEight midterm model, the existing polls are a bullish sign for Barnes. In fact, based only on polling (as represented by the “Lite” version of our forecast), Barnes has a 60-in-100 chance of winning the election. (See Attachment Thirteen)

Many pollsters may be steering clear of Wisconsin this year because the Badger State has given them plenty of heartburn in recent elections. For example, in the 2020 presidential election, the average poll gave Joe Biden an 8.4-percentage-point lead in Wisconsin; he won by only 0.6 points. But the thing is, just because polls missed in a particular direction in one election doesn’t necessarily mean they will miss in the same direction in the next. 

Of course, as pollsters, 538 might be prejudiced…

Barnes, only 35, has already had a successful political career, but running as a Black man in a state that is 87% white, he has been subject to attack ads that supporters are calling racist, darkening his skin tone and calling him "different" and "dangerous."

Barnes' momentum in the race was stunted when Johnson, 67, began moving the conversation away from hot-button issues like abortion and instead framing the election as a matter of keeping Wisconsinites safe, accusing Barnes of being a candidate who would allow crime to run rampant (Barnes supported the elimination of cash bonds in a move he said would keep criminals from buying their way out of jail; Republicans say it lets criminals run free).

As the incumbent, Sen. Johnson entered the race with the upper-hand, and it appears he has reclaimed it. Still, a race as close as his reinforces how split Wisconsin's values are, and may be a testament to the unpopularity of pushing 2020 election lies on behalf of Trump.  (People Magazine, Attachment Five)

 

...and: WHAT THE VOTERS ARE WORRIED ABOUT...

 

Economy

 

“America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, is trying to strike a delicate balance: It has to take steps to slow down the economy to bring inflation under control — but it wants to do so without causing a severe recession,” according to German Lopez of the New York Times (10/5, Attachment Fourteen).

The predicament is unusual for a government agency. Typically, public officials talk about stimulating the economy and creating more jobs.

 

The Fed is trying to do the opposite. Under its dual mandate from Congress, the Fed tries to keep unemployment low and prices relatively stable. Yet those two goals are sometimes in conflict: A strong economy can lead to more jobs but quickly rising prices, while a sluggish economy can lead to fewer jobs but slower price increases. The Fed aims to balance those extremes.

But as the Fed has moved to slow down the economy, some experts have worried that it’s going too far, risking unnecessary economic pain. The Fed’s defenders, meanwhile, say the central bank is acting wisely — and may even need to go further than it has to tame rising prices.

 

 

Some experts worry the Fed will not wait long enough to see the full effects of its previous actions before it takes more aggressive steps. That could lead to more harm to the economy than necessary. “The risk that the Fed is moving too slowly to contain inflation has declined, while the risk that high interest rates will cause severe economic damage has gone up — a lot,” Paul Krugman, the economist and Times columnist, wrote last week.

By acting aggressively now, the Fed hopes to avoid such harsh measures — and, Lopez adds, hopefully, produce a “soft landing” that reduces inflation without wrecking the economy.

 

The central bank’s record suggests it can reduces inflation without wrecking the economy., Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman, argued in The Wall Street Journal. The Fed achieved a soft landing or came close in six of 11 attempts over the past six decades. “Landing the economy softly is a tall order, but success is not unthinkable,” Blinder wrote.

Turmoil in financial markets and growing evidence of stress elsewhere are, you might think, just the normal signs of a bear market and a coming recession. But, as the Economist reported, they also mark the painful emergence of a new regime in the world economy—a shift that may be as consequential as the rise of Keynesianism after the second world war, and the pivot to free markets and globalisation in the 1990s. “The era of economic placidity in the 2010s is over.”

The immediate fear is of a blow-up, as a financial system that has become habituated to low rates wakes up to the soaring cost of borrowing. But look further ahead and the fundamental trends in the 2020s and 2030s are for bigger government (as spending rises on health care, defence and energy infrastructure) with still-low real interest rates (as ageing populations in rich countries accumulate excess savings). That poses an acute dilemma for central banks. Should they ditch their 2% inflation targets and raise them to, say, 4%? A brave new world of somewhat higher government spending, and somewhat higher inflation, would present both opportunities and dangers. It is time to start weighing them, and their implications for citizens and businesses.

 

Abortion

 

Top tenner Arizona failed to make the flip it squad, but Time’s Ellioty pointed out the importance of abortion in the Western version of the Sunshine State.

“The unknown in Arizona is how much the return of a near-total 1864 abortion ban—made possible by the fall of Roe in June—will matter to voters. MAGAlicious Lake has praised the Old West-era law and has promised to beef up the state’s anti-abortion policy as governor, while also promising to protect contraception and to hold fathers accountable. Polling shows abortion rights a powerful force, with 91% of Arizonans saying a total ban on abortion is too much.

“That’s where the Democratic nominee comes in. Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state and a former social worker, has made abortion rights and defending democracy from Big Lie-style shenanigans central to her campaign, although some Democrats worry she is being too cautious. Others are tepid on her, given her slow recognition of systemic racism, including the clumsy handling of the 2015 firing of a Black woman on her staff in the state senate.”

The Los Angeles Times calls abortion the one “wild card” in that the  Supreme Court’s June decision reversing Roe vs. Wade after nearly 50 years will animate young voters and female voters who don’t usually make it to the polls. “We’ll see,” they parse.

And People Magazine places abortion front and center in Nevada.  Cortez Masto, the first Latina elected to U.S. Senate, wants to make crystal clear to voters that a vote for Laxalt is a vote to criminalize abortion nationwide. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, Americans across the political spectrum have flocked to the polls in support of Democrats — prioritizing reproductive rights over party preference — and the incumbent knows that her pro-choice values are her greatest asset.

“The tight race between Cortez Masto and Laxalt reflects Nevada's division. For middle-of-the-road voters who are equally passionate about abortion rights and inflation,” People steals a dodge from the L.A. times, above, “the choice is unclear.”

Or perhaps not.

Just how important is the issue of abortion?

Very according to a September 29 article sponsored by the Brookings Institute.  (See Attachment Fifteen)

“The reason is that in politics, intensity matters. Unlike every other issue pollsters ask about, abortion and the broader questions it raises about reproductive health are central to the existence of 51.1% of the population in a way that no other issue in politics is or has ever been.”

And there are more women than men in America—167,500,000 women compared to 164,380,000 men.

But more importantly, women vote more often than men—in the 2020 presidential election, women constituted 52% of the electorate compared to 48% for men.

 

Foreign Affairs

 

Russia \

 

Time’s roving reporter Peter Pomerantsev roamed through Ukraine, interviewing local journalists, officials and ordinary citizens – all of whom come to the same conclution: Russia wants to lock their country into its own cellar and commence with more atrocities (Attachment Sixteen, October 4th).  It wants to drag Europe down there too, to return us to a world where bullying states humiliate small ones—a world we thought had passed. It’s using energy to blackmail and break Europe and make the free world kiss its boots. It uses nuclear threats to bring back the nightmares of the Cold War: Putin wants a cheaper, nastier remake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As Anton Barbashin, a political analyst and editor of Riddle, noted as he watched Putin’s surreal speech announcing the annexation of parts of Eastern Ukraine on September 30, Putin was trying to return the world to the 1970s: the USSR is on par with America; Moscow controls half of Europe. Until we learn to fight back with the spirit of Ukrainians we will risk losing our future, too.

“It’s striking how little mention of the future there is in the Kremlin’s propaganda. There’s only vengeance, warped nostalgia for the USSR, a mythic, cruel “Russian World”—and resentment. The Russian project has failed, so the aim now is to bring everyone down to its own level, drag all down to its cellar. “How dare you live so well” read a piece of graffiti scrawled by Russian soldiers in the suburbs of Kyiv.”

And this morning, Ukraine gave the maniac in Moscow an undesired 70th birth day present.

This morning, “in circumstances that are still unclear,” according to the Guardian U.K., a huge explosion rocked the Kerch bridge, collapsing part of the road carriageway into the Kerch Strait below and setting fire to fuel tankers on a train crossing the second railway span of the bridge.  (Attachment Seventeen)

The enormous significance of the damage to the bridge, obliquely claimed by a senior adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, will become clear in the coming hours and days – not least whether Moscow feels compelled to retaliate for the attack. How Moscow responds is the big question, but one that had been looming ever more powerfully as Ukraine has successfully pressed its counteroffensive in recent weeks amid mounting disquiet among Russian elites and commentators over the conduct of Putin’s war.

In April, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and prime minister, and currently deputy chair of the Security Council of Russia, said: “One of the Ukrainian generals talked about the need to strike at the Crimean Bridge. I hope he understands what the retaliatory target will be.”

At the very least, opined the Brits, “it is a huge propaganda victory for Kyiv that will be held up as a sign that not only is it unafraid of Putin’s nuclear threats but that it believes it is winning the war.

 

Italy

Good morning, advises a kindly David Leonhardt of the New York Times. (10/5, Attachment Eighteen) “We look at Italy, the largest country in western Europe to elect a far-right government in decades.”

Amidst war in Ukraine, the economy... which is worse in many parts of Europe than here... the contradictions upon depending on Russian gas, the usual cultural, ethnic and income equality... have voters angry.  In Italy as in the United States.

 

Italy, the world’s eighth-largest economy, elected a far-right government last week, with Giorgia Meloni as the likely next prime minister. It’s part of a trend: Her victory came shortly after Swedish elections that led to a far-right party becoming the second-largest in Parliament there.

Meloni, Leonhardt concludes, may be trying to hoodwink Italians with moderate stances on gays (no marriage, but no criminalization either), abortion and a democratic system of governing well to the left of, say, Victor Orban in Hungary... let alone Putin or Xi.

Upon that (and the viability of NATO, the EU and other umbrella acadamies... Meloni has been a full-throated supporter of Ukraine, Leonhard contends, “but her coalition partners have sounded like Russia apologists” and asks: “What happens now?”

 

 

Armageddon

 

The US president made his most outspoken remarks to date about the threat of nuclear war, at a Democratic fundraiser in New York, saying it was the closest the world had come to nuclear catastrophe for sixty years.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” Thursday’s Guardian U.K. reported.  (See Attachment Nineteen)

“We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” Biden said, referring to the Russian president. “He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

Earlier on Thursday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin understood that the “world will never forgive” a Russian nuclear strike.

What world?

 

Identity (including race, age, gender, religion, social and economic status, geograph and, of course, politics)

 

Of the above, the ethnic divide seems to offer the most promise for weaponization ever since Donald Trump shifted the hopes and fears of the bottom 80% of Don Joneses from class war to race war.

Unless other conflicts emerge and overturn America... nuclear war, of course, climate change, a full-on depression (not recession), hand to hand, knife to throat race riots as may escalate to full-on genocidal war may be only a white cop shooting a black kid or a vigilante gang hanging Latino migrants from Trump’s Beautiful Wall away.  The natives... well, at least those from Europe and Africa, Asia perhaps too... are bored and angry and restless and itching to strike out at somebody, anybody, as the nation slides into an agglomeration of road ragers, victims and vindicators, purge fanatics and the like.

Inklings of coming conflict could be gleaned from a black, left-wing GUK editorial and reports of a white-makes-right speech this week.

“Whiteness poses the greatest threat to US democracy,” editorialized Steve Phillips, a (presumably black) Briton )@check) who advises the U.K., U.S.A. and the world that “People forget that championing whiteness is what makes Trump powerful,” (using the present tense in the expectation that King Djonald will ride in at the head of a legion of Proud Keeper, Oath Boys and no-longer-backing-off Boogaloo butchers and reclaim his birthright.

“After stirring the racial resentment pot, his popularity took off,” Phillips reminds us, citing the contention that historian Taylor Branch (“Caste”) noted: people saying “they wouldn’t stand for being a minority in their own country”. He went on to add, “the real question would be if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?”

As leads to the trending “white replacement” theory and its antithesis... replacing the replaces, by violence, if necessary.  (See Attachment Twenty)

And as every action leads to a reaction, former Auburn football coach turned Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville trailed Donald Trump to the podium at his October 8th rally in Nevada and, like many a fabled rock and roll opener, proceeded to blow the headliner off the stage with a blistering defense of... well... as well innumerable cunningly coded “are’s” and given the restoration of the ancien regime in 2024, “will be’s.”

Positing the fruits of robbery, rape and murder as revenues justified by history, “(Black people) want reparation because they think the people who do the crime are owed that,” Tuberville said as the crowd cheered behind him. “Bullshit!” he added.

 

Crime

 

Thus, hand-in-gauntlet with race, goes the issue of crime... its causes, effects and political (and racial) weaponization.

For two years, Democrats railed against our men and women in blue, no less an authority than Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee alleged in the Nixonian holdover, cult-created, alt-alt-right Washington Times declared. (See October 3rd, Attachment Twenty Two)  “They backed the defund-the-police movement. They championed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals back on the streets. And they’ve turned a blind eye to the crisis on our southern border. All of this has led to a surge in violent crime and dangerous drugs in our communities.” 

“In Pennsylvania, the Democratic-run cities Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are experiencing dramatic crime waves and a spike in murders fueled by radical policies that Democrats like Senate candidate John Fetterman have supported.” Mr. Fetterman, the WashTimes alleges, worked to release multiple first-degree murderers, including one who referred to himself as “a son of the devil.”

Anybody who still hoped that mainstream Republicans could hold the fort against the onslaught of dictator-loving... well, let’s call them semi-Fascists... needs to have their head cracked open and examined.  Which the New Regime would be itching to do.

 

There is a history of candidates relying on racist tropes when warning of rising crime rates. During the 1988 presidential campaign, supporters of George H.W. Bush released the so-called Willie Horton ad that has become one of the most prominent examples of race-baiting in politics.

In this year’s elections, contends PBS (Attachment Twenty Three) “Republicans often blame crime on criminal justice reforms adopted after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, including changes to bail laws that critics had long contended disproportionately impacted communities of color, along with accusations that Democrats have not been sufficiently supportive of law enforcement.”

In Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee for Senate, heart surgeon-turned-TV talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz, has toured the state holding “safe streets” forums in Black communities.

Asked by a reporter about his focus on crime, Oz pointed to a conversation he had with Black Republican ward leaders in Philadelphia that turned from economic issues to struggling Black-owned businesses.

“The African Americans in the group said, ‘Well, the deep problem is … people don’t feel safe,” Oz said in an interview.

 

Disease (and Health, in general)

 

According to TIME, experts are worried that COVID-19 case counts may rise in the U.S. in the coming weeks. But there’s also another. To help forecast COVID-19 rates for the U.S., experts often look to Europe—and the data there aren’t promising. More than 1.5 million COVID-19 diagnoses were reported across Europe during the week ending Oct. 2, about 8% more than the prior week, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest global situation report, published Oct. 5. More than 400,000 of those diagnoses came from Germany, and almost 265,000 came from France.

Arrianna Marie Planey, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health has been encouraging people she knows to get boosted and making sure they know about tools like Evusheld (a vaccine alternative for people who are immunocompromised or unable to get their shots) and the antiviral drug Paxlovid. She says she’d like to see more urgency from the government, including stronger communication about the need to get boosted and a continued push for those who haven’t been vaccinated at all to get their primary shots.

The problem, says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota , is getting people to actually heed those warnings. Many polls show that Americans are ready to leave the pandemic behind, even if the virus continues to spread and mutate in the future.

That leaves public-health experts with the frustrating job of repeating the same advice they’ve given for the last several years, to an increasingly detached audience. “There’s no joy in saying, ‘I told you so,’” Planey says, “because people are sick and dying.”

And that brings back the aggravating and occasionally violent arguments over masks, vaxxes and social distancing.  Each party will blame the other should an outbreak break out before November, and what the ultimate result will be is unknown.  All that is known is that Don Jones will be angrier and on edge when he (or the distaff Joneses) go to the polls.

 

Candidate Viability (and, yes, this wobbles back to you, Donald Trump!)

Occasionally, hesitantly, stated among RINO circles is the lament that... thanks to the success of the entertainer Trump in 2016... ideologically right-minded but inexperienced celebrities have been nominated to key races, even Senatorships.

Time’s Elliott (Attahment Twenty Five) highlighted Trump’s support, which helped get the nominees onto November’s ballots—your latest reminder both of Trump’s power inside the party and his destructive influence on the Establishment’s best-laid plans—as witness the elevation of a TV doctor, a football player and a fiction writer to nominations.  Add onto these the innumerable conspiracy theorists, denialists and dangerous lunatics in downballot races and you have... well... a tragedy, if they lose and a catastrophe if they win.

And the liberal Huffington Post interviewed Clinton’s dark eminence, the Bayou rattlesnake himself, James Carville, who scoffed at the Republicans “very low-quality candidates” in the 2022 midterm elections.  (Attachment Twenty Six)

 

Speaking of stupid, we attach the peanut galleries on the right... the WashTimes... and on the left... HuffPost

Who’s calling whom stupid?

 

 

October 1st – October 7th, 2022

 

 

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Dow:  28,725.51

 

 

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  And also Jimmy Carter’s 98th birthday.  And, also, National Mental Health Month.  And... withal... National Depression Month.  (Watch out, Economy and Democrats!)

   Having had his fill of Florida, Ian heads north along the coast as a post-tropical storm (that will eventually strengthen back into a Cat. 1 hurricane.  Search, rescue and recovery teams get to work.  The death toll stands at 33, but many more are missing and costs are yet to be been computed.  President Joe says he will go to Puerto Rico (post-Fiona) and the area of worst Ianic damage south of Tampa to look at the damage and, survivors hope, bring the Federal checkbook.  Speculators speculate over whether he and Gov. Ron deSantis will be able to work together and tame spokesanimals keep repeating that natural disasters are no place for politics.  Mediots are on the ground and prowling for human interest stories, findin a perhaps politicized Floridian who says: “People work all their lives to get a little sliver of something, and now it’s all gone.”

   Russia, still losing on the battlefield, kidnaps Ukrainian nuclear scientists and leave not only Zaporizhazha but other facilities abandoned and vulnerable to meltdown.  As Mad Vlad and NATO point fingers over the Nordstrom gas pipeline sabotage, Putin accuses the U.S. of Satanism and TV Gen. Ganyard says odds on a nuclear holocaust are up from 10% to 25%.  TV Gen. Petraus advocates admitting Ukraine into NATO and predicts any resulting nuclear war will be “graduated”.

   Inflation, untamed, causes a terrible week for stocks as the Dow grovels in a Bear Market.  Supply chain oddities still causing shortages, but Nike suddenly has too many shoes, so holiday discounts loom.

 

 

 

Sunday, October 2, 2022

Dow: Closed

 

 

Back to hurricane status, Ian batters the Jersey shore with wind and rain while announcers announce that the death toll is 72 (all but four in Florida), utilities are kaput and estimated damages are $60B.  Governor (and potential 2024 candidate) deSantis laments “...being without power is a real drag.”

   With hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing the country, Mad Vlad annexes Ukrainian provinces that his troops are being evicted from, like the city of Lyman.  In America, liberals compare his plight to the mass migration of Jews from Hitler; MAGA to that of century old Russians fleeing Bolshevism.  Secret negotiations to free Britney Griner still secretly stalled, but President Joe does cut a deal to exchange seven Americans (mostly oil executives) for two “narco nephews” of Venezuela’s First Lady.  Sen. Marco (R-Fl) is apopleptic. 

   More disclosures reveal not only Trump but assorted underlings also filched confidential documents that should have gone to the National Archives.  Djonald Unrepentant holds a rally in Wisconsin, trains his anger on Mitchy McC. who, with his Chinese wife (Trump’s former TranSec) conspired to betray America.  G.O.P. moderates flog themselves for “hitching our stars to his wagon.”

 

 

 

Monday, October 3, 2022

Dow:  29,490.89

 

 

The Supremes... with incoming Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson... launch a new term full of complicated cases involving abortion, race, voting rights etc.; but first, everybody gets their picture taken.

   Florida, especially Lee County between Naples and Ft. Myers and the offshore islands, still has 600,000 powerless, cell phone service is out, water is out, key roads and bridges are out.  The commercial shrimping fleet has been demolished and the death toll is up to 83.

   Oil is, coincidentally, up to $83 a barrel, but the Fed’s backtracking on raising interest rates and inflation be damned gives stocks their best day in seven years.  Housekeeping begins at the One Six Inquisition with the trial of five Oath Keepers for sedition, FIFA addresses soccer riots in Indonesia and complaints of sexual harassment and assaults from youth soccer to professional teams.  And fishy doings hit competitive fishing when medal-winning catches are found to have metal balls amidst their  

   In the Ukraine, partisans keep pushing the Russians back and are poised to recapture the key port city of Kherson.  Pope Francis tells Bad Vlad: “Begone!” while India and China back away from the maniac.  The National Security Council’s John Kirby on Sunday’s talkshows says we have to take Putin’s “irresponsible” nuclear threats seriously, while NoKo, enraged at being ignored and at U.S./SoKo military exercises, shoots a missile over the Japanese mainland.

 

 

 

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Dow:  30,316.32

 

 

 

 

 

Post-hurricane recovery slow in Florida and Puerto Rico.  Ian’s death toll rises to 103, 440,000 still powerless.  President Joe visits disaster sites, makes promises.  Where the water isn’t... East Africa, of course, and now drought is striking Nebraska – threatening crops and starting fires.

   Gen. Ganyard, back again, predicts that if Putin loses the Crimea, he will either be deposed or create an Armageddon; other commentators say that his political strategy is being undercut by his military strategy.  Iran blames America for riots over its “morality police” murders, goes shopping for NoKo nukes. 

   Police in San Bernardino, CA kill daughter of fugitive they also killed in shootout.  Farther north, a serial killer (or killers) are targeting Hispanic men in Stockton and trials begin for Texas man accused of killing 22 elderly.  Kim Kardashian fined $1.35M for fraudulent crypto testimonials and the SEC vows to crack down on paid celebrity endorsements and “random influencers”.  Watch out, Matt Damon! 

   RIP country icon Loretta Lynn.  (She’d be cancelled and trolled if she expressed pride in being a “Coal Miner’s Daughter” today.

 

 

 

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Dow:  30,273.11

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s World Teachers’ Day.

And... Coffee with a Cop Day.

   Cops and teachers, parents too, gripped by fear as the DEA warns that Halloween Harmdoers will give out fentanyl “candy” and kill millions of kids.  Hocus Pocus!  Dr. Fauci, tho’, says that all Hallowee candy is unhealthy and what scares him, he’s asked: “Children coming to my door and breathing on me.”  (He also fears that a new vaxx-proof plague variant will arrive.)

   MTG has the fear too... electric cars that will emasculate American men.  Emasculator-in-Chief Elon changes his mind and agrees to buy Twitter, reinstant Djonald UnPosted, promote Trump and Putin and develop “X” (the everything app). 

   Odd couple President Joe and Ronaldo of the Saints form the odd couple for a good cause, facilitating the rescue and recovery of Florida as Ian blows off into history,  And history is made as Albert Pujols hits his 62nd home run, becoming the all time leader, except for a few druggies.

 

 

 

Thursday, October 6, 2022

 Dow:  29,926.24

 

 

 

 

 

In a smaller but also inspirational swats, retiring Oakland catcher Steve Vogt homers in his last at bat. Jaime Jarrin retires as Dodgers’ Spanish broadcaster also retires... after 64 years.  6,500 pot smokers are pardoned by President Joe, Amazon, after announcing a freeze on new employees, hires 150,000 holidary temps and U.S. forces terminate not one but two... one, two!... ISIS leaders in Syria.

   That’s the good news.  The bad... especially for Democrats... is that the Saudis collaborate with Russia to raise oil prices after assuring Biden they wouldn’t.  A Federal court wakes up Dreamers, sending legalization up to SCOTUS where horrors lurk.  Ukrainian houses of horrors multiply as Russians are evicted... mass graves and boxes of tortured teeth... and a not-so-Proud Boy rats out his comrades in One Six Trial.

   And there’s plenty of violence.  Mass shooter kills 36 (24 being small children) at Thai day care center.  Another pre-Halloween goblin in Vegas, a misogynistic illegal alien, wields his blade, stabbing 8 showgirls, killing two.  A Gotham, crazy cop car chase crash crushes ten pedestrians, the missing family of four in California (including 8-month old) is found slaughtered and academicall inclined murderers snuff out a Professor at the U. of Arizona and a student at Purdue as the student loan forgiveness scheme is overrun by scammers. 

 

 

 

Friday, October 7, 2022

Dow:  29,296,79

 

 

 

National Faith in Blue week begins, putting our faith in God and the cops.

   Woke police announce and euphamystic media report arrest of a social media threatener against “a certain ethnic group” and shows a photo of his post with a Confederate flag and his mugshot.  He’s black.  Twitter accuses the MuskRat of “mischief and deceit” while MAGAfaithers protest “Spookly the anti-bullying square pumpkin” as “Satanic” and an animal rights protester sues the cruel and carnivorous L.A. Rams after being tackled by players for running onfield spraying mystery pink gas, proven harmless. Up north, in trendy, gentrified Frisco, “Dogue” promotes $75 luxury means... for dogs.

   A stronger jobs report (but not at Pelaton, which cuts 500) means that unemployment (index above) drops, which means the Fed will take more aggressive inflation fighting and interest rates, which mean credit card bills will go up and stocks fall 600+ (but still close higher than last week’s bad week Dow).  CD interest rates even crawl up to about half of mortgage rates.  Fun to be a banker!

   MLB postseason Series aspirants chosen and Nobel Prizes being doled out.

   Newscaster Vlad Dutier gets it (Covid, remember?).  So does Ringo Starr – and has to cancel his tour.

   And... oh yes... President Joe declaims that the world faces Armageddon for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 while his HHS, coincidentally, orders 290M radiation sickness doses.

 

 

 

In the most volatile week in years... perhaps in the history of the Don (we’ll look it up for next Lesson)... some indices were way, way up, others were way, way down.  In the end, the advances in employment (as may prompt further Fed Reserve action) and the balance of trade pushed the Don back to almost where it was when we started in 2013.

 

 

 

THE DON JONES INDEX

 

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

 

See a further explanation of categories here…

 

ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)

CATEGORY

VALUE

BASE

RESULTS

SCORE

OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS

 

INCOME

(24%)

6/17/13 & 1/1/22

LAST

CHANGE

NEXT

SOURCE

 

Wages (hrly. per cap)

9%

1350 points

10/1/22

+0.36

10/15/22

1,387.14

1,392.13

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages   27.45 67  77

 

Median Inc. (yearly)

4%

600

10/1/22

+0.025

10/15/22

605.62

605.77

http://www.usdebtclock.org/   35,941 952 36,041 050

 

Unempl. (BLS – in mi)

4%

600

10/1/22

+5.71

10/15/22

616.25

651.46

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/  3.7% nc 3.5

 

Official (DC – in mi)

2%

300

10/1/22

-9.50

10/15/22

316.45

286.38

http://www.usdebtclock.org/      5,897 886  6,504

 

Unofficl. (DC – in mi)

2%

300

10/1/22

-5.09

10/15/22

286.75

272.14

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    10,929 917 11,503

 

Workforce Particip.

   Number

   Percent

2%

300

10/1/22

-0.19

10/15/22

299.78

299.72

In 158,713 787  Out  99,337 452 Total: 258,050 239

 

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 61.50 2.30

 

WP %  (ycharts)*

1%

150

9/22

+0.16

10/15/22

150.48

150.72

https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate  62.30

 

 

OUTGO

15%

 

 

 

 

 

Total Inflation

7%

1050

9/22

+1.3%

10/15/22

1010.64

1010.64

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +1.3

 

Food

2%

300

9/22

+1.0%

10/15/22

286.15

286.15

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +1.0

 

Gasoline

2%

300

9/22

+11.2%

10/15/22

238.50

238.50

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +11.2

 

Medical Costs

2%

300

9/22

+0.7%

10/15/22

292.28

292.28

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.7

 

Shelter

2%

300

9/22

+0.6%

10/15/22

291.99

291.99

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.6

 

 

WEALTH

6%

 

 

 

 

 

Dow Jones Index

2%

300

10/1/22

-0.57%             

10/15/22

254.26

233.43

https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/   31,899.29 29,131.57  29,296.79

−630.15 (2.11%)today

 

Home (Sales)

(Valuation)

1%

1%

150

150

10/1/22

-6.25%              -6.37%             

10/15/22

154.06

309.58

144.43

289.86

https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics

Sales (M):  5.12  4.80 Valuations (K):  416.0  389.5

 

Debt (Personal)

2%

300

10/1/22

+1.70%

10/15/22

289.99

284.68

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    70,292 388 71,602

 

 

 

 

 

 

NATIONAL

(10%)

 

 

 

 

 

Revenue (trilns.)

2%

300

10/1/22

+11.10%

10/15/22

353.61

392.85

debtclock.org/       4,398 407 4,895

 

Expenditures (tr.)

2%

300

10/1/22

+0.47%

10/15/22

342.60

344.20

debtclock.org/       6,098 012 5,987

 

National Debt tr.)

3%

450

10/1/22

+1.65%

10/15/22

440.77

433.51

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    30,598 615 1,128 

 

Aggregate Debt (tr.)

3%

450

10/1/22

+0.79%

10/15/22

434.70

431.29

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    91,563 725 2,451

 

 

 

 

GLOBAL

(5%)

 

 

 

 

 

Foreign Debt (tr.)

2%

300

10/1/22

+0.81%

10/15/22

325.37

328.02

http://www.usdebtclock.org/   7,541 550 489

 

Exports (in billions)

1%

150

10/1/22

+1.17%

10/22

163.02

164.93

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html  255.9 258.9

 

Imports (bl.)

1%

150

10/1/22

+5.60%

10/22

158.89

167.79

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html  341.4 323.3

 

Trade Deficit (bl.)

1%

150

10/1/22

+26.85%

10/22

237.64

301.46

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html   85.5 67.4

 

 

 

ACTS of MAN

12%

 

 

 

World Affairs

3%

450

10/1/22

+0.4%

10/15/22

458.07

459.90

U.S. prisoner swap with Venezuela, 2 of theirs for 7 of ours.  The votes are still being counted in Brazil as many wonder... if Jaire Bolsonaro loses, will he mount a coup?  Germans play “hide the bratwurst” over the gas pipeline from Russia

 

Terrorism

2%

300

10/1/22

+0.7%

10/15/22

296.90

298.98

After kidnapping Uke nuke scientists and leaving behind bodies of the tortured dead in graves and basements, Sad Vlad gets more accusations of war crimes, his bridge to Crimea blown up and scolding Pope Francis tells him to go away.  He doesn’t.  Nor does neglected NoKo’s Kim, shooting off rockets and welcoming callers... Iran, looking to buy nukes after blaming America for protests against his murderous “morality police”.  U.S. troops, unashamed, liquidate two more ISIS bossesi in Syria.

 

Politics

3%

450

10/1/22

  -0.5%

10/15/22

470.18

467.83

As President Joe visits Puerto Rico and Florida, Congress kicks the can to keep the government running – then OPEC kicks it back with production cuts that sends prices at the pump thry the roof.  National Archivers says Trump copycats were and are still stealing documents.

 

Economics

3%

450

10/1/22

  -0.3%

10/15/22

435.33

434.02

Inflation closes out a “terrible month” for stocks, then they rise again on Fed losing zeal on raising interest rates... then the Dow goes Down Again on OPEC doublcross.  Supply chain wobbles all over – Nike has too many shoes, spook stores lack pumpkins.  Amazon freezes hiring Wed., hires 150,000 holiday temps Thurs.

 

Crime

1%

150

10/1/22

  -0.4%

10/15/22

284.55

283.41

Stockton Ca. serial killer wastes five; more active and/or random shooters and stabbers go on sprees from Thailand to Vegas (see esp. Thursday above) to Arizona and Purdue Universities to the subways of New York.  Mad Daddy pours a pot of boiling water over his daughter.  Rampant shoplifting causes Rite Aid to lock up their merch, causing clerks to loudly declaim: “You want me to unlock a box of tampons?” 

 

ACTS of GOD

(6%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Environment/Weather

3%

450

10/1/22

  +0.2%

10/15/22

440.71

441.59

Summer hangs on in droughty, fiery West as far as Nebraska, but fall falls by the wayside and the Midwest moves straight into winter with cold and snow from New Mexico to Michigan. But summer hangs on for a few days in the East and no more big storms loom... Hurricane Julia stays south in Central America.

 

Disasters

3%

450

10/1/22

-0.4%

10/15/22

437.86

436.11

Ian, after ravaging Florida, swipes at Charleston and then parks off the Jersey Shore.  Soccer stadium riot kills 174.  Vehicle overturning in India takes out 25, while 85 migrants are found in a Texas truck... alive.  General Petraus raises chances of nuclear holocaust from ten to 25%.  President Joe agrees.

 

LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX

(15%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Science, Tech, Educ.

4%

600

10/1/22

nc

10/15/22

617.90

617.90

Busy busy Elon Musk buys Twitter after all, says he’s a fan of Trump and Putin; then invents Optimus, a humanoid robot.  Feds authorize mucho $ for installing electric charging stations to service Tesla.  Uh... 

 

Equality (econ/social)

4%

600

10/1/22

nc

10/15/22

590.79

590.79

The Donald at Wisconsin rally says Mitchy deals with... uh oh!... Chinese and has a Chinese wife, “Coco” Chao (Trump’s former TranSec.   Rogue Repubs blame themselves for “hitching our stars to his wagon.”  Women’s soccer sex abuse scandals stretch from the youth leagues to the professionals.

 

Health

4%

600

10/1/22

-0.2%

10/15/22

487.93

486.95

NFL concussion scandals provoke firing of inept doctors.  Other, presumably eptic Docs declare eating anything after 6 PM WILL KILL YOU! Disagreeing doctors say nay, septic household clutter will chop years off your life.  FDA greenlights OTC hearing aids as HHS Czar Becerra underscores President Joe’s imminence of nuke war by ordering 290M antiseptic anti-radiation pills.

 

Freedom and Justice

3%

450

10/1/22

+0.3%

10/15/22

452.64

454.00

Liberals say that Ginni Thomas damages credibility of SCOTUS (as it begins new term with KBJ as minority... double meaning... Justice).  Chinese billionaire gets Minn. rape charges dropped as do 6,500 pardoned pot smokers while a Proud Boy seeks mercy for ratting out four comrades.  Busy season for the lawyers: Kim Kardashian slandered as a “random influencer”, pays fine for crypto fraud.  Alex Baldwin settles civil shooting suit, prosecutor still pursuing criminal charges.  Djonald UnLibeled sues CNN for half a bil, swats off Inquisitors in DC, NY and GA while one of his appointed judges charges Biden (Hunter) on drugs, guns and tax crimes.

 

 

MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX

 

 

(7%)

 

 

 

 

Cultural incidents

3%

450

10/1/22

nc

10/15/22

468.42

468.42

MLB playoffs begin after Aaron Judge hits 62nd season, Albert Pujols hits 700th career while retiring Oakland catcher Steve Vogt homers in last at bat.  Inspirational!  FIFA, football and women’s soccer deal with assorted scandals after over a hundred die in Indonesian soccer riot (see “health” and “equality” above).  With Just Jaekin off to porno hell, or heaven, he finds company in Kitten Natividad (“Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens”).  Also RIP to Oscar protester Sacheen Littlefeather, Yankees’ Hector Lopez, comedienne Judy Tenuta and coal miners’ daughter Loretta Lynn.

 

Misc. incidents

4%

450

10/1/22

-0.1%

10/15/22

464.21

463.28

Prize fisherman busted for stuffing fish with lead balls to up their weight and win prizes.  Alaska holds Fat Bear elections with winners to be announced October 11th.  Nobel Prizes start to trickle in.  After Ebola embargo cancels vacations in Uganda, Conde Naste proclaims Portugal #1 world travel destination and Charleston to be the U.S. top choice.  Then, Ian pays a visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Don Jones Index for the week of October 1st through October 7th, 2022 was UP 56.40 points

 

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator.  The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

 

 

ATTACHMENT ONE – From assorted polls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

State

Governor

Aspirant(s)

Cook Quo.

Poll Q 

Score

Incumbent Senator

Aspirant(s) 

(from Wiki)

Cook Q

Poll Q 

Score

Congress

 

 

 

·          

 

 

 

 

·          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

·          

 

 

 

 

·          

 

 

 

 

 

X1

Alabama

Kay Ivey (R)

·         Jimmy Blake (L)[10]

·         Yolanda Flowers (D)[10]

·         Kay Ivey (R)[10]

R+15

59.5% R

3.0

Richard Shelby (R)  (retiring)

·         Will Boyd (D)[22]

·         Katie Britt (R)[22]

·         John Sophocleus (L)[23]

R+15

64.0% R

 

3.0

Rep 6–1

 

X2

Alaska

Mike Dunleavy (R)

·         Mike Dunleavy (R)[11]

·          Les Gara (D)[11]

·          Charlie Pierce (R)[11]

·          Bill Walker (I)[11]

R+8

51.4% R

2.0

Lisa Murkowski (R)

·         Patricia Chesbro (D)[24]

·         Buzz Kelley (R)[24]

·         Lisa Murkowski (R)[24]

·         Kelly Tshibaka (R)[24]

R+8

44.4% R

 

3.0

Dem 1–0

 

X3

Arizona

Doug Ducey 

(term-limited)

·          Katie Hobbs (D)[12]

·          Kari Lake (R)[12]

R+2

56.0% R

0.0

Mark Kelly (D)

·         Mark Kelly (D)[25]

·         Blake Masters (R)[25]

·         Marc Victor (L)[25]

R+2

51.2% D
(2020 spec.)[i]

 

1.0

Dem 5–4

 

X4

Arkansas

Asa Hutchinson (term-limited)

·          Ricky Harrington (L)[13]

·          Sarah H Sanders (R)[13]

·          Chris Jones (D)[13]

R+16

65.3% R

3.0

 

John Boozman (R)

·         John Boozman (R)[26]

·         Kenneth Cates (L)[26]

·         Natalie James (D)[26]

R+16

59.8% R

 

 

3.0

Rep 4–0

 

X5

California

Gavin Newsom

(D)

·          Brian Dahle (R)[14]

·          Gavin Newsom (D)[14]

D+13

61.9% D

3.0

Alex Padilla (D)

·         Mark Meuser (R)[19]

·         Alex Padilla (D)[19]

D+13

Appointed
(2021)[j]

3.0

Dem 42–11

 

X6

Colorado

Jared Polis (D)

·          Paul Fiorino (Unity)[15]

·          Heidi Ganahl (R)[15]

·          Danielle Neuschwanger (Con.)[15]

·          Jared Polis (D)[15]

·          Kevin Ruskusky (L)[15]

D+4

53.4% D

2.3

Michael Bennet (D)

·         Frank Atwood (App. Voting)[27]

·         Michael Bennet (D)[27]

·         TJ Cole (Unity)[27]

·         Joe O'Dea (R)[27]

·         Brian Peotter (L)[27]

D+4

50.0% D

 

 

1.6

Dem 4–3

 

X7

Connecticut

Ned Lamont (D)

·          Michelle Bicking (G)[16]

·          Ned Lamont (D)[17]

·          Bob Stefanowski (R)[17]

D+7

49.4% D

2.0

Richard Blumenthal (D)

·         Richard Blumenthal (D)[28]

·         Leora Levy (R)[28]

D+7

63.2% D

 

2.7

Dem 5–0

 

X8

Delaware

No Contest

 

 

 

No Contest

 

 

Dem 1–0

 

X9 

Florida

Ron DeSantis (R)

·         Charlie Crist (D)[18]

·         Ron DeSantis (R)[18]

·         Carmen Gimenez (I)[18]

·         Hector Roos (L)[18]

R+3

49.6% R

1.9

 

 

Marco Rubio (R)

·         Val Demings (D)[29]

·         Steven B. Grant (I)[29]

·         Dennis Misigoy (L)[29]

·         Tuan Nguyen (I)[29]

·         Marco Rubio (R)[29]

R+3

52.0% R

 

 

1.4

Rep 16–11

 

X10

Georgia

Brian Kemp (R)

·          Stacey Abrams (D)[19]

·          Shane Hazel (L)[19]

·          Brian Kemp (R)[19]

R+3

50.2% R

1.1

Raphael Warnock (D)

·         Chase Oliver (L)[30]

·         Herschel Walker (R)[30]

·         Raphael Warnock (D)[30]

R+3

51.0% D
(2021 sp. runoff)[k]

3.0

Rep 8–6

 

X11

Hawaii

David Ige 

(term-limited)

·         Duke Aiona (R)[20]

·          Josh Green (D)[20]

D+14

62.7% D

3.0

Brian Schatz (D)

·         Feena Bonoan (L)[31]

·         Dan Decker (Aloha Aina)[31]

·         Bob McDermott (R)[31]

·         Emma Pohlman (G)[31]

·         Brian Schatz (D)[31]

D+14

73.6% D

 

 

 

3.0

Dem 2–0

 

X12

Idaho

Brad Little (R)

·         Ammon Bundy (I)[21]

Chantyrose Davison (C)[21]

·          Stephen Heidt (D)[21]

·          Brad Little (R)[21]

·          Paul Sand (L)[21]

R+18

59.8% R

3.0

Mike Crapo (R)

·         Scott Cleveland (I)[32]

·         Mike Crapo (R)[32]

·         David Roth (D)[32]

·         Idaho Sierra Law (L)[32]

·         Ray Writz (C)[32]

R+18

66.1% R

 

 

3.0

Rep 2–0

 

X13

Illinois

J. B. Pritzker

·         Darren Bailey (R)[22]

·          J. B. Pritzker (D)[22]

·          Scott Schluter (L)[23]

D+7

54.5% D

2.7

Tammy Duckworth (D)

·         Tammy Duckworth (D)[33]

·         Kathy Salvi (R)[33]

D+7

54.9% D

 

3.0

Dem 13–5

 

X14

Indiana

No Contest

 

 

 

Todd Young (R)

·         Thomas McDermott (D)[34]

·         James Sceniak (L)[34]

·         Todd Young (R)[34]

R+11

52.1% R

 

3.0

Rep 7–2

 

X15

Iowa

Kim Reynolds (R)

·         Deidre DeJear (D)[24]

·         Kim Reynolds (R)[24]

·         Rick Stewart (L)[24]

R+6

50.3%R

2.9

Chuck Grassley (R)

·         Michael Franken (D)[35]

·         Chuck Grassley (R)[35]

R+6

60.1% R

 

2.9

Rep 3–1

 

X16

Kansas

Laura Kelly (D)

·         Seth Cordell (L)[25]

·         Dennis Pyle (I)[25]

·         Laura Kelly (D)[25]

·         Derek Schmidt (R)[25]

R+10

48.0% D

0.1

Jerry Moran (R)

·         David Graham (L)[36]

·         Mark Holland (D)[36]

·         Jerry Moran (R)[36]

R+10

62.2% R

 

 

3.0

Rep 3–1

 

X17

Kentucky

No Contest

 

 

 

Rand Paul (R)

·         Charles Booker (D)[37]

·         Rand Paul (R)[37]

R+16

57.3% R

 

2.9

Rep 5–1

 

X18

Louisiana

No Contest

·          

 

 

 

John Kennedy (R)

·         Beryl Billiot (I)[38]

·         Gary Chambers (D)[38]

·         Devin Graham (R)[38]

·         Xan John (I)[38]

·         John Kennedy (R)[38]

·         Thomas L. Olson (I)[38]

·         Bradley McMorris (I)[38]

·         Vinny Mendoza (D)[38]

·         Luke Mixon (D)[38]

·         Salvador Rodriguez (D)[38]

·         Aaron Sigler (L)[38]

·         Syrite Steib (D)[38]

Thomas Wenn (I)[38]

R+12

60.7% R

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.0

Rep 5–1

 

X19

Maine

Janet Mills (D)

·          Sam Hunkler (I)[26]

·          Paul LePage (R)[26]

·          Janet Mills (D)[26]

·          

D+2

50.9% D

0.9

No Contest

 

 

 

Dem 2–0

 

X20

Maryland

Larry Hogan (term limited)

·         Dan Cox (R)[27]

·         David Harding   (Working Class)[27]

·         David Lashar (L)[27]

·         Wes Moore (D)[27]

·         Nancy Wallace (G)[27]

D+14

55.4% R

2.6

Chris Van Hollen (D)

·         Chris Chaffee (R)[39]

Chris Van Hollen (D)[39]

D+14

60.9% D

 

3.0

Dem 7–1

 

X21

Massachusetts

Charlie Baker (retiring)

·         Geoff Diehl (R)[28]

·         Maura Healey (D)[28]

·         Kevin Reed (L)[28]

D+15

66.6% R

2.7

No Contest

 

 

 

Dem 9–0

 

X22

Michigan

Gretchen Whitmer

·         Donna Brandenburg (U.S. Taxpayers)[29]

·          Mary Buzuma (L)[29]

·          Tudor Dixon (R)[29]

·          Kevin Hogan (G)[29]

·          Daryl Simpson (Natural Law)[29]

·         Gretchen Whitmer (D)[29]

·          

R+1

53.3% D

1.4

No Contest

 

 

 

Split 7–7

 

X23

Minnesota

Tim Walz

·          James McCaskel (Legal Marijuana Now)[30]

·         Steve Patterson (GLC)[30]

·         Darrell Paulsen (GLC)[30]

·         Hugh McTavish (Independence-Alliance)[30]

·         Gabrielle Prosser (Socialist Workers)[30]

·         Tim Walz (DFL)[30]

D+1

53.8% D

1.4

No Contest

 

 

 

Split 4–4

 

X24

Mississippi

No Contest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rep 3–1

 

X25

Missouri

No Contest

Roy Blunt (R)

Retiring

Trudy B. Valentine (D)[41]

·         Jonathan Dine (L)[41]

·         Eric Schmitt (R)[41]

Paul Venable (Const.)[41]

R+10

49.2% R

 

 

2.8

Rep 6–2

 

X26

Montana

No Contest

No Contest

 

 

 

Rep 1–0

 

X27

Nebraska

Pete Ricketts (term limited)

·          Christine Drazan (R)[38]

·          Betsy Johnson (I)[38]

·          Tina Kotek (D)[38]

·          R. Leon Noble (L)[38]

·          Donice Smith (Con.)[38]

 

R+13

59.0% R

3.0

No Contest

 

 

 

Rep 3–0

 

X28

Nevada

Steve Sisolak

·         Austin Billings (I)[32]

·          Ed Bridges (I-Amer.)[32]

·          Brandon Davis (L)[32]

·          Joe Lombardo (R)[32]

·          Monique Richardson (I)[32]

 Steve Sisolak (D)[32]

R+1

49.4% D

0

 

Catherine Masto (D)

·         Catherine Masto (D)[42]

·         J. J. Destin (I)[42]

·         Adam Laxalt (R)[42]

·         Barry Linderman (I)[42]

·         Barry Rubinson (AI)[42]

·         Neil Scott (L)[42]

R+1

47.1% D

 

 

 

0

Dem 3–1

 

X29

New Hamp.

Chris Sununu (R)

Tom Sherman (D)[33]

Chris Sununu (R)[33]

D+1

65.1% R

2.7

 

Maggie Hassan (D)

·         Don Bolduc (R)[43]

·         Maggie Hassan (D)[43]

D+1

48.0% D

 

 

1.1

Dem 2–0

 

X30

New Jersey

No Contest

·          

 

 

 

No Contest

 

 

 

Dem 10–2

 

X31

New Mexico

Michelle L.. Grisham (D)

Karen Bedonie (L)[34]

Michelle Lujan Grisham (D)[34]

Mark Ronchetti (R)]

D+3

57.2% D

0.9

No Contest

 

 

 

Dem 2–1

 

X32

New York

Kathy Hochul (D)

·          Kathy Hochul (D)[35]

·          Lee Zeldin (R)[35]

D+10

59.6% D

2.7

 

 

 

 

Chuck Schumer (D)

·         Joe Pinion (R)[44]

·         Thomas Quiter (L)[44]

·         Diane Sare (LaRouche)[44]

·         Chuck Schumer (D)[44]

D+10

70.6% D

 

 

 

 

 

3.0

Dem 19–8

 

X33

N. Carolina

No Contest

·          

·          

 

 

 

Richard Burr

(Retiring)

·         Cheri Beasley (D)[46]

·         Shannon Bray (L)[46]

·         Ted Budd (R)[46]

·         Matthew Hoh (G)[46]

R+3

51.1% R

 

0.7

Rep 8–5

 

X34

N. Dakota

No Contest

 

 

 

John Hoeven (R)

·         Rick Becker (I)[47]

·         Katrina Christiansen (D–NP)[48]

·         John Hoeven (R)[48]

R+20

78.5% R

 

 

3.0

Rep 1–0

 

X35

Ohio

Mike DeWine

Mike DeWine (R)[36]

Nan Whaley (D)[36]

·         Niel Petersen (I)

·          

R+6

50.4% R

2.6

Split

Tim Ryan (D)

 

Rob Portman (R)

·         Eric Meiring (I)[50]

·         Sam Ronan (I)[51]

·         Tim Ryan (D)[52]

·         J. D. Vance (R)[52]

R+6

58.0% R

 

1.0

Rep 12–4

 

X36

Oklahoma

Kevin Stitt

Natalie Bruno (L)[37]

Joy Hofmeister (D)[37]

Kevin Stitt (R)[37]

Ervin Yen (I)[37]

 

R+20

54.3% R

2.6

 

James Lankford (R)

·         Kenneth Blevins (L)[20]

·         Michael Delaney (I)[20]

·         Madison Horn (D)[20]

·         James Lankford (R)[20]

R+20

67.7% R

 

3.0

Rep 5–0

 

Oklahoma (Special)

·          

 

 

 

Jim Inhofe (R)

Retiring

·         Kendra Horn (D)

·         Markwayne Mullin (R)

R+20

62.9% R
(2020)

3.0

 

 

X37

Oregon

Kate Brown 

(term-limited)

·         Christine Drazan (R)[38]

·         Betsy Johnson (I)[38]

·         Tina Kotek (D)[38]

·         R. Leon Noble (L)[38]

·         Donice Smith (C)[38]

 

D+6

50.1% D

0.1

Ron Wyden (D)

·         Chris Henry (Prog.)[53]

·         Jo Rae Perkins (R)[53]

·         Dan Pulju (Pac. G)[53]

·         Ron Wyden (D)[53]

D+6

56.6% D

3.0

Dem 4–1

 

X38

Pennsylvania

 Tom Wolf 

(term-limited)

·         Christina DiGiulio (G)[39]

·         Matt Hackenburg (L)[39]

·         Doug Mastriano (R)[39]

·         Josh Shapiro (D)[39]

·         Joe Soloski (Keystone)[39]

 

R+2

57.8% D

1.3

 

Pat Toomey (R)

Retiring

·         John Fetterman (D)[55]

·         Erik Gerhardt (L)[55]

·         Mehmet Oz (R)[55]

·         Everett Stern (I)[56]

·         Daniel Wassmer (Keystn.)[55]

·         Richard Weiss (G)[55]

R+2

48.8% R

-0.7

Split 9–9

 

X39

Rhode Island

Dan McKee (D)

·         Elijah Gizzarelli (L)[40]

·         Zachary Hurwitz (I)[40]

·         Ashley Kalus (R)[40]

·         Dan McKee (D)[40]

·         Paul Riana Jr. (I)[40]

 

D+8

52.6% D

2.4

No Contest

 

 

 

Dem 2–0

 

X40

S. Carolina

Henry McMaster (R)

·         Joe Cunningham (D)[41]

·         Henry McMaster (R)[41]

·         Bruce Reeves (L)[41]

 

R+8

54.0% R

3.0

 

Tim Scott (R)

·         Krystle Matthews (D)[57]

·         Tim Scott (R)[57]

R+8

60.6% R

3.0

Rep 6–1

 

X41

S. Dakota

Kristi Noem (R)

·         Kristi Noem (R)[42]

·         Tracey Quint (L)[42]

·         Jamie Smith (D)[42]

 

R+16

51.0% R

2.9

 

John Thune (R)

·         Brian Bengs (D)[58]

·         Tamara Lesnar (L)[58]

·         John Thune (R)[58]

R+16

71.8% R

 

3.0

Rep 1–0

 

X42

Tennessee

Bill Lee (R)

·         Constance Every (I)[43]

·         John Gentry (I)[43]

·         Bill Lee (R)[43]

·         Basil Marceaux (I)[43]

·         Jason Martin (D)[43]

·         Charles Morgan (I)[43]

·         Alfred O'Neil (I)[43]

·         Deborah Rouse (I)[43]

·         Michael Scantland (I)[43]

·         Rick Tyler (I)[43]

 

R+14

59.6% R

3.0

No Contest

 

 

 

Rep 7–2

 

X43

Texas

Greg Abbott (R)

·         Greg Abbott (R)[44]

·         Delilah Barrios (G)[44]

·         Beto O'Rourke (D)[44]

Mark Tippetts (L)[44]

R+5

55.8% R

2.1

No Contest

 

 

 

Rep 24–12

 

X44

Utah

 No Contest

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Lee (R)

·         James Hansen (L)[59]

·         Mike Lee (R)[59]

·         Evan McMullin (I)[59]

·         Tommy Williams (I American)[59]

R+13

68.2% R

 

 

2.3

Rep 4–0

 

X45

Vermont

 Phil Scott  (R)

·         Peter Duval (I)[45]

·         Kevin Hoyt (I)[45]

·         Bernard Peters (I)[45]

·         Phil Scott (R)[45]

Brenda Siegel (D)[45]

D+16

68.5% R

2.7

Patrick Leahy

(Retiring)

·         Mark Coester (I)[60]

·         Natasha Kohout (Grn. Mt.)[60]

·         Stephen Duke (I)[60]

·         Dawn Ellis (I)[60]

·         Cris Ericson (I)[60]

·         Gerald Malloy (R)[60]

·         Kerry Raheb (I)[60]

·         Peter Welch (D)[60]

D+16

61.3% D

 

 

 

 

2.9

Dem 1–0

 

X46

Virginia

No Contest

 

 

 

 

No Contest

 

 

 

Dem 7–4

 

X47

Washington

No Contest

 

 

 

 

Patty Murray (D)

·         Patty Murray (D)[61]

Tiffany Smiley (R)[61]

D+8

58.8% D

 

2.3

Dem 7–3

 

X48

W. Virginia

No Contest

 

 

 

 

No Contest

 

 

 

Rep 3–0

 

X49

Wisconsin

Tony Evers (D)

·         Joan Beglinger (I)[46]

·         Tony Evers (D)[46]

Tim Michels (R)[46]

R+2

49.5% D

0.1

Ron Johnson (R)

·         Mandela Barnes (D)[62]

·         Ron Johnson (R)[62]

 

R+2

50.2% R

 

0.7

Rep 5–3

 

X50

Wyoming

Mark Gordon (R)

·         Jared Baldes (L)[47]

·         Mark Gordon (R)[47]

Theresa Livingston (D)[47]

R+25

67.1% R

3.0

No Contest

 

 

 

Rep 1–0

 

 

 

 

ATTACHMENT TWO – From Politico

 

BATTLE FOR SENATE MAJORITY REMAINS A NAIL-BITER

The 50-50 Senate is still finely balanced a month out from Election Day, the latest surveys show.

By STEVEN SHEPARD  10/09/2022 07:00 AM EDT

The battle to control the 50-50 Senate is at a stalemate — at least according to the polls.

With 30 days to go until Election Day, polling averages suggest Democrats and Republicans are each poised to win 50 Senate seats. Each party currently has the lead in just one seat currently held by the opposition: The Republican is slightly ahead in Nevada, while the Democrat has the lead in Pennsylvania.

And the polling averages in POLITICO’s four Toss Up races remain tight — including in Georgia, where there’s only been a single, one-day survey conducted since the allegations that GOP nominee Herschel Walker paid for his then-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009.

This is the first weekly check-in on the latest polling in 10 key Senate races this fall. Each capsule includes the current leader in the RealClearPolitics polling average, where the polls stood at this point in the presidential race two years ago, and the eventual winner (and margin of victory) in 2020.

1.  Arizona

MARK KELLY (D) vs. Blake Masters (R)
POLITICO Election Forecast rating: Lean Democratic
RCP polling average: Kelly +4.1
2020 RCP polling average 30 days before election: Biden +3.6
Eventual margin: Biden +0.3

Two new polls last week, from CBS News/YouGov and CNN, showed Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly running ahead of Republican Blake Masters by 3 and 6 percentage points, respectively. That’s also the range of Kelly’s leads in the RealClearPolitics average throughout the duration of the race, which has been relatively stable.

Masters has not led a single public poll — after the primary or before it. And this week’s surveys suggested a comeback would be difficult: In the CNN poll, the percentage of likely voters with an unfavorable opinion of Masters was 51 percent — only 35 percent viewed him favorably. That compares to Kelly’s positive favorable-to-unfavorable rating: 48 percent to 42 percent.

2.  Colorado

MICHAEL BENNET (D) vs. Joe O’Dea (R)
Election Forecast rating: Lean Democratic
RCP polling average: Bennet +8.3
2020 RCP polling average: No average
Eventual margin: Biden +13.5

Last week’s only poll in Colorado was from the Democratic firm Data for Progress, which gave Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet a 9-point lead over Republican Joe O’Dea, 50 percent to 41 percent.

Republicans have held out hope that O’Dea could beat Bennet, who won with just a plurality of the vote in 2010 and 2016. But the race hasn’t come online — and Democrats increasing margins here may be too much for O’Dea to overcome.

3.  Florida

MARCO RUBIO (R) vs. Val Demings (D)
Election Forecast rating: Lean Republican
RCP polling average: Rubio +4
2020 RCP polling average: Biden +3.5
Eventual margin: Trump +3.3

GOP Sen. Marco Rubio continues to lead Democratic Rep. Val Demings in Florida, by a moderate-though-steady margin. Two new polls released last week showed Rubio ahead by 6 and 7 points — though it’s worth noting that the Mason-Dixon poll was conducted during the landfall of Hurricane Ian, and a Siena College survey was conducted before the storm was bearing down on the state.

 

4.  Georgia

RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D) vs. Herschel Walker (R)
Election Forecast rating: Toss Up
RCP polling average: Warnock +3.8
2020 RCP polling average: Biden +0.3
Eventual margin: Biden +0.3

It was an eventful last week in Georgia, where Republican nominee Herschel Walker is battling allegations that he paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion — the latest in a litany of accusations about Walker and his treatment of women over the years.

But it was a quieter week on the polling front, with just two new surveys released: A SurveyUSA poll for WXIA-TV in Atlanta showed Warnock with an implausible, 12-point lead. And a one-day survey from InsiderAdvantage for WAGA-TV showed Warnock ahead by 3 points.

That InsiderAdvantage poll was designed to measure the fallout from the scandal, though polls conducted entirely in one day can contain additional sources of error. It did suggest a turnaround for the Democratic incumbent, who trailed Walker by 3 points in the previous InsiderAdvantage poll.

Walker has not led a public poll in Georgia since mid-September.

There’s reason to view Warnock’s lead here more credulously: Unlike in some other states, the Georgia polls did not overestimate Biden’s chances two years ago — and they performed similarly well in the Jan. 2021 Senate runoffs.

5.  Nevada

CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO (D) vs. Adam Laxalt (R)
Election Forecast rating: Toss Up
RCP polling average: Laxalt +2.1
2020 RCP polling average: Biden +5.3
Eventual margin: Biden +2.7

Two new polls last week staked Republican Adam Laxalt to 2-point leads over Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. Laxalt has now been the leader in every poll in the RealClearPolitics database since mid-August — but within a very tight range of 1 to 4 points.

The polls in 2020 were, on balance, accurate in Nevada — meaning Cortez Masto is still within striking distance, but in dangerous territory for an incumbent.

6.  New Hampshire

MAGGIE HASSAN (D) vs. Don Bolduc
Election Forecast rating: Lean Democratic
RCP polling average: Hassan +6.6
2020 RCP polling average: No average
Eventual margin: Biden +7.2

Just four weeks removed from winning a divisive primary — and with four weeks until Election Day — Republican Don Bolduc is struggling to make headway in the polls against Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan.

Hassan enjoys a roughly 7-point lead in the polling average, and the only poll to show Bolduc within striking distance came from the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group.

7.  North Carolina

Ted Budd (R) vs. Cheri Beasley (D)
Election Forecast rating: Lean Republican
RCP polling average: Budd +1.5
2020 RCP polling average: Biden +0.6
Eventual margin: Trump +1.3

Not only is the North Carolina Senate race tight, but a larger number of voters remain undecided there than in other states. Despite leading the polling average, Republican Ted Budd is only at 45 percent — and last week’s only poll gave him a 1-point advantage, 43 percent to 42 percent.

That poll, conducted by SurveyUSA for WRAL-TV, showed both candidates with favorable and unfavorable ratings all hovering around 40 percent — befitting a race with a double-digit share of the vote still up for grabs.

8.  Ohio

J.D. Vance (R) vs. Tim Ryan (D)
Election Forecast rating: Lean Republican
RCP polling average: Vance +1.2
2020 RCP polling average: Biden +2.5
Eventual margin: Trump +8

No new polls in Ohio last week, but there’s reason to suspect the race remains close, as candidate quality — Democrat Tim Ryan’s strengths and Republican J.D. Vance’s weaknesses — counter Ohio’s Republican lean.

But there’s also reason to suspect Vance’s lead could be larger than stated here: namely, Ohio polls’ massive underestimation of Trump in 2020.

9.  Pennsylvania

Mehmet Oz (R) vs. John Fetterman (D)
Election Forecast rating: Toss Up
RCP polling average: Fetterman +4.3
2020 RCP polling average: Biden +6.6
Eventual margin: Biden +1.2

Pennsylvania remains the most-polled state of the 2022 cycle, though last week only brought one new survey in the RealClearPolitics average: A USA Today/Suffolk University poll showing Democrat John Fetterman leading Republican Mehmet Oz by 6 points, 46 percent to 40 percent.

Fetterman’s lead has been cut in half over the past few months — he once led Oz by as many as 9 points in the RealClearPolitics average — but the Republican still has high negatives that cast doubts on his ability to get much closer. The USA Today/Suffolk poll showed just 34 percent of likely voters have a favorable opinion of the celebrity surgeon-turned-politician, while 51 percent view Oz unfavorably.

10.  Wisconsin

RON JOHNSON (R) vs. Mandela Barnes
Election Forecast rating: Toss Up
RCP polling average: Johnson +3
2020 RCP polling average: Biden +6
Eventual margin: Biden +0.7

No new polls last week, so incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson retains the lead he grabbed nearly three weeks ago after trailing Democrat Mandela Barnes all summer. We’ll get a check-in this week from the Marquette Law School poll, considered among the most reliable public measures of voter opinion in the state.

Wisconsin was also ground zero for the 2020 polling failure, with Trump and the GOP overperforming their standing in pre-election surveys on Election Day.

 

AND...

 

ATTACHMENT THREE – From Politico

We rated every race in play in 2022.
This is who we think will win.

Last updated Oct. 3, 2022, 8:32 p.m. EDT

GOVERNORS

We predict most Americans will be led by Democratic governors.

31 mil. Americans

OCT. 5, 2022

Alaska's At-Large District

Previous rating: Lean Republican

Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola narrowly prevailed in the August special election thanks to the state's new ranked-choice voting system, and the smart money is on a repeat in November.

OCT. 3, 2022

Georgia Governor

Previous rating: Toss-Up

GOP Gov. Brian Kemp consistently leads Democrat Stacey Abrams in the polls. Abrams' best hope may be holding Kemp under 50 percent and forcing a December runoff.

OCT. 3, 2022

Oregon Governor

Previous rating: Lean Democratic

Independent Betsy Johnson's candidacy continues to open the door for Republican Christine Drazan, who is neck-and-neck with Democrat Tina Kotek for first place.

OCT. 3, 2022

Oklahoma Governor

Previous rating: Solid Republican

Though he's still a significant favorite, GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt is getting a stiffer challenge from Democrat Joy Hofmeister.

OCT. 3, 2022

California's 45th District

Previous rating: Toss-Up

Freshman Rep. Michelle Steel is the favorite over Democrat Jay Chen.

OCT. 3, 2022

New York's 4th District

Previous rating: Likely Democratic

Recent GOP gains in suburban Nassau County — along with a strong candidate in Anthony D'Esposito — has this open-seat race getting increasingly competitive.

OCT. 3, 2022

Oregon's 4th District

Previous rating: Likely Democratic

Both parties are now fully engaged in the fight to replace retiring Rep. Peter DeFazio.

OCT. 3, 2022

Oregon's 6th District

Previous rating: Likely Democratic

Oregon's new House district went for President Joe Biden by 14 points, but Democratic weakness at the top of the ticket this fall has the seat sliding into a more competitive category.

OCT. 3, 2022

Texas's 34th District

Previous rating: Lean Democratic

Even though President Joe Biden carried the seat by 16 points in 2020, the member-vs.-member race between Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez and GOP Rep. Mayra Flores is hypercompetitive.

OCT. 3, 2022

Kansas's 3rd District

Previous rating: Toss-Up

Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids' seat got more competitive in redistricting, but she's built a lead over Republican Amanda Adkins.

 

 

Much is riding on the 2022 midterm elections: the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda, leadership in state capitals across the country and a potential 2024 comeback by former President Donald Trump. Democrats’ extremely narrow majorities in Congress are highly vulnerable, and the traditional midterm penalty suffered by the party in power has Republicans well positioned to wrest back control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, in the fall.

I've collected a few races I think you should keep your eye on.

THE SENATE

Arizona Senate

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has opened a lead over Republican Blake Masters.

Georgia Senate

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker are on a November collision course in the most closely divided state of the 2020 presidential election.

Nevada Senate

Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto faces a tough race against Republican Adam Laxalt.

Pennsylvania Senate

Republican Mehmet Oz is seeking to close a deficit with Democrat John Fetterman in the open-seat race.

Wisconsin Senate

GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is running for a third term — making him the only Republican seeking reelection in a state President Biden won in 2020.

New Hampshire Senate

Republicans' late primary complicates their quest to oust Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan in the nation's smallest swing state.

THE HOUSE

California's 27th District

The most vulnerable GOP incumbent in the country might be Rep. Mike Garcia, whose district north of Los Angeles voted for President Joe Biden by 13 points.

Iowa's 3rd District

Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne survived 2020, despite Donald Trump carrying her Des Moines-based district. But 2022 will be a steeper climb.

Maine's 2nd District

House Democrats' most iconoclastic member, Rep. Jared Golden, is betting his brand of centrism can overcome a challenging political environment.

Michigan's 7th District

Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin's battleground seat got slightly easier in redistricting, but the GOP thinks it can oust her with a national tailwind.

Nebraska's 2nd District

Can a moderate Republican keep holding on to a blue-trending suburban seat? GOP Rep. Don Bacon’s race is one to watch.

Ohio's 1st District

GOP Rep. Steve Chabot survived 2020, but Ohio''s new congressional map could be too steep a hill for him to climb.

Pennsylvania's 7th District

Pennsylvania's new congressional map is generally good news for Democrats — except for Rep. Susan Wild, whose Lehigh Valley seat got tougher for her.

Texas's 15th District

Republicans' South Texas surge could net them this congressional seat. The Rio Grande Valley swung sharply to the right in the last election.

Virginia's 7th District

Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger is seeking a third term in a district President Joe Biden won by 6 points in 2020 but now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin flipped the following fall.

THE GOVERNORS

Arizona Governor

Democrat Katie Hobbs vs. Republican Kari Lake is one of the marquee races of the 2022 midterms.

Kansas Governor

Gov. Laura Kelly is Democrats' most vulnerable incumbent on the ballot this year.

Pennsylvania Governor

Republicans may have cost themselves the chance to flip this open seat by picking an extreme nominee, Doug Mastriano.

Wisconsin Governor

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is seeking a second term in one of the country's most-closely divided states.

Florida Governor

GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis could seek to use a decisive 2022 victory into a springboard for a national campaign in 2024.

Michigan Governor

Despite a difficult environment, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's poll numbers have been more durable than other Democrats'.

ADVERTISEMENT

A lot of outlets do election ratings. Here’s how POLITICO’s are different:

We’re demystifying the midterms — taking you inside the races to explore the macro- and micro-trends driving the campaign. Does the incumbent in the race consistently overperform their party’s baseline in the district? Is the challenger struggling to raise money? Is the nation’s political realignment driving a state or congressional district from one party’s column to the other? Does one of the candidates have a fully-booked 747 worth of baggage?

The road to November has many twists and turns, but POLITICO’s Election Forecast is there to chart the course — and tell you why.

 

 

ATTACHMENT FOUR – From Cook

MIDTERM RATINGS SUMMARY

SENATE SEATS

Includes seats not up for re-election. Control of Senate marked at 50 seats.

DEMOCRATREPUBLICAN

36

14

21

29

Currently, Democrats control 48 seats. Republicans control 50 seats.

14 Democrat-controlled seats and 21 Republican-controlled seats are up for election.

There are 2 Independent seats, and none are up for election. These seats caucus with Democrats.

SENATE SEATS

Only seats up for re-election (35).

SOLID DEMOCRATSOLID REPUBLICAN

9

3

4

3

1

15

 Likely : These seats are not considered competitive at this point, but have the potential to become engaged.

 Lean : These are considered competitive races, but one party has an advantage.

 Toss Up : These are the most competitive; either party has a good chance of winning.

DEMOCRATS | 14 HELD SEATS

SOLID D

LIKELY D

§  CA-Padilla

§  CT-Blumenthal

§  HI-Schatz

§  IL-Duckworth

§  MD-Van Hollen

§  NY-Schumer

§  OR-Wyden

§  VT-Open

§  WA-Murray

LEAN D

TOSS UP

§  AZ-Kelly

§  CO-Bennet

§  NH-Hassan

§  GA-Warnock

§  NV-Cortez Masto

LEAN R

LIKELY R

SOLID R

REPUBLICANS | 21 HELD SEATS

SOLID D

LIKELY D

LEAN D

TOSS UP

§  PA-Open

§  WI-Johnson

LEAN R

LIKELY R

§  FL-Rubio

§  NC-Open

§  OH-Open

§  UT-Lee

SOLID R

§  AK-Murkowski

§  AL-Open

§  AR-Boozman

§  IA-Grassley

§  ID-Crapo

§  IN-Young

§  KS-Moran

§  KY-Paul

§  LA-Kennedy

§  MO-Open

§  ND-Hoeven

§  OK-Lankford

§  OK-Open

§  SC-Scott

§  SD-Thune

5 Senate Races That Will Test Trump’s Influence and Determine Control of Washington

There are a lot of ways to describe Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Gaffe-prone is not one of them.

So when the top Republican in the Senate told reporters that it’s more likely that his party takes the House than his chamber in November’s elections, much of Washington paid attention to his classically understated warning. “Senate races are just different. They’re statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell said ominously on Aug. 18.

Well, as The D.C. Brief continues our tour of the 15 midterm races that could explain U.S. politics, these five Senate races lay bare in spectacular fashion how contests that once looked ripe for Republican successes may instead turn rotten for the GOP, due in large measure to the party’s inability to block problematic candidates endorsed by ex-President Donald Trump. In fact, in each of the five races below, Trump’s support helped get the nominees onto November’s ballots—your latest reminder both of Trump’s power inside the party and his destructive influence on the Establishment’s best-laid plans. Just look at the headlines coming out of Georgia. (More on that below.) And while McConnell does not flub his words, it seems he did err in not derailing certain nominees that put his return to Majority Leader at risk.

Democrats currently enjoy the narrowest possible majority in the Senate, which is split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a tie. So any one of these five races may be the one that decides power in Washington for the last two years of President Joe Biden’s first term. And given the national mood—and political quirks in each of these states—Republicans may yet prevail and win a majority, one that could bring some unpredictable, truly Trumpian characters to the upper chamber..

Ohio: The Trump Convert

In the bitterly competitive contest among Ohio GOP Senate hopefuls for Trump’s endorsement, the 45th President eventually chose an ex-NeverTrumper—a choice that will test the thesis that the former Apprentice host is an all-powerful kingmaker inside the party. As J.D. Vance told TIME’s Molly Ball: “I’m not just a flip-flopper, I’m a flip-flop-flipper on Trump.” He trashed Trump for years, but when it looked like Trump’s support could be helpful, he toned it down and praised Trump’s version of the truth. And in an early test of his potency post-White House, Trump helped Vance emerge victorious with the Republican nomination.

Now, the Hillbilly Elegy author and venture capitalist is locked in a tight race against Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan for the seat being vacated early next year by Sen. Rob Portman.

Vance has the advantage in the polls, although in fundraising Ryan has been lapping him. While the official campaigns give Ryan a 7-to-1 money advantage, much of the Vance operation has been outsourced; while both candidates have had about $13 million in attack ads run against them, Ryan has had just a little under $1 million in supportive ads at his back, while Vance has seen $13 million in outside ad spending to prop him up, according to fundraising reports. Having mega-donor Peter Thiel as a pal certainly has its perks for Vance in a race that already has seen more than $100 million in outside spending, according to ad agencies. Having McConnell-aligned groups book $28 million helps, too.

The Vance-Ryan race is a curious one to watch, as Ryan is testing a theory that a version of Bidenism can still have resonance in the Midwest. His first ad can only be described as anti-China. He’s leaning heavily on unions, which still have sway in the state. And his populism is along the lines of Ohio’s incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has proven successful at winning campaigns as a happy warrior fighting for workers.

Then there’s this reality: Ohioans may have twice voted for Trump, but many did so more on a feeling than any actual policies. In a way, Ryan shares workers’ frustration and grievance of being left behind, but he’s not angry about it. That posture was the thesis of Hillbilly Elegy, which is why so many—including McConnell—thought Vance would have been an attractive candidate. But then he did the full-pivot to Trumpism, which may end up costing him support among independents and traditional Republicans. Just ask former Portman chief of staff John Bridgeland and legislative director Jonathan Petuchowski; they’re both working to elect Ryan.

Pennsylvania: The TV Doc

It’s hard to imagine a Trumpier move than nominating a celebrity TV doctor who may or may not even live in the state. Yet that is exactly what Pennsylvania Republicans did when they picked Dr. Mehmet Oz, who prevailed in the primary by fewer than 1,000 votes over a former top official in the George W. Bush-era Treasury Department.

It was another early indicator of the power of Trump’s thumb on the scale of this cycle’s electorate. Too few Republicans took it as a warning that they could be fielding first-time nominees who haven’t been through the grind of a campaign. As the campaign hits its final march toward Election Day, plenty of consultants are second-guessing that decision.

Oz struggled, even with his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, away from the trail to recover from a stroke in May. Oz and his campaign have preferred to question Fetterman’s health rather than keeping the focus on Fetterman’s progressive policies like reducing prison populations. Conservative pundits have seemed obsessed with Fetterman’s tattoos and preference for hooded sweatshirts, yet again a dismissive detour from substance.

For his part, Fetterman successfully leveraged his social media footprint to hit back at Oz. His campaign was merciless in mocking Oz’s trip to a grocery store for crudité. This week, his campaign tossed on its social channels a video comparing a quack doctor on The Simpsons with Oz, who has faced serious questions about his credentials. Meanwhile, Fetterman’s campaign has touted the Lieutenant Governor’s record on criminal justice.

The race has tightened as Election Day has gotten closer. Polls show Fetterman’s lead shrinking; some are within the margin of error. Since 1992, a Republican nominee for president has carried the state just once—Trump in 2016 over Hillary Clinton. But Pennsylvania is a complicated state: seven times in that window, have voters elected or re-elected Republicans to the Senate. Smart strategists in both parties are calling this one a coin toss, an outcome that could well come down to dumb luck more than either candidates’ promises or airtime.

Arizona: The Moviegoer

The official story behind Trump’s endorsement of Blake Masters is that he is the strongest believer that the ex-President actually won Arizona in 2020. Unofficially, the truth is probably closer to this: Masters showed up at Mar-a-Lago in May for a screening of a conspiracy theory -based film about election fraud that has been widely debunked.

As TIME’s Eric Cortellessa reports, Arizona was seen as a prime pick-up opportunity for Republicans, who had counted on Sen. Mark Kelly to be an easy candidate to cast as out-of-touch with the proudly quirky state with decidedly Trumpy tendencies. Immigration was supposed to be the issue that tanked Kelly. But the former astronaut proved a killer fundraiser , raising $52 million and banking almost $25 million, according to his July report. Masters, a venture capitalist, raised $5 million and had $1.5 million on hand, according to his September report.

Masters, meanwhile, also has a spotty record that includes calling the gender pay gap a liberal fantasy, opposing the United States’ involvement in World War II while in college at Stanford, and more recently calling for a national abortion ban, before walking it back. Republicans fret that these were exactly the kinds of errors that should have been part of Trump’s vetting of candidates, but were secondary to the ex-reality star’s own gut or ego. Already, McConnell’s super PAC abandoned the state and withdrew millions of dollars in ads as Kelly has maintained a persistent lead.

The candidates are set to meet on Thursday for their debate. It’s a safe bet plenty of staffers here in Washington will be watching closely—with their media buyers ready to boost or pull whatever reserved ad time is left on the books.

Nevada: The Golden Boy

On paper, Nevada GOP Senate nominee Adam Laxalt matched all of Trump’s criteria: an election denier who led the effort in Nevada to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. He thinks prosecutors are too aggressive in chasing members of the Jan. 6, 2021, mob at the Capitol. He comes from a long line of Nevada politicians, had won a statewide race before, and served as the state’s attorney general.

Plus, he was way ahead in the polls, and Trump doesn’t mess with losers.

These days, the polls are much closer, though even the Senate Democrats’ chairman of their official election arm has warned Nevada is one of two very real risks for loss. (The other, Georgia, comes next, so keep reading.)

There remains, however, an obvious problem for Laxalt: money. The Democratic incumbent, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, had raised close to $30 million through the end of July, according to her last public filing, while Laxalt’s updated filing showed he had raised more than $7 million in early September. Laxalt’s $2 million cash on hand doesn’t buy many ads, which explains why outside groups have spent at least $26 million to promote him or to oppose Cortez Masto.

The Latino vote in Nevada will play a key role in this race. Democrats have a broader problem with Latino and Hispanic voters, but Cortez Masto, the first and only Latina elected to the Senate, has a built-in affinity and ground game with the community. During a recent visit to a seafood restaurant in Las Vegas, we watched as she was greeted in a Latino-owned business as an old friend. And, in a surprising deviation among Latino voters, polling suggests a community long-assumed to be conservative on abortion doesn’t much care for the recent moves against abortion rights.

Still, immigration and the economy are areas where Republicans think they can make inroads, especially among Latino voters. Also, some $2 million in Spanish-language ads are heading to Nevada airwaves from an anti-spending outside group, an outlay the Club For Growth claims is the biggest bucket of advertising aimed at Hispanics from any GOP group this cycle.

Republicans now see Nevada and Georgia as their path to the majority. But Democrats aren’t ready to write off Nevada’s seat that’s been in their party’s hands since former Sen. Paul Laxalt—grandfather of the current nominee—retired in 1987, and is the former foothold of former Majority Leader Harry Reid, who died last year. For veterans of Reid’s orbit, this one is personal.

Georgia: The Predicted Problem

For months, Republicans in Washington have groaned that their path back to a majority may hinge on a former football star-turned-first-time candidate avoiding a fumble. They were not optimistic, even as Herschel Walker rocketed in polls, cleared the field of potential rivals, and in May roared to a primary victory by 55 points.

Trump is a big Walker booster—after all, Walker was a contestant on Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice. Most Republican leaders, including McConnell, fell in line despite their doubts in pursuit of a majority.

But Walker and his campaign committed a cardinal sin in politics: knowing there’s a bad story that can break at any time and betting it doesn’t. The latest was a Daily Beast report that Walker impregnated a woman and then paid for her abortion—which could be an issue even without Walker’s near-absolute opposition to abortion rights. As proof, The Daily Beast examined a get-well card and a check deposit, interviewed the woman and protected her anonymity, and corroborated the story with a friend who was told about the events contemporaneously. Walker’s campaign has denied the report, and the Republican Party and its organs have rallied around him.

The Daily Beast abortion story is hardly the only damaging story to come out about Walker. There were reports of business shadiness, falsified biographies, bogus charities, secret kids , allegations of assault, stalking, pointing a gun at a woman… At this point, anything seems plausible for a candidate who misled his own campaign about his past.

It’s too soon to know if or how the news might reshape the Senate race in Georgia, where Walker faces incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock. Despite a constant drumbeat of bad stories about Walker, his support appears to have a floor that correlates to partisan identity. So far, no dodgy comment or eye-raising history seems to shake Republicans’ affinity for their party’s choice. Georgia may be changing, but it’s still a Southern state.

Republicans and their allies have dumped $66 million on ads, McConnell’s super PAC has another $20 million teed up, and the official campaign arm of Senate Republicans released a statement sticking with Walker after The Daily Beast’s abortion story. (Democrats and their allies have already spent $76 million on the race.)

GOP consultants still think the race is winnable. After all, Georgia is a runoff state; any candidate needs more than 50% to win, meaning this could well be heading to a Dec. 6 runoff. Once again, control of the Senate may be decided by the winner of an exceedingly close race in Georgia.

 

ATTACHMENT FIVE – From People Magazine

2022 MIDTERMS: EVERY SENATE, HOUSE AND STATE RACE AMERICANS SHOULD FOLLOW

This midterm season, human rights are on the ballot. Here are the key races that will determine domestic policy in America for years to come, with regularly updated poll standings

By Kyler Alvord  Updated on October 6, 2022 02:17 PM

 

The future of the United States rests in the hands of voters this November, who will not only be determining which party controls Congress, but will make consequential decisions about state leadership, too, at a time when hot-button issues are increasingly falling into the hands of government officials at the state level.

PEOPLE has been following a number of battleground races that could change domestic policy for decades to come. In the 2022 midterms, reproductive rights, religious freedom, LGBTQ+ expression and school curriculum guidelines are on the ballot — and the nation's approach to these topics could be decided by just a handful of votes.

Below are the tightest and most consequential races to keep an eye on as Nov. 8 approaches, complete with ever-changing polling stats as reported by campaign tracker FiveThirtyEight.

 

U.S. Senate

Florida — Demings vs. Rubio

 

Latest Polling: Rubio leads by 4.6 points

In the swing state of Florida, which has tilted Republican in recent years, Democrat Rep. Val Demings is seeking to strip onetime presidential candidate Marco Rubio of his Senate seat.

Sen. Rubio has a long political history in Florida, made more prominent on the national stage for regularly contributing to the far-right's culture wars a la Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis. For conservatives, he's a strong choice, but he runs the risk of isolating moderates — and certainly will not earn any significant backing from Democrats.

That's where Demings hopes to come in. A former police chief and rising star in the Democratic Party, she's perhaps best known around the country for making Joe Biden's vice president shortlist, a spot that ultimately went to Kamala Harris. While she carries name recognition among voters, she still faces an uphill battle in surpassing Rubio in November, something that polls have all but confirmed. It's Florida, though — the epicenter of recent human rights battles — and Demings could still find momentum among dissatisfied residents before Election Day.

 

Georgia — Warnock vs. Walker

 

Latest Polling: Warnock leads by 3.9 points

Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock was part of the "blue wave" that swept over Georgia in 2020, electing two Democratic senators and supporting Joe Biden for the presidency. Because Warnock was only elected to fill out the remainder of a former senator's term, he is already up for reelection — and Republicans hope his rookie status, coupled with Georgia's conservative voting history, will leave him vulnerable.

GOP officials weren't wrong in identifying Warnock's seat as flippable, but the party's candidate has proven less effective on the campaign trail than many Republicans hoped. Former NFL player Herschel Walker, a longtime Texas resident, returned to Georgia to challenge Warnock, relying on his former star power and endorsement from Trump to carry him over the finish line.

Over time, Walker has narrowed the polling gap. While he's likely to give Warnock a good fight in November, his endless stream of controversies and missteps have prevented him from becoming the total hero his party needed him to be.

The latest debacle — which is already appearing to influence poll outcomes — involves Walker's right-wing social media star son, 23-year-old Christian Walker, publicly breaking ties with his father after allegations surfaced that the pro-life candidate paid for an abortion in 2009, which Walker denies. Christian accused his dad's entire campaign of being built on lies, and provided vague allegations of abuse from his childhood, writing on Twitter, "How DARE YOU LIE and act as though you're some 'moral, Christian, upright man.'"

 Off the Field, Herschel Walker Fumbles: Inside the Hail Mary Attempt to Have a Football Star Flip the Senate

 

Nevada — Cortez Masto vs. Laxalt

 

Latest Polling: Laxalt leads by 1.4 points

Republicans are counting on Nevada to help prevent a Democratic majority in Senate, as the toss-up race appears to be one of the GOP's best shots at taking a blue seat. Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto is defending her position against Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.

Laxalt, who served as Nevada's attorney general from 2015 to 2019, has the name recognition needed to take on an incumbent — but even descending from a powerful political family (his grandfather and father were both U.S. senators), his far-right viewpoints proved detrimental in a previous attempt to climb the ladder when he ran for governor in 2018. The Trump ally's strategy this election is to focus on the economy. Nevadans have been hit particularly hard by inflation this year, and Laxalt hopes that associating Cortez Masto with Biden's turbulent economy will be enough to get voters on his side.

Cortez Masto, the first Latina elected to U.S. Senate, wants to make crystal clear to voters that a vote for Laxalt is a vote to criminalize abortion nationwide. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, Americans across the political spectrum have flocked to the polls in support of Democrats — prioritizing reproductive rights over party preference — and the incumbent knows that her pro-choice values are her greatest asset.

The tight race between Cortez Masto and Laxalt reflects Nevada's division. For middle-of-the-road voters who are equally passionate about abortion rights and inflation, the choice is unclear.

 Nancy Pelosi Warns That Pro-Choice House Candidate's Upset Special Election Win Should 'Scare' GOP

 

North Carolina — Budd vs. Beasley

 

Latest Polling: Budd leads by 0.7 points

Six years ago, Republican Sen. Richard Burr gave constituents a heads up that he would not run for reelection in 2022, giving the Republican and Democratic parties ample time to identify strong candidates to vie for his seat. Flash forward to today, and the fight to replace Burr is now the closest Senate race in America as North Carolinians are poised to split votes almost evenly between U.S. Rep. Ted Budd and esteemed jurist Cheri Beasley.

On the right is Budd, a Republican House representative who pushed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election despite a lack of evidence that they were rigged. In September, he co-sponsored a House bill to ban abortions nationwide.

On the left is Beasley, former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, who has received endorsements from environmental and human rights groups. Her political stances would mark a shift in North Carolina's representation, aiming to protect women's rights and combat the climate crisis — which Burr and Budd have fought against.

 Federal Abortion Ban Proposed by Republicans Would Make the Procedure Illegal After 15 Weeks — in Every State

 

Ohio — Vance vs. Ryan

 

Latest Polling: Ryan leads by 1.6 points

Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance has become one of the most controversial figures in the 2022 midterm elections, propelled to the spotlight due to his name recognition as the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir turned divisive Oscar-nominated film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.

Vance has routinely made headlines for his head-scratching comments about things like abortion, the war in Ukraine, and staying in abusive marriages. Once a critic of Donald Trump, he came full circle to earn the former president's endorsement, an important get for candidates on the outer reaches of the Republican Party.

To get to D.C., though, Vance will have to go through Democratic candidate Tim Ryan, a longtime House representative who briefly ran for president in 2020 before withdrawing from the primary race and endorsing Biden. Despite campaigning to fill a Republican senator's seat, Ryan — an outspoken critic of how members of the GOP reacted to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots — has held a lead over Vance in the polls for most of the year, but only by a smidge.

 

Wisconsin — Johnson vs. Barnes

 

Latest Polling: Johnson leads by 1.9 points

Until late September, polls widely suggested that Wisconsin's Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes would unseat a prominent Trump ally, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. More recently, Johnson has taken the lead.

Barnes, only 35, has already had a successful political career, but running as a Black man in a state that is 87% white, he has been subject to attack ads that supporters are calling racist, darkening his skin tone and calling him "different" and "dangerous."

Barnes' momentum in the race was stunted when Johnson, 67, began moving the conversation away from hot-button issues like abortion and instead framing the election as a matter of keeping Wisconsinites safe, accusing Barnes of being a candidate who would allow crime to run rampant (Barnes supported the elimination of cash bonds in a move he said would keep criminals from buying their way out of jail; Republicans say it lets criminals run free).

As the incumbent, Sen. Johnson entered the race with the upper-hand, and it appears he has reclaimed it. Still, a race as close as his reinforces how split Wisconsin's values are, and may be a testament to the unpopularity of pushing 2020 election lies on behalf of Trump.

 Lawmakers Slam Sen. Ron Johnson's Racist Remarks About U.S. Capitol Riot: 'Stunning'

 

Arizona Governor — Hobbs vs. Lake

 

Latest Polling: Hobbs leads by 0.5 points

The gubernatorial race between Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and former broadcast journalist Kari Lake exemplifies how two completely opposite candidates can achieve near-equal levels of popularity in the same state.

Sec. Hobbs, the Democratic nominee, elevated her career when she went on television following the 2020 presidential election to defend the legitimacy of Arizona's results, which were baselessly called fraudulent by Donald Trump and his allies. On the other hand, Lake rallied a far-right army of supporters for pushing Trump's election lies, even when the Republican governor of Arizona said they were false. Before the primary election this year, Lake pulled a page out of Trump's book and asserted that if she didn't win the Republican nomination, it would mean the vote was rigged.

Lake has become the anti-hero of the campaign, spearheading culture wars and cosigning the stances that she knows will rile up far-right voters. Hobbs is more reserved, preaching an optimistic message of unity and growth and supporting the ever-popular charge to preserve reproductive rights, though one moment from her political past — when a Black state Senate staffer was wrongfully fired while she was the Senate minority leader — has kept some left-leaning voters from throwing their support behind her.

Hobbs has consistently stayed above Lake in the polls, but averaging well within the margin of error, neither side knows quite what to expect on election night.

 Anti-Drag Candidate for Ariz. Governor Was Once a Supporter, Drag Queen Friend Says: 'Complete Hypocrite'

 

Nevada Governor — Sisolak vs. Lombardo

 

 

Latest Polling: Lombardo leads by 0.6 points

With mere weeks until Election Day, Nevada's Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak has lost the smallest of leads to Republican challenger, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. Sisolak's three immediate predecessors were all Republican — showing how fragile his placement as a Democrat is by nature — and current polling data supports that theory, as he's no stranger to placing within a fraction of Lombardo when voters are surveyed.

In an October debate between the candidates, Trump-backed Lombardo sought to distance himself from the scandal-ridden former president, partially agreeing with Sisolak that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen ("There was modicum of fraud, but nothing to change the election"). On other issues, though, the nominees confirmed that they are quite different from one another.

Lombardo has made clear that he is pro-life, though his campaign website suggests that Nevada voters will be the ones to decide if abortion is ever banned, not him. He also clarifies that he believes contraceptives are "an essential part of health care," a more toned-down stance than many Republican nominees in races around the nation that has undoubtedly made him more palatable to moderate voters. Sisolak has much more strongly defended reproductive freedom and believes that climate change and Nevada's wildfire and water supply challenges are directly correlated, something that Lombardo's official stances skirt around.

 Nevada Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak and Wife Threatened During Frightening Altercation at Restaurant

 

Oregon Governor — Kotek vs. Drazan

 

Latest Polling: Drazan leads by 1.2 points

Oregon's gubernatorial race is a monumental moment in politics, as the Democratic, Republican and independent candidates are all women; for context, the nation has never had more than nine female governors at a time, and this year, woman are sweeping the ballots in executive elections more decisively than ever before.

Democrat Tina Kotek, Republican Christine Drazan and independent Betsy Johnson are all vying for the title of Oregon governor — and though Johnson is poised to place third, she's polling with about 20% of the vote, a strong showing for a third-party candidate.

Currently, Kotek and Drazan are battling for first place. Kotek (along with Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Maura Healey) could become the first openly lesbian U.S. governor if elected. Her platform hits all the expected notes for a Democratic governor in a Democratic state, which is exactly what Drazan is campaigning against.

Drazan hopes to paint her potential governorship as a necessary break from Democrats' decades-long rule and convince voters to try something new. If elected, residents who have grown accustomed to liberal state policies could see a drastic shift in how Salem handles the issues of the moment.

 The U.S. Has Never Had More than 9 Female Governors at a Time — That Can Change in November

 

Wisconsin — Evers vs. Michels

 

Latest Polling: Evers leads by 0.7 points

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers isn't ready to hand the Executive Residence back over to Republicans. In one of the most back-and-forth states in America, Evers likely knew that reelection would not be easy when the time came, and he's feeling that pressure now as polls show him neck-and-neck with wealthy GOP businessman Tim Michels, an Army veteran making another attempt at entering the political arena.

As with many states right now, Wisconsinites' everyday lives will be directly impacted by the outcome of the gubernatorial election. If Michels is elected, he has alluded to taking hard right stances on many hot-button issues, including school curriculum, abortion and same-sex marriage. Evers has said he will fight to protect reproductive rights and voting access — which took a recent hit by the Wisconsin Supreme Court — and bolster gun safety regulations.

In the race, Michels aims to emulate Trump's "outsider" approach to the 2016 presidential election, claiming he will "drain the swamp," but his missing track record makes him a wild card in terms of how he'll govern. Evers has already revealed his governing style, making him a safe bet, but anyone dissatisfied with Wisconsin's state of affairs may not want to keep the status quo.

 

ATTACHMENT SIX – From the Washington Times

CLOSE RACES, DELUGE OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS COULD DELAY ELECTION RESULTS IN SOME CRITICAL RACES

By Susan Ferrechio - The Washington Times - Friday, September 30, 2022

Two years after prolonged ballot counting led to one of the most chaotic presidential elections in history, mail-in voting and other ballot processing issues may postpone the results in key races beyond Nov. 8 and perhaps delay determining which party will control the Senate.

The Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin races are considered the closest Senate race — rated toss-ups by nonpartisan race analysts. These races could result in razor-thin margins of victory.

The closer the results are, the more that the increasing use of mail-in ballots may become key to determining a winner, and those could take time to tabulate beyond Election Day

Georgia voters would have to wait another month or more to learn who wins races for Senate and governor if no candidate garners more than 50% of the vote, which would force a Dec. 6 runoff. Both incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and Republican Herschel Walker, a Republican, have mostly polled below 50%. 

States are also anticipating a higher volume of mail-in ballots thanks to changes implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic and election workers will need time to count them.

In Nevada, which conducts elections by mail and sends a ballot to every registered voter, ballots will be counted as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 8, which means election officials could hold off declaring a winner until they are sure they’ve received ballots from everyone who voted on time.

The counting of mail-in ballots delayed Nevada’s election results in 2020 by several days, fueling voter fraud claims by former President Donald Trump, who ultimately lost the state to President Biden by a little more than 2 percentage points.  

Nevada’s Senate race is now considered a dead heat between incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt, which means election officials may end up waiting days to count straggler mail-in ballots before determining a winner.

In Wisconsin and Georgia, ballots must arrive by Election Day but could still take longer to tally if workers operating the polls and counting ballots are overwhelmed.

“If you’re spread thin in terms of your election workers, and you have most people focused on keeping the polling places open and running, there’s less resources to put towards processing mail ballots on Election Day,” said Rachel Orey, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s associate director of the Election Project.

The policy center is advocating for changes that would permit election workers to begin processing ballots well ahead of Election Day in order to reduce worker strain, avoid long delays in determining winners, improve security and increase voter confidence.

In more than a quarter of states, the Bipartisan Policy Center reports, election officials can start counting mail-in ballots at least seven days before Election Day. 

The center said providing workers with a one-week head start is considered “the gold standard,” because it makes it easier for election officials to report results more quickly and accurately on election night when Americans have become accustomed to learning results.

Twenty-six states, including Nevada and Georgia, allow processing at least a few days ahead of Election Day, but the rest do not.

In Wisconsin, where Republican incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson is tied in polls against his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, election workers must wait until Nov. 8 to begin processing mail-in ballots. The same rule applies in Pennsylvania, where celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, a Republican, is tied in a recent poll with Democrat and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

States, now anticipating a flood of mail-in ballots, are quickly realizing they need to begin counting these ballots before the polls close.

A Maryland state law prohibiting officials from counting election results until two days after the polls closed led to delays in the results of the state’s July 19 primary.

That prompted the state election board this summer to go to court to challenge the law ahead of November. Montgomery County Circuit Judge ruled election officials could start counting general election mail-in ballots beginning on Oct. 1.

 

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – From Real Clear Politics

 

lection 2022 Polls | Senate Polls | House Polls | Governor Polls | 2024 Polls | State of Union Polls | All Latest Polls 

 

Friday, October 7

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

Iowa Senate - Grassley vs. Franken

Emerson

Grassley 49, Franken 38

Grassley +11

Iowa Governor - Reynolds vs. DeJear

Emerson*

Reynolds 53, DeJear 36

Reynolds +17

Colorado Senate - O'Dea vs. Bennet

Data for Progress (D)**

Bennet 50, O'Dea 41

Bennet +9

Colorado Governor - Ganahl vs. Polis

Data for Progress (D)**

Polis 56, Ganahl 39

Polis +17

Rhode Island Governor - Kalus vs. McKee

WPRI/Roger Williams*

McKee 45, Kalus 32

McKee +13

Rhode Island 2nd District - Fung vs. Magaziner

WPRI/Roger Williams*

Fung 46, Magaziner 40

Fung +6

California 21st District - Maher vs. Costa

Trafalgar Group (R)

Costa 44, Maher 44

Tie

2022 Generic Congressional Vote

Rasmussen Reports

Republicans 47, Democrats 43

Republicans +4

2022 Generic Congressional Vote

Data for Progress (D)**

Republicans 47, Democrats 45

Republicans +2

Iowa: Trump vs. Biden

Emerson

Trump 47, Biden 39

Trump +8

Rhode Island: Trump vs. Biden

WPRI/Roger Williams

Biden 49, Trump 32

Biden +17

 

Thursday, October 6

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

Nevada Senate - Laxalt vs. Cortez Masto

CNN

Laxalt 48, Cortez Masto 46

Laxalt +2

Nevada Governor - Lombardo vs. Sisolak

CNN

Lombardo 48, Sisolak 46

Lombardo +2

Arizona Senate - Masters vs. Kelly

CNN

Kelly 51, Masters 45

Kelly +6

Arizona Governor - Lake vs. Hobbs

CNN

Lake 46, Hobbs 49

Hobbs +3

Minnesota Governor - Jensen vs. Walz

KSTP/SurveyUSA

Walz 50, Jensen 40

Walz +10

New York Governor - Zeldin vs. Hochul

Trafalgar Group (R)*

Hochul 45, Zeldin 43

Hochul +2

New York 11th District - Malliotakis vs. Rose

Spectrum News/Siena

Malliotakis 49, Rose 43

Malliotakis +6

President Biden Job Approval

NPR/Marist

Approve 45, Disapprove 52

Disapprove +7

2022 Generic Congressional Vote

NPR/Marist

Republicans 45, Democrats 48

Democrats +3

Direction of Country

NPR/Marist

Right Direction 28, Wrong Track 70

Wrong Track +42

 

Wednesday, October 5

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

Florida Governor - DeSantis vs. Crist

Mason-Dixon

DeSantis 52, Crist 41

DeSantis +11

Georgia Senate - Walker vs. Warnock

FOX 5/InsiderAdvantage*

Warnock 47, Walker 44

Warnock +3

Georgia Governor - Kemp vs. Abrams

FOX 5/InsiderAdvantage*

Kemp 50, Abrams 45

Kemp +5

Georgia Senate - Walker vs. Warnock

WXIA-TV/SurveyUSA

Warnock 50, Walker 38

Warnock +12

Georgia Governor - Kemp vs. Abrams

WXIA-TV/SurveyUSA

Kemp 47, Abrams 45

Kemp +2

Arizona Senate - Masters vs. Kelly

CBS News/YouGov

Kelly 51, Masters 48

Kelly +3

Arizona Governor - Lake vs. Hobbs

CBS News/YouGov

Lake 49, Hobbs 49

Tie

New Hampshire Senate - Bolduc vs. Hassan

St. Anselm

Hassan 49, Bolduc 43

Hassan +6

New Hampshire Governor - Sununu vs. Sherman

St. Anselm

Sununu 50, Sherman 34

Sununu +16

New Hampshire 1st District - Leavitt vs. Pappas

St. Anselm

Pappas 49, Leavitt 41

Pappas +8

New Hampshire 2nd District - Burns vs. Kuster

St. Anselm

Kuster 49, Burns 35

Kuster +14

Vermont Governor - Scott vs. Siegel

WCAX-TV/UNH*

Scott 48, Siegel 31

Scott +17

President Biden Job Approval

Reuters/Ipsos

Approve 40, Disapprove 53

Disapprove +13

President Biden Job Approval

Politico/Morning Consult

Approve 42, Disapprove 56

Disapprove +14

President Biden Job Approval

Rasmussen Reports

Approve 44, Disapprove 54

Disapprove +10

President Biden Job Approval

Economist/YouGov

Approve 49, Disapprove 50

Disapprove +1

Congressional Job Approval

Economist/YouGov

Approve 22, Disapprove 59

Disapprove +37

2022 Generic Congressional Vote

Economist/YouGov

Republicans 46, Democrats 47

Democrats +1

2022 Generic Congressional Vote

Politico/Morning Consult

Republicans 43, Democrats 46

Democrats +3

Direction of Country

Politico/Morning Consult

Right Direction 29, Wrong Track 71

Wrong Track +42

Direction of Country

Economist/YouGov

Right Direction 28, Wrong Track 63

Wrong Track +35

 

Tuesday, October 4

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

Florida Senate - Rubio vs. Demings

Mason-Dixon

Rubio 47, Demings 41

Rubio +6

Pennsylvania Senate - Oz vs. Fetterman

USA Today/Suffolk*

Fetterman 46, Oz 40

Fetterman +6

Pennsylvania Governor - Mastriano vs. Shapiro

USA Today/Suffolk*

Shapiro 48, Mastriano 37

Shapiro +11

North Carolina Senate - Budd vs. Beasley

WRAL-TV/SurveyUSA*

Budd 43, Beasley 42

Budd +1

Oregon Governor - Drazan vs. Kotek vs. Johnson

Emerson

Drazan 36, Kotek 34, Johnson 19

Drazan +2

Oregon Senate - Perkins vs. Wyden

Emerson

Wyden 51, Perkins 32

Wyden +19

Washington Senate - Smiley vs. Murray

Emerson

Murray 51, Smiley 42

Murray +9

New Hampshire Senate - Bolduc vs. Hassan

Trafalgar Group (R)*

Hassan 48, Bolduc 45

Hassan +3

New Hampshire Senate - Bolduc vs. Hassan

Data for Progress (D)**

Hassan 50, Bolduc 43

Hassan +7

New Hampshire Governor - Sununu vs. Sherman

Data for Progress (D)**

Sununu 52, Sherman 39

Sununu +13

Michigan Governor - Dixon vs. Whitmer

Detroit News/WDIV-TV*

Whitmer 50, Dixon 32

Whitmer +18

California Governor - Dahle vs. Newsom

Berkeley IGS/LA Times

Newsom 53, Dahle 32

Newsom +21

New York 22nd District - Williams vs. Conole

Spectrum News/Siena

Williams 45, Conole 40

Williams +5

President Biden Job Approval

InsiderAdvantage

Approve 46, Disapprove 54

Disapprove +8

President Biden Job Approval

Newsnation

Approve 46, Disapprove 54

Disapprove +8

2022 Generic Congressional Vote

Newsnation

Republicans 44, Democrats 45

Democrats +1

2022 Generic Congressional Vote

InsiderAdvantage

Republicans 47, Democrats 44

Republicans +3

North Carolina: Trump vs. Biden

WRAL-TV/SurveyUSA

Biden 45, Trump 43

Biden +2

Oregon: Trump vs. Biden

Emerson

Biden 50, Trump 41

Biden +9

Washington: Trump vs. Biden

Emerson

Biden 49, Trump 39

Biden +10

 

Monday, October 3

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

Florida Senate - Rubio vs. Demings

Spectrum News/Siena

Rubio 48, Demings 41

Rubio +7

Florida Governor - DeSantis vs. Crist

Spectrum News/Siena

DeSantis 49, Crist 41

DeSantis +8

President Biden Job Approval

Monmouth

Approve 38, Disapprove 55

Disapprove +17

2022 Generic Congressional Vote

Monmouth

Republicans 47, Democrats 45

Republicans +2

Congressional Job Approval

Monmouth

Approve 23, Disapprove 67

Disapprove +44

Direction of Country

Monmouth

Right Direction 22, Wrong Track 74

Wrong Track +52

Direction of Country

Rasmussen Reports

Right Direction 29, Wrong Track 64

Wrong Track +35

 

Sunday, October 2

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

Nevada Senate - Laxalt vs. Cortez Masto

Nevada Independent

Laxalt 45, Cortez Masto 43

Laxalt +2

Nevada Governor - Lombardo vs. Sisolak

Nevada Independent

Lombardo 45, Sisolak 42

Lombardo +3

 

Saturday, October 1

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

Maryland Governor - Cox vs. Moore

Wash Post/Univ. of Maryland

Moore 60, Cox 28

Moore +32

 

 

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – from Ballotpedia

INCUMBENT MARK KELLY (D), BLAKE MASTERS (R), AND MARC VICTOR (L) ARE RUNNING IN THE GENERAL ELECTION FOR ONE OF ARIZONA'S U.S. SENATE SEATS ON NOVEMBER 8, 2022.

Kelly took office in December 2020 following a special election in November 2020. Before joining Congress, he served as a U.S. Navy pilot and a NASA astronaut. He and his wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), founded Americans for Responsible Solutions (now known as Giffords) in 2013. Kelly's campaign has focused on bipartisan compromise and a willingness to work across the aisle. "I’m focused on representing Arizonans – all Arizonans – and I’ll keep working with Republicans and Democrats to support hardworking families and get our economy back on track."[1] Kelly's campaign website highlighted affordable health care, providing competitive educational opportunities, increasing wages to cover the cost of living, and funding federal benefits like Social Security and Medicare as policy goals in Washington.[2] As of July quarterly reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Kelly raised $54.1 million and spent $30.8 million.

Masters is a venture capitalist. He became president of the Thiel Foundation in 2015 and served as COO of Thiel Capital from 2018 to 2022. Masters' campaign website said he was running "because the same old establishment politicians and the same old establishment candidates have failed us. [Masters] brings a wealth of experience to the table on how to defeat not just the progressive Democrats, but also the weak and compromised RINO Republicans." Masters' policy focuses are technology companies and China. He said that Democrats have "[weaponized] technology to destroy America as we know it" and that China has committed intellectual property theft and waged digital warfare against the United States.[3] Former President Donald Trump (R) endorsed Masters in the August 2 Republican primary. As of July quarterly reports filed with the FEC, Masters raised $5.0 million and spent $3.4 million.

As of September 27, 2022, Cook Political Report, Sabato's Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections rated the election as lean or tilt Democratic.

The previous two Senate elections—held in 2018 and 2020—were both decided by 2.4 percentage points. In 2020, Kelly defeated incumbent Sen. Martha McSally (R) in a special election 51.2% to 48.8%.[4] In 2018, Kyrsten Sinema (D) defeated McSally 50.0% to 47.6%.

The two most recent presidential elections in Arizona were similarly close. Joe Biden (D) won the state of Arizona by 0.3 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump (R) won the state in the 2016 presidential election by 3.6 percentage points.

The outcome of this race will affect the partisan balance of the U.S. Senate. Thirty-five of 100 seats are up for election, including one special election.[5] Democrats have an effective majority, with the chamber split 50-50 and Vice President Kamala Harris (D) having the tie-breaking vote.[6] Democrats hold 14 seats and Republicans hold 21 seats up for election in 2022.

Marc Victor (L) completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey. To read those survey responses, click here.

For more information about the primaries in this election, click on the links below:

·         United States Senate election in Arizona, 2022 (August 2 Democratic primary)

·         United States Senate election in Arizona, 2022 (August 2 Republican primary)

 

ATTACHMENT NINE – From Forbes

 

HERSCHEL WALKER TUMBLES IN GEORGIA SENATE POLL AS SCANDALS MOUNT

 

By Brian Bushard   Oct 5, 2022,05:24pm EDT

Georgia’s Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock opened up a 12-point lead against his Republican challenger Herschel Walker, according to a SurveyUSA poll released Wednesday, amid mounting scandals accusing Walker, a staunch anti-abortion candidate, of paying for his girlfriend’s abortion in 2009 and not providing for his four children.

The SurveyUSA poll put Warnock, Georgia’s first-term Senator and a Baptist pastor, ahead of Walker, a former University of Georgia running back, 50% to 38% among more than 1,000 likely voters, in the new poll, conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 4.

The double-digit lead comes amid a series of controversies, including a Daily Beast report on Tuesday claiming that in 2009 Walker paid for his then girlfriend to get an abortion because he didn’t want a child, though in the years since, Walker has called for a nationwide abortion ban without exceptions for rape, incest, or threats to a mother’s life—Walker denied the allegation.

 

Following the report, Walker’s son and conservative social media star Christian Walker released several videos on social media accusing Walker of committing “atrocities” against his mother and “having sex with other women” instead of raising his children.

In the survey, which began before the latest Walker scandal broke but ended a day after, Warnock held a larger lead among women voters in Georgia, who favor him 57% to 28%, while men are split at 44%, according to the new poll.

Some 51% of respondents had an “unfavorable” opinion of Walker, compared to 28% that found him “favorable,” while 40% said Warnock was unfavorable, and 43% said he was favorable.

Less than a third of independents said they would vote for Warnock, along with 21% who identified as moderate, 75% of Republicans and 69% of respondents who identify as conservatives.

Walker has fallen substantially from polling in June, when he was locked at a 47% tie with Warnock, according to an East Carolina University poll. The Trump-endorsed candidate had won the state’s Republican primary in a landslide one month earlier, winning 68.2% of the vote. The former Heisman Trophy winner has been mired in controversy throughout his candidacy, however, including allegations of stalking and physical threats, as well as domestic violence against multiple women, including his ex-wife. Walker told Axios last December he is “accountable” for his history of violence, blaming the incidents on mental health issues. According to the Daily Beast report this week, Walker—a self-described family man—paid his former girlfriend $700 to cover the cost of an abortion and gave her a get-well card.

Aggregate polling data from FiveThirtyEight had Warnock just two points ahead of Walker in the popular vote, leading 50.2% to 48.2% —other recent polls in FiveThirtyEight’s indicator peg Warnock with a narrower lead, while a University of Georgia poll shows Walker two points ahead.

Despite the growing criticisms over Walker, who described himself on the campaign trail as a family man, Republicans this week doubled down on their support, with National Republican Senate Committee chair Rick Scott saying Republicans will “stand with” Walker and “Georgians will stand with him, too.”

Republican lawmakers are looking to the midterm elections to flip the Senate, which is currently split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote. Democrats, however, are counting on several races, including in Georgia, to keep control of the chamber. Other close races include the Pennsylvania Senate race, where Republican candidate and former TV personality Mehmet Oz is trailing in the polls, Wisconsin, where incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R) holds a narrow lead, and Ohio, where Republican nominee J.D. Vance is trailing in the race for an open seat.

FURTHER READING

Republican Party ‘Stands With’ Herschel Walker Amid Abortion Scandal, National Chair Says (Forbes)

Herschel Walker’s Son Christian Turns On Him—‘Everything Is A Lie’—As Scandal Grows (Forbes)

Trump-Endorsed Herschel Walker Falls Behind Warnock In Georgia Senate Poll (Forbes)

 

ATTACHMENT TEN – From Five Thirty Eight

 

NEVADA COULD BE SENATE REPUBLICANS’ ACE IN THE HOLE

By Nate Silver

OCT. 7, 2022, AT 1:13 PM

On the surface, Nevada seems to validate the otherwise somewhat unsuccessful hypothesis of the 2002 book “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” Authors John Judis and Ruy Teixeira predicted that Nevada would become a light-blue state as Democrats held onto their unionized, working-class base and demographic change brought new Democratic voters into the fold.

Although Democratic nominee John Kerry narrowly lost to George W. Bush in Nevada in the following presidential election, Barack Obama carried the state by a whopping 12.5 percentage points in 2008, and Democrats have won the state in every presidential election since. Nevada’s senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, are both Democrats, as is its governor, Steve Sisolak, and three of its four U.S. representatives.

So, Nevada is usually a pretty reliable state for Democrats, right? Well, not so fast. Cortez Masto, up for reelection this year, is narrowly trailing in the polling average against her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general.1 Our forecast has this race at about as close to 50/50 odds as it gets. 

And just to be clear about the stakes here, Nevada couldn’t be much more important in determining which party controls the Senate. It is Republicans’ most likely pickup opportunity, according to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast2 — and the GOP’s second-best target, Georgia, took a big hit this week after new allegations surfaced that Republican nominee Herschel Walker paid for his then-girlfriend to get an abortion in 2009.

The math is fairly simple. If Democrats pick up a seat in Pennsylvania, where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is favored to win, Republicans will need two pickups to gain control of the Senate, and Nevada and Georgia are the easiest targets. If Fetterman loses, they’ll need one of the two. According to our interactive,3 Republicans’ chances of flipping the Senate shoot up to 56 percent if they win Nevada but are just 11 percent if they don’t. So let’s take a deeper look.

 

Nevada isn’t that blue

Consider Nevada’s presidential, congressional and gubernatorial elections since 2000, as the following table shows.

In Nevada, narrow Democratic wins are punctuated by big losses

Democratic margin of victory or defeat for presidential, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and gubernatorial elections in Nevada, 2000 to 2020

CYCLE

PRESIDENT

SENATE, CLASS I

SENATE, CLASS III

HOUSE*

GOVERNOR

2000

-3.5

-15.4

—

-18.1

—

2002

—

—

—

-25.9

-46.2

2004

-2.6

—

+25.9

-11.0

—

2006

—

-14.4

—

+4.8

-4.0

2008

+12.5

—

—

+8.1

—

2010

—

—

+5.7

-5.6

-11.8

2012

+6.7

-1.2

—

-0.4

—

2014

—

—

—

-17.4

-46.7

2016

+2.4

—

+2.4

+0.9

—

2018

—

+5.0

—

+5.4

+4.1

2020

+2.4

—

—

+2.3

—

*Results for U.S. House elections reflect combined results from all congressional districts in Nevada.

SOURCES: DAVE LEIP’S ATLAS OF U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, NEVADA SECRETARY OF STATE

Several things stand out. First, although Democrats have a four-election winning streak in presidential races, their record in congressional and gubernatorial elections is checkered. Sisolak was the first Democrat elected governor there since 1994. And even though Cortez Masto’s Class III Senate seat was in Democratic hands for some time thanks to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Rosen’s Class I seat was held by Republicans between 2001 and 2019. House races in Nevada have been swingy, meanwhile. As recently as 2014, Republicans won the state’s combined popular vote for the U.S. House by 17.4 points.

And with the exceptions of Obama and Reid — and we’ll come back to what they had in common in a moment — Democratic wins in Nevada have been narrow. Hillary Clinton’s 2.4-point win in 2016 was similar to her national margin of victory in the popular vote — and Joe Biden’s 2.4-point win in 2020 was less than his 4.5-point national popular-vote win. Sisolak and Rosen, meanwhile, won their gubernatorial and Senate races by 4 and 5 points, respectively, in 2018, but both of them underperformed the national political environment that year, which favored Democrats by almost 9 points. Whether you call Nevada blue, red or purple is something of a semantic question. But it certainly hasn’t been a reliable state for Democrats.

Nevada isn’t a great fit for the new Democratic coalition

Paired together as tipping-point states this year, Nevada and Georgia are moving in opposite directions.

Georgia has a sizable share of Black voters and a multiethnic coalition of increasingly college-educated voters in Atlanta and its suburbs. The Black vote there has held up relatively well for Democrats, and they’ve been gaining ground with college-educated professionals in almost every election. If you tried to create a state in a lab where Democratic fortunes improved even as they had problems elsewhere, Georgia would be about as good a formula as you could get.

Nevada, on the other hand, ranks 44th in the share of adults with a college degree, right between Oklahoma and Alabama. Its Black population is below the national average but increasing. It does have a considerable share of Hispanic and Asian American voters, but they are often working-class — subgroups that Democrats have increasingly struggled with in recent years.

Of course, Nevada is sui generis, with several economic and demographic attributes that aren’t that common in other states. On the one hand, it has a massive workforce in the gaming (gambling), leisure and hospitality industries. To give you some sense of the scale, just one hospitality and entertainment company, MGM Resorts International, employs 77,000 people in Nevada, roughly as large a share of its workforce as Ford Motor Company employs in Michigan. These are mostly working-class and middle-class jobs, often unionized, often held by employees of color. But Nevada doesn’t have as many jobs in culturally progressive industries like media and technology.

On the other hand, Nevada is a major destination for out-migrants from other states who are attracted to its warm weather,4 lack of state income tax and laissez-faire lifestyle. Only 26 percent of Nevada residents were born in Nevada, easily the lowest of any U.S. state. Nevada has traditionally had a big third-party vote — it was one of Ross Perot’s better states, for instance.

This latter group of voters can also be relatively apolitical. If people migrate to Colorado for its crunchy, progressive politics, and to Florida for its YOLO conservatism, the prevailing attitude in Nevada is live-and-let-live, which sometimes borders on political apathy. Political participation is relatively low. Its turnout rate in 2020 was 65.4 percent, lower than the 66.8 percent in the U.S. overall — which is unusual because swing states usually have high turnout. By comparison, for instance, turnout was 71.7 percent in Florida in 2020 and 76.4 percent in Colorado.

Turnout could be Democrats’ saving grace

Let’s return to that question I teased earlier. What did Obama and Reid, the two big Democratic overperformers in Nevada, have in common? For that matter, what about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who never got to compete in a general election in Nevada but performed extremely well in the state’s Democratic caucuses in 2020?

Well, Reid, Obama and Sanders relied heavily on organization, turnout and the state’s union-backed Democratic machine. It’s hard to know whether Cortez Masto — and Sisolak, who is also in a very tight reelection race — will be able to pull off the same. But if you have two large voting blocs in Nevada, and the more conservative of the two is somewhat politically apathetic, turnout at least potentially works to Democrats’ advantage.

Indeed, this may be a race where Democrats need the turnout edge because the other dynamics of the campaign don’t work in their favor. Though he’s an election denier who served as one of then-President Donald Trump’s Nevada campaign chairs in 2020, Laxalt has a relatively traditional resume as the state’s former attorney general — an exception among Republicans in competitive Senate races this year — and in recent polling, he has decent personal favorability ratings.

Although abortion is a strong issue for Cortez Masto in a relatively irreligious state like Nevada, voters in the Silver State rank the economy as their top issue. It’s understandable in a state that was hit hard by the housing bubble and that relies on highly cyclical industries like the casino business, which suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the turnout front, a CNN/SSRS poll yesterday had both good and bad news for Cortez Masto, depending on how you squint at it. In the survey, she led by 3 points among registered voters but trailed by 2 points among likely voters. Polls among likely voters are usually more reliable, and so the +2 number for Laxalt is the one in our polling average and forecast. But it does suggest a gap that could be closed by a strong turnout operation.

Reid, for instance, won comfortably in 2010 despite trailing in the polling average. Cortez Masto may need a little bit of Reid magic to hold onto her seat.

 

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – From NBC

 

TIM RYAN 'ALL BY HIS LONESOME' AS NATIONAL DEMOCRATS IGNORE CLOSE OHIO SENATE RACE

Republicans supporting J.D. Vance have poured more than $30 million into a state where polls show a dead heat. Democrats are focused elsewhere.

 

Oct. 10, 2022, 1:29 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 10, 2022, 1:52 PM EDT   By Henry J. Gomez

 

CLEVELAND — Democrats are increasingly fearful that they are squandering a chance to flip a Senate seat in Ohio — a state that once seemed off the map but, according to polls, remains close four weeks from Election Day.

Although the Republican, “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, has struggled to raise money, national groups have propped up his campaign by pouring in more than $30 million worth of advertising.

Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, has been a more prolific fundraiser. But because national Democratic groups have provided comparatively little help on the airwaves, Ryan has had to spend cash as fast as it comes in just to keep up with the GOP onslaught.

The lopsided funding has unnerved Democrats in Ohio and across the country, according to interviews with a dozen party leaders and operatives. Many worry that Democrats will regret not doing more to try to pull Ryan ahead of Vance, a right-wing ally of former President Donald Trump.

“Tim Ryan is running the best Senate race in the country and having to do it all by his lonesome,” said Irene Lin, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist who managed Tom Nelson’s Senate primary campaign in Wisconsin this year. “If we lose this race by a few points, and the Senate majority, blame should squarely fall on the D.C. forces who unfairly wrote off Ohio.”

In an interview with NBC News after a campaign appearance Saturday in Cleveland, Ryan sounded resigned to going it alone.

“The national Democrats … trying to talk them into a working-class candidate, it’s like pulling teeth sometimes,” Ryan said as he tossed a football with his 8-year-old son in a parking lot behind an Irish pub. “We’re in Ohio and we got a candidate running around with a tinfoil hat on. We’re out here fighting on our own. I mean, it’s David against Goliath.”

Ryan and Vance are running to succeed Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican who is not seeking re-election. Independent polls suggest the race is a toss-up, with slim leads by either candidate falling within the margin of error. The candidates will meet Monday night in Cleveland for the first of two televised debates.

After losing two presidential campaigns and a race for governor in the state since 2016, national Democrats are wary about spending in Ohio, once a quintessential battleground. Republicans are treating it as a state they can't afford to lose.

Trump’s super PAC was the latest group to jump into the race, reserving more than $1 million in ads last week. The barrage includes a spot attacking Ryan, who has portrayed himself as a moderate, as a party-line voter beholden to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. But even the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, a major presence in other states key to determining partisan control of the chamber, has been largely absent from Ohio.

Through Monday, Republicans had spent or reserved at least $37.9 million worth of advertising on the general election, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. Only $3.7 million of that had come directly from Vance’s campaign, with another $1.6 million split between the campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee through coordinated advertising. 

On the Democratic side, Ryan’s campaign had accounted for $24 million of the more than $29 million spent or reserved through Election Day and splitting another $835,000 with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Other outside Democratic groups had committed only $4.5 million to the race — about 14% of what the GOP groups are spending.

Ryan said the lack of national spending hasn’t frustrated him and that Vance, because of the largesse behind him, would owe more favors if he wins.

“The optics of it,” Ryan added, “are in my favor.”

Others are more willing to raise complaints on Ryan’s behalf.

When campaign manager Dave Chase tweeted about tight polling numbers last week, he noted how Ryan “has defended his lead with no outside spending from national Dem groups.”

Justin Barasky, the campaign’s media strategist, asserted that Ryan would have the race locked up if not for the heavy investment by national Republicans. 

“J.D. Vance is benefitting from an unprecedented amount of outside spending in Ohio,” said Barasky, who managed Sen. Sherrod Brown’s 2018 re-election campaign in the state. “The race would be over without it.”

Another Democratic operative who is closely watching the race was blunt when asked about the lack of Democratic funding. 

“It’s malpractice,” said the operative, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

This year’s Senate map presents tough decisions for leaders of both parties. Democrats, who control the 50-50 chamber with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, are playing defense in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — close contests, all.

“I think that Democrats have a lot of incumbents that they’ve got to try to protect, and that’s always the No. 1 priority,” former Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., said in an interview Saturday while helping Ryan with canvassing efforts in Cleveland.

At the same time, Democrats have treated Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as more enticing pickup opportunities. And Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC last week reserved more airtime in North Carolina, a state where Democrats have not won a Senate seat since 2008. Brown, conversely, has been re-elected twice in Ohio since then, a data point Ryan’s allies dutifully cite.

The state is not entirely off the national radar for Democrats. Guy Cecil, the chair of Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC, tweeted a plea late last month to “Give what you can” to Ryan. A spokesperson for the group said that Priorities is monitoring the race but had no announcements about plans to get involved financially. Cecil’s tweet annoyed some Ryan allies who saw it as patronizing.

Other national Democrats have tipped their hat to Ryan, noting how his moderate message has put the seat within striking distance, if not higher on the party’s list of priorities.

“Tim Ryan is running a strong race that has put Republicans on defense,” said David Bergstein, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He emphasized the organization’s support “through coordinated television spending.”

Both candidates spent the week leading up to their first debate barnstorming the state — Vance with Donald Trump Jr., Ryan in a newly debuted tour bus.

After campaigning at a police union hall near Columbus on Wednesday, Vance questioned the accuracy of the polls while also arguing that the reason Ryan is performing well in them is because voters wrongly identify the Democrat as a moderate “diet version of me.”

“What polling consistently does is, it under-polls white working-class voters, who are a core part of my base in my campaign, a core part of who I’m trying to appeal to,” Vance added.

Ryan spent Saturday at two Cleveland events casting Vance as too extreme for Ohio.

“We are not going to send someone who’s going to be in the Senate with a tinfoil hat on, waiting for the black helicopters to come,” Ryan said at one stop, keeping his remarks brief as guests snuck glances at the TVs above the bar as the Cleveland Guardians went into extra innings of a playoff game they would eventually win.

The event was hosted by Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin, a well-wired local Democrat. In an interview, Griffin said he understood Democrats’ focus on the Southwest and Southeast but urged them not to sleep on Ryan.

“The national Democrats have walked away from Ohio prematurely,” Griffin said. “We need to make sure that they recognize that this still is a state that is in play.”

 

 

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – From WHTM

 

HOW THE POLLS HAVE TRENDED FOR JOHN FETTERMAN, DR. OZ

by: George Stockburger  Posted: Oct 8, 2022 / 12:44 PM EDT  Updated: Oct 8, 2022 / 12:46 PM EDT

 

 (WHTM) – Few races in the nation have attracted as much attention and money as the Pennsylvania Senate Race.

Polls show a tightening race between Republican celebrity television doctor Mehmet Oz and Democrat Lt. Governor John Fetterman. Despite suffering a stroke in May and not publicly campaigning for several months, Fetterman has remained ahead in most polls.

abc27 compiled recent polling to show how the race has trended since the spring primary season.

The poll numbers were compiled by FiveThirtyEight using pollsters who received at least a B+ rating. Pollsters in this chart include; Suffolk University, Emerson College, Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research, Marist College, Muhlenberg College, Trafalgar Group, YouGov, Public Opinion Strategies, Susquehanna Polling & Research, and Cygnal.

Five polls conducted between mid-August and mid-September all showed Fetterman with a five-point lead. The largest lead Fetterman has seen was an 18-point lead in an August poll sponsored by Pittsburgh Works Together and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies.

Polls in late September have shown the race even closer than the late Summer/early Fall results.

A WHTM/Emerson College Polling/The Hill poll released at the end of September of 1,000 likely Pennsylvania voters, Fetterman led Oz 44.6% to 42.6% with a +/-3% margin of error. Third-party candidates received 5% and 7.9% were undecided.

Nine percent of Republicans (twice as much compared to Democrats) said there were undecided.

Fetterman and Oz will participate in an exclusive primetime debate on October 25 at the abc27 studio in Harrisburg.

The debate is expected to be the race’s only one, while gubernatorial candidates Doug Mastriano and Josh Shapiro have not agreed to terms on any potential debates.

 

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – From Five Thirty Eight

Wisconsin Polls Look Good For Democrats, But We Need More Of Them

By Nathaniel RakichSEP. 20, 2022, AT 11:13 AM

 

Are pollsters afraid to survey Wisconsin?

It sure looks like it. Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race has the second-fewest polls of any competitive1 Senate race nationwide. 

Where are all the Wisconsin polls?

Number of polls conducted in each competitive 2022 Senate race, as of Sept. 20, 2022, at 9 a.m. Eastern

STATE

NO. OF POLLS

Florida

32

Georgia

31

Pennsylvania

22

Nevada

18

North Carolina

18

Ohio

18

Arizona

17

New Hampshire

15

Utah

13

Wisconsin

10

Colorado

9

 

In fact, until last week, we didn’t even have enough Wisconsin polls to generate a polling average for that race.2 But now that we do, it looks like Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes holds a slight lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, 48.7 percent to 47.5 percent.3

According to the FiveThirtyEight midterm model, these polls are a bullish sign for Barnes. In fact, based only on polling (as represented by the “Lite” version of our forecast), Barnes has a 60-in-100 chance of winning the election. 

Many pollsters may be steering clear of Wisconsin this year because the Badger State has given them plenty of heartburn in recent elections. For example, in the 2020 presidential election, the average poll gave Joe Biden an 8.4-percentage-point lead in Wisconsin; he won by only 0.6 points. But the thing is, just because polls missed in a particular direction in one election doesn’t necessarily mean they will miss in the same direction in the next. 

That said, the “Deluxe” version of the forecast — which in addition to polls factors in non-polling “fundamentals” and expert ratings — gives Johnson a 56-in-100 chance of winning. That’s because those other factors simply aren’t as good for Democrats as the polling. While about half of the Deluxe forecast is based on polls, about a third is based on race ratings from experts like those at the Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and one-ninth is based on fundamental factors like partisanship, candidate quality and fundraising. Those expert ratings say (on average) that the race tilts Republican, and those fundamentals suggest Johnson has about a 1-point lead.

Over the past month, the polls have slowly moved Wisconsin’s Senate race into the toss-up column in our model. According to the Deluxe version of the forecast, on Aug. 16, Johnson had a 67-in-100 chance of prevailing. But then Marquette University Law School dropped a poll giving Barnes a 7-point lead, and Fox News released a poll showing Barnes 4 points ahead of Johnson (though still within the margin of error). After that, the race tightened to the point where Johnson had just a 60-in-100 chance of winning. Then, in late August, the Trafalgar Group — a Republican pollster — showed Barnes 2 points ahead of Johnson. Finally, as national polls continued to improve for Democrats, Johnson eventually fell to a 51-in-100 chance of winning on Sept. 13.

Since then, though, we have gotten four new polls that have averaged out to a 1-point Johnson lead. That suggests the race could be shifting in Johnson’s favor, especially since one of the more recent polls came from a pollster — Marquette — that had previously given Barnes a healthy lead. In this case, Marquette found that Johnson had gained 4 points — and Barnes had dropped 4 points — in the span of a month.

That shift could be because Republicans have blanketed television airwaves with attack ads since Barnes won the Democratic primary on Aug. 9. The ads have focused primarily on crime, which according to Marquette is the second-most concerning issue to Wisconsin voters. The ads, which highlight Barnes’s support for ending cash bail and tie him to the “defund the police” movement, have also been criticized for being racist dog whistles.

That said, the shift could be for other reasons, like voters starting to tune into the campaign. It could even be a mirage caused by sampling or another polling error. We’ll need to see more polls to say for sure. Hopefully, pollsters can muster up some courage and give us the Wisconsin polls we’re so thirsty for.

 

(NOTE: There are many charts and graphs.  You can see them at https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wisconsin-senate-polls/

 

 

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – From the New York Times

BALANCING EXTREMES

 

By German Lopez  October 5th

 

Good morning. The Federal Reserve is trying to tame inflation without wrecking the economy.

 

America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, is trying to strike a delicate balance: It has to take steps to slow down the economy to bring inflation under control — but it wants to do so without causing a severe recession.

The predicament is unusual for a government agency. Typically, public officials talk about stimulating the economy and creating more jobs.

 

The Fed is trying to do the opposite. Under its dual mandate from Congress, the Fed tries to keep unemployment low and prices relatively stable. Yet those two goals are sometimes in conflict: A strong economy can lead to more jobs but quickly rising prices, while a sluggish economy can lead to fewer jobs but slower price increases. The Fed aims to balance those extremes.

But as the Fed has moved to slow down the economy, some experts have worried that it’s going too far, risking unnecessary economic pain. The Fed’s defenders, meanwhile, say the central bank is acting wisely — and may even need to go further than it has to tame rising prices.

 

Today’s newsletter will explain both sides of the debate and the potential dangers to the economy if the Fed does too much or too little to bring down inflation.

The case for caution

 

Experts arguing for caution worry that the Fed has already done enough to ease inflation, even if the effects are not clear yet, and that any more action could backfire.

The Fed’s attempts to cool the labor market illustrate the potential risk.

 

The jobs market is one of the major drivers of inflation today, said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University. Many employers have raised wages to compete for hires; there are more job vacancies than there are available workers. But someone has to pay for the higher wages, and employers have passed those costs on to consumers by charging higher prices, fueling inflation.

In response, the Fed has raised interest rates five times this year to increase the cost of borrowing money. The goal: More expensive loans will result in less investment, then less business expansion, then fewer jobs, then lower pay, then less inflation.

 

There are hints that the Fed’s moves are working. For example, stock markets have declined as the Fed has raised interest rates — partly a signal that investors expect the economy to cool off, just as the Fed wants. “Markets going down is not an indictment of the Fed’s policy,” my colleague Jeanna Smialek, who covers the economy, told me. “Markets going down is the Fed’s policy.”

But the rest of the intended chain of reaction, from less investment to less inflation, will take time to work through the economy. The Fed’s interest rate hikes may have done enough, but the full effects aren’t visible yet.

 

Some experts worry the Fed will not wait long enough to see the full effects of its previous actions before it takes more aggressive steps. That could lead to more harm to the economy than necessary. “The risk that the Fed is moving too slowly to contain inflation has declined, while the risk that high interest rates will cause severe economic damage has gone up — a lot,” Paul Krugman, the economist and Times columnist, wrote last week.

The case for more

 

On the other side, there’s the risk of the Fed doing too little.

We have seen the consequences. The Fed, believing inflation would be temporary, was slow to raise interest rates last year. That probably exacerbated the rising prices we’re dealing with now.

 

But things could get worse. The longer inflation goes on, the likelier it is to become entrenched. For example, if businesses expect costs to keep rising, they will set prices higher in anticipation — leading to a vicious cycle of increasing costs and prices.

Longer bouts of inflation are also more likely to result in stagflation, when inflation is high and economic growth slows. In such a situation, people have a harder time finding a job and the pay they can get quickly loses value. The U.S. endured stagflation in the 1970s; Europe is facing it now as prices rise and the continent’s economy stumbles.

 

Entrenchment and stagflation could force the Fed to act even more drastically, with grave side effects. It has happened before: In the 1970s and ’80s, the Fed raised interest rates so dramatically and so quickly that the unemployment rate spiked to more than 10 percent.

By acting aggressively now, the Fed hopes to avoid such harsh measures — and produce a “soft landing” that reduces inflation without wrecking the economy.

 

The central bank’s record suggests it could pull off the feat, Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman, argued in The Wall Street Journal: The Fed achieved a soft landing or came close in six of 11 attempts over the past six decades. “Landing the economy softly is a tall order, but success is not unthinkable,” Blinder wrote.

Related:

 

·         Want less inflation? Try a consumption tax on the rich, Ezra Klein says.

 

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – From Brookings.edu

THE ABORTION ISSUE IN THE 2022 MIDTERMS – UNLIKE ANY OTHER ISSUE

By Elaine Kamarck, Thursday, September 29, 2022

 

As we near the midterm elections many are asking how will the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion influence how people vote? With a host of other issues like inflation, student loans, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the president’s age, and the pandemic competing for the attention of voters, just how important is the issue of abortion?

Very.

The reason is that in politics, intensity matters. Unlike every other issue pollsters ask about, abortion and the broader questions it raises about reproductive health are central to the existence of 51.1% of the population in a way that no other issue in politics is or has ever been.

From the time a young woman menstruates to the time she is done with the last symptom of menopause and beyond, women are in constant conversation with other women about the everyday reality of their reproductive organs.

For many women these discussions eventually revolve around pregnancy, and for a subset of the female population, there is an additional struggle and trauma associated with getting pregnant in the first place. The intensity of pregnancy is usually the first time in this saga that men become aware of the realities of reproduction as they learn about the dangers and problems their partners could face. For most of human history, pregnancy has been dangerous and often fatal. Women with uteri can experience ectopic pregnancies, preeclampsia, and placental complications. After these health risks comes the trauma of delivery and the possibility of fetal distress, perinatal asphyxia, placenta previa, and host of other complications that can still be fatal even with modern medicine. Most men have never heard of these complications until their wife or partner is pregnant. And after the pregnancy, men rarely talk about these issues again and they recede into the background.

This is no criticism of men, they don’t live the reproductive cycle so of course they don’t pay much attention to it. But it does make them less acutely aware of the enormous dangers women face when the government starts telling doctors what they can and cannot do to pregnant women. There are some things the government is simply NOT good at and dictating individual medical outcomes is near the top of the list.

So, we now face an election where that is exactly what is on the ballot. Everyone born with a uterus has an interest and a stake in the abortion issue that those without a uterus do not have—meaning, the abortion issue will be intense for a lot of people. In addition to the intensity of this issue is the sheer number of females in the population and the electorate. First, there are more women than men in America—167,500,000 women compared to 164,380,000 men.

But more importantly, women vote more often than men—in the 2020 presidential election, women constituted 52% of the electorate compared to 48% for men.

Small shifts in this vote yield big numbers. Take, for instance, the swing state of Pennsylvania. It, like many states in 2020, had record high turnout of 6,924,558. According to exit polls, 52% of those voters were women or 3,600,827. A shift of only 3% of the women’s votes would be equal to 108,025 votes or 27,470 more than Biden’s close victory over Trump.

No wonder Republican candidates are trying to soften their abortion stances. As men get a crash course in reproductive biology, more and more will have the experience that South Carolina State Rep. Neal Collins had when he regretted voting for an anti-abortion law that put a young women’s life at risk and the near loss of uterus when her water broke just after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Collins went on to vote for a less radical bill—one that listed 12 to 14 situations where the life of the mother would be protected. But what if there are more situations that threaten the life of the mother than the South Carolina legislature knows about? Women know that ultimately these decisions must be made between themselves and their doctors (and the men in their lives know that too). Nothing else will work, which is why the abortion issue is unlike anything else we have seen in politics.

 

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – From Time

RUSSIA WANTS TO LOCK UKRAINE BACK IN THE SOVIET CELLAR

BY PETER POMERANTSEV    OCTOBER 4, 2022 6:00 AM EDT

 

Putin gave his latest rant of resentment in the Kremlin, hinting at Cold War style nuclear threats, medieval holy war with the “satanic” West, and restoring the USSR by annexing slices of Ukraine, the Ukrainian army continued liberating parts of the country he was claiming to annex. As Ukrainian forces have freed people over the last few weeks in the Kharkiv region from Russian occupiers, they were greeted by relieved locals. Many told how they spent weeks, sometimes even months, hiding in their cellars from the Russian invasion. Such cellar stories are one of the repeating leitmotifs of the invasion.

Since February some Ukrainians have retreated to cellars for safety, seeking shelter from indiscriminate bombardment, ears attuned to measuring the proximity of each missile blast, bodies reverberating with every tremor. Across Ukraine there have been underground hospitals and underground schools, underground TV studios and underground concerts. Some 2500 civilians hid in the labyrinthine passages and halls underneath the vast, four square mile factory complex of Azovstal in Mariupol, as the Russians obliterated the city above them.

Missiles Rock Kyiv and Other Ukrainian Cities as Russia Escalates War

There are grimmer cellars, where Russian troops interrogate, torture, tie up, and rape. In recently liberated Izyum victims speak of torture cellars where they were given electro-shocks, had gas masks put on their faces and had flashlights shone in their face during interrogation. Such torture chambers are so systemic, the forms of torture so consistent, they can’t just be the work of soldiers breaking bad: torture is Russian policy. Many more victims can’t speak: a mass grave with over 400 bodies is currently being exhumed.

In the village of Yahidne, in northern Ukraine, Russian soldiers drove three hundred villagers in the cellar beneath the school, from infants through to old-age pensioners. Without medical care some died. When I asked one of the women who had been imprisoned in Yahidne how one imagines what’s going on in the rest of the world when locked underground, she explained how her world shrank to four walls, the little walks she was permitted to take outside, and the mood of the soldiers guarding them.

It was the Ukrainian journalist Andrii Bashtivoi, now a soldier at the front of the counter-offensive, who in the opening weeks of the invasion first turned my attention to how cellars were one of the important symbols of this war. They are emblematic of how Russia wants to imprison a whole country, trap and confine it, the physical manifestation of Russia’s war aims—and its motivations. But what precisely is this cellar that Russia wants to drive Ukraine into? What lurks in the basement of the Russian mind?

 

Ukraine at war is a territory where the literal and the metaphorical meet, where abstract words take on a bloody reality, and where physical objects swell with symbolism.

Whenever I cross into Ukraine the very air seems to thicken with meaning. As I leave behind the Polish border with its stalls of charities helping refugees, pass through passport control and emerge from the long, zig-zag, wire-fenced corridor of customs I enter a dimension where cliches turn into lived experience.

“Fighting for democracy” is something people do in Ukraine every day, laying down their lives for the right to live in a society where their voice matters. Russia kills and arrests elected officials and imposes violent dictatorship wherever it occupies.

“Civil society,” that web of horizontal social interconnections whose loss is always being lamented in the U.S., actually exists here—citizens band together to build city defenses, clean up the debris after missile hits, nurse the wounded and orphaned. Ukraine reminds what “family values” really mean: the whole country fights like one great family.

“Patriotism,” “sovereignty”—terms which have become so wasted in the West, are imbued with meaning in Ukraine.

But even as Ukrainians make talk about “democratic values” tangible, so the physical world here also pushes into the metaphorical, into the cellars.

In Kharkiv in July, in the far East of Ukraine, I was in the cellar of my colleague, the journalist Natalia Kurdiokova. Since an artillery strike knocked out the toilet of her apartment she has moved underground. It’s a comfortable cellar that she was already using as an office before the war. There’s a broadcast studio, bean bags, bright lighting, a kitchen and a bedroom.

At night we listened to the noise of artillery rolling over Kharkiv. The Russians failed to take the city in Spring, so now they were randomly shelling the city and lobbing random missiles in order to terrorise the population. The week I was there the Russians hit two buildings in the centre, killing five and injuring many others. On local news I watched the clip of a man whose wife was killed as they went out shopping. He knelt on the street by the bloodied body bag which contained her corpse, wept, ripped it open and began to kiss the dismembered limbs. A few weeks after I left the Russians hit a hospital for the hard of hearing. 21 died. Natalia told me she heard the missile as it gave a high pitch scream and tore the air above the city. As the Ukrainian forces liberated the Kharkiv Oblast and pushed past, Russia increase long range missile attacks on the city as punishment and vengeance.

Natalia and I were researching how people survive psychologically under such terror. In the first months of the invasion thousands Kharkivchani moved into the metro stations, like Londoners during the Blitz. Some became so paralyzed by fear they refused to emerge for months. Natalia described how even when the initial bombardment subsided she would see people standing at the bottom of the escalators, paused in silent panic, unable to ride up.

Natalia recalled how much she used to enjoy climbing on her roof to gaze out over the city and beyond.

“They want to take away our sense of the horizon. Of the sky.”

Climbing up high always inspires a sense of possibilities. The barrages of Russian artillery have made such ascents impossible. Russia is not only forcing Ukrainians physically into cellars, it’s trying to do so mentally as well: to rob Ukrainians of their sense of a future, of horizons, of openness.

In Putin’s rambling, aggressive, misinformed speeches about Ukraine he always harps on a false history, claiming that Russia and Ukraine are one people, that Ukraine belongs to Russia. The speeches are also interesting for what they leave out. There’s no attempt to deal with the oppressions of the Russian and Soviet past, the way the Kremlin repeatedly colonizes, ethnically cleanses, deports, starves and mass murders other nations, and the way it kills and arrests and humiliates masses of its own people too in labour camps, Gulags, and the killing cellars of the KGB. Russia is a country that makes no effort to make sense of, define who was responsible, ask for forgiveness and move on from its legacy of mass murder and institutionalized sadism. There isn’t even a museum any more to the tens of millions killed in Stalin’s gulags, let alone to Russia’s colonial crimes. Right before the current invasion the NGO Memorial, which tried to document Soviet crimes, was shut for being a “foreign agent.”

All this horror stays locked up in the cellar of the Russian mind, a history of humiliation played out in a sado-masochistic torture cellar. And it’s this cellar the Russians want to lock the Ukrainians into. Russia’s current invasion replays Soviet-style “filtration” camps and mass executions, deportations, mass destruction of cities, show trials and crass propaganda. Just like in many centuries past Russia destroys Ukrainian language school books, arrests and “disappears” anyone who stands up for Ukrainian language and letters. In its stead Russia recreates a Soviet Dismaland of crass propaganda with marching pioneers and Soviet style songs, Soviet insignia and Soviet posters.

If we didn’t manage to escape the past—is the message—you have to suffer it with us, too. Russia wants to lock Ukraine into its cellar of horrors and force it to replay the past in a twisted fantasy where the mass murders, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and intent to genocide are all very real.

It’s striking how little mention of the future there is in the Kremlin’s propaganda. There’s only vengeance, warped nostalgia for the USSR, a mythic, cruel “Russian World”—and resentment. The Russian project has failed, so the aim now is to bring everyone down to its own level, drag all down to its cellar. “How dare you live so well” read a piece of graffiti scrawled by Russian soldiers in the suburbs of Kyiv.

Ever since the first weeks of the war Ukrainians have been asking the West to “protect our sky”: whether through enforcing a no fly zone, or at least by providing Ukraine with fighter jets. The sky needs protecting literally from Russian planes and missiles, but also figuratively for Ukraine’s right to define its own future. Wein the West did far too little to help, refusing to give planes and more sophisticated air defence systems. Now Ukraine is fighting for its own skies—and our future. Russia wants to lock Ukraine into the cellar of its past, but it wants to drag Europe down there too, to return us to a world where bullying states humiliate small ones—a world we thought had passed. It’s using energy to blackmail and break Europe and make the free world kiss its boots. It uses nuclear threats to bring back the nightmares of the Cold War: Putin wants a cheaper, nastier remake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As Anton Barbashin, a political analyst and editor of Riddle, noted as he watched Putin’s surreal speech announcing the annexation of parts of Eastern Ukraine on September 30, Putin was trying to return the world to the 1970s: the USSR is on par with America; Moscow controls half of Europe. Until we learn to fight back with the spirit of Ukrainians we will risk losing our future, too.

Whenever I’m in Ukraine I’m always glancing up at the sky with a mix of fear and hope. Every distant rumble of thunder makes me start: is that a missile? Like some medieval villager, the sky seems full of portents, danger, hope and symbols. Whenever I leave again, walking back across the border into Poland, the return to a zone of safety seems so cruel. Just a few hundred meters away is the zone of danger, where the innocent are being slaughtered every day. Here the trees, grass, birds all look the same but everything is different, both more secure and less alive, below a meaningless sky.

 

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – From the Guardian U.K.

IMPACT OF KERCH BRIDGE BLAST WILL BE FELT ALL THE WAY TO THE KREMLIN

Vladimir Putin opened road section in 2018 and Moscow had threatened reprisals if it was attacked

By Peter Beaumontin in Kyiv

Twelve miles long and taller than the Statue of Liberty, the Kerch bridge to the occupied Crimean peninsular was the jewel in the crown of Vladimir Putin’s infrastructure projects – described in the Russian media as the “construction of the century”.

When the Russian president opened its road span on 15 May 2018, driving an orange Kamaz truck across the bridge, he boasted of its significance.

“In different historical epochs, even under the tsar priests, people dreamed of building this bridge. Then they returned to this [idea] in the 1930s, the 40s, the 50s. And finally, thanks to your work and your talent, the miracle has happened.”

Heavily defended since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it was seen as important enough for Moscow to warn of reprisals if the bridge was targeted.

But on Saturday morning, in circumstances that are still unclear, a huge explosion rocked the Kerch bridge, collapsing part of the road carriageway into the Kerch Strait below and setting fire to fuel tankers on a train crossing the second railway span of the bridge.

The enormous significance of the damage to the bridge, obliquely claimed by a senior adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, will become clear in the coming hours and days – not least whether Moscow feels compelled to retaliate for the attack.

In the immediate aftermath, many analysts were quick to note the timing of the blast, occurring the day after Vladimir Putin marked his 70th birthday amid a series of humiliating recent defeats on the eastern and southern fronts of his war of aggression against Ukraine that has seen large scale Russian retreats.

It comes hard on the heels of Russian nuclear brinkmanship and a barely a week after Putin signed a decree illegally claiming to have annexed four Ukrainian provinces.

But the implied rebuff of the apparent attack is more significant than simply symbolic. The bridge was a key logistical supply line not only for Russian forces in the occupied Crimea but also elsewhere in southern Ukraine where Russian forces have been in retreat in recent days, even as the main supply line from mainland Russian, including a train line to Melitopol, has come under increasing Ukrainian pressure.

That significance has not been lost on residents of Crimea who, as news spread, rushed to petrol stations to fill up their cars.

And while there are other ways of supplying the Crimea, including its ports, damage to the bridge is hugely important to a place that until very recently was seen by Russia as being beyond the reach of Ukraine.

That has changed in recent months, however. An attack on the naval airbase at Saky in August, led Russian tourists to flee Crimea’s beaches en masse, jamming the bridge with miles-long tailbacks. Some Russian naval forces appear also to have been discreetly redeployed as the war has inched ever closer.

How Moscow responds is the big question, but one that had been looming ever more powerfully as Ukraine has successfully pressed its counteroffensive in recent weeks amid mounting disquiet among Russian elites and commentators over the conduct of Putin’s war.

In April, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and prime minister, and currently deputy chair of the Security Council of Russia, said: “One of the Ukrainian generals talked about the need to strike at the Crimean Bridge. I hope he understands what the retaliatory target will be.”

At the very least it is a huge propaganda victory for Kyiv that will be held up as a sign that not only is it unafraid of Putin’s nuclear threats but that it believes it is winning the war.

 

 

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – From the New York Times

THE POLITICS OF GRIEVANCE

 

By David Leonhardt   October 6, 2022

 

Good morning. We look at Italy, the largest country in western Europe to elect a far-right government in decades.

 

Italy, the world’s eighth-largest economy, elected a far-right government last week, with Giorgia Meloni as the likely next prime minister. It’s part of a trend: Her victory came shortly after Swedish elections that led to a far-right party becoming the second-largest in Parliament there.

To help you understand why Meloni won and what may lie ahead, I spoke with Jason Horowitz, The Times’s Rome bureau chief.

 

David: What was the main reason for Meloni’s victory?

Jason: The real secret to Meloni’s appeal was not any particular policy or vision. In Italy, every election is a change election, and being the candidate of the protest vote is a powerful thing. Meloni was that. The other major candidates had all been part of Mario Draghi’s national unity government. She stayed in the opposition and vacuumed up the protest vote. She won with about 26 percent.

 

Meloni’s appeal is also based heavily on grievance — the grievance of workers left behind by the globalization of which she is ideologically suspicious.

David: How would you compare Meloni with Donald Trump?

 

Jason: Despite her past admiration of Trump, and her closeness to the Republican Party — she has spoken at CPAC — she is different. Whereas Trump was the scion of a real-estate mogul, Meloni grew up in the leftist working-class neighborhood of Garbatella — and made it as a right-wing post-Fascist youth activist. She has a rough Roman accent, which could be compared to an old Brooklyn accent. And as a woman she had to overcome a lot. It all screams tough.

David: Meloni’s agenda also seems different from Trump’s. She has proposed specific economic policies to help the working class, right?

 

Jason: Her party’s main proposals are deep tax cuts, including for lower earners. On top of that, she wants to increase pension payouts and cut taxes for working mothers. She talks about increasing the low birthrate as a way to talk about Italians being proud again — being patriots who prosper and multiply. To help them multiply, she believes the government needs to help.

Still, Meloni’s platform is not anti-rich. She won the working-class vote — and also the rich vote. She is in a coalition with Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, who has been talking about tax cuts for 30 years, and other allies of businessmen from northern Italy. In all, Meloni’s proposals would blow a big hole in the budget.

 

David: Meaning that she has not also proposed spending cuts?

Jason: She has targeted one big economic benefit for cuts — “reddito di cittadinanza,” or citizenship income. It is a welfare benefit, enacted a few years ago, that pays hundreds of euros a month to people who don’t work. It has proved enormously popular in Italy’s disadvantaged southern regions, but its critics, including Meloni, see it as a handout that promotes laziness and crime.

 

Her opposition to the benefit probably cost her votes in the south. By contrast, the Five Star Movement, another anti-establishment party that seemed to be fading, defended the benefit and did well in the south.

David: In Italy, the foreign-born share of the population has surged over the past couple of decades. Was that subject part of Meloni’s message?

 

Jason: Even though there has not been an uptick in migrant arrivals of late, immigration is now a talking point of the Italian right. Meloni has talked about replacement of native Italians by illegal migrants. She has talked about invasion. I heard her tell workers that international bankers are driving mass migration to weaken their rights by replacing them with cheap migrant labor.

 

Immigration has been in the populist ether here since 2014 or so, when Italy had a wave of illegal migration land on its shores. Italy’s center-left leader at the time appealed to the European Union for help and didn’t get it. So it could be argued that Brussels had a hand in creating the populist wave that it so fears.

The left has failed to come up with a response on the issue, and even the more moderate or liberal governments in France and Spain are emphasizing enforcement. Left-wing parties are in a tough position, in which they can’t give up on integration, because it is central to their values. But emphasizing it may hurt their electoral chances.

 

David: How much reason is there to worry that Meloni might govern in an anti-democratic way and trample on human rights?

Jason: There is a feeling that even if she wanted to go the way of Viktor Orban in Hungary, she could not because Italy is so integrated into the European Union, and so dependent on hundreds of billions of euros in funds. She has also been a consistent voice for democratic elections. (The Times’s Steven Erlanger explains the E.U.’s fears.)

 

People are concerned about gay rights and perhaps abortion rights. She is against gay marriage and opposes adoption by gay couples, arguing that only a married man and woman can give a child its best shot. She herself is an unwed mother with a longtime boyfriend and says she should not be allowed to adopt either.

On abortion, Meloni has told me she believes abortion should remain safe, accessible and legal, but she wants to increase prevention. That has raised concerns that Meloni would make it more difficult to have abortions in a country where it can already be hard, because so many doctors contentiously object to it.

 

For more: Meloni has been a full-throated supporter of Ukraine, but her coalition partners have sounded like Russia apologists. What happens now?

 

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – From G.U.K.

BIDEN WARNS WORLD WOULD FACE ‘ARMAGEDDON’ IF PUTIN USES A TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPON IN UKRAINE

 

In his starkest assessment yet, President Joe says world is the closest it has come to nuclear catastrophe in 60 years

 

 By Julian Borger of GUK, Thu 6 Oct 2022 22.08 EDT

 

Joe Biden has warned the world could face “Armageddon” if Vladimir Putin uses a tactical nuclear weapon to try to win the war in Ukraine.

The US president made his most outspoken remarks to date about the threat of nuclear war, at a Democratic fundraiser in New York, saying it was the closest the world had come to nuclear catastrophe for sixty years.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he said.

 

“We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” Biden said, referring to the Russian president. “He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

 

Putin and his officials have repeatedly threatened to use Russia’s nuclear arsenal in an effort to deter the US and its allies from supporting Ukraine and helping it resist the all-out Russian invasion launched in February. One fear is that he could use a short range “tactical” nuclear weapon to try to stop Ukraine’s counter-offensive in its tracks and force Kyiv to negotiate and cede territory.

If Russia did use a nuclear weapon, it would leave the US and its allies with the dilemma of how to respond, with most experts and former officials predicting that if Washington struck back militarily, it would most likely be with conventional weapons, to try to avert rapid escalation to an all-out nuclear war. But Biden said on Thursday night: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

“First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have the threat of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” the president said. “We are trying to figure out what is Putin’s off-ramp? Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face but significant power?”

US intelligence agencies believe that Putin has come to see defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat to his regime, which he associates with an existential threat to Russia, potentially justifying, according to his worldview, the use of nuclear weapons.

Earlier on Thursday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin understood that the “world will never forgive” a Russian nuclear strike.

“He understands that after the use of nuclear weapons he would be unable any more to preserve, so to speak, his life, and I’m confident of that,” Zelenskiy said.

 

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – From the Guardian U.K.

HOW WHITENESS POSES THE GREATEST THREAT TO US DEMOCRACY

By Steve Phillips  Tue 4 Oct 2022 06.21 EDT

 

People forget that championing whiteness is what makes Trump powerful.

‘After stirring the racial resentment pot, his popularity took off.’

A growing chorus of voices is warning that our democracy is in grave danger, but there is much less discussion of the exact nature of the threat. Recently, President Biden emphasized the severity of the threat by going to the place where the constitution was signed to give what the White House described as “a speech on the continued battle for the soul of the nation”.

Biden specifically named “Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans” as the ones carrying out the attacks, and that is accurate, on the surface. The deeper, more longstanding threat, however, was articulated by historian Taylor Branch in a 2018 conversation with author Isabel Wilkerson recounted in Wilkerson’s book Caste. As they discussed how the rise of white domestic terrorism under Trump was part of the backlash to the country’s growing racial diversity, citing the contention that historian Taylor Branch (“Caste”) noted: people saying “they wouldn’t stand for being a minority in their own country”. He went on to add, “the real question would be if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?”

 

Whiteness is the deeper threat because championing whiteness is what makes Trump powerful. People forget that Trump was not particularly well-regarded before he started attacking Mexican immigrants and signaling to white people that he would be the defender of their way of life. In the months before he launched his campaign, he was polling at just 4% in the May 2015 ABC/Washington Post poll. After stirring the racial resentment pot, his popularity took off, growing exponentially in a matter of weeks and propelling him to the front of the pack by mid-July 2015 when he commanded support of 24% of voters, far ahead of all the other Republican candidates.

As his support grew with each racially infused statement – such as banning Muslims from entering the US – Trump marveled at the unshakable passion of his followers, observing quite presciently that, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters … It’s like, incredible.”

Trump’s 2015 discovery of the power of whiteness is the same lesson that Alabama’s segregationist governor George Wallace internalized in the crucible of southern politics during the civil rights movement in the 1950s. “I started off talking about schools and highways and prisons and taxes – and I couldn’t make them listen,” Wallace said, adding, “Then I began talking about n-----s – and they stomped the floor.” After Trump began talking about Mexicans, and then Muslims, many white people from coast to coast stomped the floor and even stormed the Capitol to keep him in power, seeking to destroy the democratic tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.

As Wallace’s words show, Trump is not the first leader of a movement to make America white again, and for more than a century we have consistently underestimated the political power of whiteness.

The clearest example is the start of the civil war itself. A hundred and sixty years before the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the legislatures in one-third of the states passed laws rejecting the outcome of a presidential election and then issued a literal call to arms where hundreds of thousands of people picked up their guns and, in the name of defending whiteness, proceeded to shoot and kill hundreds of thousands of their fellow Americans.

In 1968, Alabama’s Wallace saw that the audience for white nationalism reached far beyond his state’s borders and mounted a presidential campaign that secured 13.5% of all votes cast. The strength of Wallace’s showing influenced Richard Nixon’s presidential administration to the extent that historian Dan Carter wrote: “When George Wallace had played his fiddle, the President of the United States had danced Jim Crow.”

In 1990, an actual Klansman, former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke, mounted a bid for the US Senate and was initially dismissed as unable to win because of his unapologetic white supremacist views. Duke shocked the establishment by attracting the support of 44% of Louisiana’s voters.

The good news is that the proponents of whiteness do not command majority support. The original Confederates themselves were in the minority and represented just 11% of the country’s white population. People who enjoy majority support have no need to unleash fusillades of voter suppression legislation in the states with the largest numbers of people of color. Yet, from the grandfather clauses of the 1800s to the restrictive voting laws passed last year in the south and south-west, we are seeing an unrelenting practice of trying to depress and destroy democracy by engaging in what the writer Ron Brownstein has described as, “stacking sandbags against a rising tide of demographic change”.

Just as the enemies of democracy know that they must destroy democracy in order to prevail, the clearest way to defeat them is to aggressively expand democratic participation. Mathematically there is a clear New American Majority made up of the vast majority of people of color in alliance with the meaningful minority of white people who want to live in a multiracial nation. With the sole exception of the 2004 election, that coalition has won the popular vote in every presidential election since 1992.

In order to defend democracy and win the fight for the soul of the nation, two things must happen. One is to make massive investments in the people and organizations working to expand voting and civic participation. Coalitions like America Votes Georgia and Arizona Wins played critical roles in bringing hundreds of thousands of people of color into the electorate, helping to transform those former Confederate bastions.

The second step is to directly challenge the nation to choose democracy over whiteness. When Taylor Branch posed his provocative question in 2018, it was in the wake of tragedies such as the killing of Heather Heyer, a white woman protesting the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, march of white nationalists incensed at plans to remove Confederate statues. Trump’s response to Heyer’s killing – she was intentionally struck by a car driven by a white supremacist – was to shrug and note that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the march.

When he launched his presidential campaign in 2019, Biden explicitly invoked Trump’s post-Charlottesville embrace of whiteness, saying “We have a problem with this rising tide of white supremacy in America,” and went on to oust a defender of white nationalism from America’s White House. Far from being chastened, however, the enemies of democracy have only intensified their efforts. To ultimately prevail in this defense of our democracy, we must clearly understand the underlying forces imperiling the nation, name the nature of the opposition, and summon the majority of Americans to unapologetically affirm that this is a multi-racial country.

Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and is a Guardian US columnist. His book How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Endin

 

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – From Al.com

 

Tuberville: ‘Pro-crime’ Democrats want ‘reparation’ for ‘people who do the crime’

By Sarah Swetlik | sswetlik@al.com  Published: Oct. 08, 2022, 9:20 p.m.

 

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Saturday said Democrats are in favor of “reparation” because they are “pro-crime.”

Tuberville, R-Ala., made the comments while at a rally held by former President Donald Trump in Nevada.

“They want reparation because they think the people who do the crime are owed that,” Tuberville said as the crowd cheered behind him. “Bullshit!” he added.

Tuberville’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Tuberville joined Trump and other Republicans speaking at a rally near Lake Tahoe in Nevada in support of Adam Laxalt, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and oJoe Lombardo, a candidate in the state’s governor’s race.

“We’re going to take our country back and we’re going to straighten up education and we’re going to close the border,” Tuberville said. “We’re going to get inflation under control, and we’re going to stop this damn crime. You have to select and get Adam Laxalt elected senator of the state of Alabam-of Nevada.”

During the rally, Tuberville also said the U.S. cannot afford food stamps and “people need to go back to work.”

Reparations typically refer to “financial recompense for African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves and lived through the Jim Crow era,” according to the NAACP. The association has called for a national apology, as well as financial payments, social service benefits and land grants to every descendant of enslaved African Americans.

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – From the Washington Times

DEMOCRATS’ ‘CRIMINALS FIRST’ STRATEGY WILL HAVE THEM FINISHING LAST ON ELECTION DAY

They can backpedal all they want, but they can't erase their records

OPINION By Ronna McDaniel - - Monday, October 3, 2022

 

Last month, Wisconsin Democratic Senate nominee Mandela Barnes bragged about his endorsements from nine police officers, only two of whom currently serve. Considering there are 13,400 active-duty officers in the state, finding two is hardly something to be proud of. But it gets worse: Neither of the two endorsements Mr. Barnes claims to have received actually endorsed him. In endorsingMr. Barnes’s record on supporting law enforcement is so troubling, he’s resorted to making up endorsements.

Mr. Barnes — like countless Democrats running for office — is simply reaping what he’s sown. For two years, Democrats railed against our men and women in blue. They backed the defund-the-police movement. They championed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals back on the streets. And they’ve turned a blind eye to the crisis on our southern border. All of this has led to a surge in violent crime and dangerous drugs in our communities.  

In Pennsylvania, the Democratic-run cities Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are experiencing dramatic crime waves and a spike in murders fueled by radical policies that Democrats like Senate candidate John Fetterman have supported. For years, Mr. Fetterman has pushed for taxpayer-funded drug dens and releasing one-third of the prison population. And he’s only doubled down. Last year, he admitted that he wants to free every second-degree murderer in Pennsylvania prisons. According to Mr. Fetterman, a life sentence for murder is a “tragedy.” Unfortunately for Keystone State residents, Mr. Fetterman has put his dangerous views into action. Under his leadership, nearly 10,000 inmates have been released. And as chair of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, Mr. Fetterman worked to release multiple first-degree murderers, including one who referred to himself as “a son of the devil.”

In Nevada, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is being haunted by her time on the Nevada Board of Pardons Commissioners as state attorney general. Between 2007 and 2014, Ms. Cortez Masto voted to shorten the sentences of violent criminals more than 75 times. In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is on record accusing police officers of having a “gangster and thug mentality.” And in Florida, Democratic Senate candidate Val Demings is walking back past sympathies for the defund-the-police movement and statements describing violent riots as “a beautiful sight.”

Ms. Demings isn’t the only Democrat scrambling to change her tune. In Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly talks tough about border security, but he’s voted with President Biden 94% of the time and consistently refuses to do the bare minimum to secure the border. He voted to defund border wall construction three times. He refused to vote to renew Title 42, the last bastion of President Donald Trump’s border policy that immediately removed illegal immigrants. And he declined to support hiring more Border Patrol agents despite funding “sanctuary cities” and thousands of IRS agents.

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Meanwhile, deadly drugs like fentanyl are pouring over the border and deep into our communities. Business is booming for human smugglers and sex traffickers. Sixty murderers, 78 people on the terror watchlist, and 323 sex offenders have been caught trying to cross the border so far. Yet Mr. Kelly ignores the crisis in his own backyard. He’s just another Democrat refusing to enforce the law.

That’s not a winning strategy when voters are increasingly concerned about crime and violence. For the first time since 2016, a majority of voters — 53% — said they worry a “great deal about crime,” according to a Gallup Poll. Voters also trust Republicans over Democrats to get crime under control. And the latest polling shows Mr. Biden’s approval rating has sunk below 40%.

While Democrats run from the problem they created, Republican Senate candidates are racking up endorsements from our men and women in blue. In Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson has been endorsed by 51 sheriffs across the state — Republican, Democratic and independent. In Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz has been endorsed by the Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police. In Nevada, Adam Laxalt was endorsed by the Las Vegas Police Protective Association and the Public Safety Alliance of Nevada, which recently revoked their endorsement of Cortez Masto. Arizona’s Blake Masters earned an endorsement by the National Border Patrol Council.

And North Carolina’s Ted Budd, Georgia’s Herschel Walker and Ohio’s J.D. Vance have all been endorsed by law enforcement agencies as well.

Democrats can backpedal all they want, but they can’t erase their records. Americans know that a vote for Republicans is a vote for public safety, security and the rule of law. That’s an issue that will win at the ballot box.

• Ronna McDaniel is the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.

 

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – From PBS

GOP STEPS UP CRIME MESSAGE IN MIDTERM’S FINAL STRETCH

 

Oct 7, 2022 11:20 AM EDT

 

NEW YORK (AP) — The graphic surveillance video shows a man on a sidewalk suddenly punching someone in the head, knocking them to the ground.

With muted screams and gunshots in the background, the video stitches together other surveillance clips of shootings and punching on streets and subway trains as a voiceover says, “You’re looking at actual violent crimes caught on camera in Kathy Hochul’s New York.”

That’s not exactly true.

The ad from Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican challenging New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in next month’s election, included video of an assault in California. Some of the footage depicted crimes that took place before Hochul took office last year. While acknowledging a mistake, Zeldin’s campaign defended the ad and said the message was clear: violent crime is out of control.

That’s a theme GOP candidates across the U.S. are sounding in the final month of the critical midterm elections. The issue of crime is dominating advertising in some of the most competitive Senate races, including those in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada, along with scores of House and governors campaigns such as the one in New York.

The rhetoric is sometimes alarmist or of questionable veracity, closely echoing the language of former President Donald Trump, who honed a late-stage argument during the 2020 campaign that Democratic-led cities were out of control. That didn’t help Trump avoid defeat, but experts say Democrats would be wrong to ignore the potency of the attacks.

“When violence is going up, people are concerned, and that’s when we tend to see it gain some traction as a political issue,” said Lisa L. Miller, professor of political science at Rutgers University, who focuses on crime as a political issue in countries across the world.

The FBI released annual data this week that found violent crime rates didn’t increase substantially last year, though they remained above pre-pandemic levels. The report presents an incomplete picture, in part because it doesn’t include some of the nation’s largest police departments.

More broadly, rates of violent crime and killings have increased around the U.S. since the pandemic, in some places spiking after hitting historic lows. Non-violent crime decreased during the pandemic, but the murder rate grew nearly 30% in 2020, rising in cities and rural areas alike, according to an analysis of crime data by The Brennan Center for Justice. The rate of assaults went up 10%, the analysis found.

The rise defies easy explanation. Experts have pointed to a number of potential causes from worries about the economy and historically high inflation rates to intense stress and the pandemic that has killed more than 1 million people in the U.S.

There is a history of candidates relying on racist tropes when warning of rising crime rates. During the 1988 presidential campaign, supporters of George H.W. Bush released the so-called Willie Horton ad that has become one of the most prominent examples of race-baiting in politics.

In this year’s elections, Republicans often blame crime on criminal justice reforms adopted after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, including changes to bail laws that critics had long contended disproportionately impacted communities of color, along with accusations that Democrats have not been sufficiently supportive of law enforcement.

Some GOP candidates are trying to make their case in communities of color. Zeldin, for instance, has delivered his anti-crime message while speaking at buildings and bodegas in diverse New York City neighborhoods.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee for Senate, heart surgeon-turned-TV talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz, has toured the state holding “safe streets” forums in Black communities.

Asked by a reporter about his focus on crime, Oz pointed to a conversation he had with Black Republican ward leaders in Philadelphia that turned from economic issues to struggling Black-owned businesses.

“The African Americans in the group said, ‘Well, the deep problem is … people don’t feel safe,” Oz said in an interview.

Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state lawmaker from Philadelphia, said Oz is using crime victims to get votes but rejects steps like limiting the availability of firearms that would reduce gun violence.

“Oz does not live in a community that is struggling with this kind of crime and nobody, nobody believes that he actually cares and would actively advance policy solutions that would help deal with this problem,” Kenyatta said.

Despite the GOP messaging, it’s not clear that crime is a top priority for voters.

In an AP-NORC poll conducted in June that allowed U.S. adults to name up to five issues they consider most important for the government to be working on in the next year, 11% named crime or violence, unchanged since December and well below the percentage naming many of the other top issues for Americans.

A September Fox News poll asking people to name one issue motivating them to vote this year found just 1% named crime, even as most said they were very concerned about crime when asked directly.

Still, Democrats are responding to Republican efforts to portray them as soft on crime.

Hochul in recent days announced the endorsement of several law enforcement unions and released her own ad with a public safety message titled, “Focused on it,” to remind voters that she toughened the state’s gun laws.

During a debate last week in Colorado, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis responded to his Republican opponent Heidi Ganahl, who has repeatedly portrayed him as soft on crime, by suggesting her plan to cut taxes would “defund the police” by cutting prison and police budgets.

Ganahl denied that, calling herself a “law-and-order girl,” and blamed Polis for rising crime rates.

In Oregon, the Republican candidate for governor is making crime a top issue in a three-person race, where an independent candidate who is a former Democratic state lawmaker could take enough votes from the Democratic nominee to help the GOP win the top office in a blue state.

Democrat Tina Kotek has joined her opponents in pledging to increase police funding but has also backed tougher gun laws as part of a plan to tackle crime.

That approach is one embraced by gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund, which is spending $2.4 million combined on ads in Wisconsin and Georgia to convince voters that Republicans who don’t support tougher gun laws are actually the ones “soft” on crime.

“We can reset this narrative and neutralize the GOP’s, what I would call, artificial advantage on the issue,” said Charlie Kelly, a senior political advisor to Everytown.

In some states, candidates are raising alarm about crime rates that remain relatively low or have even fallen.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, said in a recent debate as he runs for reelection that the state’s crime is “going down despite some of the fearmongering you hear.”

State data shows violent crime rates in Connecticut dropped 9% in 2021 from 2020, which Lamont pointed out in a recent debate with his Republican challenger, Bob Stefanowski, who has made “out of control” crime a central plank of his campaign.

When asked how he can keep making the argument that crime is on the rise when the numbers tell a different story, Stefanowski said people are afraid of rising crime, but he denied stoking those fears.

“If we weren’t highlighting this, we wouldn’t be doing our job. I can tell you when we’re out there, people are afraid. I’m not trying to make them afraid,” he said. “They’re coming to me afraid and saying, ‘What are you going to do about it?'”

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – From TIME

WE MAY BE IN FOR YET ANOTHER COVID-19 SURGE THIS FALL AND WINTER

BY JAMIE DUCHARME   OCTOBER 11, 2022 4:15 PM EDT

 

Falland winter have always been peak seasons for respiratory viruses. As the weather cools in many parts of the U.S., people are forced into indoor environments where viruses can spread more easily. Holiday gatherings and travel can also become breeding grounds for disease.

That’s one reason why experts are worried that COVID-19 case counts may rise in the U.S. in the coming weeks. But there’s also another. To help forecast COVID-19 rates for the U.S., experts often look to Europe—and the data there aren’t promising. More than 1.5 million COVID-19 diagnoses were reported across Europe during the week ending Oct. 2, about 8% more than the prior week, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest global situation report, published Oct. 5. More than 400,000 of those diagnoses came from Germany, and almost 265,000 came from France.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Says 'Elements of Enemy' Among Protesters

“We’re concerned,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, at an Oct. 5 press briefing. “In the Northern Hemisphere, we’re entering autumn and the winter months, so we will see co-circulation of other viruses like influenza….We need health systems to be prepared.”

The U.S. doesn’t always follow in Europe’s footsteps. The Alpha variant, for example, caused a larger spike in Europe than in the U.S. But European outbreaks related to Delta and Omicron predated similar surges in the U.S.

COVID-19 in the U.S. has been at a “high-plains plateau” for months, says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Since the spring, roughly 300 to 500 people have died from COVID-19 each day—a rate that is still tragically high but relatively stable.

Read More: What Happens If I Get COVID-19 and the Flu at the Same Time?

The situation in Europe “may be a harbinger of things to come,” Osterholm says. He fears a “perfect storm” may be brewing, threatening to turn that U.S. plateau into another surge. Waning immunity, low booster uptake, ever-evolving subvariants that are increasingly good at evading the immune system, and people behaving as if the pandemic is over all suggest “we are headed to the end of the high-plains plateau,” Osterholm says. “I just don’t know what [the next phase] looks like.”

Federal case counts aren’t showing an uptick in the U.S. yet; in fact, daily diagnoses and hospitalization rates have fallen steadily since July. But case counts have become increasingly unreliable as more people rely on at-home tests and states pull back on reporting. Osterholm says he pays closer attention to death and hospitalization rates, but both lag behind actual spread of the virus, since it can take time for infections to become serious enough to result in hospitalization or death.

Meanwhile, the CDC’s wastewater surveillance dashboard, which tracks the level of virus detected in wastewater samples across the country, suggests circulation is increasing in multiple parts of the country, including portions of the Northeast and Midwest.

Taken together, the signs suggest a surge is coming, says Arrianna Marie Planey, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.

“I don’t like to use the word ‘inevitable’ because all of this is preventable,” Planey says. “It’s just that prevention is harder and harder at this stage of the pandemic,” when mitigation measures like mask mandates have fallen away and many people either don’t know about or don’t want to get the new Omicron-specific boosters.

Planey has been encouraging people she knows to get boosted and making sure they know about tools like Evusheld (a vaccine alternative for people who are immunocompromised or unable to get their shots) and the antiviral drug Paxlovid. She says she’d like to see more urgency from the government, including stronger communication about the need to get boosted and a continued push for those who haven’t been vaccinated at all to get their primary shots.

The problem, Osterholm says, is getting people to actually heed those warnings. Many polls show that Americans are ready to leave the pandemic behind, even if the virus continues to spread and mutate in the future.

That leaves public-health experts with the frustrating job of repeating the same advice they’ve given for the last several years, to an increasingly detached audience. “There’s no joy in saying, ‘I told you so,’” Planey says, “because people are sick and dying.”

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – From Time 

 

Elliott (see his critical state theory, above) made mention of the tendancy of Republicans, after The Donald’s four years of glory, to some; anguish, to others; and entertainment, to all, and, on the balance, found celebrity nominations to be a negative factor for the midterms.

In each of the five races he selected (see above), Trump’s support helped get the nominees onto November’s ballots—your latest reminder both of Trump’s power inside the party and his destructive influence on the Establishment’s best-laid plans. Just look at the headlines coming out of Georgia!  “And while (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell does not flub his words, it seems he did err in not derailing certain nominees that put his return to Majority Leader at risk.

“Democrats currently enjoy the narrowest possible majority in the Senate, which is split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a tie. So any one of these five races may be the one that decides power in Washington for the last two years of President Joe Biden’s first term. And given the national mood—and political quirks in each of these states—Republicans may yet prevail and win a majority,” one that could bring some unpredictable, truly Trumptastic characters to the upper chamber.

 

They noted his contempt on an MSNBC broadcast: “They have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries. They really do. I’m not really supposed to say that but it’s obvious fact. And you know, when stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people,” Carville said. 

Carville’s comments came during a discussion with anchor Ayman Mohyeldin about the fresh controversy surrounding former football star and Georgia GOP U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who this week was accused of paying for an abortion for a then-girlfriend in 2009. Walker is running a staunch “pro-life” campaign.

Other Republicans running for office this November who drew Carville’s ire included Doug Mastriano, the Donald Trump-backed nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, and U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters in Arizona.

The GOP’s problem is the “very low-quality people that vote in their primaries” are “producing predictably very low-quality candidates,” Carville reiterated. “It’s evident right in front of you.”

Carville: They have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries. They really do. I'm not really supposed to say that but it's an obvious fact. But when stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people. 

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – From the Huffington Post

 

DEM STRATEGIST RIPS REPUBLICANS WITH REASON FOR THEIR ‘VERY LOW-QUALITY CANDIDATES’

 

"I'm not really supposed to say that but it's an obvious fact," said longtime Democratic operative James Carville.

 

By Lee Moran   Oct 5, 2022, 08:13 AM EDT

 

 

Longtime Democratic political consultant James Carville pulled no punches with his searing assessment of the GOP field of those he described as “very low-quality candidates” in the 2022 midterm elections.

“They have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries. They really do. I’m not really supposed to say that but it’s obvious fact. And you know, when stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people,” Carville said of Republicans on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour.”

Carville’s comments came during a discussion with anchor Ayman Mohyeldin about the fresh controversy surrounding former football star and Georgia GOP U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who this week was accused of paying for an abortion for a then-girlfriend in 2009. Walker is running a staunch “pro-life” campaign.

Other Republicans running for office this November who drew Carville’s ire included Doug Mastriano, the Donald Trump-backed nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, and U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters in Arizona.

The GOP’s problem is the “very low-quality people that vote in their primaries” are “producing predictably very low-quality candidates,” Carville reiterated. “It’s evident right in front of you.”

 

Carville: They have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries. They really do. I'm not really supposed to say that but it's an obvious fact. But when stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people.

 

 pic.twitter.com/HYGYAjPfuY

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 5, 2022

 

 

 

 

ATTACHMENT the LAST – From the PEANUT GALLERIES

 

FROM the WASHINGTON TIMES

Peanut Gallery

 

Trexbites

Oct 4

Montgomery County Circuit Judge ruled election officials could start counting general election mail-in ballots beginning on Oct. 1. This is BS. how many more votes for VAN Hollen to get voted back in and Hoyer? Wait a sec. I can tell you in month. Then we need to dump as many ballots as possible + 100 so it looks tight. paid for the DNC

Reply

BakkaHead

Oct 3

Is PA that desperate? That much hate for Trump? You would elect this mistake of a candidate? Oz is not the best but he is better.

Reply

3

1 reply

bbga

Oct 3

Mail-in voting should not be allowed. Voters should vote in person, showing their I.D., to ensure honest & accurate election results. In Georgia, paper ballots print out & are scanned in. The paper ballots should be counted, to compare with the machine results. We should be able to trust our votes/elections, & currently there is very little trust in them. With good reason.

Reply

31

1 reply

DeborahMacaoidhSelim

Oct 3

This is how conservative outlets are portraying the election. "The most chaotic in history." It was actually not chaotic at all. All the ballots were counted and a winner declared within days. This is not chaotically abnormal. Trump and his followers MADE it chaotic by trying to overthrow our democracy.... Which anyone paying attention saw coming from a mile away.



Do NOT blame the election debacle in mail in ballots! It was Trump and his minions who were COMPLETELY to blame!

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41

6 replies

Oct 2

Mailing ballots to every name on a voter list is asinine as these lists contain millions of now ineligible voters - either dead ones or ones who moved away. Who is actually filling out these ballots and returning them to anonymous drop boxes? What a travesty - a system inviting fraud and cheating.

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4

5 replies

jebstuart

Oct 2

Why is the Gore Bush election never mentioned? I remember being on tender hooks waiting for a third count which Bush also won. How did it become the results have to be revealed immediately without challenges of any kind?

Reply

21

2 replies

rioquibu

Oct 2

Most of the covid rule changes for Dem election cheating in 2020 remained the normal in PA.

Reply

1

10 replies

Clydesdale528

Oct 1

With COVID rules still in place ? The Democrats will win everything. #2020steal2.0

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3

3 replies

BillCunnane

Oct 1

The Dems will drag out the count so they can stuff the boxes with additional ballots for their candidates. It talks time for the dead to fill out the ballots and mail them in

Reply

431

6 replies

rnnicomments12

Oct 1

So does all this mean election integrity has not been restored under the Biden Administration?

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41

7 replies

SadlyOrwellian

Oct 1

Here we go again.

Reply

AlHall

Oct 1

·        Watch. Democrats will win every seat in the mid-terms. 120% of Democrats will vote in every precinct like in 2020. Strictly Democrat vote counters can't wait to get their fingers on those juicy mail-in ballots when behind locked doors with no witnesses again. Importation of mail-in ballots from one Democrat precinct or state to another is authorized by this illegitimate president and his totalitarian regime. Joe Biden will personally put his Chinese boots on the throats of anyone in the flyover states that interferes with his plans to create a western Stasi police country. Doctor of Education Jill concurs. And Hunter will be making deals with the CCP and pointing loaded guns at his prostitute's faces while ripped on cheap fentanyl from the southern border.

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62

12 replies

JoeTaliBiden

Oct 1

Remember when we used to have election DAY! It's a wonder we've gotten by these last 240 or so years!

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81

3 replies

SteveDeery

Oct 1

That is planned. It leaves more time for Democrat electoral shenanigans. Again.

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8

2 replies

HarryHuntington

Oct 1

You need to know how the Election Day count is going so you can print more mail in's, fill them out, and fake the postmark.

Reply

721

12 replies

Openletter2004

Sep 30

Bipartisan Policy Center’s associate director of the Election Project is advocating for changes in all 50 states that would permit election workers to begin processing ballots well ahead of Election Day in order to reduce the strain on election workers, avoid long delays in determining winners, improve election security and increase confidence among voters."



Only if leaking the pre-election day counts is a crime with an automatic death sentence since a leak would absolutly destroy the little confidence voters currently have about the intergrity of the elections system.

 

FROM the HUFFINGTON POST

PG

 

 

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Lee E Armstrong Jr

 

@leea360

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

So very true!

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Roberta 

 

@RobertaByTheSea

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

Considering the people that were elected in 2020 I kinda have to agree

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ᴜᴋ1ʟʟᴇᴅᴍʏꜰ4ᴛʜ3ʀ

 

@pr3p4r32d13

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

Like as if we hadn’t all figured this out six years ago…

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So Sue Me 2

 

@sueschul

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

I laughed out loud at that.

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Aloha Cindy

 

@sendingAlohas

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

You can say it and Keep saying it.

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Lynn Clark

 

@NLClark2

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

One merely has to look at the GOP in Michigan to see that this is true..

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Ambien

 

@NorrinR06303580

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@NLClark2

and

@Acyn

Or, just look at Rep. Qbert and Margarine 3'Toez in GA! And let's not forget the likes of frmr Reo. Steve King, Louie Gomert "Pyle" of TX, or arguably the most racist member of Congress, Paul Gosar of Arizona. I mean, the 1950's called and they want Gosar back!

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Jennifer Baty

 

@JenBaty

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

Confirmed.

GIF

ALT

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TR

 

@pyrrhanik

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

Rewound to hear it again & watch AM hold it tigether.

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SarahCA

 

@SarahBCalif

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

Bingo

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Ambien

 

@NorrinR06303580

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

I fell of my chair when he said that..

GIF

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Kim

 

@HyattathomeKi

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

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Brecksvillean

 

@brecksvillean

 

·

Oct 5

Replying to

@HyattathomeKi

and

@Acyn

True, but somehow I'm not laughing though

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MamaMx

 

@Mxstr76ArmyMom

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

The following media includes potentially sensitive content. Change settings

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White w/a side of mayo

 

@shannoncmallory

 

·

Oct 5

Replying to

@Mxstr76ArmyMom

and

@Acyn

Ikr

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ksmith

 

@ksmith9105

 

·

Oct 4

Replying to

@Acyn

On both sides, but true.