Nail-Biting Time, No? Alaska in Chaos. Antisemitism on Ballot. Perfidious Peggy Noonan: I’m Dreaming of a Big Blue Wave. Good GDP. ‘Bad Bromance’: Omar Update. Dems Can’t Quit ‘Trans’ Movement. More

Americans once again cast their ballots for the single most important midterm elections of their lives. Polls close Tuesday.

All eyes on Alaska. The state has “become the most chaotic Senate race in battleground America.” According to the Wall Street Journal, “Democrats wanted to focus on Trump and high heating bills, but then came the October surprise”:

Now, with just days to go, allegations that Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign secretly worked to recruit a spoiler candidate to help her party win the pivotal Alaska seat—and potentially retake control of the Senate—has become this midterm election’s biggest October surprise.

For months, Republicans raged over the presence on the ballot of a retired teacher named Dan J. Sullivan Jr., who is one of four finalists for the Senate seat held by Dan S. Sullivan, potentially confusing voters. Trump directed the Justice Department last week to sue Alaska, seeking to delay the results if the incumbent narrowly loses.

The New York Times report on the secret efforts to get the second Dan Sullivan on the ballot broke after roughly 58,000 voters—one in ten Alaskans—voted. George Washington University law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley writes that Alaskan voters need to know what happened, while PJ Media’s Tim O’Brien wonders if the stench of Alaska politics will spread to ubiquitous Democratic lawyer Marc Elias.

Another word beginning with an A—antisemitism. Matthew Continetti argues that “Antisemitism Is on the Ballot.” “The midterms will measure our collective immunity to an ageless hatred that destroys everything it touches” is the subtitle. Continetti writes:

Under the surface, however, an ugly force is stirring in U.S. politics that makes this midterm campaign different. … From Graham Platner to Abdul El-Sayed, from Hasan Piker to Tucker Carlson, antagonism toward Israel, “Zionists” and foreign intervention has morphed into fear and loathing of a minority that has lived peaceably and productively in this country for more than 300 years. …

Mr. El-Sayed’s radical candidacy might have been dismissed in previous election cycles as an outlier, a novel product of Michigan’s fervid college towns and sizable Arab and Muslim population. Not this year. Mr. El-Sayed is simply the most prominent—and perhaps the most vulnerable—representative of the anti-Israel and antisemitic bile flowing through the body politic in 2026. He has company.

Seth Mandel writes in the New York Post that El-Sayed “can’t dodge vile antisemitic ad — because it parrots his own words.” Even former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi admits she finds El-Sayed’s past comments on Israel “‘concerning’ and ‘wrong.’” Meanwhile, Ruy Teixeira, iconoclastic Democrat, writes in the Washington Post that his party is on course for a “stunningly good” midterm election—but their success could come back to bite them in 2028:

The populations of red states are growing faster than those of blue states, which will give Republicans an electoral college advantage after the 2030 Census. … Democrats don’t have an easy road ahead. But, paradoxically, the better they do in 2026, the more likely they are to ignore their party’s weaknesses with working-class and rural voters. Those weaknesses led to Trump winning the 2024 election, but they are likely to fade from the party’s memory as Democrats, buoyed by the fool’s gold of midterms success, attempt to placate an energized left.

Perfidious Peg? Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan would welcome a “historic blue wave” (please don’t yell at me—I’m just telling you what she said). She writes:  

I believe a big, big wave is coming, and I see it as composed of many colors—blue voters predominantly, but indignant red voters too, and disappointed Trump-base voters, many staying home.

This is what I hope for: that it won’t be a close election, that the outcome is unmistakable. Let it be a clear and obvious rebuke—a rejection, a rebellion, a rout.

For un-disappointed Trump supporters, this sounds awfully like a return to the old GOP, which is remembered by many Trump supporters as the era of genteel concession speeches.  There was good news on the economy this week—real GDP rose 3.4%. “Get Out There and Sell It, Republicans,” econ guru Larry Kudlow orders. Meanwhile, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal touts the arrival of the U.S. investment boom:

It’s hard to recall a time with such a large disconnect between how Americans feel about the economy and the data. The Commerce Department on Thursday reported that GDP grew 3.4% in the third quarter thanks to surging business investment and buoyant consumer spending. So why are Americans so glum?

By objective measures, the economy is firing on most cylinders. Consumer spending remains healthy and contributed 2.52 percentage points to the third-quarter GDP increase. Even if consumers fume about higher prices, they aren’t tightening their belts. Spending on motor vehicles, household furnishings, restaurants and travel increased.

The world’s most famous sibling made the cover of the New York Post this morning. “Bad Bromance” is the headline, and there are pix of Ilhan Omar, if that is her name, and her favorite brother in his fetching short shorts. Obama calls the probe of Ilhan’s marriage “appalling,” but it started in his administration. The New York Times, which previously brushed off the story, now reports that the feds found evidence of the sham marriage in 2016. Meet the brother.

Ilhan’s favorite brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, described himself as a gay man of the East African diaspora in an academic paper earlier this year. He described his “ethnographic research”: 

“It was a space shaped by tension, risk, intimacy, and vulnerability,” he continued. “While navigating the challenges of ethnographic research, I immersed myself in the lived experiences of the people I spoke with, while also negotiating my own safety and the complexities of my identity.”

We long to read his ethnographic musing on the vulnerabilities associated with wedding one’s sister.

In “Transgenderism and the Democrats,” scholar Hadley Arkes writes that the Democratic Party “can’t seem to get over its attachment to this bizarre, esoteric and deeply unpopular cause”:

In the old “Uncle Remus” stories the “tar baby” was a decoy, a doll made from a mixture of tar and turpentine by the crafty Br’er Fox to catch the elusive Br’er Rabbit. Once the doll was touched, Br’er Rabbit couldn’t let go.

Transgenderism has become the tar baby for the Democrats: a thing they can’t let go, can’t help promoting and defending even when it costs them dearly. In the presidential election of 2024, the issue worked with an unanticipated power for the Republicans: “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

It’s easy for voters to tune out complicated policy issues like deregulation, healthcare financing and antitrust law. In contrast, transgenderism can’t help but draw the concern of ordinary people once attention is paid: disfiguring surgeries and hormones with lifelong effects; males easily defeating or injuring women on the sports field; invasions of privacy and sexual assault in women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and prisons. And only an intellectual can deny the obvious truth that sex is immutable; it isn’t “assigned at birth” but intrinsic to one’s body, with the differences penetrating to the cellular level.

A related City Journal article, “Inside the Network Helping Families Evade Bans on Pediatric Gender-Transition Treatments,” bolsters Arkes’ point.

In making a dumb joke about how tacky the Cheesecake Factory is, Barack Obama bit off more than he could chew. He showed himself to be an elitist snob. “The Cheesecake Factory Is Over-the-Top, Gaudy and Bizarre. That’s the Point” is a headline in the WSJ. Eat your heart out, Obama:

There are few cultural institutions that Americans seem to agree on these days. The late Dolly Parton. The wholesale excess of Costco. And, if recent events are any indication, the Cheesecake Factory, in all its grand and zany glory.

That’s why former President Barack Obama’s remarks about President Trump at a rally in Ohio over the weekend—“he’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory”—stirred so much debate and strong emotion. Yes, the chain is kitschy, gaudy and over-the-top. Yes, it transcends the constraints of both diet and design. That’s why it’s such a juggernaut.

Nothing during Covid was so infuriating as condescendingly telling conservatives to “follow the science.” As suspected, it’s elite institutions that have trouble following the science. Bad babysitter strikes again: “America yet again falls for a ginned-up fake race-baiting story with the help of Ms. Rachel” is the headline on Kirsten Fleming’s New York Post column.