What Will We Know Late Tonight? Five Words That Will Determine the Outcome. Veteran Scribe: We Need a Smaller Tent. Oh, And We’re Bombing Iran. Tucker Will Be Upset. More
Will we know which party will control Congress by bedtime?
Here’s the Washington Post breakdown on poll closings, but it’s still not too late for predictions.
“A terrible night awaits the GOP, and even that might be an understatement,” predicts Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen. Olsen writes:
You don’t have to be a prophet to see what’s coming. No serious analyst thinks Republicans will have a good night as midterm returns roll in. The open question is whether it will be merely bad, terrible or something akin to being eaten by a Cyclops.
In this column, the 12th version of my biennial election prediction memo, I’m taking the middle course: I foresee a terrible night for the GOP, with losses in the House of 20 seats and a Democratic takeover of the Senate. Team Red will also lose many governorships and state legislative chambers as the public expresses, up and down the ballot, its significant dismay at the course of Trump’s presidency.
Communications strategist Lee Carter is an extremely serious political analyst—but she doesn’t hazard a prediction; instead, Carter focuses on “the five words that explain this election“: “Affordability. Socialism. Corruption. Trump. Turnout.” The categories aren’t cut and dried. Every single one of them cuts both ways. Turnout, for example:
A wave of Democratic enthusiasm in safely blue districts won’t change control of Congress. A smaller Republican surge in a handful of competitive races could.
And a relatively modest number of independents deciding to stay home or to show up could rewrite the headlines.
The polls can tell us where voters stand.
Tuesday will tell us which voters stand up.
The Dems have a “weekend from Hell” (including Haley Stevens’ endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed and continued fallout from the two Dans in Alaska), but James Antle of the Examiner asks if it will matter. Axios worries that, if the Dems do win big tonight, they will reinterpret the message:
Democrats are poised to romp in today’s election — easily winning the House and, according to most forecasts, flipping the Senate too. Yet the party itself is less popular than the IRS. Even the GOP has a better brand. …
But polls across the board still show a lesser-of-two-evils election — or as one Republican tied to President Trump’s political operation described it, a contest of which party voters hate more. Voters are more eager to disempower Trump than to empower Democrats.
If the Democrats were to take both Houses of Congress, it would further empower the already surging progressive wing of the party. In a Free Press story headlined “The Democratic Tent Is Too Big,” veteran reporter Joe Klein states his reservations: “I would like both houses of Congress to gain Democratic majorities, but not at the cost of empowering extremists who don’t like Israel or, more to the point, Jews.”
A New York Post story by Victor Nava shows how the DSA’s midterm socialist takeover could unfold on Election Night. Nava provides a candidate-by-candidate look at what might happen. We should stress here that nobody knows for certain what will happen overall tonight. Alaskans are going to the polls with the controversy over the two Dans unresolved.
“When Does a Dirty Trick Become a Crime?” lawyer George J. Terwillinger III asks regarding the Alaska mess. Terwilliger makes a case for investigating the case, but the question is complicated:
“Politics ain’t beanbag,” as Finley Peter Dunne’s fictional Chicago saloonkeeper, Mr. Dooley, famously observed. But throughout American history, political combat has remained subject to legal limits. The boundary between shady and illegal activity isn’t always clear, but there is a zone that, when entered, can expose political operations and operatives to accusations of criminal conduct in their political affairs….
One way the dirty trick can easily become a criminal matter is through misconduct by the participants in the course of investigation of a dirty trick. Watergate is the most prominent example. The dirty trick was itself a crime—a burglary seeking kompromat of the opposition party by bugging its headquarters. The men who carried it out were charged with burglary, wiretapping and conspiracy. But it was the attempts by its intended beneficiaries, including President Richard Nixon, to conceal the crime and hinder the investigation for which several appointees, aides and operatives went to prison and Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment. Thus did that dirty trick get turned on its head, producing the adage “The coverup is worse than the crime.”
In the Alaska matter, an intentional effort to confuse voters to harm Sen. Sullivan’s re-election surely falls under the rubric of dirty tricks, which Merriam-Webster defines as “underhanded stratagems for obtaining secret information about or sabotaging an enemy or for discrediting an opponent (as in politics).” But is it a crime—or could it become one by way of conduct during an investigation?
Meanwhile, Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York takes a look at the “acrimony” and “funky polls” in the Michigan Senate race. Democrat Haley Stevens, who endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed, was the wild card in Michigan. Ed Morrissey of Hot Air took note of the vicious reaction from the “party of women” to Ms. Haley’s decision, especially James Carville’s reference to her as a “used condom.”
Speaking of foul language, Meghan Gurdon writes that, “Politics Needs a Swear Jar.” That’s definitely got my vote.
Turning Point? With this election, it can be argued that America’s two political parties are in for the first reshaping of the landscape since Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren invented Democrats. Election Day itself, Barton Swain points out, one of our great traditions, is dying:
For about 100 years, from the early 20th century to the early 21st, Americans voted almost wholly together. The custom offered a splendid example of unity in division. In the early republic and in various ways through the 19th century, laws accommodated early votes for servicemen stationed abroad and citizens living in remote locales. Modern early voting offers something different: convenience.
Another reason to vote on Election Day, not before: You can learn a lot about a candidate in the weeks before an election…. Alaskans would go to the polls with more intelligence than 41,000 of them had in the first week of early voting. Not for the first time, patience receives its reward.
Multitasking. The U.S. struck Iran’s Qeshm Island yesterday. Let’s hope this doesn’t set off Tucker Carlson. Carlson is insisting that President Trump is on the verge of going nuclear (as in weapons). Relax. Tucker’s been wrong before.
You Should Make a Silk Purse Out of That. The American Psychological Association is having an accreditation crisis. Joseph Figliolia suggests in City Journal that the nation’s largest professional organization for psychologists should view this as an opportunity:
Critics charged the APA with politicizing its programs, including the embrace of “critical” psychotherapies that make dubious assumptions about “gender identity” and label Jews colonial oppressors. The APA’s commitment to social-justice ideology undermines its program quality and nondiscrimination standards, commenters noted, particularly in its failure to address complaints of anti-Semitism. …
How can the APA turn its ship around? Some basic reforms include introducing a scientific integrity standard, definitions for what constitutes “unsettled” scientific areas, a revised “non-discrimination” standard, and clearer protocols for navigating program complaints.
First, the APA should recommit itself to open scientific inquiry on controversial issues like gender medicine. That would mean adding “scientific integrity” to its enumerated professional values for accredited programs. Doing so would help ensure that APA-accredited programs create environments where faculty and students can teach and research competing scientific viewpoints in good faith….
In an era defined by public distrust in institutions, the APA has a rare opportunity to stand up for scientific integrity, evidence-based practice, and equal access. For the sake of patients and trainees, let’s hope that it seizes it.
The men in women’s sports issue reared its head in Maine, where two high school girls yesterday spoke out about competing against male athletes who identify as “trans” women:
“Many girls and women are discovering the crushing disappointment that comes from being beaten in their own sports by males who should have never been allowed to compete in the first place,” Wilson said.
Alliance Defending Freedom has taken their case.
See you tomorrow. The Force be with you.
