Late Tuesday night, Peter Baker reported for the New York Times that "In the last days before a midterm congressional election that will determine the future of his presidency, Mr. Trump seems to be throwing almost anything he can think of against the wall to see what might stick, no matter how untethered from political or legal reality. Frustrated that other topics-- like last week’s spate of mail bombs-- came to dominate the news, the president has sought to seize back the national stage in the last stretch of the campaign. Ad hoc though they may be, Mr. Trump’s red-meat ideas have come to shape the conversation and, he hopes, may galvanize otherwise complacent conservative voters to turn out on Tuesday. But he risks motivating opponents, as well, and he has put even some of his fellow Republicans on the spot as they are forced to take a position on issues they were not expecting to have to address."The newest crazy move by an ally of the White House Crackpot is to hire women to claim that Bob Mueller sexually abused them. Jack Burkman, a Republican lobbyist, conspiracy theorist and Trumpist hate talk radio host, is the paymaster on this one and the FBI is investigating him and trying to find out where on the Republican Party food chain the hoax was hatched.But the illegitimate fake "president" is hardly the only desperate Republican this week. Congressional Republicans all seem to feel they have been granted permission-- by Trump and by the right-wing public-- to lie their asses off in their ads and debates, brazenly, according to HuffPo reporter Jonathan Cohn. For example, how does a Republican Party pro-gerrymandering group get their message across? Cohn offers this radio ad with more dishonest assertions per second than even Trump's tweets make! Proposal 2 is a ballot initiative to set up a bipartisan commission to draw district lines for seats in the state Legislature and Congress with the goal of ending partisan gerrymandering. But listening to the ad, you'd never know that was even what Prop 2 is about. Listen; it's the sound of GOP desperation as they lose their grip on the levers of power.6 days out and they're at each other's throats-- pity!"Distortions in political advertising are part of politics," wrote Cohn... "[b]ut if you get the feeling the most frequent and audacious misrepresentations are coming from one side of the political spectrum, you are not crazy. Around the country, it’s Republicans and conservatives making the most patently ridiculous claims [like] all of those Republicans portraying themselves as champions of protections for people with pre-existing conditions even though they spent last eight years trying to take those protections away. The desperation could be a sign of panic over the polls, which give Democrats a strong chance of winning key statewide races and control of the U.S. House, as well as an outside chance of gaining a majority in the Senate."In Michigan, that means the governor's mansion flipping red to blue, the state Supreme Court flipping from red to blue, the congressional delegation going from 9 Republicans and 5 Democrats to a big enough change that could amount to 9 Democrats and 5 Republicans! And "Republicans," wrote Cohn, "don’t have an easy way to fight back. Their party leaders have negative approval ratings, while their legislative record in Washington consists of an unpopular health care bill that didn’t pass and an even less popular tax cut that did. And so they seem to have decided the best strategy is just making up stuff about the causes and candidates they oppose."All over the country, the Republican healthcare message is to frighten people into believing that single-payer health insurance-- whether that particular Democrat backs it or not-- would "destroy" Medicare.Yesterday, Chuck Todd and company noted that everything seems to be moving in the direction of the Democrats in the last few days of Republican desperation. Trump's approval rating is sinking again; the generic polling is moving up for Democratic candidates-- the good, the bad and the ugly-- especially in the battleground races.
[T]he final week of this midterm season-- with now six days to go-- is how different it is in the closing days versus what we saw in 2016, when Comey, daily WikiLeaks disclosures and a disciplined Trump dominated the final days of that contest.Is this due to movement after the pipe-bomb scare and Pittsburgh? Is this the political environment snapping back to where it was pre-Kavanaugh? Or is it just noise and a false sense of where things truly stand? (After all, it was six days before Election Day 2016 when the polls had Hillary Clinton up 6 points in Wisconsin.)
The close races that the pundits have been reticent to talk about other than to say "toss-up" have started moving blue. Progressive challenger Jared Golden, in the sprawling, largely rural 2nd district of Maine, has now pulled ahead of Wall Street puppet and Trump enabler Bruce Poliquin. 538 has changed their rating from "toss-up" to "lean Democrat," give Golden a 5 in 8 shot (63.3%), despite Ryan's SuperPAC and its allies spending $4,364,000 on ads smearing Golden, an ex-frontline marine who led the fight in the state legislature to protect healthcare from Republican efforts to take it away and led the fight in the state legislature to raise the minimum wage.Even in the deep red Trump districts (over R+10) where the DCCC decided not to engage, Democrats have moved up into margin-of-error territory. Look at this: neo-Nazi incumbent Steve King leads JD Scholten by one point-- 45-44%... in a district Trump won by 23 points! The momentum towards Scholten is gigantic-- the true picture of a political tsunami. Ammar Campa-Najjar-- who DCCC right-wing staffer Kyle Layman has worked actively to sabotage-- has basically pulled even with Republican Druncan Hunter in a district where Hillary only got 39.6% of the vote. In western New York's 27th district (PVI- R+11), Hillary did even worse-- 35.2% against Trump's 59.7%-- but progressive Democrat Nate McMurray is now ahead of incumbent Chris Collins (who, like Hunter, is out on bail). Trump keeps going to Montana for hate rallies-- but that seems to have helped little-known Democrat Kathleen Williams pull even with Trumpist incumbent Greg Gianforte, the out-of-state multimillionaire who Trump lauded for body-slamming a reporter.Another district that will report early on Tuesday is PA-11, one of the only districts in Pennsylvania to have gotten significantly redder after the state was un-gerrymandered. The DCCC had a corporate candidate in the race and she-- and they-- disappeared immediately after the state Supreme Court announced the new boundaries. But the progressive in the race, Jess King, fought even harder and is now within the margin of error in a fight against incumbent backbencher Lloyd Smucker. She's outraged him ($1,623,583 to $1,302,707), out-worked him, out-debated him and now, without the DCCC lifting a finger on her behalf, she's within 4 points of Smucker in a district that 538 says Smucker has an 11 in 12 (92.1%) chance of winning. When the totals are announced earlyTuesday night, a win or even a close loss-- by King will signal that GOP incumbents across the country should be kept away from windows in tall buildings for the rest of the evening.
