Last Call For The Recount Account

Recounts in Georgia and Florida are underway as evidence piles up of massive voter suppression in both those states by Republicans in order to steal both gubernatorial races and the Florida senate race. Georgia's Brian Kemp should go to prison for this.

Republican Brian Kemp’s campaign declared victory in the race for Georgia governor on Wednesday, even as election officials continued counting thousands of absentee and provisional ballots, narrowing his lead and prompting Democrat Stacey Abrams to insist she could have the votes to force a runoff election.

As the vote-counting continued, voting rights advocates accused Kemp — who as secretary of state is Georgia’s top election officer — and local officials of disenfranchising thousands of voters on Election Day. Hundreds of complaints flooded in about hours-long lines brought on by broken equipment, a shortage of voting machines and insufficient quantities of printed provisional ballots.

On Wednesday evening, Kemp was ahead with 50.3 percent of the vote to Abrams’s 48.7 percent. Abrams and the Libertarian candidate would need to gain at least 25,000 votes more than Kemp to bring his share of the vote below 50 percent and trigger a runoff.

Today the state is counting absentee, and provisional ballots and Abrams is suing to make sure those ballots are counted.  Kemp has stepped aside as Secretary of State, something he has to do under state law.  There are a lot of ballots -- maybe hundreds of thousands -- that still need to be counted.  But it gets worse:

Another problem was the limited number of voting machines in some locations. More than 1,800 machines sat idle in storage in three of the state’s largest and most heavily Democratic counties. In Fulton County, according to figures provided by elections director Rick Barron, the ratio of machines to registered voters was lower than it had been in 2014, despite predictions that turnout was likely to break records for a midterm election.

While some voters waited in hours-long lines in Fulton County, 700 of those machines sat in stacks in a warehouse in downtown Atlanta, Barron said. The machines were sidelined because they are evidence in a lawsuit alleging the equipment had been exposed to the threat of hacking in 2016.

The federal judge in the case had ordered state and local election officials — including Kemp — and the plaintiffs to weigh the demands of upcoming elections in deciding how many machines to set aside.

Kemp dragged his feet to make sure those machines couldn't be used.  It's purposeful voter suppression of black Democratic votes, period.  The legal struggle continues in Georgia, but the odds of a recount in Florida for not one but three races seems guaranteed now by state law.

Two of the highest profile races in the country -- both in Florida -- are likely headed to a recount soon. 

Sen. Bill Nelson's re-election bid is likely headed to a hand recount given that the incumbent Democrat now trails Florida Gov. Rick Scott by 17,000 votes, within the .25% margin required for a hand recount. Nelson's campaign aides believe he will emerge victorious once all the ballots are counted. 

And on the governor's side, Democrat Andrew Gillum -- after conceding the race on Tuesday evening -- has grown more supportive of a recount of late, in part because his deficit to Republican Ron DeSantis is down to 38,000 votes, within the .5% needed for a machine recount. Campaign aides, though, remain clear eyed about the the long odds that Gillum can make up that deficit. 

Recounts, which have not officially been authorized in either race, put the outcome of two of the most closely watched races of 2018 on hold, with Democrats hoping for a miracle that could get both Gillum, a candidate who garnered considerable attention in his campaign against DeSantis, and Nelson, an incumbent who Democrats had thought would win his seat going into Tuesday night, over the finish line with a win. 

"On Tuesday night, the Gillum for Governor campaign operated with the best information available about the number of outstanding ballots left to count. Since that time, it has become clear there are many more uncounted ballots than was originally reported," Gillum's communications director Johanna Cervone said in a statement. "Mayor Gillum started his campaign for the people, and we are committed to ensuring every single vote in Florida is counted." 

At no point in the statement, though, did Gillum's campaign withdraw the concession and sources close to the mayor highlight that his outlook hasn't changed since his Tuesday night speech. It it is important to Gillum, these sources said, that his supporters know they are fighting for every vote. 

"We want every vote counted, we believe that there are still votes out there for Mayor Gillum and we want to make sure his supporters know we are fighting for every vote," one source said.

The third race is where Democrat Nikki Fried is a few hundred votes ahead of Republican Matt Caldwell for the state's Agriculture Commissioner, a powerful office in the state of Florida because it handles the state's gun licenses and enforces firearms legislation.

We'll know more in the days ahead, but Democrats could win all four of these races and need to fight for every single vote to be counted.

Stay tuned.

The Blue Wave Vs. The Red Wall

One state where the Blue wave faltered badly was North Carolina, which kept its illegal, unconstitutional partisan gerrymander through the 2018 election thanks to some help in foot-dragging from the Trump regime.  It paid off, too.  Republicans kept their 10-3 seat edge despite Democrats winning the popular vote in the state yet again.

“The blue tide did not breach the gerrymandered sea wall that exists because of the broken redistricting process we have in North Carolina,” said Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause NC. “That was what we were watching for. We were waiting to see, does anything change? Gerrymandering does provide a protective sea wall for those districts.”

Across the state, Republican candidates for Congress won 50.3 percent of the vote and Democrats won 48.4 percent of the vote, according to a News & Observer analysis of vote totals. Democrats did not have a candidate in Eastern North Carolina’s 3rd district, won by Republican incumbent Rep. Walter Jones.

But Republicans kept their 10-3 edge in the state’s House delegation.

Republican Rep. George Holding defeated Democratic challenger Linda Coleman 51.2 percent to 45.8 percent in the 2nd district, which includes suburban Wake County.

Republican Rep. Ted Budd defeated Democratic challenger Kathy Manning 51.5 percent to 45.5 percent in the 13th district, which includes part of suburban Greensboro.

And Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready 49.4 percent to 48.7 percent in the 9th district, which includes parts of suburban Charlotte. All results are unofficial until certified by the state.

A three-judge panel has twice ruled the congressional districts are unconstitutional because of excessive partisan gerrymandering, with the latest ruling coming in August. The judges, which allowed Tuesday’s elections to proceed under the maps, said no future elections could use the districts as drawn. The ruling has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

One of the authors of the maps had a different view of the results.

“The fact that the Democrats competed so heavily in the seats means that they were very confident they could win those seats,” said state Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican who helped draw the districts.

“If they are very confident they could win those seats, it proves the seats were not drawn to keep them out of the process ... Any person who has looked through their mailbox or watched TV or gone on the internet or opened a newspaper knows these seats are in fact competitive.”

Don't count on the 2020 map being any better.  Yes, Democrats shorted out the supermajority that the GOP had in the state legislature and now governor Roy Cooper can actually veto things.  The worst abuses are on the way out.  But the ruling on NC's districts is now going before the Roberts court, and the only issue is whether Chief Justice Roberts will be the fifth vote to overrule the lower court.  Considering Roberts was more than happy to gut the Voting Rights Act, I fully expect SCOTUS to block the order despite the screaming racism involved in the gerrymander in the first place.

Cooper will have a tough re-election battle ahead to keep his governor's seat in 2020 too.  Like it or not, the Red Wall is here to stay in North Carolina, and in several other states in the South and Midwest.

But one of those states where Democrats are having the same problem is Ohio, and unlike North Carolina, Ohio is only getting older and whiter.  ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis has been covering Ohio politics for a while now, and this thread on Ohio Dems in 2018 is pretty sobering.

Yes, Sherrod Brown won reelection, which shows the enduring appeal of his rumpled brand of economic populism. (Though his flawed opponent got almost 48% despite getting relatively little party/outside backing.)

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) November 8, 2018

Outside of Sherrod Brown, the Buckeye State is basically a lost cause for Dems in the Trump era.  Unless they want to permanently cede it to the GOP along with Indiana and Kentucky, Ohio Dems need to figure out how to win in a state that is tailor-made for the politics of white resentment.

I don't know if they can. The Red Wall is definitely protecting Ohio, and unlike NC, I don't see a way over, around or through it.

Meat The Press, Con't

If the Trump regime wanted to get the headlines off of yesterday's firing of Jeff Sessions in an effort to interfere with the Mueller probe and tie the media up in knots, the White House definitely accomplished that last night by revoking the press credentials of CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta after falsely accusing him of assaulting a White House aide at a Trump post-election press conference Wednesday.

In a stunning break with protocol, the White House said Wednesday night that it's suspending the press pass of CNN's Jim Acosta "until further notice." 

The move came just hours after Acosta, CNN's chief White House correspondent, drew the ire of President Donald Trump and his allies by asking multiple questions at a post-midterms news conference. Trump insulted Acosta and called him a "terrible" person. 

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders announced in a statement that Acosta would be stripped of what's known as a "hard pass," which gives him access to the White House grounds. 

CNN said in a statement that Acosta has the network's full support. 

The revocation of his pass "was done in retaliation for his challenging questions at today's press conference," the statement said. "In an explanation, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders lied. She provided fraudulent accusations and cited an incident that never happened. This unprecedented decision is a threat to our democracy and the country deserves better. Jim Acosta has our full support." 

In the 7 p.m. hour on Wednesday, Acosta was stopped at the White House's Pennsylvania Avenue gate where reporters usually enter. He was heading back to the White House for a live shot on "Anderson Cooper 360." 

The real reason of course was that Acosta asked one question too many about the Racist-in-Chief, and Trump finally lost his temper as the walls of the Mueller probe are closing in.  I don't expect Acosta to get his press pass back either, if he does, I will be very surprised.   Trump is fully committed to the media as "enemies of the people" narrative after this week's loss of the House to Democrats, and Acosta is only the first of what I expect to be many casualties.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders went on a Twitter tirade, posting a long string of garbage about Acosta's unacceptable behavior with a doctored video that conveniently popped up on right-wing sites a couple of hours after the news conference and that he owed the White House aide a formal apology after "putting his hands on her" as she was taking the mic out of his hand while asking a question of Dear Leader Trump.

Trump needs a distraction right now to give his new Acting AG Matthew Whitaker time to torpedo the Mueller probe, and crucifying Jim Acosta definitely has the media on the defensive, and his base is baying for blood.  I don't expect any of Acosta's colleagues will do more than whine, either, because they know they will be next.

What they should do is as a whole refuse to cover Trump until Acosta gets his credentials back, but the press only cares about access, so it will never happen.  Acosta will be disappeared and replaced by another CNN reporter, which is what Trump wants. And Actually, Acosta's egregiously unfair punishment is exactly what Trump needs to get his failures off the front page.  Judging from the headlines this morning, it's working.

Until the press walks out on Trump, nothing will change.

StupidiNews!

• At least 13 are dead and 12 more injured at a mass shooting in a dance club in Thousand Oaks, California early Thursday, the shooter is believed to be among the dead.
• Canadian PM Justin Trudeau is officially apologizing on behalf of Canada for Ottawa's refusal to accept a 1939 refugee ship carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees.
• British PM Theresa May is pushing a draft UK Brexit deal this week ahead of plans to finalize a compromise with the EU by the end of this month.
• Democrats are warning that Donald Trump could delay release of his tax returns subpoenaed by a Democratic House committee for months, if not years, in a fight that could stretch beyond 2020.
• Samsung is teasing a phone that unfolds into a tablet for a 2019 launch as the manufacturer gets its annual developer conference under way this week.

Last Call For Trump's Race To The Bottom

People keep telling me that the Trump regime isn't a bunch of white supremacists, but for some weird reason, admitted white supremacists keep ending up at the White House.

The leader of a white nationalist group whose members marched in the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville visited the White House on Wednesday, according to pictures he posted online.

Patrick Casey, who heads the group Identity Evropa, posted the pictures to Twitter, in which he is seen posing on the White House grounds on what he described as a visit to “pay my respects.”

“Evropa has landed at the White House!” Casey tweeted.

Three sources familiar with how the Trump White House operates tell The Daily Beast that Casey could not have reached the location directly in front of the White House’s south front by himself or on a tour. Casey, the source said, likely would have had to be escorted by a Trump administration staffer wearing an official badge to get that kind of access.

Identity Evropa is a highly controversial group. Several of its members marched with other white supremacists in Charlottesville, and its previous leader was found guilty in a misdemeanor trial for his role. Since taking over Identity Evropa late last year, Casey has sought to distance the group from that fatal rally by adopting a public image focused on white “identitarianism.”

The group’s motto, “You will not replace us”, both refers to the idea that non-white groups are intent on eliminating white Americans and echoes the “Jews will not replace us” slogan that white supremacists chanted in Charlottesville.

The pictures from Casey’s White House visit were tweeted on the same day that President Donald Trump held a press conference in which he bristled at a reporter who questioned whether his embrace of “nationalism” encouraged white nationalists. Trump responded by claiming that the question itself was “racist.” The reporter who asked the question, PBS’ Yamiche Alcindor, is African American.

This is Trump's base, people.  This is the leader of the tiki torch carrying assholes that led a white pride parade through an American city, and then got invited to the White House grounds.  One day after midterms and the guy fires Jeff Sessions, puts a crony in charge of Mueller, and has the local white ethno-state racist asshole over for giggles and selfies.

If you're still a Republican after the last two years, I'd tell you that you needed to do some soul searching, but it's obvious you have no soul.  But hey, guess what, now you're supporting the party that wants to embrace people who want to forcibly relocate and/or kill people like me, and you expect me to accept that the person in the White House and his party are both okay with that?

I'm not ready to make nice with violent racists who want me gone, or the party that supports those racists.  Dig?

 

The End Of The Session(s), Con't

As widely expected, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is resigning at request of Donald Trump, just hours after Trump earlier today at a press conference said that he'd rather discuss that prospect at another time.  Apparently that "other time" was on Twitter this afternoon.

Jeff Sessions resigned from his role as attorney general at President Donald Trump’s request on Wednesday.

Sessions was an early supporter of Trump’s campaign and one of the first people nominated to his Cabinet. But the president grew publicly frustrated with Sessions’ leadership of the Justice Department, specifically his March 2017 decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged coordination with the Trump campaign. Shortly afterward, in May 2017, deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead the FBI’s Russia investigation ― a decision that also angered Trump.

Trump’s frustration with Sessions became undeniable in late May of this year, when Trump tweeted that he wished he hadn’t named Sessions as head of the Justice Department.

The president’s remarks came a day after The New York Times reported that he’d asked Sessions to reverse his recusal from the Russia probe shortly after the attorney general announced it. Trump later pushed back, claiming that Sessions never told him he planned to recuse himself.

So at this point, we see what happens.  I told you two months ago this was coming. Sessions will be replaced by his Chief of Staff, Matthew Whitaker, as acting AG, which automatically means Rod Rosenstein is no longer overseeing the Mueller probe because Sessions was recused.  Whitaker apparently has no such qualms and is now in charge.

If you have any doubt as to what's about to happen, before becoming Sessions's Chief of Staff, Whitaker authored this CNN piece saying Rosenstein should rein in Mueller.

Any investigation into President Trump's finances or the finances of his family would require Mueller to return to Rod Rosenstein for additional authority under Mueller's appointment as special counsel. 

If he were to continue to investigate the financial relationships without a broadened scope in his appointment, then this would raise serious concerns that the special counsel's investigation was a mere witch hunt. If Mueller is indeed going down this path, Rosenstein should act to ensure the investigation is within its jurisdiction and within the authority of the original directive.

've prosecuted several financial crimes at the federal level and I've also defended plenty in my private practice. From this unique vantage point, I can understand how a motivated prosecutor, in a broad investigation into the financial affairs of high-profile individuals, can become overzealous toward the targets of such probes -- with calamitous results. While no one is above the law, in situations such as this, any seasoned prosecutor must use discretion both judiciously and expertly. 

It is time for Rosenstein, who is the acting attorney general for the purposes of this investigation, to order Mueller to limit the scope of his investigation to the four corners of the order appointing him special counsel. 

If he doesn't, then Mueller's investigation will eventually start to look like a political fishing expedition. This would not only be out of character for a respected figure like Mueller, but also could be damaging to the President of the United States and his family -- and by extension, to the country.

Expect Whitaker to move very quickly on reining in Mueller.  There's no need to fire Rosenstein with Sessions resigning, he can do with Mueller whatever he wants.

That hammer will fall quickly and Mueller knew it was coming.  He has made preparations.  We're about to find out what they are.  Worst case scenario,the new Democratic House majority subpoenas Mueller's materials and continues from there.

Stay tuned.

The Blue Wave Crested The Red Wall

The Blue Wave happened last night, guys.

Democrats won the popular vote in the House last night by about seven points, they will end up with about 35 pickups, maybe a few more.  This is 100% unalloyed good news.  There were a couple of surprise wins for the Dems like Oklahoma's 5th, South Carolina's 1st and New York's 11th that were long shots, and the Dems basically will end up splitting the 30 tossups evenly while winning all the races they were favored in.

Having Democrats in charge of House committees in January means Donald Trump will be truly investigated.  Even if Trump fires Mueller today, Democrats will finally conduct real oversight of Trump and his criminal actions, and Trump knows it.

On the governor's side, Dems picked up seven Governor's seats, unfortunately Florida wasn't one of them, and Stacey Abrams hasn't conceded in Georgia yet, but she has a major legal battle ahead against Brian Kemp's cheating.  Still, Kris Kobach went down in flames in Kansas.  The Brownback nightmare is over.   And Scott Walker lost, finally.  The upper Midwest is shifting blue again after 2016.

And that brings us to the Senate.  The good news, Dems picked up Nevada as Dean Heller lost.  Confederate racist Corey Stewart got 1.3M votes in Virginia and got crushed anyway by Tim Kaine's 1.8M plus. The bad news: Heitkamp, Donnelly, and McCaskill all lost, and Bill Nelson and Jon Tester are both behind in races that could go to recounts, and Arizona is still too close to call this morning, if Kyrsten Sinema does end up losing, it will be because of the Green party candidate, and that really pisses me off.

Still, it could have been worse. Medicaid was expanded in Nebraska, Utah, and Idaho.  That's a big win that will help hundreds of thousands. We knew the Senate was going to be long odds, and it was.   But Democrats won the House back, guys.  We won some big races and seven governor's seats back.  This is good, good news.  It's not fantastic, but winning the Senate was, well, fantasy. 

The reality is still pretty damn awesome.

StupidiNews!

• French law enforcement have arrested six in connection with a plot to assassinate French President Emmanuel Macron, all six suspects have connection to the far right.
• Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee say they will subpoena Donald Trump's tax returns in January.
• Hungary's government plans to create a new system of administrative courts overseen by Justice Minister Laszlo Trocsanyi, a move the opposition calls a judicial power grab.
• Boeing is close to issuing a safety warning for its 737 Max jets after last week's fatal plane crash in Indonesia killed 189.
• After AT&T's purchase of Time Warner earlier this year, the cable and mobile giant is cracking down on copyright infringement and suspending the broadband accounts of egregious violators.

Last Call For Election Projections

As of 11 PM, it looks like the Dems will take the House back by a decent margin, but the GOP will keep the Senate and pick up a couple seats total. Donnelly and Heitkamp both went down, and the pickups in Texas and Tennessee didn't happen.  Arizona and Nevada will be a long night.

In the governor's races, Kris Kobach lost in Kansas, and Dems picked up New Mexico, Michigan, and Illinois, and it'll be a long night otherwise, but Mike DeWine is going to win in Ohio and that's not a good thing.  Gillum just conceded in Florida.

I'll cover it all in the morning.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It

The whole voting thing, yes.  You should do it.

NY Times has the Dreaded Needle Of Fate™ and stuff, so get out there, you still have time, and I'll check in with you later tonight.

Make history.

StupidiNews, Election Day Edition!

It’s Election Day.

Go vote.

Last Call For Final Prognostications

On the eve of Election Day, let's check in with the final numbers for the big voting prediction sites.  First up, Larry Sabato and his Crystal Ball crew.

Our ratings changes leave 229 seats at least leaning to the Democrats and 206 at least leaning to the Republicans, so we are expecting the Democrats to pick up more than 30 seats (our precise ratings now show Democrats netting 34 seats in the House, 11 more than the 23 they need). We have long cautioned against assuming the House was a done deal for the Democrats, and we don’t think readers should be stunned if things go haywire for Democrats tomorrow night. That said, it may be just as likely — or even more likely — that we’re understating the Democrats in the House. Many of our sources on both sides seemed to think the Democratic tally would be more like +35 to 40 (or potentially even higher) when we checked in with them over the weekend.

On the Senate side, it's plus one for the GOP.

Because of the bad map Democrats faced this year, the GOP picking up seats always seemed like a possibility, even a strong possibility. Our final ratings reaffirm this potential; we have 52 Senate seats at least leaning to the Republicans, and 48 at least leaning to the Democrats. If that happened, the GOP would net a seat.

Politico likewise has the Dems retaking the House, but losing the Senate.

Democrats have pulled ahead in nearly enough races to claim a majority of the 435 seats up for grabs in the first national election of Donald Trump’s presidency, with POLITICO’s final race ratings showing 216 seats in the Democratic column — those are either solidly Democratic, likely Democratic or at least leaning Democratic.

That’s a significantly stronger position than Republicans, who have 197 seats leaning or solidly in their camp, but still just shy of the 218 needed to control the House next year. Republicans would need to win at least 21 of the 22 toss-ups — races that are currently considered too close to call — to get to 218 seats.

The Senate is a darker prospect depending on Heitkamp, Ted Cruz, and the open seat in Tennessee.

If Democrats can win one of those three races, they’ll still need to sweep the five toss-up contests on Tuesday to win back the majority. Three of the five are in states that Trump carried and where Democrats are defending seats: Florida, Indiana and Missouri.

Republicans are convinced they have the advantage in both Missouri and Indiana. Of those, the Missouri seat — currently held by Sen. Claire McCaskill — is the most endangered. But public polls in recent days have McCaskill neck-and-neck with state Attorney General Josh Hawley, who had been ahead in some other surveys in October. And Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly led his GOP challenger, former state Rep. Mike Braun, in two public polls last week.

Harry Enten gets right to the point at CNN.

House forecast: Democrats will win 226 seats (and the House majority) while Republicans will win just 209 seats. A Democratic win of 203 seats and 262 seats is within the margin of error. 

Senate forecast: Republicans will hold 52 seats (and maintain control of the Senate) next Congress while Democrats will hold just 48. Anything between Republicans holding 48 seats and 56 seats is within the margin of error.

Nate Cohn at the NY Times sees dozens of true toss-ups in the House, but the Dems would only need a few of them to take the lower chamber.

After more than 10,000 interviews, the result, in the aggregate, is that Democrats and Republicans are essentially tied in the 30 districts rated as tossups by the Cook Political Report, with Democrats leading by around half a percentage point.

Democrats need to win only a handful of these tossup districts — perhaps as few as six — to gain the net 23 seats needed to take control, which is why they’re considered favorites. But Democrats haven’t put them away. Instead, those races remain startlingly close. Each of the final 28 poll results in the tossup districts was within the margin of error, and 20 of the 28 were within two percentage points, a margin that pales in comparison with the typical measurement error in a poll.

With so many close contests, even modest late shifts among undecided voters or a slightly unexpected turnout could yield significantly different results, with very different consequences for the government and the future of the Trump presidency.

Over all, the polls comport with the growing consensus among operatives from both parties that Democrats are poised to gain around 35 seats in the House. If the Times/Siena polls were exactly right (they will not be), Democrats would gain 32 seats, assuming the two parties held the seats that were not polled.

 Charlie Cook at Cook Political Report has this breakdown:

Topline: The current House breakdown is 237 Republicans and 193 Democrats with five vacancies (three Republican and two Democratic). Democrats would need a net gain of 23 seats in November to retake the majority. President Trump's low approval ratings and Democratic voters' heightened enthusiasm are threatening Republicans' structural advantages in the House, including incumbency and favorably drawn districts. A record number of Republican open seats and a new court-ordered congressional map in Pennsylvania have further weakened the GOP's position. Republicans' ability to keep their majority now depends on their ability to define individual Democrats as unacceptable alternatives on a race-by-race basis. At the moment, Democrats are substantial favorites for House control and could pick up anywhere from 20 to 40 seats. 

The Senate is not in play for the Dems according to Cook, however.

Topline: Both parties have advantages this cycle. For Republicans, the numbers are on their side. There are 34 races, including the special election in Alabama, and Democrats must defend 25 of those seats, compared to nine for Republicans. They also benefit from a friendly map in that Democrats are defending 10 seats in states that President Trump won in 2016. By contrast, there is only one GOP seat – U.S. Sen. Dean Heller in Nevada – up in a state that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried. Democrats are banking on the mid-term election curse in which the party in power tends to lose seats in the Senate and/or the House in mid-term elections, as well as Trump’s unpopularity and an energized base to help keep their losses to a minimum. An early read of the cycle suggests that there might not be much change in the make up of the Senate after Election Day. At this point, the range is +/- one seat for Democrats, which would have to be considered a victory. A bad night for Democrats would be the loss of three or four seats. At this point, the one certainty is that the majority is not in play. 

Finally, Nate Silver's numbers at Five Thirty Eight.

Not much has changed in our forecast since early October: Republicans are still favorites to keep control of the Senate, with a 5 in 6 (83 percent) shot.1What’s more, as we close in on Election Day, all signs point to the House and Senate moving in opposite directions this year. (As I’ve written before, this is weird but not unprecedented.) Republicans’ odds in the House are nearly the reverse of where they stand in the Senate: The GOP has a 1 in 8 (13 percent) chance of retaining a House majority.

Republicans have a 50 percent chance of adding at least one senator to their tally. Meanwhile, Democrats have a 32 percent shot of picking up at least one seat. But there is also nearly an 18 percent chance that there will be no net change — in other words, the status quo will be preserved and the GOP will hold on to its current 51-to-49 majority.

We'll see who's right and who's not.  I'm working on a special treat for you guys later this week, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Trump Trades Blows, Con't

The Trump regime's trade war with China over crops like soybeans has now reached the point where American farmers have harvested silos full of product rotting away because their biggest buyers in Beijing are looking elsewhere for supply, and there's no reason to believe that Midwest farmers aren't going to continue to be squeezed right out of business.

This is harvest season in the rich farmlands of the eastern Dakotas, the time of year Kevin Karel checks his computer first thing in the morning to see how many of his soybeans Chinese companies have purchased while he was sleeping.

Farmers here in Cass County have prospered over the last two decades by growing more soybeans than any other county in the United States, and by shipping most of those beans across the Pacific Ocean to feed Chinese pigs and chickens.

But this year, the Chinese have all but stopped buying. The largest market for one of America’s largest exports has shut its doors. The Chinese government imposed a tariff on American soybeans in response to the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese goods. The latest federal data, through mid-October, shows American soybean sales to China have declined by 94 percent from last year’s harvest.

Mr. Karel, the general manager of the Arthur Companies, which operates six grain elevators in eastern North Dakota, has started to pile one million bushels of soybeans on a clear patch of ground behind some of his grain silos. The big mound of yellowish-white beans, already one of the taller hills in this flat part of the world, will then be covered with tarps.

The hope is that prices will rise before the beans rot.

“We’re sitting on the edge of our seat,” Mr. Karel said.

President Trump sees tariffs as a tool to force changes in America’s economic relationships with China and other major trading partners. His tough approach, he says, will revive American industries like steel and auto manufacturing that have lost ground to foreign rivals. But that is coming at a steep cost for some industries, like farming, that have thrived in the era of globalization by exporting goods to foreign markets.

China and other trading partners hit with the tariffs, including the European Union, have sought to maximize the political impact of their reprisals. The European Union imposed tariffs on bourbon, produced in Kentucky, the home state of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, from Wisconsin, the home state of House Speaker Paul Ryan. China's decision to impose tariffs on soybeans squeezes some of Mr. Trump's staunchest supporters across the Midwestern farm belt.

Like most successful American exports, soybeans are produced at high efficiency by a small number of workers using cutting-edge technologies, like tractors connected to satellites so the optimal mix of fertilizers can be spread on each square foot of farmland. The United States exported $26 billion in soybeans last year, and more than half went to China.

Some farmers in North Dakota say they trust Mr. Trump to negotiate in the nation’s interest. Mr. Karel said many of his customers wear red “Make American Great Again” caps and insist that the pain of lost business and lower profits is worthwhile. They say they’ll suffer now so their children benefit later — echoing the argument Mr. Trump has made.

Others are less enthused. Greg Gebeke, who farms 5,000 acres outside Arthur with two of his brothers, said he struggled to understand the administration’s goals.

“I’m trying to follow and figure out who the winners are in this tariff war,” Mr. Gebeke said. “I know who one of the losers are and that’s us. And that’s painful.”

I've got news for farmers like the Gebekes.  You're only going to continue to lose.  Chinese buyers aren't going to come back.  They're going to buy from Brazil, Australia and the EU. Meanwhile, your equipment is only going to become more expensive as steel prices go up. Trump isn't going to win any trade war.

And the rest of us are going to lose too as prices for Chinese imported goods, TVs and microwave ovens and clothes and electronics, well those are going up too, just in time for the holiday shopping season.  Our little cold war with Iran will make gas more expensive.  And it won't take much to push our consumer economy over the edge into recession again.

If these farmers think it's bad now, give it a year.

Basically Nobody Likes You, Ted

A strange piece from Politico's Tim Alberta today on Texas Democrat Beto O'Rourke as voters head to the polls tomorrow to see if he can beat GOP Sen. Ted Cruz tells me two things:  One, nobody likes Ted Cruz in the state at all, period, and two, Texas Republican voters are wondering out loud now why Beto ignored them in favor of getting more non-voting Democrats to the polls.

In selling a symbolic candidacy, the Hurd roadshow was foundationally essential. But it wasn’t enough. To score the biggest upset of 2018, O’Rourke would need a brand that reinforced his rejection of status quo politics. So he created one—a campaign that rejects corporate money, that avoids negative attacks, that refuses to employ pollsters or consultants. And it worked. By offering a cause rather than a candidacy, O’Rourke convinced America that a Texas Democrat could win statewide for the first time since 1994. A staggering $70 million flooded into his campaign. Celebrities came calling on a first-name basis. LeBron James made the black-and-white “Beto” signage famous. National reporters took turns deifying the skateboarding, punk-rocking congressman. And all the while, O’Rourke was flatlining. When Quinnipiac polled the race in April, after he clinched the Democratic nomination, he registered at 44 percent; in July, the same poll pegged him at 43 percent; it was 45 percent in September; and 46 percent in late October. Whenever the race has tightened, it’s due to Cruz dropping below 50 percent. In dozens of public and private surveys this cycle, O’Rourke has never broken 47 percent.

Somewhere along the line, the rock-concert crowds and record-setting fundraising and JFK comparisons obscured a basic contradiction between Beto O’Rourke the national heartthrob and Beto O’Rourke the Texas heretic. While the coastal media’s narrative emphasized his appeals to common ground, framing him as an Obamaesque post-partisan figure, the candidate himself tacked unapologetically leftward. He endorsed Bernie Sanders’ "Medicare for all" plan. He called repeatedly for President Donald Trump’s impeachment—a position rejected by Nancy Pelosi, and nearly every other prominent Democrat in America, as futile and counterproductive. He flirted with the idea of abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He took these positions, and others, with a brash fearlessness that reinforced his superstardom in the eyes of the Democratic base nationwide. But it likely stunted his growth among a more important demographic: Texans.

Over the past six months, I spoke with a host of Texas Republicans about the U.S. Senate race. Many of them dislike Cruz. Some of them privately hope he loses. And all of them are baffled by the disconnect between the superior branding of O’Rourke’s candidacy and what they see as the tactical malpractice of his campaign.

In their view, Cruz is uniquely vulnerable, having alienated Texans of all ideological stripes with his first-term antics—and especially those affluent, college-educated suburbanites repelled by Trump. The senator has long lagged 10 to 15 points behind Governor Greg Abbott at the top of the ticket; Cruz’s internal modeling has consistently demonstrated there are several hundred thousand voters committed to Abbott but not to him. This is the paradox of the Texas Senate race: Though it’s clear a significant bloc of soft Republicans and conservative-leaning independents are open to rejecting the incumbent on Tuesday, it’s equally clear the challenger has done little to move them. The Quinnipiac poll in April showed O’Rourke pulling 6 percent of Republicans; by late October that number was 3 percent. And while there are signs to suggest he will win more votes than a traditional Democrat in the metropolitan areas of Dallas and Houston and San Antonio, O’Rourke is almost certain to underperform in the rural and exurban areas of the state.

The campaign is a study in extreme contrasts: Cruz, the cartoonishly unlikeable conservative whose machine-like enterprise is run by a platoon of political gurus, versus O’Rourke, the obnoxiously likeable liberal whose garage-band effort is guided by gut instinct and raw emotion. Nothing is certain in such a volatile political climate, and there have been indications of a tightening race in the campaign’s final days. Cruz learned first-hand in 2016 that an organizational advantage doesn’t guarantee victory; O’Rourke can draw inspiration from Trump, of all people, in proving the pollsters wrong. If O’Rourke wins, he will have revealed a blueprint for animating the base and turning out new voters. But if he loses—as Texas insiders in both parties expect—the autopsies will speak of a strategically imbalanced campaign that did too much mobilizing and not enough persuading.

The conventional wisdom here is that Beto ran too far to the left in Texas, worried too much about his national profile and not enough about winning over suburban white Republicans in the state and is going to find a way to lose to arguably the worst Republican in the Senate, Ted Cruz.

The conventional wisdom is also complete hogwash, because those suburban Texas counties are exactly where record early voter turnout is happening and it's not because people love Ted Cruz.

By the end of 12 days of early voting, 529,521 Dallas County residents had cast their ballots in the midterm elections — more than twice that of the 2014 and 2010 midterms.

The total is about 40 percent of the county's 1.3 million registered voters. It was about 20,000 shy of the early-voting total in 2016, a presidential election year in which turnout is traditionally much stronger.

In 2010, Dallas County had 218,156 early votes, and in 2014 there were 215,147.

On Friday, El Paso Rep. Beto O'Rourke said the voter turnout signifies that he's on the verge of making history as the first Democrat to win a statewide office in Texas since 1994.

"If North Texas continues to turn out in the record numbers that we've seen, shattering every midterm total for as long as we've been looking at them, in some cases rivaling presidential voter turnout, then we're going to win this race," O'Rourke said. "The best thing I can do is continue to be with the people of North Texas, just as we have been for almost the last two years."

If Democrats show up at presidential year turnout levels, and rural Texas remains at midterm turnout levels, Beto wins.  This was the idea from the beginning.  Texas isn't a red state, no matter what the GOP wants to believe.  It's a non-voting state.  Texas's turnout percentage is dead last in the country, and it's the second most populous state.  Only 28.4% of Texas voters showed up in 2014.  If we're already seeing that being eclipsed just by early voting, then Beto can win.

Watch.

Texas, get out there and vote.  I know I have Texas readers.  Make that difference.

StupidiNews!

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