Vote Early, Vote Often*

Finally Mid-Terms: The polls are open and the race is off and running. Actually, with 35 million votes already cast in early voting the election has been crossing the starting line for a while, but for those of us in one day voting states, today is finally V day, V as in vote, it’s too early to know if it’s V for victory or V for vanquished. Trump finished off his campaign push with a bang.  He added a few more outrageous claims to his usual script, threatened that anyone who tries to vote illegally would be severely punished, a voter suppression technique historically used to discourage minority voters and, spurred on by news that two of  Justice Kavanaugh accusers that we never knew existed had been referred to legal authorities, he encouraged “lock her up” chants before suggesting that Dr. Blasey Ford, the accuser he once found convincing, be thrown into jail too. He again slammed the  hordes of illegal immigrants slugging through Mexico saying that if Democrats win things would get far worse because they would open up the gates inviting “caravan after caravan” of murderers to come into the US to kill men, women and children who they, the Dems,  would then give health care benefits to but only after they encouraged them to vote illegally. Despite Trump’s outrageous assertions, his own military is fairly certain that the Mexican border isn’t threatened, adding that they have no plans to shoot anyone, especially babies and bedraggled families, because that’s not what they do.  For the record the cost of sending the military to the border is expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 million, chump change for Trump who dings the budget for about $4 million every time he goes to Mar a Lago and for Melania who ran up a $100,000 bill for a six hour make-up refresher pause in an Egyptian hotel during her Africa jaunt but big time bucks for the rest of us and money that could be spent on more productive things like maybe child health or infrastructure. Trump’s last ditch political ad demonized those so-called marauding migrants that CNN determined it was too racist to air.  Disturbingly it was aired and viewed by millions of NBC Sunday Night football fans, Fox and Fox business watchers and Facebook users before a barrage of complaints led those media outlets to reluctantly conclude that it was too racist for further viewing. Think about that, Fox actually got to where they thought that Trump’s rap was too racist and NBC, the company that must be trying to regain the spot on Trump’s interview rotation that it lost after Trump’s Lester Holt confession, thought it was okay until their viewers complained loudly.  Trump, who approved the ad and made the decision to stay with the anti-immigrant motif rather than follow the advice of a number of his advisors who wanted him to shift to a more positive “economic accomplishments” theme, responded to the news that the ad had been deemed too offensive to run, acting surprised saying “I don’t know about it. I mean, you’re telling me something I don’t know about. We have a lot of ads. And they certainly are effective, based on the numbers that we’re seeing.” When one reporter told him that many people found the ad offensive he responded, “Well, a lot of things are offensive. Your questions are offensive a lot of times — so, you know.”  Before the day was over, Trump was joined on stage by some of his Fox faves including Jeanine Pirro and  pundit, shadow advisor Sean Hannity, who earlier had said that reports that he would join Trump on stage during his Missouri rally were false and then as he did join Trump on the stage called out the other members of the press as fake news purveyors because he's Hannity, he’s part of the Trump propaganda machine, and they are not.  As a parting shot, Trump did weigh in on the economy, warning voters that if Democrats win control of anything they will take a giant wrecking ball to the economy by re-imposing the kind of unsuccessful economic policies that started the economic recovery in the first place and that they would obliterate jobs and wages.  As to the election, polls remain all over the place with a lot of those swing House and Senate races remaining in the too close to call area.  Still virtually all predict that the likelihood of Democrats taking over the House is high.  FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, my go to prognosticator, has moved his forecast for a Democratic takeover up a few percentage points to 88%.  It still looks like the Republicans will maintain control over the Senate although the likelihood of them gaining seats is getting smaller.  Nate has bumped their chances of holding onto the Senate down a few percentage points to 80%, a sizable chance but not as firm as yesterday.  To put this in perspective back in 2016 Nate gave Hillary a 71% chance of victory while noting that Trump’s 29% was too high to discount.  Keep an eye on the east coast races, particularly those in Virginia and upstate New York, they may provide an early and telling indication of what will happen across the country.  As of now things are still up in the air for a number of Virginia Democratic congressional contenders, looking very good for New Jersey’s incumbent Senator Menendez, and mildly positive for Florida’s Democratic duo, Governor wannabee Gillum and incumbent Senator Nelson. Fasten your seatbelts, we are in for another bumpy ride   Oy.  

What’s Next:  Not all of the results will be in by the end of the day, some elections will be too close to call and others, including the Georgia gubernatorial election and the Mississippi Senate race, where four candidates are running in a special election to replace retired Senator Thad Cochran, are likely to require runoffs since it’s quite possible, and in the case of Mississippi, highly likely that no one will get 50% of votes required for a victory.  That said, to the extent that there really has been a blue wave, we should know who is controlling the House after the California results are in.  We may also learn rather quickly what Special Counsel Mueller has been up to.  Trump is likely to start ridding himself of some of his cabinet members quickly with Jeff Sessions leading the way out the door so Mueller will need to act fast before he ends up with a less accommodating boss, someone other than Rod Rosenstein who will either follow Sessions out or lose responsibility for the investigation.  Indictments for Roger Stone and maybe, just maybe for Trump Jr., could be imminent.  As to staff turnover, the list of targets keeps growing, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s name has now been added to the list of people who might leave voluntarily or not.  This could be a case of last one out turnout the lights.  

GO BLUE!

*just kidding about the often part