Stay Tuned for Tuesday ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Oy Vey:  Be afraid, very afraid.  According to a NY Times/Siena poll, the twice impeached, multiply indicted Trump now leads Biden in five of the battleground states including Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia with Biden still leading slightly in Wisconsin.  Despite Biden’s war zone trips, his rather hectic schedule, and his administration’s substantial legislative accomplishments poll results currently indicate that voters’ chief concern is Biden’s age which is weird, not because Biden isn’t old because he is, but because Trump who is only a few years behind him, keeps misidentifying foreign leaders, refers to Obama rather than Biden as his opponent and last week couldn’t remember what city he was in during a campaign rally.  In addition, despite all the handwringing about VP Kamala Harris she outperforms Biden as does a generic candidate.  As to Trump who yesterday slammed Iowa Governor Kim Reynold’s political future and her “extreme disloyalty” because she’s about to endorse “Ron DeSanctimonious,” his acolytes including Stephen Miller and Johnny McEntee are already working up a list of right-wing extremist lawyers, the types who wouldn’t feel constrained by the courts or the Constitution, for his next administration.  The list includes those to the right of the Federalist Society because Trump remains furious that Federalist Society lawyers like Don McGahan and Bill Barr who facilitated most of his autocratic tendencies wouldn’t support his coup attempt. Not that Trump’s plans should surprise any of us, he’s been very upfront about how retribution, along with pulling out of NATO, cozying up to Putin, and abandoning allies will be the themes of his next administration.

Dems in Disarray? Given the Republican’s House antics, most of this year it’s been the Republican party that’s been in disarray and to a certain extent it still is as newbie Speaker Johnson has little to no wiggle room given his small majority but now it’s not just the Republicans.  The House Democratic caucus is cracking over the Israel/Hamas war.  To that end, Axios reports that at least four House Democrats, all left wing “squad members, are facing serious primary threats next year.  That list includes Missouri’s Cori Bush, New York’s fire alarm puller Jamaal Bowman, Pennsylvania’s Summer Lee, and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar who came close to losing her primary in 2022.  Worth mentioning, Bush’s St Louis district is home to the largest Jewish community in Missouri.  Of the four, Bowman whose district also includes a substantial Jeiwsh population, is thought to be the one most at risk. Given the make-up of her Detroit area district, Rashida Tlaib who outraged many of her colleagues this weekend by accusing Biden of supporting genocide and by trying to justify the “from the river to the sea” chant as just a mere aspirational cry rather than a call for the obliteration of Israel, is probably not at risk though a number of her colleagues in Michigan where Democrats really need to hold on to the open Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Debbie Stabenow are far from happy with her right now.

Elections: It’s not just Stabenow’s Michigan seat, Biden’s weak poll showing could be a harbinger of what will happen in 2024 in a number of tight Senate races across the country, a sticky problem because Democrat’s are already likely to lose the Senate since they’ll probably lose West Virginia where Joe Manchin should he run for reelection will face off against popular Republican Governor Jim Justice in the Trump plus plus plus state.  The other concerning seats are in Ohio, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.  Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester are relatively popular despite their states “red” status and should be able to hold their own but they would likely get dragged down by a Biden loss as could Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey who is likely to face Connecticut resident/hedge fund rich guy David McCormick, Dina Powell’s husband, who lost to Dr. Oz but is running again. Nevada’s Rosen is considered the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat, and a lot of Republican money is being spent to unseat her and no one really knows what will happen in Arizona where election denier/Trump lover Kari Lake is likely to be the Republican candidate, especially if Kyrsten Sinema muddies the water for the likely Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego by launching an independent run. We might know more about the impact of current events and Biden’s anemic polling after the results of tomorrow’s elections come in. Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky is up for reelection, he’s relatively popular but then again Kentucky is very red, and its two Senators are Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.  In Mississippi, another reliably red state, the relatively unpopular Republican Governor Tate Reeves who has been involved in a number of scandals including the one where state welfare funds were misdirected to former football player Brett Favre for a volleyball stadium for his daughter is being challenged by Democrat Brandon Presley, a member of the extended Elvis family.  Presley whose positions on social issues including abortion rights are very red has generated a lot of buzz but at the end of the day it’s Mississippi so he’s unlikely to pull off a victory but still the race is worth watching if only to see how close he comes.  In Virginia, Republicans and Democrats are battling over control of both houses.  Republicans currently hold a four-seat majority in one house, Democrats hold a similar majority in the other. Glenn Youngkin, the commonwealth’s Governor, has been salivating over the possibility of turning Virginia red and taking away reproductive rights. If he pulls it off, he might even jump into the presidential race, positioning himself as the Republican who could take down Trump, well maybe.  In Pennsylvania, it’s about judges and the state’s supreme court and in the really bigly one, Ohio. which everyone will be watching very closely, voters will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.  Expectation is that Ohioans, red and blue,  care about their reproductive freedom.  If the state voters cast their ballots as expected, it will mean that women’s reproductive rights are still driving election outcomes, if they don’t it will mean that the spell cast by the overturning of Roe v Wade has broken.  

And:  Expect to hear lots of vitriol from Trump this week from his mouth and from his truth social twitching fingers.  He’ll be testifying today in his New York fraud case and while NY Judge Arthur Engoron has expanded his gag order to include Trump’s lawyers in an effort to get them to stop sliming his clerk, a federal appeals court temporarily lifted the limited gag order imposed by Judge Tanya Chutkan in Jack Smith’s 2020 election interference case.