We started the Tuesday show with a “battle of the closers” segment comparing Donald Trump and Barack Obama’s final messages to voters in the battlegrounds. I regret to inform you that we may have to do something similar today, because Obama was in Georgia last night and Trump was in Ohio, and the split screen was just too good. Even the parts that weren’t about chain restaurants.
In Chillicothe, Trump free-associated about asses, Miss Universe, Ilhan Omar — whom he called “𝕏a fresh little thing”— White House renovations, deporting Haitians, why Vivek Ramaswamy’s vile ad against Amy Acton is actually great, and renaming Lake Ontario.
Meanwhile, the Atlanta event was classic Obama in the best sense. He spent a lot of it going after Trump and Republicans for getting so offended about his Cheesecake Factory line a few days earlier, in his vintage happy warrior style, stroking his chin and laughing at his own jokes. But what made it such a compelling contrast to his successor was that behind the laughs and the hugs and anecdotes, there was a 𝕏tight argument about how Republicans have squandered their chance to try to make your life better:
“This is what I mean when I say these are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems, so they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That’s the game they’ve been playing for the last two years. Just keep throwing distractions out there — attacks, fabrications, phony outrage — and hope that you won’t notice that your bills are higher and your life is tougher. Except that okey-doke will not work this time, Atlanta.”
My only note is that “the okey-doke” is a little too obscure and silly-sounding to warrant being an Obama catch-phrase all these years, but whatever. Big cheers.
I grant: it’s a lot easier to run on throwing the bums out than it is to run on your own accomplishments. If Democrats win back one or both chambers, the messaging two years from now will be, to say the least, more challenging. But one of the things Obama has always been so good at is telling a story about why the world is the way it is — and how we can make it better — in a way that people understand and feel is true. And he’s not the only one. Jon Ossoff, who brought Obama onstage, is great at it, too. So are lots of other Democrats running for office this year, from all parts of the liberal spectrum, from Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan to Paige Cognetti in Pennsylvania to James Talarico in Texas.
On the flip side: all you really hear from Republicans right now is division and fear-mongering and excuses and Joe Biden-trashing and general grievance, even though they’ve had two years in full control of the country. In other words, the okey-doke. As Obama says, it doesn’t seem to be working. In a few days, we’ll know for sure.
Somehow we have arrived at the final Friday taping before the midterms. We’ve talked to all the frontline Senate candidates who were able to make time for us, lots of great House candidates, and tremendous gubernatorial candidates, too. (It looks like the clock may run out before we’re able to work out a slot that works for Amy Acton — we’re still trying!) So today, I think we’ll try to zoom out a bit and look at the whole picture.
**Lay of the land:**We had a hunch that we’d wake up to some new Times/Siena results, but it didn’t happen. We’ll have to settle for CNN/SSRSshowing Democrats aheadin four key states. We’ll go through the near-final predictions from Nate’sFLIPR model— I’m too superstitious to actually print them here — and what we can tell about the race from where Trump and Republicans are spending their time and money, and how the vibes are feeling.**The Alaska situation.**I haven’t talked about this one with Dan and Jon, but I think it’s safe to say that while it’s probably not fatal that Peltola’s team and the DSCC actively recruited the clone Dan Sullivan, the revelations aren’t exactly helpful. At minimum, it gives Republicans something to go on offense about. You can bet Trump will be talking about it all day, and this morning, Alaska’s term-limited Republican governor said he’s𝕏launching an investigation. In some good news: Lisa Murkowski justendorsedJonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, the Democrat running to replace him.**South Carolina.**Is the Palmetto State truly in play? Trump seems to think so. He’s back in South Carolina this afternoon to rally Republicans around Sen. Darline Graham, who’s facing a surprisingly tough challenge from Democratic nominee Annie Andrews. Trump has reason to be anxious: the latestNew York Times/Siena pollshows Graham and Andrews neck-and-neck at 48 percent each, with 3 percent of voters undecided. Trumpvisitedthe state just last week. Now he seems to think it needs another boos.Election protection.New reporting from ProPublicaprovides yet another spooky look at Trump’s long-running obsession with tilting the election system in his favor. You may remember Cleta Mitchell, the Trump ally and conservative attorney who helped supercharge his attempt to overturn the 2020 results. Apparently, she enjoys an “open door” to the president, and has been “in and out to see him all the time.” She runs an organization dedicated to rewriting election law to make voting more restrictive. Meanwhile, MS NOWreportsthat FBI agents worry they may be sent to key swing states to patrol polling stations or even seize voting machines. Last night, the Department of Justice insisted before a judge thatFBI and ICE agents won’t serveas poll monitors, although personnel from other agencies, like DEA and ATF, will. Here’s hoping all this comes to nothing.
For this final week of the midterms: tea-leaf reading on allllll the Senate races, why Roger Marshall’s neighbors don’t like him, and — why not! — an exploration of a Substack founder’s claim that this platform has righted the web’s wrongs.
