Republicans are panicking. Democrats are praying that the polls are right. Everyone’s obsessing over the possibility of a towering blue tsunami.
Republicans are panicking. Democrats are praying that the polls are right. Everyone’s obsessing over the possibility of a towering blue tsunami.
President Donald Trump is now standing in the path of a potentially crushing midterm election that could turn him into a lame duck — the classic term for a permanently diminished president with one foot in the dumpster heap of history. What is Team MAGA’s plan, with just 32 days to go? Leave it to Vice President JD Vance to spin up a new rallying cry.
“This is not the time to sort of gripe about all the little things,” Vance
told Fox News. “We need to get more done, which is why you need to give us two more years.”Wow. How inspiring. The message is… stop complaining, and give us a break? You’ve got my vote!
This is, after all, the same politician who recently begged voters to just
“give us another chance— or give us another couple years to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.” By that, he meant the war in Iran; stubbornly high inflation; runaway artificial intelligence; more data centers; andmemes, memes memes.
Vance’s lazy appeal to voters suggests that even the president’s team believes Republicans might get walloped in November… and, just over a month from the election, they lack great options.
Consider Susie Wiles’ latest advice to the Department of Justice. The White House chief of staff instructed Attorney General Todd Blanche to pause any actions related to abortion ahead of the midterms,
according to theWashington Sun. Why? The Trump administration’s crackdown on abortion across the nation could hurt Republicans’ odds of winning, Wiles suggested.
Republicans seemed to give up on the Senate race in North Carolina today. Senate Republicans’ top PAC
canceled allof its remaining ads in the state and shifted millions of dollars away to boost their candidate in Kansas.*You read that right!*The GOP is worried about [checks notes]*Kansas,*a state that last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1932.
“Forty percent of our electorate is unaffiliated [with a political party]. You can’t win with just a pure MAGA base,”
saidretiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), whose seat will likely turn blue.
Are the polls too good (for Democrats) to be true? Some think so.
Some Dems I’ve spoken with are wary of predicting a massive blue wave in November, citing
past electionsthat didn’t meet expectations — not to mention their 2024 presidential faceplant. But the reality is that poll after poll now shows Democratswith a huge advantage. What’s more, House Democrats areincreasingly bullishthat they could even win in deep-red districts.
Is
Kansasreally on the table? Left-leaning commentator Matt Yglesias has his doubts: “Once again I simply cannot believe the polling that we are seeing,” hetweeted. Some diehard conservatives and election denierseven dismissthe lopsided polls as a “psyop.”
There’s good reason to be skeptical. Remember when a recent college grad
created fake pollsthat were picked up by mainstream media outlets this summer? And famed pollster Ann Selzermistakenly predictedthat Kamala Harris would win Iowa.
And yet it’s also entirely possible that Trump and Republicans might fail to court voters in red states.
“The thesis the polls are showing is that all these voters that shifted to Trump — so working class whites and Hispanics, especially working class Hispanics — are shifting out of that coalition,” said polling expert Nate Silver, on Crooked’s new
Still Countingpodcast. “Is that a plausible story? Well, it makes sense. If Trump is now much more unpopular, then the people that migrated toward him might be the first ones out.”
In other words: You reap what you sow, Donny.
** Hiring slowed in September, as employers added **only 29,000 jobs — far fewer than the 89,000 that analysts expected, according to government data. The unemployment rate also rose to 4.2 percent.
** Countries in the Group of Seven agreed to release **100 million barrels of emergency diesel and crude oil reserves, after Donald Trump threatened Germany and France to do so or face an export ban on diesel. Energy analysts think that likely will help reduce sky-high prices in the near-term. But it doesn’t sort out the long-term geopolitical mess.
** FBI Director Kash Patel has instructed agents** to “look harder” for evidence that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, the
** Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) accused Cornell University police **of mishandling the case of a female student who was allegedly raped by several fraternity members in 2024. “In what world would the police learn from the victim that she had literally been gang raped” and not raise it to to the district attorney, Hochul said during a press conference today. Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) said her office plans to investigate the case and potentially pursue prosecutions.
** Tennessee’s failed execution of Christa Pike this week** has reignited the debate about whether the death penalty should be outlawed. “This failed attempt is the worst we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, wrote in a statement. Pike remains in critical condition after surviving two lethal injections,
** DHS has incentivized local police to assist with **its immigrant crackdown by offering big bucks. For example, a department that turns over one deportable immigrant may qualify for $60,000 a year per deputized officer. One stunning statistic: “The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in Florida signed up more than 970 deputies, making it eligible for roughly $14.5 million in DHS funds from April to June, state records show. That pencils out to more than $2 million for each of its seven immigration arrests in that quarter,” the
** NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani held hands** with Curtis Sliwa, his eccentric, red beret-wearing political rival, while getting the flu shot. “This is not the kind of shots we used to give one another!” said Sliwa, who got shot five times in 1992. “You know he got more votes than me, he’s more popular than me. But you don’t have bigger muscles!”
** Major League Baseball dropped its proposal to build** a ballpark in Grand Teton National Park after public backlash. “It has become clear the local community does not want us to continue evaluating Grand Teton National Park as a potential site,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote in a letter. A major organization listening to the will of the people? You love to see it.
A SpaceX flight led by a Black female commander broke the record for the fastest trip to the International Space Station by an American spacecraft, completing the journey in just under eight hours.
** New grandparents are choosing unconventional names** that they’d like to be called, according to the Washington Post. My family chose silly names for my grandparents, such as Gwakwa and Grampdad. Does your family have special nicknames for grandparents? Send them to whataday@crooked.com!
** Fiat is selling a tiny electric car known** as the Topolino (which translates to “little mouse” in Italian) for $15,000 in the United States. It tops out at 25 miles per hour, and one of its two models has ropes instead of doors. But the car is fun to buzz around in: “I zipped home. The open-air cabin was freeing and the weather was nice. It was fun—
** A large portion of the world’s driest desert,** located in Chile, is now covered with wildflowers, after El Niño dumped rain on the region earlier this year. “It is a unique phenomenon; there are more than 200 plant species,” a top Chilean forest service official said. “This is a flowering event that is obviously extraordinary and unusual, very different from other blooms that occur elsewhere on the globe.”
Meet Roman! He’s a 4-year-old tri-color Cavapoo who loves snuggles, long walks, and greeting everyone he meets along the way.
“When he’s not out exploring the neighborhood, you can usually find Roman watching TV — though ‘watching’ might be generous. He’s really on neighborhood watch, eagerly scanning the screen for intruders. Animals, animated characters, or anything else suspicious will immediately be met with a bark to remind them exactly whose house this is.
“Sweet, social, and just a little protective of his domain, Roman is equal parts cuddle bug and security guard.”
— Erica, senior producer of the What A Day podcast
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