A 2022 Election Forecast Part II: The View from the Ground
PLUS: Aaron Judge in pursuit of Ruth and Maris
Last week, in part one of my preview of the 2022 election, I looked at the major factors that typically shape the midterm environment. For the most part, those factors are determinative in that they go a long way toward explaining the outcome of the election no matter the strengths and weaknesses of individual candidates and whatever events transpire between now and Election Day.
Despite this, we still hold elections and politicians still work hard to win them. Cycle-specific variables like candidate quality and issue valence have the potential to alter the playing field. It’s hard to defy the science of politics, but the artistic practice of politics—which requires sensing and exploiting opportunity and having a knack for saying or doing the pitch-perfect thing at just the right time—leaves room for the unexpected to occur. Consequently—and particularly at a time when control of Congress hangs by the slimmest of margins—it’s worth taking a look at how factors on the ground may shape the outcome of this election cycle.
1. The Economy: In retrospect, I probably should have included the economy on my list of overarching factors last week. The president’s approval rating—and with it, their party’s chances of doing well in an election—typically tracks with how well the economy is doing, as Americans (rightly or wrongly) assign the president responsibility for managing the economy. Take a look at a few leading economic indicators and you can generally get a pretty good sense for the mood of the electorate. The reason I’m discussing the economy this week is that it may be contending with a few other issues as the most pressing issue on voters’ minds this cycle.
The good news for Democrats is that the unemployment rate is 3.7%, which is really low. If you want work, you can generally find it, and if you want a better job or higher pay, you can generally find that, too.
The bad news is that most voters are not focused on the job market or the unemployment rate right now. What people are focused on is inflation, and that isn’t a pretty picture.
The numbers on the right side of the chart track the rate of inflation, which was 8.5% in July (meaning prices were 8.5% higher in July than they were one year ago.) As you can see, that rate is much higher than anything in recent memory, so that’s quite the jolt to the American consumer. Furthermore, according to a recent University of Michigan survey, American consumers have rarely felt more downbeat about their personal finances, business conditions, and buying conditions than they do today. (NOTE: A new University of Michigan survey released today indicates consumer sentiment has rebounded since June.) That sets Democrats up for a trouncing.
That said, there are some signs inflation might be easing, with prices for raw materials like oil and wheat beginning to cool, and gas prices (perhaps the most popular barometer of inflation) coming down recently. Some analysts even believe average national gas prices could drop as low as $3.30 in November. Still, the decline in the price of gas may not translate to lower prices in stores for months, and most central banks assume inflation will remain high through the winter. Democrats shouldn’t assume voters’ economic outlook will brighten by November.
A more subtle question to ask is just how much blame voters will assign the Biden administration for this bout of inflation. Perhaps Americans will be somewhat forgiving since much of the rise in inflation is driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and pandemic-strained supply lines that are only now beginning to unclog themselves. Another big question is if voters are merely annoyed by inflation or hurt by inflation. It may be that after the pandemic, Americans have some extra savings that can help take the bite out of rising prices even as they shake their heads while checking out at the cash register. Wages are also rising, which provides some relief, but in many cases they aren’t rising fast enough. People with debt likely don’t mind some inflation, but those looking to borrow money now will feel the squeeze. If Americans regard these problems as an inconvenience, they might prioritize other issues on Election Day. If these factors are causing pain, they would probably be less likely to turn-out or support Democrats come November.
Regardless, Democrats can’t count on some sort of economic miracle to save the day and deliver them from an electoral avalanche. This is a terrible environment for them to run in, and voters continue to cite the economy as the most important issue in the upcoming election. Democrats are already in a tough spot politically, and a bad economy makes it much more difficult for them to win over voters. Republicans would be fools not to exploit that. Yet there’s another issue weighing more and more heavily on voters’ minds this cycle.
2. Abortion: When news leaked a few months ago that the Supreme Court intended to overturn Roe v. Wade, I guessed Democrats would get a bit of a bump in the polls as a result. Voters in general tend to be more motivated by loss (in this case, the loss of abortion rights) than by gains. I assumed, however, that the issue of abortion was so central to conservative politics that Republican politicians would also benefit from finally fulfilling one of the Republican Party’s longest standing policy goals. Furthermore, Dobbs didn’t outlaw abortion; it merely left its legal status in the United States up to each individual state. That meant abortion was going to become an actively contentious issue again, leading both sides to mobilize for legislative battle. Finally, the polling on abortion has always been a mixed bag with no clear advantage accruing to either side in the debate. While there were always more voters supportive of placing no restrictions on abortion than there were those who sought to totally ban the procedure, the vast middle in America basically said abortion should be legal in some cases and illegal in others, which is a complete muddle.
It turns out I was wrong. It appears Americans are much more supportive of abortion rights than I assumed. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found 60% of Americans believe abortion should be legal most or all of the time (up 5% from March) while only 5% believe it should be illegal in all circumstances (down 6% from March.) That’s problematic for Republicans who have been pushing strict abortion bans that would require even underaged victims of rape to carry a pregnancy to term. Instances like this one from South Carolina have put them way out of touch on the issue, and these sorts of things happen now on a weekly basis:
Democrats sense an opening on abortion. An attempt to remove protections for abortion from Kansas’s constitution failed in August by 18 points in a state Trump carried in 2020 by about 15 points. A recent poll in Texas indicates about 60% of Texans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. In Alaska, Mary Peltola, a Democrat who just won a special election to fill a vacant House seat, focused her first re-election ad on the right to choose:
It’s worth noting neither Texas, Kansas, nor Alaska are traditionally liberal states.
The abortion issue could help limit Democrats’ losses this fall. That Wall Street Journal poll I mentioned earlier found Dobbs has made Democrats 83% more likely to vote in November compared to 31% for Republicans. That’s a massive difference in motivation, all the more notable because it’s happening during a midterm when the president’s party ordinarily grapples with a lack of motivation. As abortion has shot up as an issue of import in the upcoming election, Republicans have started downplaying their positions on abortion. Many pundits believe abortion accounts for the recent uptick in Democrats’ electoral prospects, notably the change in congressional preference.
But why? Why wouldn’t the abortion debate benefit both sides more equally? My hypothesis: A shift in the electoral preferences of college-educated women in white-collar jobs who in the past supported Republicans on account of the GOP’s more laissez-faire economic agenda. These female voters hold moderate-to-liberal positions on social issues but didn’t prioritize them at the ballot box so long as Republicans didn’t go too far to realize them legislatively. That calculus shifted with the end of Roe.
Before Democrats assume the issue of abortion will save the day for them at the ballot box, though, a word of caution. The economy still remains the most important issue for voters by a solid margin. Additionally, it remains to be seen if abortion actually vaults Democrats into the lead or if it merely reverses some of the losses they sustained over the past year (which wouldn’t be a bad thing electorally, as it could prevent a red wave from forming.) Finally, be careful reading too much into that Kansas election, which put abortion specifically on the ballot. A lot more than abortion will be on voters’ minds when they head to the polls in November to choose between candidates. Running too heavily on it could turn off voters who don’t prioritize it as an issue.
Still, it does appear opposition to Dobbs has energized Democratic voters and put Republicans on the defensive. That has the potential to limit Democratic losses this fall and blunt Republicans’ momentum. (See “‘The Environment is Upside Down’: Why Dems Are Winning the Culture Wars” by David Siders of Politico for more.)
3. The Pandemic: In case you haven’t noticed, we’re still in the midst of a pandemic, as this chart from the New York Times graphing COVID cases in the United States demonstrates:
The good news is that deaths have remained fairly low (about 500 a day, which still seems kind of high to me) and hospitals are reporting declining COVID cases. But 100,000 new cases a day is nothing to brag about and not exactly a number I would want to plateau at. Maybe this number is a new normal for the disease and Americans are willing to accept that. Indeed, Americans seem to have largely moved on from the pandemic, as even basic mitigation strategies like masking have mostly fallen by the wayside.
Politically, the pandemic seems to be a non-factor in the election right now, although Biden’s approval rating has improved along with the decline in cases. Even if that’s just an interesting but non-causal correlation, Democrats should still be worried about a potential rise in cases. A don’t think pollsters quite captured how annoyed people were with COVID these past few months as it made a mess of travel plans and summer activities. For a party and president that promised to end the pandemic, this past summer’s surge contributed to a sense that Democrats were weak and ineffectual. At the same time, the public isn’t in any mood for the re-imposition of mitigation strategies, which are politically associated with Democrats.
Everybody says we have to learn to live with COVID, but what we really want is for COVID to go away. Unfortunately, COVID isn’t going away and we’re not doing the basic things—like masking in public places—that would enable us to better live with it. Democrats could end up in a tight spot if cases began rising again in October and people found themselves once again out sick or at home tending to sick children. Elected officials no longer have the political capital to mandate steps to control the spread of COVID, but they’ll still be on the hook for the inconvenience generated by the virus regardless. The best Democrats can do is keep their fingers crossed and hope we’re either in the throes of the last COVID wave or, if we’re not, that the next wave only materializes after Election Day.
4. The Rest of the Democratic Agenda: It’s often assumed politicians are rewarded for passing legislation. I’m sure in a lot of cases that’s true: By fulfilling a campaign promise or realizing one of their party’s agenda items, politicians prove to their supporters it was worth voting for them. For instance, Donald Trump solidified his support among Republicans in 2017 when he signed his tax cut bill into law. Before then, his approval rating among Republicans was slipping.
But there are also times when passing laws end up hurting politicians. For example, passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 didn’t result in an enduring boost in Barack Obama’s approval rating. Instead, the desire to repeal the law energized Republicans in that year’s midterms. Yet at the same time, if Democrats had not passed Obamacare that year, it could have been utterly demoralizing for the party.
I won’t pretend to understand the relationship between enacting legislation and political approval. The matter needs to be raised, however, because President Biden and the Democratic-led Congress had a pretty productive summer. The major piece of legislation they passed was a scaled-back version of the Build Back Better plan that ended up being called the Inflation Reduction Act for PR purposes. (I’m just going to call it the IRA because calling it by its full name feels really deceptive.) The IRA has four major components. First and foremost, it’s the first major piece of legislation to address climate change, most notably by shifting the American economy away from its reliance on fossil fuels. Secondly, it fulfills a long-standing Democratic goal by allowing Medicare to begin negotiating the price of prescription drugs, which has the potential for massive cost savings for the government and American citizens. (It’s also about the most popular thing the government could have done in the arena of social policy.) Third, the IRA shored-up Obamacare by extending subsidies that help middle-class Americans purchase health care in government-operated marketplaces. And finally, on the revenue side, the law imposed a 15% minimum tax on corporations while boosting funding for the IRS to improve enforcement of the nation’s tax laws. (Vox provides a good overview of the law here.)
Time will tell if the bill lives up to its promise. It’s certainly ambitious and will have huge policy ramifications, but there are also parts of the bill I wish went further. I also wish the programs Sen. Joe Manchin removed from the bill—universal pre-K, government funded child care, paid leave, etc.—had been included. Yet it’s a step in the right direction that gets the government invested in these policy areas. Given how hard it is to pass big pieces of legislation, it’s nothing to scoff at.
So can Biden and the Democrats expect to be rewarded politically for the IRA and his other policy achievements? First of all, I doubt it will hurt them. Republicans aren’t mobilizing against it. The only thing they’re really speaking up about is Biden’s executive order on college loan forgiveness, but I don’t see that issue gaining much traction since voters who may not be too keen to wiping out the debt of college graduates still understand the financial crunch a lot of college graduates are experiencing. Secondly, the bill will probably bring some disillusioned progressive Democrats who had assumed their legislative agenda had died with the passage of the infrastructure bill last fall back into the fold. Again, it’s not everything they wanted, but it is something to celebrate.
Third, the timing of the bill’s passage actually works to their advantage. I’m in the camp that presidents should tee-up major legislation early in their terms and ram it through Congress when they have the political capital and popular goodwill to do so. The longer they wait, the more likely intervening events, legislative shenanigans, and attacks from the opposition will derail their ambitions. (NOTE: I’m not against the deliberative legislative process. I just think Congress can expedite that process since a lot of policy proposals have been floating around Washington for years.) But in this case, because Democrats had worked on this for about a year and a half and left it for dead not once but twice, its surprise resurrection over the summer boosted spirits and made it more likely the bill will be on voters’ minds this fall.
Finally, even if the substance of the bill ends up getting glossed over during the election, the very fact that Democrats have had a productive legislative session positions them well for the election. Without their legislative achievements, it would be easy to brand the Democratic Party as nothing more than the anti-Trump party (which, by the way, should be enough on its own to earn someone’s vote.) Their record, however—not only infrastructure, pandemic recovery, climate change, prescription drugs, health care, tax reform, and “inflation reduction,” but also semiconductors and veterans health—indicates they’re serious about governance and improving the lives of everyday Americans. It offers a good contrast: While the GOP plunges the nation into a completely unnecessary political drama by magnifying the lies and personal grievances of its uncouth leader, the Democrats are the party that gets shit done. That’s powerful because it completely undermines Trump’s strongman “I alone can fix this” appeal.
5. Candidate Quality: Elections aren’t decided by issues alone. Candidate quality and campaign strategy still matter. In today’s America, if a candidate walked out into the middle of the street and shot someone actually, check that. In our highly-partisan, highly-polarized era, candidate quality matters much less than usual. A candidate from either party, no matter their personal foibles, can probably expect to receive an unconditional level of support in a general election so long as they tow the party line. (The caveat I would put on that claim is that Democrats seem more interested in weeding out bad candidates in primaries than Republicans, who in some cases now seem to treat presumably disqualifying traits as positive attributes.)
But partisan support can only take a candidate so far in a general election, particularly in close contests where swing and irregular voters are more likely to supply the winning candidate with their margin of victory. A poor candidate can alienate swing voters and turn off portions of their base; a strong candidate can consolidate their party behind them and appeal to independents.
Candidate quality generally matters less in House elections, since most congressional districts tend to have stronger partisan leans that cancel out factors related to candidate quality. Still, voters in that special congressional election in Alaska recently chose to send a Democrat to Congress rather than former Republican vice presidential nominee and slow-motion car crash Sarah Palin. Candidate quality will generally matter more in Senate elections, as states almost always have larger electorates and more balanced partisan compositions.
A saving grace for Democrats in this cycle is that Republicans may have nominated a batch of poor quality candidates. Republicans made this mistake before in 2010—the Tea Party election—which likely cost them control of the Senate that cycle. Remember?
This time around, Republicans appear to have nominated a handful of candidates that could cost them races for competitive seats. I’ll write about this more in a future article, but as a group, the source of their strength among Republican voters appears to be their fidelity to Trump and the MAGA movement. Yet that and a range of other issues—checkered pasts, poor retail political skills, extreme political positions, a lack of intellectual gravitas, etc.—could disqualify them in the minds of many voters. It’s also possible this group of candidates—which includes Herschel Walker in Georgia, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, J.D. Vance in Ohio, Blake Masters in Arizona, and potentially Don Bolduc in New Hampshire—and other statewide nominees end up tarnishing the Republican brand as a whole. (For their part, Democrats appear to have avoided nominating poor candidates in major races.)
Democrats shouldn’t count on candidates disqualifying themselves, though. These nominees have developed such a poor reputation that they can earn some credibility with voters simply by surpassing a few low expectations. Also, if the national mood sours between now and Election Day, their disregard for conventional political norms can suddenly appear commendable. Which brings us to
6. Trump: To recap: The former one-term president continues to be the subject of numerous national and state investigations, a House committee plans to resume hearings this month looking into the role he played during the 1/6 riot, the FBI recently acted on a warrant to retrieve hundreds of classified documents he had taken with him when he left the White House that he was storing in unsecured locations at his resort home, he regularly posts incendiary and anti-democratic comments on his personal social media site, he has resumed large-scale rallies on behalf of congressional and gubernatorial candidates, and it is likely he will declare himself a candidate for president either before or after the midterms. All the while, he remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party. Few in his party are willing to publicly defy him, and many GOP candidates are devoted to him.
This is an unprecedented situation. With the exception of Theodore Roosevelt, no former president has ever played such an outsized role in American politics after leaving the White House. Midterms are typically referendums on the sitting president, but Trump looms over this election season in a way that could turn these elections into either a referendum on him or a choice between him and Biden.
That prospect likely makes Republican leaders nervous, as they would probably like nothing more than to keep the focus of this election on the economy, immigration, and crime. While Trump certainly energizes Republicans voters, he also turns off much of the American electorate. A Reuters poll found 58% of Americans now believe the MAGA movement is a threat to American democracy. An almost identical number want investigations into Trump to continue. “Threats to democracy” are moving up in “most important issue” rankings. A recent poll (and this is just one poll) found Biden leading Trump in a hypothetical rematch 48%-42%. Those numbers don’t bode well for Republicans if these elections turn into a choice between Trump and Biden.
While pundits seem to believe Democrats are in a much better position today than they were two months ago and have some decent momentum on their side, the fundamentals of the 2022 election do not favor Democrats. There are some factors working in their favor—a relatively friendly Senate map, voter anger over abortion, weak Republican candidates in some key races—but Democrats should be in store for a disappointing night in November, particularly given the condition of the economy.
The prominent role Donald Trump continues to play in American life, however, is an x-factor election modelers have never had to account for in the past. Perhaps voters will conclude this election is strictly about the guy in the White House rather than his powerless predecessor. Or maybe voters will be compelled to render yet another verdict on Trump and the MAGA movement. It truly is an unprecedented situation that’s leading many prognosticators to hedge their bets. It’s also a situation fraught with peril. Trump’s presence not only makes these midterms more unpredictable than past elections, but also more critical for the future of American democracy. I hope that’s a realization that’s sinking in more and more every day.
Signals and Noise
“I’ve got to know a lot of the foreign leaders, and let me tell you, unlike our leader, they’re at the top of their game….[President Xi Jinping of China] rules with an iron fist, 1.5 billion people, yeah I’d say he’s smart. Wouldn’t you say he’s smart?”—Former president and wannabe autocrat Don Trump
“Geoff [Diehl] is a proven fighter who successfully pushes back on the ultra liberal extremists, and who has driven them a little bit wild too because they can’t figure him out, and he’ll rule your state with an iron fist and he’ll do what has to be done.”—Former president and wannabe autocrat Don Trump endorsing Republican Geoff Diehl in the Massachusetts gubernatorial election
By Philip Bump of the Washington Post: “In Praise of Iron Fists: Trump Leans Into His Authoritarian Instincts”
The only good Iron Fist:
Election officials throughout the nation are worried about the potential for violence on or before Election Day. Many have taken steps to beef-up security.
By David Frum, for The Atlantic: “Biden Laid the Trap, Trump Walked Into It” (“Biden came to Philadelphia to deliver a wound to Trump’s boundless yet fragile ego. Trump obliged with a monstrously self-involved meltdown 48 hours later [at his rally in Wilkes-Barre.] And now his party has nowhere to hide. Trump has overwritten his name on every Republican line of every ballot in 2022.”)
File this under liberty vs. license. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) went on ABC’s This Week last Sunday and, when asked if there was any reason for Don Trump to have taken a bunch of classified documents with him when he retired to Mar-a-Lago, reasoned, “He has a different set of rules that apply to him. The president can declassify a document on a moment's notice and we don't have all the facts.” OK, so just set the legal argument about whether or not the president can just go bippity-boppity-boo on a bunch of classified documents and make them unclassified. Even if he could, should he? Even if a president can say words that lead a mob to go ransack the Capitol, should he? These guys will go to no end to debase themselves for Dear Leader.
Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to appoint a special master to review the documents seized by the FBI during its raid on Mar-a-Lago looks more and more egregious with each passing day.
The latest attempt by the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker to sound totally norm is a major flop. Her assertion: “[America’s] “Not as Divided As We Think.” I can get onboard with the idea there’s more common ground out there than we think and that politics divides people who might otherwise get along with each other. But Parker cites a recent analysis by Philip Bump of the Post that found only about 10% of the American population qualifies as MAGA extremists, in that they reject the 2020 election results, embrace candidates who also reject the results, approve of the 1/6 attack on the Capitol, and approve of violence as a political tool. The problem, of course, is that one of that 10% is a former POTUS who is the frontrunner to win his party’s nomination in 2024 and the overwhelming majority of his party are just fine with that. In other words, There’s a Good Reason America is More Divided Than Kathleen Parker Thinks.
Here’s another Reason America is More Divided Than Kathleen Parker Thinks: Mitch McConnell is trying to get Donald Trump to spend more money on the Senate campaigns of Trump’s preferred candidates. I think the Senate would be better off without those particular individuals as members—and perhaps McConnell believes that, too—but that’s just me.
From AP: “The names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of [the Oath Keepers,] a far-right extremist group that's accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report released Wednesday.”
By Michael Wines of the New York Times: “A review…of some 400 voting-fraud charges filed nationwide since 2017 underscores what critics of fraud crackdowns have long said: Actual prosecutions are blue-moon events, and often netted people who didn’t realize they were breaking the law.” Also:
“Punishment can be wildly inconsistent: Most violations draw wrist-slaps, while a few high-profile prosecutions produce draconian sentences. Penalties often fall heaviest on those least able to mount a defense. Those who are poor and Black are more likely to be sent to jail than comfortable retirees facing similar charges.”
From 538: “More Than 1 In 2 Americans Will Have An Election Denier On The Ballot This Fall” (Check out their map to see if you are one of those Americans, although I’m not sure an elected official who replied to this survey with a “no comment” or “accepted results with reservations” really counts as a non-election denier.)
From CNN: “A Republican county official in Georgia escorted two operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump into the county’s election offices on the same day a voting system there was breached, newly obtained video shows. The breach is now under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and is of interest to the Fulton County District Attorney, who is conducting a wider criminal probe of interference in the 2020 election.” And from the Washington Post: “Technology consultants who sought evidence that Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat was fraudulent made multiple visits to a county elections office in rural Georgia in the weeks after an alleged post-election breach of voting equipment there that is the subject of a criminal investigation. Surveillance video reviewed by the Washington Post shows that the consultants, Doug Logan and Jeffrey Lenberg, made two visits in January 2021 to the elections office in Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta. Lenberg made an additional five visits on his own. The two men are under investigation for separate alleged breaches of voting machines in Michigan.”
A few months ago, I wrote about the possibility that GOP poll workers might interfere with official work on Election Day to prove elections officials are “rigging” the vote. Looks like the Wayne County, Michigan, GOP has taken up that challenge.
How did a missing Michigan voting machine end up at a Michigan Goodwill store, where it was purchased for $7.99 and then resold on eBay for $1200?
More Michigan news: Its state Supreme Court ruled a proposed constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights can be included on the ballot this November. In a nakedly partisan ruling, a lower court had earlier kicked it off the ballot after it ruled the petitions used to gather signatures to support the amendment contained (no joke here) spacing and formatting issues that violated the law.
Want to hear the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania pray for the federal government to be overthrown on 1/6? OK:
Why is Glenn Yougkin, the moderate, soft-spoken, reasonable Republican governor of Virginia, campaigning for Maine’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Paul LePage, the former governor who has falsely claimed that 90% of the people arrested for drug trafficking in Maine were Black or Hispanic, called Black and Hispanic people “the enemy,” claimed many drug traffickers passing through the state “impregnate a young White girl before they leave,” and publicly wished he could have killed a Democrat he was in a feud with in a duel? None of that sounds like something a moderate, soft-spoken, reasonable Republican would do.
OK, Dr. Oz, but what if it turns out the patient is sick? (“Yeah, looks like you have diabetes. Thanks for stopping by!”)
Dr. Oz said the uninsured “don’t have the right to health,” but should be given “a way of crawling back out of the abyss” with “15-minute physicals” provided by the government “in a festival like setting.”By the way, you don’t want to know Dr. Oz’s views on incest.
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson now says he won’t support a bill codifying same-sex marriage, adding he only said he would this past summer to get the press “off my back.” Is that a legit excuse now? Maybe he didn’t have a pretend phone call to take when he was originally asked the question.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) presented a woman he described as a “political prisoner” with an American flag that had flown over the Capitol upon her release from jail for participating in the 1/6 Capitol riot. (P.S.: She’s a doctor. Guess what she thinks about COVID?)
Here’s an interesting midterm development that’s gone largely unnoticed: Democrats are leading among those voters most likely to vote (both registered voters and those who say they intend to vote.) That’s probably a consequence of college-educated voters shifting toward Democrats and non-college educated voters shifting toward Republicans. It always used to be the other way around, which made mobilization efforts so much more important for Democrats than Republicans.
Time to start hoping for a warm winter in Europe, with energy rationing all but inevitable now that Russia has shut down its main natural gas pipeline to Europe.
The truly significant political news out of the UK this week is that the United Kingdom just got a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss. She’s the fourth conservative PM in about six years’ time and is inheriting a mess, as Brexit has left the UK economy more vulnerable to the economic disruptions wrought by the war in Ukraine than other Western nations. First impressions of Truss have been less than impressive. (She’s all for cutting taxes on the wealthy even though UK citizens are having to choose between paying their utility bills and buying groceries. She also isn’t sure if France is a “friend or foe.”) Added complication: Not only does a majority of UK citizens believe she will be a “terrible” prime minister, but a majority of MPs in the House of Commons didn’t even support her leadership bid. Jonathan Pie can fill you in on the details.
We’ve heard so much about the heavy losses taken by the Russian military during Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but Ukraine’s forces—which remain heavily outgunned—are suffering mightily as well.
But in a new development this weekend, Ukraine appears to have pulled off a surprising counteroffensive in a key strategic area in Kharkiv. Even Russian state media is admitting Putin’s forces have been forced to retreat.
The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet among wealthy nations it has one of the world’s lowest life expectancies. Why? Derek Thompson of The Atlantic looks into how America’s way of life (for example, our on-average longer commutes) contributes to shortened lives.
Approximately 1 in 10 American households struggle with food insecurity.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, federal health officials believe Americans will probably need annual COVID shots.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has declared a state disaster emergency after an unvaccinated individual was diagnosed with polio and the polio virus was detected in New York City wastewater.
Yeah, I’m sure nothing evil can come of this. By Anna Merlan, of Vice: “On September 1st, Evie Magazine—which strives to be the conservative answer to Cosmo, and which promotes COVID denialism and vaccine misinformation, soft-focus transphobia, and a weird obsession with organ meats—announced a new venture: 28, a ‘femtech’ company offering workouts and nutritional tips based on users’ menstrual cycles, and which requires those users to enter information about the first day of their last period. The week prior, TechCrunch announced the new venture’s biggest funder: the investment firm Thiel Capital, which led the latest $3.2 million funding round, and whose founder Peter Thiel has a variety of other interests. (Those include, of late, funding the MAGA movement to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.)”
Here’s a book that’s getting a lot of buzz: Slouching Toward Utopia: An Economic History of the 20th Century by J. Bradford DeLong (From Annie Lowrey’s review in The Atlantic: “[DeLong’s] long-gestating examination of what he calls the ‘long 20th century’ is sweeping and detailed, learned and accessible, familiar and strange—a definitive look at how we arrived at such material splendor and how it failed to deliver all that it seemed to promise. His decision to end the story in 2010, and thus to finish his book, holds a message for all of us: Despite its problems and iniquities, the economic era Americans just lived through was miraculous. And now it is over.” Vox also interviewed the author.
And finally, the official White House portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama. President Obama’s portrait is by Robert McCurdy. First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait is by Sharon Sprung. You can learn more about the artists and their work here.
Garbage Time: Here Comes Judge
(Garbage Time theme song here)
As much as I don’t like to see summer go, I’m sure glad August is over. August is the worst time of the year for sports. Turn on the TV in the middle of the month and what do you find? Pre-season football and little league baseball games. It’s so bad.
At least during the last week we get the U.S. Open. The big story out of the tournament this year was the retirement of Serena Williams, which ESPN unfortunately treated more like the retirement of a celebrity than the end of the all-time greatest tennis player’s career. It also felt like the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era, as one of them was injured, another got bounced in the 4th round, and the other couldn’t play because he doesn’t believe vaccines are healthy. We were then treated to a showdown between Russian Daniil Medvedev and Australian Nick Kyrgios with what seemed like the future of men’s tennis on the line. Kyrgios won…and then proceeded to lose his next match to the 27th seed. (#1 seed Iga Swiatek of Poland defeated #5 seed Ons Jabeur of Tunisia to win the women’s singles tournament and assert her dominance over the women’s field. Sunday afternoon, #3 seed Carlos Alcaraz will face off against #5 seed Casper Ruud of Norway. Pay attention to Alcaraz; he is young and has shot to stardom this year. When you watch him, you don’t watch him play so much as you watch him get better. Enjoy this volley during his semi-final match Friday night against American Francis Tiafoe.)
And now football’s starting up but I just can’t get myself excited for that. The college team I follow, the Iowa Hawkeyes, put together a few big innings last weekend and won 7-3. Seriously, though, if you knew nothing about that game, you’d think Iowa only scored once but NO honest to God they actually scored three different times. Apparently their best player is their punter. Unfortunately, according to advanced analytics, safeties are only worth .33 of a touchdown, less than that if you assume the extra point. Not an efficient way to put points on the board if you ask me.
As for the NFL, I thought about writing up a preview, but I don’t follow 32 different offenses and defenses closely enough to be able to tell you anything you’d find interesting or useful. Here’s what I know off the top of my head:
Russell Wilson isn’t in Seattle anymore, he’s in Denver.
Some team is going to reluctantly pay Jimmy Garoppolo to play for them.
Cleveland not only traded for a quarterback being sued by twenty-two women alleging sexual misconduct but gave said defendant a $230 million contract.
Aaron Rodgers has no one on his team who is good at catching footballs.
Pittsburgh replaced Ben Roethlisberger with one of the 254 (+/- 37) players who have started at QB for the Chicago Bears since Jim McMahon left. I can’t remember which one.
Gisele is not happy Tom Brady un-retired. Neither, presumably, is Tom Brady’s cranium.
Everyone is picking Buffalo to win the Super Bowl, which I learned in elementary school is a mean thing to do to someone.
The WNBA Finals between the Las Vegas Aces and the Connecticut Suns starts this week. The series will pit this season’s MVP (Las Vegas’ A’ja Wilson) against last season’s MVP (Connecticut’s Jonquel Jones). The Aces also feature Chelsea Gray, who was lights out in the Aces’ series against Seattle (which marked the end of Sue Bird’s legendary basketball career.) I’m pulling for Las Vegas on account of their coach, Becky Hammon, who was an assistant coach for the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs from 2014-2022 and the first woman to take on the duties of a head coach during an NBA game following an ejection of Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. Despite her eight-year tenure in one of the NBA’s best programs, no NBA franchise hired her to lead their team. That led her to take the leap to the WNBA, where she now has her team on the cusp of a championship in her first year at the helm.
The sports story I’ve got my eye on this month, however, is unfolding in the Bronx, where Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge is sitting on 55 home runs with twenty-two games left to play. That puts him on pace to hit 64 home runs this season, which everyone slyly notes would be a Yankee and American League record, thank you very much. You may be thinking nine homers in twenty-two games is a tall order, but Judge doesn’t need to do that to set the record. If he hits five more home runs, he’ll end up tied with Babe Ruth for second place. If he hits six more, he’ll tie Roger Maris’s all-time mark. And if he finishes with just seven more home runs—about one dinger a series—he’ll have that Yankee record all to himself. There is a universe in which Maris’s record still stands, and it turns out this is it. Having delivered a player named Judge to baseball’s most storied franchise, perhaps the baseball gods have a sense of justice after all.