Hey! Look Over There!

Even by his standards, Donald Trump had an unusually unhinged Labor Day weekend. To be honest, we really don't like writing items like this one, because they are kind of soul-crushing. On the other hand, when it's this much stuff, and it's this nutty, we just can't ignore it. We're going to run these down in roughly chronological order:

The Arc de Trump: This story actually began to hit the front pages in the middle of last week, but the White House doubled- and tripled-down over the weekend. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum claims that the administration does not need no stinkin' approvals to build the Arc de Trump, and so ground will be broken on the project sometime in the next 2 weeks.

A fair question is: Why the rush? We see only two plausible answers. The first is that Trump and Burgum know that if they try to do this through normal channels, it will never get built. Either the approval won't be there, or the money won't be there, or it will be tied up in court, or all of the above. The second is that Trump is desperate to get it started before the midterms. We'll address our theories as to why the midterms would matter later in this item.

New America: Among the stories that appear here, this was the first "new" news that we heard about this weekend. Fresh off his "triumph" in renaming Lake Ontario (which polls report Americans oppose 63% to 14%, a margin of more than 4-to-1 against), Trump declared that his next foray into cartography might be to rename New Mexico as "New America." Here is the map he posted to his social media platform for the phony tough and the crazy brave:

You can tell Trump did not create this map himself, since there is no Sharpie usage.

When we heard about this story, we presumed that Trump was just trolling the libs. If you think renaming a lake by fiat is unpopular, wait until a president tries to rename a state by fiat. Especially the one that has "Mexico" in the name. Plus, someone surely must have told Trump that, unlike Lake Ontario or the Gulf of Mexico, the names of the U.S. states are set by law. The bill that conferred statehood on New Mexico, signed by William Howard Taft on January 6, 1912, says that the name is "New Mexico." Only Congress can change it.

Trump Gone Wild: We presume that Trump would never get the therapy he so desperately needs, because that is "weak" in his mind, and so he's using social media as a replacement. In any event, the "New America" post was actually a part of a run of disturbing, mostly-AI-driven, posts to Truth Social over the span of about 3 hours. We see no other way to do justice to how unhinged it was, so here is a rundown:

• 11:54 a.m.: AI image of Robert De Niro holding a "Trump is my president" shirt
• 1:47 p.m.: AI image of Trump and George Washington riding horses
• 1:47: AI image of Trump meeting with George Washington at the White House
• 1:47: AI image of Trump renaming Lake Ontario
• 1:48: Map "renaming" New Mexico to "New America"
• 1:49: Photo of Trump at McDonald's
• 1:56: AI image of the moon saying "The Moon Is Ours"
• 1:57: AI image of Trump's face superimposed on Iran
• 1:57: Bragging about the White House helipad
• 2:40: AI image of Trump next to a TV with Joe Biden edited onto it
• 2:40: AI image of the Titanic sinking labeled "Dumocratic Party"
• 2:40: AI image of Trump as Hulk Hogan
• 2:41: Declares he will be remembered as the "greatest president of all time"
• 2:41: AI image of Trump walking with robots captioned "THEY WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN"
• 2:43: Claims Democrats have changed the names of things, so renaming Lake Ontario is OK
• 2:47: Claims other countries are cheating
• 2:48: Declares the Strait of Hormuz is open (it's not)
• 2:56: AI image of the U.S. blowing up Kharg Island
• 3:04: Another AI image of Trump with military robots
• 3:06: Photo of Trump at the ballroom construction site
• 3:11: AI image of Trump saying he made America great
• 3:17: AI image of Trump trading stocks
• 3:26: AI image of Trump as a Space Force member dropping bombs on countries
• 3:28: Declares that Iran is a failing nation
• 3:43: Photo of Trump in a trash truck
• 3:43: Declares Mar-a-Lago is the best club in the world

Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy.

New North America: It would seem that a lake, a state and a gulf are not enough for Trump, and that he's hungry for more. And so, the morning after posting the "New America" image, the President followed up with this:

We will point out, once again, that Trump is in a trade war with Canada. He is also ostensibly working with Mexico on immigration and fentanyl smuggling. And he wants both of those countries to agree to an updated trade agreement. Disrespecting the sovereignty of both nations is not going to help on any of those fronts.

Meanwhile, we are not surprised that Cuba and other Caribbean nations, along with part of Central America, were suddenly "subsumed" into America. Trump certainly has aspirations to take over Cuba. Further, he's proven himself to be a colonialist, and the visual required that all the nations on the map be included. However, note that the flag "starts over" with Greenland. Note also that the island on the far right of the map could have been cropped out without ruining the overall visual effect. We are interpreting these facts as evidence that the people making maps for Trump's social media feed, and the people checking them over, are morons who don't realize that island to the east of Greenland is not part of Greenland and is, in fact, Iceland.

By the way—and this doesn't fit anywhere else, so we're just sticking it here—two can play at this silly map-renaming game (at least, for a short while). Someone, and we have no idea how they did this, apparently managed to briefly rename the Lincoln Reflecting Pool on Google Maps as Ozaawiminaazo Inini Reflecting Pool. That is reportedly Ojibwe for "Orange Colored Man Reflecting Pool."

Happy Labor Day!: Everyone knows that, even on the occasion of a holiday or a death, times when the majority of mature adults rise above politics for a moment, Trump simply cannot resist the opportunity to get in a dig. He did not "disappoint" with his Labor Day message:

Happy Labor Day to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, and Dumocrats who will do anything possible to destroy our Country. These Deranged People, after fighting for 10 years, should finally acknowledge that your Favorite President (ME!), knows how to WIN! They should be exhausted by now but, sadly, they're not. They're going to give it one last shot at ruining America, but we're not going to let that happen. We're going to win the Midterms, BIG, and SAVE AMERICA! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Trump was elected to represent 100% of Americans, including those who did not vote for him. Every other president understood this, and took seriously their duty to the entire country. Trump has no interest in being president to the people who did not vote for him. In fact—and we don't think we're out of line or in error in writing this at this point—we think he would be perfectly happy if the people who did not vote for him were to die en masse tomorrow.

This Is What Fascism Looks Like... Literally: Finally, Trump posted an AI-generated image (naturally) of what he wants the uniforms of the U.S. Space Force to look like:

Trump did not hide the fact—in fact, he bragged about it—that the aesthetic is borrowed lock, stock and barrel from the 1997 film Starship Troopers.

The President is so culturally illiterate, and so unable to grasp even hit-you-over-the-head subtext, that he presumably did not realize what he was admitting to here. The fellow who wrote the book, Robert Heinlein, was a conservative in the Rand Paul mold, and ended up producing a text that was either outright fascist, or was at least fascist-curious. The fellow who directed the movie, Paul Verhoven, did not want to make a fascist film, and so he intended the movie as a parody of fascism. The uniforms worn by the Starship Troopers (i.e., the people being mocked as fascists) were thus modeled on the uniforms of the Nazis. They are also very similar to the uniforms worn by officers of the Empire in the Star Wars films. Those uniforms were also modeled on the uniforms of the Nazis, with several scenes in those movies being effectively lifted from Leni Riefenstahl's pro-Hitler propaganda piece Triumph of the Will.

For Trump, a fascist vibe is undoubtedly a feature, not a bug. But if he had any awareness whatsoever of the subtext of Starship Troopers, we seriously doubt he would have been so open in bragging about his inspiration.

Again, there is just so much lunacy here, we could not let it pass.

So, what is driving all of this? We think there are three plausible explanations, and they are not mutually contradictory, so all three might be correct:

Mental Illness/Cognitive Decline: This is the default explanation on social media. We are hardly in a position to make a diagnosis ourselves, since we haven't got the correct training, and we have not examined him. But it sure seems like he's growing more unhinged every week. Could be because he's feeling anxious about losing the midterms and/or eventually losing the legal protections the presidency affords. Could be because he's an elderly man who is exhausted by the demands of his job, and who is not bearing up well under all the invective hurled in his direction. But it certainly could also be that there's been a physical change of some sort, and he is legitimately not well.

Midterm Strategy: Trump only has one electoral strategy, and it's "more of me." It's already clear that he plans to "save" the GOP by putting himself front and center this midterm cycle, whether or not the other Republicans want that. This weekend's silly stunts are the kind of thing that has worked well for him in the past, earning him a lot of free publicity, firing up the base, and enraging the libs.

If this is what is going on, however, then there are some obvious problems with this strategy. First, Trump is not on the ballot. We already have abundant evidence that MAGA works far less well when his name is not there to prop it up. Second, he is arguably as unpopular as he's ever been right now, perhaps even more unpopular than he was after the 1/6 insurrection. That is not a good time for Republicans to run on his record or his message. Third, Trump's shtick has gotten old and stale. It happened with his reality show, which had worse ratings every season it was on. And now, it's happening with his political stunts. Yes, we are writing about this weekend's nonsense, because there was so much of it, and because it's indicative of where he is as we move into "midterm crunch time." But, by and large, these stunts are just engendering a lot of eye-rolling, and people are moving on within days... or hours. By all indications, stuff like "New America" and The United States of North America aren't even getting MAGA voters excited.

Distraction: As we have written several times, we're no longer sure what things are the distractions, and what things are being distracted from. But we do know that the Iran War is a mess (and see below), that the economy is in a bad place right now (see below, once again) and that the Epstein files haven't gone anywhere. Every column inch that is taken up by a story about Lake America is, ostensibly, one less column inch devoted to a story about inflation.

That said, we don't think this is working as well as it once did, either. These stunts and these culture wars battles just don't get as much oxygen as they once did. Meanwhile, people don't actually need a story every single day about inflation. Every other day is enough, particularly when voters are personally suffering the ill effects. Put it this way: We cannot imagine a world in which the headlines on Nov. 4 are "GOP Majority Saved by Trump's Mapmaking Shenanigans."

We write all of this, of course, on the cusp of the Trump-driven midterm "convention," which will take place on Wednesday and Thursday. Any or all of the explanations above could also explain what is driving the event, where Trump will be the featured speaker on both nights.

We do not think the convention will help the GOP, nor do we think it will hurt the GOP. And we think both of these things for the same reason: Nobody is going to watch, except for the True Believers (and even many of them will surely take a pass, since NFL football is way more interesting than a Trump speech). Heck, the TV networks, even the ones on cable, have yet to commit to even covering the event. It may be necessary to watch online, or else on some high-number channel like Newsmax.

We feel a little bit strange, given the focus of the site, that we don't intend to watch the thing. But we just can't see any purpose in doing so, especially since many Republican officeholders are also taking a pass (most obviously, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-SD, has sent in his "regrets" and won't be there). It's going to be a glorified Trump rally, and we know what the story is without even having to see it. The story is that, as with this weekend, Trump is leaning hard into the things that worked for him in 2016. But it's not 2016 anymore, and Trump's inability to accept that and to try to course-correct (his best play would be to make himself as invisible as is possible for the next 3 months) is going to work to the detriment of his party. The only question, at this point, is exactly how much of a detriment. (Z)

$100 Billion and Counting...

The Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University put together a tracker that calculates exactly how much money the Iran War has cost Americans in terms of higher fuel prices. And this weekend, the counter crossed an inauspicious threshold: Total excess fuel costs are now north of $100 billion. That's about $55.1 billion in increased gasoline costs and about $45.5 billion in increased diesel costs (which are sometimes borne directly by consumers, but are mostly passed down along the supply chain, as a result of increased shipping and transport costs). This $100 billion works out to almost $770 per household.

There are, of course, many households that won't much feel an extra $770 in costs. But the majority most certainly will, especially since those extra costs have been imposed over a period of about 6 months. For most folks, it's hard to miss extra expenses of $100+/month, especially when more than half of that comes in the form of increased gas costs, which might be the most noticeable economic indicator in American society.

And speaking of increased gas costs, the price per gallon this weekend, which averaged $4.15 nationwide, set a record for the Labor Day weekend. In fact, the national average has never been above $4/gallon on Labor Day; the previous high was $3.82/gallon, set way back in 2012.

As we have pointed out many times, this kind of comparison is somewhat misleading, because it fails to account for inflation. In truth, $3.82 in 2012 was the equivalent of about $5.50 today. Still, we would say that this weekend's high fuel prices are very bad news for the party in power, for three reasons. The first is that we're getting very close to Election Day, which means that voters' feelings about fuel prices are about to get baked in (if they aren't baked in already), and nothing can happen to change that. The second is that crossing a round-number barrier (e.g., $4.00/gallon) sticks in the mind. And the third is that the trendline is bad. Gas was an average of $3.20/gallon one year ago, and it was an average of $2.98/gallon when the Iran War started.

If voters perceive not only that gas prices are high, but also that they are headed in the wrong direction, that's poison for the party in power. Meanwhile, the Democrats might just mention, once or twice, that "Trump's War" took $100 billion out of the pockets of American families. It would be difficult, to be frank, to write a more disastrous script for an election year. The attack on Iran was obviously ill-conceived and poorly planned, both from a tactical standpoint and a political standpoint, and we and everyone else wrote that when it happened. Seriously, here is the piece we published on the day after the attack, in which both we and the readers excoriated the White House. Here is what we wrote the next day, and here and here are lengthy pieces we wrote a week later, after some of the dust had settled, and there had been time to reflect. The theme that runs through all four pieces is: This war makes absolutely no sense.

Now, a shade over 6 months later, the legion of critics has been proven correct, and then some. The only question—and we honestly don't know the answer—is whether Donald Trump realizes it, and if he would take a mulligan right now, if he could have one. Unfortunately for him, war is not golf—you can't cheat your way out of your mistakes, and you can't guarantee you'll win by holding the event at a venue that you own. (Z)

Newsom 2028 Is in Full Swing

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) will be out of a job, thanks to term limits, in January of next year. Given his presidential aspirations, we can wonder if that's a good thing for him, or a bad thing. The good part is that he can focus on running for the White House full-time. The bad part is that he loses the bully pulpit and the megaphone of the California governorship, not to mention the potential to sign anti-Trump legislation into law.

In any event, the situation is what it is. Newsom doesn't want to wait until he's unemployed to get going, so he's already hitting the campaign trail. This weekend, he was in South Carolina to speak to Democratic voters there. The Governor admitted that part of the motivation was a 2028 presidential bid, but insisted that is "fourth" on the list of reasons for his trip. Somehow, he did not find time to explain what the top three were.

The Governor has decided that the biggest feather in his cap, and thus the basis for his pitch, is his leadership of the successful effort to gerrymander California's district maps, and thus to push back against Republican gerrymandering. By all indications, he is right about this, and the voters he spoke to over the weekend ate it up. Newsom would be best served if, on Election Day, the Democrats take the House, but only by a small margin—say, 220-215. Then he could claim that he single-handedly won the House for the blue team. He might end up being the only person in the country who, as the results are reported on November 3, is rooting for the Democrats to win, but not by too much.

Newsom has also decided that he really needs to connect with Black voters. This is certainly correct; South Carolina now has even greater importance than it used to, and half the Democrats there are Black. Plus, the road to the Democratic nomination runs through the South, and Black voters tend to dominate the Democratic Party in those states. Recall how Black voters saved Joe Biden in 2020, or doomed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in 2016.

Thus far, however, Newsom is not exactly connecting with that demographic. We read numerous reports about this weekend's campaign stops, and they all noted that the audiences were overwhelmingly white (there are a fair number of retirees from New York and New Jersey who have relocated to South Carolina). This problem does not figure to get better if and when Newsom's fellow Californian, Kamala Harris, gets in.

We are inclined to think, however, that Newsom's (implied) decision, that South Carolina is the best early state for him to target, is probably correct. Keep in mind that Maine was about to have a Senate contest between an oysterman and a person who prides themselves on being seen at the farmers market on Sundays, and will now have a contest between a lumberjack and the farmers market attendee. New Hampshire is right next door, and isn't that different, culturally. It's hard to imagine that a slick urban liberal like Newsom is going to find a lot of support there. Same goes for Iowa, where voters like candidates who go to the state fair to eat fried stuff, and who personally know how to castrate a pig.

There is Nevada, of course. However, it's fourth in line, and nobody ever saw their presidential hopes revived because they did well in the Silver State. Further, because the next-door Newsom is well known there, he probably doesn't need to devote time to Nevada quite yet. Of course, if a Latino candidate gets in, like Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), then all bets are off. In any event, trying to crack South Carolina, while he basically has the stage to himself, looks to be the best use of Newsom's time right now.

Meanwhile, Nevada Republicans are also test-piloting a Newsom presidential run, in a manner of speaking. Gov. Joe Lombardo (R-NV) has a problem similar to the one Donald Trump has (see above), namely that fuel costs are very high. This is particularly a problem in a driving-heavy state like Nevada. However, unlike Trump, Lombardo is up for reelection. He isn't going to take the blame for the gas prices himself, and he can hardly blame the sitting president of his own party, even if it's quite clearly that sitting president's fault. So, the (Nevada) Governor is trying to blame the (California) Governor. The pitch is that California's energy policies have driven up prices in Nevada, and that it will get worse if Aaron Ford (D) is elected as governor, because he's little more than a Newsom clone.

This seems pretty desperate to us. If it does work, however, it will suggest that voters (at least in Nevada) so dislike Newsom, they are willing to pin things on him even if it doesn't make sense. Should that be the case (and there have certainly been politicians in American history who were so hated that they did get the blame for nonsensical things), then it would not bode well for Newsom as a national candidate. (Z)

Fetterman Story Presumably Surprises No One

Late last week, The Wall Street Journal had a lengthy piece headlined "Behind Closed Doors, John Fetterman Shows Little Interest in the Work of a Senator."

The article is behind the WSJ's paywall, but the main assertions are as follows:

• He hates performing constituent services, and often searches for excuses to avoid doing so. At various times, for example, he has blown off a meeting with disabled veterans, a meeting with people building a children's hospital and a funeral for three slain police officers.
  
  
• He hates attending committee meetings. To avoid losing his assignments and/or giving his opponents political fodder, he has perfected the art of showing up just long enough to be counted as "present," and then vamoosing.
  
  
• He does find time for Fox. Fetterman likes appearing on TV, and he has a particular affinity for Fox's airwaves. In fact, on the same day he missed the meeting with disabled veterans, claiming that he was suffering from food poisoning, he did an interview with Fox.
  
  
• He has become obsessed with Israel, on par with Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. Fetterman has said he does not plan to leave the Democratic Party, but that he WILL do so if it becomes the anti-Israel party. Of course, that's a pretty squishy standard, and one that you could already argue has been met, if you point to Israel-critical Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed and the members of the Squad. Heck, you could even point to Jon Stewart, who had Fetterman on his show about a month ago, and who made the argument that assuming that any government is 100% right, 100% of the time, is a dangerous road to travel.
  
  
• He is very difficult to work for, between being abusive and being unreliable, and burns through staffers as fast as anyone on The Hill.

Fetterman pushed back against the Journal's reporting yesterday, describing the article as a collection of "smears" and "half-truths," and offering up explanations for the various claims made in the article (e.g., "I was just joking" and "I was sick in the morning, but felt better in the afternoon"). The problem here is that the newspaper showed its work, and had text messages from Fetterman to back its claims. The second problem here is that this tracks; it's not like it comes out of the blue that Fetterman has been something less than a model U.S. Senator.

Anyhow, it's worth noting for two reasons. The first is that Fetterman is not a reliable Democratic vote, or even a reliable Democrat, from here on out. In particular, if the Democrats retake control of the Senate 51-49, there is a very real chance he'll flip to the GOP, either to stick it to the blue team, or in exchange for a mountain of pork/other perks, or both. Even if he stays with Team Blue, you cannot be confident he'll support the bills that the Democrats try to pass, even if they are "here's what we'll do if we get the trifecta" bills that have no chance of actually becoming law before January 3, 2029, because Donald Trump won't sign them.

The second is that it's hard to imagine a world where Fetterman remains in the Senate once his term is up in January 2029. He does not seem to enjoy the job, or the scrutiny that comes with it. And even if he wants to remain, he has completely burned his bridges with the voters who sent him to Washington. In response to the Journal's story, several members of Pennsylvania's House delegation tore into the Senator. For example, here is Chris Deluzio:

There is a lot I could say about this report of John Fetterman's pathetic behavior as a Senator. But between the laziness, disrespect, and willingness to carry water for a foreign government, it shows us something we already know: this man has no sense of duty.

He is not up for the high office he was elected to -- and we in Pennsylvania will do something about it in 2028.

It is unusual, to say the least, for a representative to speak so harshly about a senator from their own party, and their own state. Even if Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) was upset with Bernie Sanders, for example, she would never lambaste him like this.

And Deluzio's words aren't just the words of someone who's taken the gloves off and is ready to go bare-knuckle. They are also the words of someone who smells blood in the water, and who is preparing a Senate bid of their own in 2028. So, even if Fetterman does try to keep his job, he's going to have at least one or two very serious primary challengers, challengers who are getting their ducks in a row as we speak, and challengers who are very clearly Democrats, as opposed to someone who leans DINO. Yep, Fetterman is cooked. (Z)

A Campaign Gone Wrong

The Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and is generally regarded as right-leaning. That is a pretty apt descriptor of the paper's editorial pages. However, the paper's reporters definitely did not get the message, as they keep pumping out pieces that will gladden the hearts of Democrats.

There was, first of all, the piece about John Fetterman (see above), who is not well-loved by most members of the Democratic Party, to say the least. There was also a story yesterday about Corey Lewandowski, reporting that he and Kristi Noem were de facto co-DHS Secretaries during her tenure, despite the fact that she was Senate-confirmed and he was not. This isn't much of a surprise, as he was clearly much more involved in running DHS than an unpaid advisor (his official role) would be, and since this administration regularly grants people power to which they are not legally entitled (see DOGE; Kushner, Jared; Witkoff, Steve; etc.).

Also published in the Journal yesterday was an article headlined "The GOP Senate Campaign Gone Disastrously Wrong in Georgia." It is, of course, about Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who is doing everything possible to lose his attempt to unseat Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in November.

Their laundry list of issues with Collins' campaign is really quite substantive; it could well be a future case study in a class called "Politics 101: What Not to Do." A brief rundown:

• Collins started his campaign with a much-derided video that decreed "GEORIGA [sic], LET'S RIDE." Remarkably, the video was never removed from the campaign's Twitter feed, despite all the mockery directed at it.
  
  
• Collins has flip-flopped on some key issues, most obviously whether or not the 2020 election results were legitimate. MAGA voters, who control the primaries, want to hear that 2020 was fake news. But Georgia voters in general do not like election denialism. The problem is that this is not an issue where there's middle ground, and Collins struggled to switch gears once he had the nomination in hand.
  
  
• Collins is as bad a fundraiser as Ken Paxton (R) over in Texas, and has been outraised 10-to-1 by Ossoff. Plus, Ossoff didn't have to spend his money to win a contentious primary; Collins did.
  
  
• Collins' campaign has been beset by scandals. In particular, reporters dug up overtly white nationalist statements from both his son-in-law and a now-former senior staffer. Those things will turn off the moderate Republicans and independents whose votes Collins so badly needs, while at the same time could motivate Black voters to get to the polls to vote for Ossoff. There are Black Georgians still living who can remember being represented in the Senate by a bigot like Herman Talmadge (who left office in 1981).

As a result of these problems, not to mention Ossoff running a very skilled campaign, Collins is getting crushed in the polls, trailing by an average of about 8%. Equally important is that five of the six aggregators have Ossoff above 50%. That is, of course, the promised land. And the sixth has Ossoff at 49.2%, which is right on the cusp of the promised land, despite nearly 10% of respondents being undecided.

Collins has only two slim hopes right now. The first is that the polling is wrong. This is possible; we all know what happened in Michigan and Wisconsin earlier this year. However, it is not probable. There's no curve ball, like candidates dropping in and out, or somewhat-fringy frontrunners, in this race. Also, it's probably the most heavily polled Senate race in the nation, so we're not talking about just two or three polls.

The second slim hope is that Collins can keep Ossoff under 50%. That would, of course, force a runoff under Georgia law, one that would take place in early December. In the winter cold, with a wonky electorate, anything could happen. Ossoff himself first won the seat in such an election, though do keep in mind he was on the same ballot as a Black colleague, Raphael Warnock. This helped get Democrats, and in particular Black Democrats, out to the polls. The same might not happen if it's just Ossoff all by himself.

As you might guess, we think these are both long shots. And, more importantly, the Republican pooh-bahs might soon decide they are long shots (if they have not already done so). The GOP has to play defense in so many places this year, it cannot afford to waste financial and other resources on lost causes. So, it may already be too late for Collins to right the ship. And if it's not already too late, it will be soon. If the Republican cavalry does not, in fact, ride to the rescue, then Collins will have to win on his own, which is not something he's shown that he can do. (Z)

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