Dem
52
Ties
3
GOP
45
There's a lot of news we need to pass along, starting with yet another example of the President of the United States doubling down on deplorable behavior.
Doubling Down: Many people dislike the sleazy Vivek Ramaswamy ad, the one that features the mother of Amy Acton (and, by the way, it's come out that mom is a kitten killer). Trump is not one of the people who dislikes the ad. In fact, he likes it very much, to the point that he's demanded that Ramaswamy keep using it, and he's made it a Republican loyalty litmus test. Who knows what Trump's motivation is, beyond his general misogyny. However, the ad is not likely to help Ramaswamy much, and it's only one governorship in one state, anyhow. And the price is that Republicans in other states, in more competitive races, could be damaged by Trump's insistence on nationalizing the thing.
Our Take: The other day, we wrote, in so many words, that when it comes to this particular issue, the fish stinks from the head down. Nothing that has happened since has caused us to rethink that position.
Desperruption: We're not sure if this is a story that illustrates Donald Trump's corruption, or one that illustrates his desperation in anticipation of a blue wave. Probably both. In any event, last year, Amazon agreed to pay out $2.5 billion to customers who were scammed into buying Amazon Prime accounts they did not want. The checks started going out this week, and the notice included with them advises recipients that the money is courtesy of "President Trump's Federal Trade Commission." This has not been done with previous settlement checks during other administrations, and appears to be the product of a little "cooperation" between FTC Chair Andrew N. Ferguson and Amazon Founder/Executive Chair Jeff Bezos.
Our Take: If you're not having success buying people's votes with the government's money, then we guess you try to buy people's votes with private corporations' money.
Another New Low: In just the last week, Donald Trump has hit a new low for him in five different polls. The latest is this week's CNN/SSRS poll, which now has Trump at 32% approve, 67% disapprove, putting him 35 points underwater. On the generic Congressional ballot, CNN has the Democrats up 10, 49% to 39%.
Our Take: "The Bush line" might soon be obsolete, to be replaced by "the Trump line."
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Part I: The major organs of the Democratic Party have been pleading poverty all year, and the major media outlets have been running "the Republicans have way more money than the Democrats" stories all year. While this may be true for the RNC vs. the DNC, we have otherwise consistently been skeptical of this narrative. Perhaps we were right to think that way; yesterday the Democrats' Senate Majority PAC announced that it has raised $354 million this year, which is a record. That includes nearly $100 million in October.
Our Take: We stand by our view that the money situation in politics has gotten so labyrinthine, you just can't draw conclusions any more about who is doing well and who isn't.
One Mississippi, Two Mississippi: Consistent with their not-so-empty bank account, Senate Democrats are now buying commercial time in Mississippi in hopes of getting Scott Colom elected.
Our Take: The Democrats are spending money on U.S. Senate commercials... in Mississippi. Let that sink in for a moment.
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Part II: Elon Musk can spare a dime. He can spare much more than that, in fact. With his latest round of donations to various Republican-aligned PACs, his giving this cycle is approaching nearly half a billion dollars. That is a record for a single individual for a single cycle (with the caveat that, because of Citizens United, not all contributions are publicly known).
Our Take: Most of Musk's money is likely to go to waste, just as it did in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Will he finally get the message that he's not very good at this?
We have more, but this overall posting is getting pretty long, so we'll hold the rest to next week. Trump probably won't do anything crazy, right? So we'll have time to catch up, right? (Z & A)