Just for once I’d like there to be an election in which the fate of the nation, the democracy and the stability of the whole wide world isn’t hanging in the balance.
Just.
Once.
We used to have those. That was before 2016 when the United States lost its collective mind.
Presidential elections have always had a degree of theater about them. Obama – McCain in 2008 and Obama – Romney in 2012 were, during their times, characterized as the most consequential elections in history. There was a certain amount of hyperbole attached to those calls to arms.
I wouldn’t have been thrilled with either of those Republicans in office but I would have never expected them to be dumpster fires fueled by; unabashed support of Russia and other assorted dictators, the pissing off of allies, levying irrational tariffs, breaking laws, trashing the Constitution, naked robbery of the government coffers, and general incompetence and assholery. American democracy and her alliances would’ve survived McCain and Romney.
And the midterms. Unless you were a total junkie, taking your politics intravenously (like me), the midterms were mostly local affairs. That was until 2018, when it became clear that the Republican Party has debased itself and become a bootlicking, knee bending, pack of cowards, refusing to do its constitutionally mandated duty because it’s been cowed by a narcissistic president.
If you thought your own congressman and senators were giving you a fair shake you voted for them and let the guy in the next district or state deal with his own problem. My congressman might be a corrupt traitor to you, but hell, he’s my guy and mind your own fucking business. Suddenly Americans started to realize that the congressman two time zones away could actually have an effect on their lives. That no good senator on the other side of the country could be the one casting the deciding vote to confirm an incompetent for a cabinet position – or worse – a Supreme Court judge. Enter postcarding, phone banking and general unease over what’s happening in other states.
So here we are. Another election crossroads. Another fate of the nation, the democracy, and world stability hanging on a stinking midterm election.
By all rights, and according to the polls, the Democrats will likely take control of the House and have a better than outside chance of getting a majority in the Senate. But polls have been wrong and the Democrats have a history of vomiting all over themselves before snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (hence my reason for leaving the party and becoming Independent).
Given Trump’s polling, the utter incompetence of his cabinet, the rife corruption in the administration, a cadre of oligarchical bootlickers, a general ‘let them eat cake’ attitude towards the American people, and a feckless Congress, the Democrats should, by all rights, gain a supermajority in both houses. But in America these days things just don’t follow the logical path. And let’s be honest, it’s the Democrats, a party that hasn’t met a rake it doesn’t like to step on.
It’s unfortunate that when solidarity is most needed, Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians can’t establish anything resembling a coalition, something that isn’t uncommon in Europe. What is even more frustrating is that the Democratic Party itself can’t coalesce and is instead engaging in its traditional parlor game of ‘fuck the country’.
Montana
In this traditionally red state, Democrat Alani Bankhead has been running a lackluster campaign against Republican Kurt Alme who is a firm supporter of Trump’s ill conceived war, and tariffs, particularly those imposed on his state’s neighbor to the north.
Meanwhile, Independent Seth Bodnar could have a puncher’s chance in the election if Bankhead were to drop out of the race. But Bankhead, steadfast in her inadequacy, stated in August, “I’ll never bow down … I am in this race to win it, and I am staying through Nov. 3.”
It was a decision that caused Shannon O’Brien, the chair of the Montana Democratic Party, to resign her post and endorse Bodnar.
Don’t expect the Libertarian Kyle Austin to bow out and try to forge a coalition. That sort of thing is not in the DNA of Libertarians and Greens. Their zeal is doctrinal and they’ll stay in a race come hell, high water, or the impending collapse of the democracy and the threat of global instability (for proof one need look no further than the grifting political gadfly Jill Stein).
Maine
The engineer who originally steered this train towards the washed out bridge was Chuck Schumer when he endorsed 80 year old Vermont Governor Janet Mill for Senate on October 21, 2025. This at a time when it was clear that the nation is about over it with octogenarians (Mills would be 86 at the end of her term). Why would Schumer do this? Because he’s an old fogey himself who’s stuck in the bad old days of king-making by the national party, and because – Chuck Schumer.
In making the endorsement, Schumer warned away any potential rivals to Mills. Enter Graham Platner, who defied Schumer and ran anyway. It was a brilliant campaign. Meanwhile Mills’s campaign was uninspired, seemingly forced to run at the behest of Schumer five states distant.
Platner’s campaign caught fire and he won the primary. Unfortunately Platner’s own personal life was a tire fire that forced him to resign. Enter Troy Jackson at the eleventh hour to assume a candidacy against the always concerned but never reliable Susan Collins, a savvy politician who always wins even when she shouldn’t.
As of this writing, the polls have the race in a dead heat and Trump is pulling levers, particularly in the form of some tariff relief for Maine, as Collins tries to keep Trump at arm’s length, which he is apparently honoring.
And Janet Mills? She’s been a popular governor and her endorsement could help Jackson but, because Mills and Jackson have a history of political squabbles Mills has refused to endorse Jackson.
Texas
On March 3, James Talarico defeated Jasmine Crockett in a Texas senate primary that closed a particularly bitter campaign. An endorsement by Crockett, a Black congresswoman who is wildly popular with the left and with Black voters, could help ease the concerns of Black and more liberal voters. But Crockett has remained at arm’s length, refusing to appear with Talarico while claiming she’s focused on “campaigning downballot.”
Michigan
Democrat Hayley Stevens lost to Abdul El-Sayed in the state’s Democratic primary and in the immediate aftermath issued a lukewarm endorsement of the victor. Since then, Stevens has been missing in endorsement.
In the runup to the November 3 election, Stevens has been making the rounds of cable news sowing doubt by questioning El-Sayed’s commitment to Black and Jewish voters.
On Thursday the 29th, six days before the election, Stevens agreed to appear at a campaign event at a church service in Detroit with El-Sayed, along with Representatives Debbie Dingell of Michigan and James E. Clyburn of South Carolina. To be clear, it was Clyburn’s invitation that Stevens accepted.
The next day, five days before election day Stevens said that she expected El-Sayed to issue an apology for criticizing Israel (and what’s not to criticize since Israel is waging what the world has acknowledged is a genocide). Check that. She doesn’t want an apology, she wants three apologies. The remaining two include one for an antisemitic ad that was run by an outside group, as well as an apology for running an ad that features Tucker Carlson.
On Saturday the 31st, just four days before the election, Stevens was advised to stay away from any El-Sayed campaign events
“I don’t want any distractions,” El-Sayed told reporters.
“This isn’t working.” added Debbie Dingell. “There’s nothing to be gained by the two of them being in the same place.”
And, the icing on the cake? Stevens’s fiance, a Democrat, has announced that he’s going to vote for Mike Rogers.
There is no worse time for prideful intransigence, conscience massaging, and single issue voting. There will quite likely be at least one (possibly three) Supreme Court vacancy coming up in the next two years. Who out there is all in for Justice Aileen Cannon?
And yet – here we are.
We’ve seen this movie. In 2024 we watched swaths of voters, pissed off at Biden, take their anger out on Kamala Harris. Some actually believed the promises made by Trump the pathological liar and developed amnesia over the chaos of Trump 1.0.
2024, when swaths of shortsighted voters cast their ballots for Trump, or voted for the grifting political gadfly Jill Stein, or stayed at home and pouted.
Why?
When told by Trump himself that 11 million undocumented immigrants, would be rounded up and deported, the Latino community believed that all 11 million were hardened criminals roaming American streets. Imagine their surprise they they discovered that the pathological liar – you know – lied, and soccer moms, nannys, and veteran’s spouses were shown the door. They didn’t take into account that the dyed in the wool Fascist, Stephen Miller would be in charge of the cruelty.
The other group couldn’t get over themselves and their collective conscience over Biden’s Gaza policy, one which Harris was, according to reporting, opposed to.
The rest? They couldn’t figure out that Trump would be an angry tire fire of retribution, autocracy and plunder.
The specter of the oligarchs
“As Plato: It is an essential feature of the just state that the wealthy be kept away from political power and that the politically powerful be kept away from wealth.” ~ Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away
The man trying to harness the political winds in order to achieve his own aims is a Frankenstein’s monster built of ignorance, megalomania, sociopathy and untold wealth. He was constructed by the shortsightedness of a Federal Elections Commission and a Supreme Court.
Those bodies never saw the possibility that a Ketamine drenched, megalomaniacal trillionaire could, as Tim Miller pointed out in his podcast The Bulwark Daily, “invest a billion dollars per state” in the 2028 elections and it would be “totally legal.”
In 2025, Elon Musk tried to buy an election by dumping $25 million into the Wisconsin Supreme Court election to defeat Judge Susan Crawford’s bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He failed, in part because he was vocally obnoxious in his backing of conservative Brad Schimel. But that doesn’t mean that Musk hasn’t learned that he can stay quiet and let his money do the talking.
Elon Musk has poured $445 million into the midterms, all of it in support of MAGA candidates including the corrupt Ken Paxton in Texas, and the reprehensible Vivek Ramaswami in Ohio.
Musk isn’t the only one of the American oligarchy who is throwing his monetary weight behind even the most abhorrent of Republican candidates.
A recent article in The New Republic points out that “big money is still warping American elections, putting weak candidates on equal financial footing with stronger ones, making politicians from both parties beholden to the rich instead of their constituents, and blocking more populist policies.”
Plumbing the depths
“I was a university student and lecturer once, so I know universities stand for truth, honesty, and the pursuit of knowledge. When I became a politician I had to abandon all of that.” ~ Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (attribution)
We all get it. Politics is a dirty business. Still . . .
In 2015, Donald Trump took the already dirty business into unprecedented lows; racism, misogyny, xenophobia, baldfaced lying, bullying, and the taunting of war heroes, the disabled and any individual or thing he didn’t like. Scandalous at the time, Trump’s eleven years of depravity has mainstreamed indecency. Campaigning has devolved from a swamp to a toxic nuclear waste dump.
In Michigan the Republican campaign against Abdul El-Sayed has, because opponent Mike Rogers has nothing to offer, become full on, unapologetic Islamophobia, as Trump has taken to calling El-Sayed a “vicious, violent jihadist.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/us/politics/trump-muslim-voters-feel-used.html
In the Ohio Gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy aired an attack ad against his Democratic opponent Amy Acton, that featured Acton’s estranged mother who sided with her then husband who had sexually assaulted Acton when she was 12. https://www.ms.now/news/amy-acton-slams-vivek-ramaswamy-ad-decency-ohio-midterms
Assaulting the process
Thanks to Donald John Trump, his crooked administration and all of MAGA America, the fairness of the electoral process has been cast into doubt. As expected, the regime has already begun a series of moves to discredit candidates, and tamper with election results.
Trump’s Justice Department requested California election officials to halt the processing of 20,000 ballots that the DOJ has asserted were cast by noncitizens. A Federal Judge denied the request but it’s doubtful that this fight is over. https://apnews.com/article/california-noncitizen-voting-trump-midterm-lawsuit-481bed64919ad193e80e051d28beb2c0
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is being targeted by Trump’s Justice Department, ignoring the traditional 60-day rule in which the DOJ refrains from announcing investigations or filing indictments. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/ilhan-omar-details-federal-search-dc-home-will-move-safety-reasons-rcna604930
The Justice Department, at Trump’s behest, has sued to preemptively block certification of Alaska’s Senate race in the event that Democrat Mary Peltola defeats the Republican candidate. https://abcnews.com/US/doj-preemptively-sues-block-alaska-senate-results-republican/story?id=137512876
The reason for the move against Alaska has as much to do with Democratic stupidity and malfeasance as it does with tampering by the regime.
In Alaska, there are two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. One Dan is the Republican incumbent. The other is just a regular Dan who, the Republicans claim, was recruited by the Peltola campaign in order to confuse voters, thereby siphoning votes from the incumbent. The Peltola campaign’s first response was along the line of ‘Moi? What a ridiculous claim.’
Enter the New York Times, which did some digging and found that yes, regular Dan was indeed recruited by the Peltola campaign. This has caused Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy to order an investigation into the Peltola campaign to determine if it should face criminal charges or civil penalties.
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of the last of the sane Republicans, blasted the Peltola campaign saying rightfully, “Run and win on your merits: your views, your policy ideas, and your accomplishments.” https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/6179799-murkowski-peltola-ballot-stacking-claims/
The response from Democrats? “Republicans have a long history of recruiting and propping up candidates in an attempt to boost their own campaigns.” This brought back fond memories from my childhood when I got caught doing something stupid and justified it by saying that Whitey Jacobs down the street did it. This of course prompted mom to say, “If Whitey jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would you do it too?”
The ballot distinguishes between the two Dans, with the incumbent being identified as the Republican incumbent. Still, at a time when public opinion of politicians is at historic lows and there is doubt in the process, this sort of subterfuge was ill-advised.
Trump’s three stooges, Attorney General Todd Blanche, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and FBI Director Kashyap Patel, have all stated that agents could be posted at polling places or become involved in some other manner during and immediately following the election. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/23/will-ice-agents-play-a-role-in-the-2026-us-midterm-elections
The other stooge in play is Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth who, not inconceivably, could try to dispatch the military on Trump’s order. At that point the fate of the nation is handed over to Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The regime’s Justice Department is threatening state and local election officials with prosecution in what Politico terms “an unusually aggressive posture toward election officials in the days before the midterms.” https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/30/doj-election-officials-legal-threats-01143124
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson a state election official who refused to hand over voter rolls to the DOJ has faced threats of prosecution, was sent an envelope containing a mysterious white powder, and has received death threats and rape threats. She’s become so frightened by threats that she refuses to open her door when someone knocks.
On Friday, four days before the election, a federal judge issued an order blocking the regime from threatening and intimidating election officials. The regime has appealed that decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/judge-orders-trump-administration-stop-threatening-election-officials-rcna606659
There’s concern that the regime could attempt to seize ballots and/or voting machines before tabulation and certification, an action that could break the chain of custody thereby invalidating those ballots. On Alex Wagner’s podcast Runaway Country, author and journalist Barton Gellman described the consequences of that scenario; “But the thing is, at that point you’re not in legal territory at all, you’re in coup d’état territory.”
What will the Trumpy Texas election officials do if Talarico wins my a one thousand vote whisker? Certainly the morally bankrupt Ken Paxton won’t go quietly.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that election vandalism can extend all the way into January, when Mike Johnson is supposed to swear in the new Congress, and J.D. Vance the new Senate. The operative word is supposed.
How will Americans respond?
My sense is that by and large Americans will roll over. They’ve been rolling over for a decade.
Democracy, shmocracy – right? As long as Americans can get their lattes, even at an inflated price, still catch Guy Fieri on TV, and take the kiddos to play Saturday soccer, they’re good.
Some will take to the streets and I’ll be among them. But it’s going to be the same aging crowd that’s been on American streets over the last year and a half, a group author Charles Blow correctly characterized as “very white . . . old hippies.” Yep that’s us, reliving our glory days from the 1960s and 70s.
And assuming, hopefully, that all goes well, and there are no challenges from Trump, what will he do? He will still have two months before a new Democratic majority is seated and could in some way shackle his actions. He’ll have 60 days to escalate the war with Iran that he promised would be a two week thing? Will he invade Cuba? Cozy up closer to Putin? Tighten the screws here at home? What new emergency will he declare?
And once the Democratic majority is seated will it follow precedent and spend its time pearl clutching? While a Democratic Congress should do its due diligence and investigate the regime’s corruption, the American people are not going to stand for a constant chorus of ‘impeach, impeach, impeach.’ Americans are going to have to see some work towards relief and restoration of some semblance of normalcy.
In the end, I have to maintain confidence that enough people in crucial postitions will do the right thing. The courts, with the exception of the partisan right-wing Roberts Court, have swatted back the regime’s attempts at rigging the election. Hopefully the courts will hold the line and the Trump regime will abide by court orders.
So here we are my fellow Americans, it’s time to dust off the security blanket, stock up on antacid, popcorn and your favorite adult beverage, throw a log on the fire and buckle up.
Welcome back Paul. Your voice needs to be read by us all. My ballot is in its envelope, ready to take to the ballot box at the library, but I’m waiting until Tuesday. Even then, I don’t trust that a Trump ally won’t figure out how to seize it. This is a sad time for this country. I also wonder what will Trump do when the Democrats have the majority. Who will be threatened and how? I’ve said it before, this is a great time to be a senior citizen!
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