Midterms Ramble.

If you look closely at this ,
the "blue wave" is really
nothing .

Blue Wave If it's  going to happen . NOW we are approaching the mid-terms . THIS NOVEMBER 6TH is going to determine the fate of theTrumpAdministration.The "mid-term wave" - a sweeping electoral triumph that reshapes the national political map - is a recurring phenomenon in US politics.  (1)>>Is one about to crash on Republicans in Washington? Democrats have a five in six chance of being able to take the House.Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to get control of that chamber. AS it is right down the Democrats hold 49 to 52 Republican. That not a big margin . Its always been puzzling that even at 49 seats the Democrats have had some power , since Trump won, the Democrats have become cowards. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight predicted on Thursday that Democrats have a 15% chance of flipping the Senate and asserted that Democrats would need "some type of systematic polling error to win the Senate." Thelatest polls are suggesting that the Democrats are doing well enough in the suburbs and exurbs to pick up the twenty-three G.O.P.-held seats in the House they need to flip for a majority, and possibly a dozen or two more. Donald Trump has reason to be nervous.A Democratic victory in either the House of Representatives or the Senate would give the party the power to open investigations into various aspects of his administration, the Financial Times reports. Sources described as being familiar with the president’s thinking told CNN that he is “genuinely concerned” about the outcome of elections, most of which will take place on 6 November.
Voter rage ?

Republican  agenda
seen through a cartoon .

The generic ballot tells us voters prefer Democrats to Republicans by a 10-point average. Its not really much. (1.2)>>The president’s approval ratings, a historically useful guide to his party’s midterm hopes? The lowest at this point of any in recorded history. Recent special elections? Democrats took a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama for the first time in 30 years and a Wisconsin state Senate seat that had stayed Republican for 17 years. The average swing to Democrats in the four special elections so far: more than 20 percent. Republicans in the House seem to be heading for the hills: Thirty-one have already announced they are leaving, compared with just 15   Democrats. According to the UVA Center for Politics’ Crystal Ball, an online publication that analyzes political data, the Democrats have not been this exposed (vulnerable) since 1970, during the Nixon administration.  -So, right now, polling shows Democrats have a clear advantage in congressional supportfor the House of Representatives.That's 435 congressional districts,all having competitions,though there's only about 70 that are actually competitive.Democrats need to flip 23 seats to take control of the House.The Senate is a

weaker position for Democrats.They have many vulnerable incumbent senators

and they have to win a whole string of different elections,in order to win. But they're still competitivein a number of battleground states.What's really interesting about the houseis that it's flipped back and forthin a series of recent midterm elections,always going against the president's party.Polling shows that the election's shaping upvery much as a referendum on President Trump. (2)>>Roughly 9 in 10 people who disapprove of Trump saythat they're planning to support Democrats.Nearly as many people who approve of Trump say they're planning to support Republicans.The other big factor in midterms,in congressional elections, is turnout.Only about 40% of people have voted in midterm electionsover the past 20 years,though there are some signs that people are more interestedin turning out this year than last.We've seen a roughly 10-point jump in the share of Americans who are absolutely certain to vote this year,compared to four years ago,and that's been concentrated among groups that tend to favor Democrats,so, nonwhite voters, as well as younger voters.Turnout in midterm electionshas never exceeded 49% in the last 100 years,but it would be substantial if turnout increased by 5 or 10 points more than in 2014, when just 36% turned out. So we're really in record-low territory.The question is whether that's gonna seea significant jump this year.The difference between the 2016 election and this year's election is really that Hillary Clinton is not on the ballot. (3)>>Exit polling in 2016 showed that a large share of Trump's voters, between 2 in 10, 3 in 10, of his supporters, had serious qualms about his qualifications for office or other temperament, but they just disliked Hillary Clinton more.

But the dynamic is different when there isn't a clearDemocratic bogeyman for Republicans to criticize.Heading into the final weeks of the election,a few things we're really gonna be looking at are the enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans. Whether Democrats can match Republicans' enthusiasmand whether it suggests they're going to turn outat high rates is a big question.The other question is the degreeto which Republicans and Republican-leaningindependents really stick with their partyand whether Trump supporters really are enthusiasticabout voting for Republicans and whether they can match Democrats' unification on that side.The other thing we're also watching foris really any big issues.The news cycle has been incredibly quick and we've shown that people have prioritized

and really focused in on a lot of major policy issues this year, from guns to immigration to Supreme Court justices. It's still not clear what's going to dominate the conversation in the final week of the election, but it very well could shape people's decisions as they head into the voting booth.

Blue Wave or NO?

If there is a blue wave coming to Washington it might look something like this  , but it can be deceiving . Now? I’m not so sure.Trump's message, or to see his voters as racist and deplorable, is to miss the point. It is not that the Democrats' elite are geriatrics, though they certainly are; it is that they are too entrenched, too tone deaf and out of touch in myriad ways. The Clintons need to retire to discover the ambiguous pleasures of obscurity that the rest of us already know. Barack Obama is as eloquent as ever, and inspirational, but he needs to understand the dismay many of us feel when seeing him and his fellow Democrats taking money from big companies that outsource work and exploit foreign workers, all the while sucking up to celebrities. Mika Brzezinski warned this week on Morning Joe—and indeed, Trump’s eleventh-hour fear mongering may be enough to dull the impact of the blue wave. More likely, current trends will produce the same outcome that has been predicted for months. The only variable to watch is how many nail-biters get hyped in the process.    This is because there are two forces at work in (4)>>American politics that render the system highly anti-democratic, even in the House of Representatives, which is supposed to be the most democratic thing we have at the federal level.If you look at the last presidential election at the county level, you get this [ SEE MAP] during Brett

Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings for the US Supreme Court angry activists of all genders and colors turned up to protest in numbers this is a key strategy the Democrats have been banking on make people show up and party. The state legislative elections will not only be crucial for state-level policy debates but could also determine the fate of abortion rights if the Supreme Court moves to undercut Roe v. Wade, the future of Medicaid expansion in some states, not to mention innumerable other issues like education, taxes, and labor rights.Currently, the Democrats are outnumbered in the Senate 51-48, and in the House of Representatives with an overwhelming Republican lead of 239-192. Barring an unprecedented sweep in the House races, which would involve retaining 192 seats while flipping 47 Republican seats, it seems that the best chance for Democrats is to retake control of the Senate.Well how do you know what's going to happen?  The polls of the Electorate indicate a very fluid situation, and there are dead heats and very close races all over the country - so none of us really knows what is going to be the final result.  Many of you pro-Trumpers seem to be manifesting the same hubris and overconfidence you heavily criticized the Dems for back in the 2016 election where Trump pulled off an E.C. upset.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>Is one about to crash on Republicans in Washington? The new poll also confirmed that the Democratic Party now has a huge advantage over Republicans among nonwhites (sixty-six per cent to twenty-six per cent); people under the age of forty (fifty-eight per cent to thirty-seven per cent); and white college-educated women (sixty-two per cent to thirty-six per cent). On Tuesday, the latter group can probably be relied upon to vote in large numbers. The results of the election, though, may well hinge on turnout in the first two groups. Obviously, we won’t know until after the election. (1.2)>>The president’s approval ratings.  Donald Trump’s net approval rating, while still underwater, has been rising for months. And G.O.P. strategists are seeing signs that Trump’s recent fear-mongering—about “Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order, and common sense,” as the president put it at a recent rally—is paying electoral dividends. “Republican enthusiasm doesn’t quite equal the white-hot enthusiasm of Democratic voters, G.O.P. consultant Whit Ayres told the Associated Press, “but the Kavanaugh hearings got it pretty close.”    (2)>>Roughly 9 in 10 people who disapprove of Trump saythat they're planning to support Democrats.  Much of the Democrat leadership still hasn’t gotten around to figuring out what was it that led to DJ Trump becoming the President. And the best example of this in a cultural sense is the premature elation shown by Joy Behar on the View after she was a handed a note that said Flynn was going to testify that Candidate Trump had instructed him to call on the Russians, when in fact it was President-elect Trump who had instructed. Mainstream left still IMO continues to live in a bubble where anything, regardless of whether it is true or not, is jumped on to before due diligence, because it confirms the pre-existing bias of wanting to see Trump not be the President. When you have this mindset, the politics is naturally going to be very flawed, and akin to playing checkers when the game being played is actually chess. Trump seems to understand this innately.(3)>>Exit polling in 2016 showed that a large share of Trump's voters.  The midterm elections almost always punish the party in office. This has happened in the last century and this time was no exception. Since 1898 the party has only increased the chairmanship seats in the House of Representatives in four mid-term elections: 1902, 1934, 1998 and 2002. In 2014 that was in the game, especially the majority in the Senate and Republicans six more seats needed to regain control in 2006, they have achieved and surpassed.Like any midterm election there has been the prelude to the next presidential in 2016. Republicans have received a vote of confidence to end the ‘guerrilla war’ they have with the Democrats and the executive, but nobody believes a miracle, so we must prepare for two years of blockade and rule by decree in the US.Poll after poll, the electorate has expressed frustration and suspended the management of the entire political class, Democrats and Republicans alike, so that the effect of yesterday’s results in the upcoming presidential election and depends on what you do to each other from today to change that mood. If the middle and lower classes are still seeing the benefits of recovery, with stagnant or falling wages, and the Republicans, rather than cooperate with Obama, block their major reforms, today’s victory may be futile to get the jackpot which is the White House. Democrats probably will advance the nomination and Hillary Clinton can emerge stronger. (4)>>American politics that render the system highly anti-democratic Since the 1980s, incrementally the American political system has come to become plutocratic, and the extension of this on a cultural sense has alienated people in rural areas, nationalists and basically all those groups who don’t really fit on the prefabricated mold of what a progressive ought to look like as per the priesthood of the system. When political systems decay in such fashions, at some point it triggers a resurgence of a very authoritarian figure who derives his political power from this powerlessness felt among people, who promises to fight against a fatalistic acceptance of this powerlessness. That figure in the current era is Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton couldn’t have ran a worse message (I am with Her), when the power to be derived laid with integrating with the powerlessness felt by You, the pleb (Donald Trump )