“Florida, the onetime swing state Republicans spent a generation transforming into a conservative stronghold, is looking like a political battleground once again,” Bloomberg reports.
“After writing off the state as too red to win for nearly a decade, some of the Democratic Party’s biggest names are making a last-minute push they hope will pay off with major upsets on Nov. 3.”
A new Tufts University Public Opinion Lab poll finds Democrats leading Republicans nationwide in congressional races, 52% to 40%.
The survey had an interesting twist: “Unlike most polls which use a generic house ballot question that only provides the party labels, our House vote question piped in candidate names (with their party labels) to more accurately reflect how people actually vote in these races.”
“President Donald Trump has traveled 22 of 28 days in October, appearing in a total of 19 states. His remarks have averaged 1½ hours. At 80 years old, this frenzied pace is testing his stamina and his ability to deliver a compelling rationale for preserving the Republicans’ slim majority in Congress,” NBC News reports.
“But between messages about the economy — during which he has touted numbers without substantiation — viewers are getting profanity, physical objectification and ethnic stereotyping.”
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ProPublica has launched a database “to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team.”
“Republicans have spent an estimated $183 million on television ads focused on transgender-related attacks against Democrats in the final phase of this year’s midterm elections, betting that struggling GOP candidates can leverage the divisive cultural issue to overcome voters’ concerns about President Donald Trump’s leadership and the state of the economy,” the Associated Press reports.
“President Donald Trump has overseen the departure of about 1 in every 5 government workers since the start of his second term, a faster and deeper overhaul than under any recent predecessor,” the Washington Post reports.
“By some metrics, Black people — who have historically made up a larger portion of government employees compared with their share of the population — were hit hardest.”
“Truth Social, the social media platform founded by President Donald Trump, has signed up news and data provider Bloomberg and two Wall Street firms for faster access to the president’s posts, which it sells for up to $100,000 a month,” Reuters reports.
“President Donald Trump and Republicans are ratcheting up their efforts to brand Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan-born Muslim whose parents emigrated from Egypt, as an ‘extremist’ in the final days of the state’s critical Senate race,” Politico reports.
“It has sparked concern among some El-Sayed supporters, who fear the deluge of attacks could break through to some undecided voters. It has infuriated some of the president’s one-time Muslim and Arab allies in the state with the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, who view the comments as Islamophobic and racist. And it has caused some of them to lose hope in Republicans.”
“As Election Day nears, recent events have prompted some FBI agents to express concern, that they may be ordered to seize voting machines or take other actions that disrupt election results,” MS NOW reports.
“Adam Hamilton’s campaign tests whether Democrats can find religion,” the New Yorker reports.
“In the final days before an election that will decide control of Congress, President Trump’s closing argument — buoyant, digressive and characteristically off-script — is at times running headlong into the economic anxieties of the voters Republicans most need,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“With a war in Iran driving up gas prices for Americans, Trump is boasting to supporters that the conflict is making the country rich. At a rally in Georgia, he said his aides had urged him not to brag about the billions of dollars the United States was earning on oil from the war, since Americans are ‘paying a little higher’ in costs because of it. But he did it anyway.”
Said Trump: “I said, I don’t give a damn. We are making a freaking fortune. Our country is getting stronger and stronger all the time. And those pump prices are going to come down.”
“The U.S. economy expanded in the third quarter at the fastest pace in a year, supercharged by feverish business investment and a resilient American consumer,” Bloomberg reports.
“Inflation-adjusted gross domestic product increased an annualized 3.4% in the three months through September after growing 2.2% in the second quarter, according to an initial estimate issued Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The rise in GDP beat the 3.2% median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists.”
“The ground you have is the ground you have, and you have to fight on it.”
— A Trump strategist, quoted by The Atlantic.
A new UMass Lowell/YouGov poll in New Hampshire finds Chris Pappas (D) leading John E. Sununu (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 48% to 41%, with Edmond LaPlante (CONS) at 4%.
Former President Barack Obama really struck a chord last night while channeling Logan Roy from Succession.
“The Bank of North Dakota is the nation’s only surviving state-owned and -operated bank. It has persisted as Great Plains politics has shifted from prairie progressivism to deep-red conservatism, and it now manages about $11 billion in assets while enjoying broad support from the state’s current political leaders,” CNBC reports.
Said Gov. Kelly Armstrong (R): “I think it’s weird, right? We’re one of the most conservative states in the union, and we have this state-run bank that was started by first-generation Norwegian immigrants. I don’t think we could set one up now, but I’m sure glad we have it.”
New Yorker: “Talarico has an uncanny ability to say the same things over and over again. His memorized speeches sound as if he is reading from a teleprompter, without false starts or stutters—he repeats himself only when trying to speak over the crowd’s applause.”
“Now, in the final stretch, his closing message attempts to cover everything, from the etymology of the word ‘Texas’ to the mythos of Beyoncé and Selena.”
“Many things look grim for Republicans in the final stretch before the midterm elections: President Donald Trump’s approval rating is at all-time low. Polling shows Democrats ahead in key races in red states. High fuel prices are fanning voters’ affordability concerns,” Bloomberg reports.
“Yet the GOP remains competitive in part thanks to one extremely powerful weapon: A massive cash pile that far exceeds Democrats’ fundraising haul.”
“The Republican party and three super PACs tied to Trump or House and Senate leaders have raised $2.1 billion, compared to $1.4 billion for their Democratic counterparts. Allied conservative groups, like Elon Musk’s America PAC, have raked in hundreds of millions more.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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