President Trump said downplayed his campaigning on behalf of House candidates while noting that his “primary focus” in campaigning has been on the Senate, CNN reports.
Said Trump: “I think we’re going to do well in the House but as you know, my primary focus has been on the Senate and I think we are going to do really well in the Senate.”
He added: “With so many people in Congress, with so many people in the House, it’s very hard to make those stops. But I’ve made a number.”
Washington Post: “Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Trump’s warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They’re packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border.”
CNN issues its final election “forecasts” of the midterm election campaign.
House forecast: Democrats will win 226 seats (and the House majority) while Republicans will win just 209 seats. A Democratic win of 203 seats and 262 seats is within the margin of error.
Senate forecast: Republicans will hold 52 seats (and maintain control of the Senate) next Congress while Democrats will hold just 48. Anything between Republicans holding 48 seats and 56 seats is within the margin of error.
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Author Stephen King urged Iowans to defeat Rep. Steve King (R-IA), The Hill reports.
Said King: “Iowans, for personal reasons I hope you’ll vote Steve King out. I’m tired of being confused with this racist dumbbell.”
Jon Ralston does not think Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) will win re-election on Tuesday.
“It’s sad in a way for me to contemplate this. Heller is genuinely one of the nicest people I have met in politics. That incandescent smile, that buoyant demeanor, that carefree mien. But he has surrounded himself with a confederacy of jerks who have not served him well, and he has traveled far from the days when he was a maverick secretary of state who really seemed to believe in things 25 years ago.”
“He is now willing to sacrifice his self-respect to embrace – nay, fawn over – a man he would ordinarily disdain (and did just two years ago) to clutch onto a job he does not like and is not very good at. Heller’s Velcroing himself to Trump is a pathetic act of political opportunism and so out of (what I thought was) his character.”
Boston Globe: “Democrats woke up in November 2016 to the cold reality that the Blue Wall of reliable votes in upper Midwestern states that they counted on for years had crumbled, clearing a path for Donald Trump to take the White House.”
“Two years later, the party is aiming in Tuesday’s midterm elections to patch up that barrier, and Democrats appear on track to make gains in House and governor races in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, three once-blue states that Hillary Clinton lost.”
“But there’s an open question hanging over the vote: Is this a temporary trend, fueled by reaction to Trump? Or are Democrats refashioning a coalition that will hold?”
Los Angeles Times: “Swamped by a tidal wave of Democratic cash, Republicans entered the final 72 hours of the midterm campaign scrambling to preserve their slim Senate majority as a bulwark against the increasing prospect of a Democrat-run House.”
“Needing to gain 23 House seats for control, Democrats were burrowing deep into once-safe Republican territory, from the suburbs of Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Houston to California’s historically conservative bastions of Orange County and the Central Valley. The most optimistic GOP scenarios had the party hanging on to its majority in the 435-member chamber by a whisper-thin margin.”
A new CBS News poll finds that 93% of voters in battleground congressional districts say their vote in this midterm election matters just as much, if not more, than in a presidential race.
In fact, 34% of Democrats say this year’s election matters more than a presidential one, while just 16% of Republicans agree.
Capt. Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who landed U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River off Manhattan after both engines were disabled by a bird strike, told NBC News that “everyone, everywhere must vote” against Republicans to save our democracy from a president who is not willing or able to change.
Said Sullenberger, a lifelong Republican: “It is my duty… I could not let my silence or civility connote acquiescence.”
“Just two days before the election, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office launched an investigation Sunday into the Democratic Party after an alleged attempt to hack the state’s voter registration system,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“Kemp, who is the Republican candidate for governor on Tuesday’s ballot, didn’t provide any evidence of hacking when his office announced the probe. He faces Democrat Stacey Abrams in the election.”
“The Democratic Party of Georgia called the allegation ‘100 percent false’ and ‘an abuse of power’ by Kemp’s office.”
For those looking for the latest midterm election polls, there are almost no good quality polls of the most competitive races in these final days.
“The Republican Party has aired eight times as many ads focused on crime and public safety as it did during the last midterm election, according to a HuffPost analysis, a reflection of President Trump’s strategy of trying to fire up the GOP’s base with fear.”
“During the last midterm elections, in 2014, Republicans running for House and Senate seats aired ads about public safety more than 12,000 times… That number spiked to nearly 107,000 for the 2018 election, an increase of more than 800 percent.”
A new Journal of American College Health study finds that one quarter of college students experienced “clinically significant” symptoms of trauma from the 2016 election results.
Politico: “Haunted by memories of 2016, liberals around the country are riven with anxiety in the campaign’s home stretch. They’re suspicious of favorable polls and making election night contingency plans in case their worst fears come true. Some report literal nightmares about a Democratic wipeout.”
“Tonight we’re live from the Arizona border where a vicious caravan of dozens—maybe millions—of illegal immigrants is heading straight for you and your grandchildren.”
New York Times: “Top officials on both sides agree that Republicans are likely to defeat Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, who is roughly 10 points down in the polls. But every other Senate Democrat is still seen as viable. That itself is rather extraordinary given that Democrats are defending 10 seats in states that President Trump carried.”
“If Democrats manage to lose just the Heitkamp seat, they have a (remote) chance of winning the Senate. They would have to win three of these four Republican-held seats: Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Tennessee.”
“Of the four, officials in both parties think Democrats are best positioned to win in Arizona and Nevada, where Mr. Trump’s incendiary language on immigration has infuriated Hispanic voters.”
North Carolina congressional candidate Mark Harris (R), a former Baptist pastor in Charlotte, said in 2011 that there would be no peace in Israel unless Jews and Muslims converted to Christianity, The Forward reports.
Said Harris: “You cannot be in that land, as powerful and as moving as it is, without realizing the incredible tension that is constantly in that land between the Palestinians and the Jews. There will never be peace in Jerusalem until the day comes that every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
A new Daily Beast/Ipsos poll finds Kanye West’s favorability rating stands at 22%, with an 11% favorability rating among Democrats, 40% among Republicans, and 15% among Independents.
“Those numbers were among the worst of the nearly 20 public figures polled, reflecting the damage that the cultural icon has done to his image with his foray into politics. West is less popular than Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Stormy Daniels, Colin Kaepernick, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Bezos, Nikki Haley, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Bloomberg, and Beto O’Rourke. He is even less popular than Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, who is deeply despised by vast portions of Democratic voters and not that beloved by his own Republicans either.”
Former independent counsel Ken Starr said that he has not seen President Trump commit any offense that is “even close” to being impeachable, The Hill reports.
Said Starr: “Not even close. I know of no evidence … that would suggest that Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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