You may think to yourself: that's exceedingly modest; everyone thinks the Democrats will retake the House next month. But that was before the Ford / Kavanaugh hearing. Surprisingly, that event seems to have nudged the needle ever-so-slightly in the Republican direction, such that a Democratic wave is marginally less likely now. Here is Nate Cohn's characteristically cautious and fact-filled take.
There is a key item in Cohn's account which serves as the basis for my prediction:
Democrats have been considered clear favorites in the fight for House control because polls and special election results have made it seem that the electorate wouldn’t be so polarized, allowing them to compete in many Republican-leaning districts. But if Democrats can’t break through and actually carry the many Republican-leaning districts they’ve put into play, Republicans could stay highly competitive in the fight for House control and even survive a wave election.
Today’s House map is so favorable to Republicans that based on recent presidential election results, even a 2006- or 2010-type wave — even a rerun of the highly polarized Virginia governor’s and state legislative races last November — would yield only around a net-27 seats for Democrats, by our estimates. Yes, that would be enough for a majority, but it would be close enough that it wouldn’t take too much luck for Republicans to hold on.The key sentence there is the last one: Republicans will need some luck. And here is my prediction: Donald Trump will ensure that Republicans don't have that luck. There is a month to go between now and Election Day. Donald Trump will do or say something between now and then to screw it up for his party, and Democrats will prevail.
Jim, I am sure you are right that Trump will do something, probably plural, to screw things up for his party given a month's time. Trouble is I have no faith that the Democrats will not shoot themselves in the foot given the same amount of time. I don't think they recognize the extent which the timing of the Kavanaugh revelations was a negative factor for them. He was nominated July 9, and was a finalist way before that. That should have been ample time to bring up any problems. The timing looked like political dirty tricks. Of course the Rs would be no stranger to that.
ReplyDeleteAnd both parties should reconsider the strategy of using sex scandals to stop an opponent, because it doesn't work very well. It didn't stop Bill Clinton, it didn't stop Trump, and now it didn't stop Kavanaugh.
If Republicans fall in line, but Democrats have to fall in love, let's look at whom they fell in love with last time (Bernie) rather than whom they thought was a safe choice (Hillary).
ReplyDeleteAnd why did they fall in love with Bernie? Because he swept away all the identity politics in favor of stuff everybody cares about: Climate change, wage stagnation and disparity, dwindling labor clout, and health care.
Democrats would do well to follow this model.
But they're not gonna.
Bingo!
DeleteAlso: I predict Democrats will not take back the House or the Senate, and that Trump will win a second term.
ReplyDeleteAll the high-brow talk from the commentators is just weak tea compared to the white lightnin' of a reality talk show host at the helm of the Greatest Show, er, Country on Earth having a daily media meltdown.
I think that just about everybody, including people who like Trump's ideas, knows that being drunk on this crap is bad for us, but sobering up is such a drag.
And with global warming set to hit the tipping point in 2050, we might as well stay drunk.
You mean I have to live to 102 to tell those dumb bastards "I told you so"? I'll do it.
DeleteMy cousin is an oceanographer with NOAA who has studied the Arctic for 30 years. He gets so depressed it's not funny. He'll be 99. You can help each other up the Capitol steps to claim your Pyrrhic victory. If they're not submerged. Or you're not under quarantine for some godawful tropical superbug. It beggars the imagination.
DeleteJoe Romm on ThinkProgress has disparaged the media's use of the term "the new normal". The problem is that that implies we've reached a stable point or plateau. We haven't. Even if we stopped all CO2 generation, the global average will increase another 0.5°C before radiative equilibrium is reached. The new normal isn't here yet. It DOES beggar the imagination.
DeleteI have not noticed this term in global warming reports, but he makes a good point.
DeleteMy prediction (since I'm in the mood for predictions, apparently), is that at some point a lot of people will die off as a result of weather disasters, starvation, plagues, cancers, and from chronic illnesses like asthma that are exacerbated by carbon emissions.
At that point, CO2 generation will drop sharply. Is there a model for how quickly the earth might recover in that eventuality?
This Nature article us from 2012 but it seems to answer your question.
Deletehttps://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/what-happens-after-global-warming-25887608
Modeling has been done. Even when the atmospheric CO2 starts to decline, the physical and biological effects will persist. For how long depends on how much CO2 we pump in. Could be tens of thousands of years.
Interesting and troubling. "Recovery" is clearly the wrong way to look at this. The release of carbon will likely change the normal cycle of warming and cooling pretty much permanently. How long will it take for climatologists to stop issuing futile warnings about global warming and turn their attention to migration and survival scenarios?
DeleteModeling those things would have to encompass the ultimate nonlinearity, people. I can't imagine any scenario where the human population is still 7B. When south FL is gone, I guess the rest of the country can absorb them. When Bangladesh is submerged, who'll take them? India and Pakistan? As for us, if sea level rise accelerates, where do you build ports? You have to plan for a strategic retreat. They're still rebuilding in flood zones as if they won't be flooded in another century. I would say, for strategies, look to the Dutch. But I don't think this country can scrape up enough IQ points these days.
DeleteSo this morning we were at the 8:15 Mass, and afterwards there was an announcement to "...please join us in the chapel for the St. Michael Chaplet. We are going to say it every day until the election next month." So, I was thinking, are they trying to get St. Michael to influence the election? The St. Michael devotion seems to be a thing lately.
ReplyDeleteThis was a lay led group, but we didn't hang around. I don't like praying for a particular political outcome.
Oh, man. I thought the voter guides were the living end. So if the vote turns out like they want, it's God's will, which means that God is a Republican and Democrats are against God. I've seen this attitude in my Baptist in-laws' church. I hate to see priests letting it take hold in Catholic parishes.
DeleteThis wasn't our parish; the 3 parishes in town take turns with the daily Masses. The priests don't say anything directly about political parties. However there are people who are on a mission from God and start these devotions. The priests just kind of let it go, I suppose they figure God will answer prayers the way he wants to. Which I suppose is the way I should take it. But like you, I find the voter guides offensive. I especially dislike it when people put them under everybody's windshield wipers in the church parking lot.
DeletePrayer cards with the prayer to St. Michael surfaced at our weekend masses this past weekend. That sort of thing isn't really characteristic of our parish. But the rosary group asked the pastor if it could be prayed during the month of October, and he said, Sure.
DeleteI've been sort of aware of the prayer, I guess, but I don't know that I had ever actually prayed it before last Sunday. Wasn't done in Catholic school when I was there in the 1970s.
Jim, yes, the prayer to St. Michael is familiar. In my grade school, pre-VII days, we used to say the "prayers at the foot of the altar" after Sunday Mass. The prayer to St. Michael was one of them. I forget what else we said, I think an Our Father and a Hail Mary.
DeleteIf there is a public rosary here, it's always with "all the trimmings". That includes Hail Holy Queen, the St. Michael prayer, the Rosary Prayer, and the prayer for vocations. And the Fatima prayer between decades. And sometimes an extra Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be for peace in the world and storm-free weather.
But the St. Michael Chaplet is a different devotion.
Katherine - re: rosaries with "all the trimmings": I can't even recite the rosary in a group anymore, they've added on so much stuff that wasn't there when I learned it. The Council Fathers of Vatican II used the term "accretions" for that sort of thing. I attribute the trend to the influence of EWTN.
DeleteI wonder if the rosary groups have adopted John Paul II's new schema for which mysteries are prayed on which days of the week. I can never remember those details, either.
Jim, Jim, Jim, you don't know what suffering is until you've been four beads into a decade and somebody yells, "Wait, wait, we have to go back to the Glory Be; we left out an ejaculation!" And now you never will know what suffering is because you are avoiding such flagellation.
DeleteRegarding the rosary: you have to remember that I'm from the banners and butterflies era. They never taught us the rosary in Catholic school. My parents made us pray it, er, established a family tradition of praying it together, on Sundays after mass. Since it was always on a Sunday, the glorious mysteries were the only ones I ever heard.
DeleteA few years ago, I caught a ride somewhere with the head couple of the rosary group - I think it was to a burial at a cemetery. They informed me that it was their custom to pray the rosary together whenever they drove anywhere, and he let me know that we'd rotate announcing the mysteries. I don't actually have the mysteries memorized - I've thought about it enough to sort of understand the general progression of each set (except for the luminous mysteries - I just plain don't get those, and don't see what they have to do with Mary). We were doing the Glorious Mysteries that day. I was assigned to the third decade.
I'd already learned that when you admit to a certain profile of parishioner that you don't have the mysteries of the rosary memorized, they look at you as though you're not certain whether Christ founded the Catholic Church, or that you think it's okay for a parish to bake its own communion bread. So when it was my turn, I sort of used my multiple-choice-quiz reasoning skills: the previous mystery was the Ascension; and I knew that the last two were about Mary's Assumption and Queenship. So by process of elimination, I figured it had something to do with the Pentecost event. So I mumbled something about "Holy Spirit". The guy looked at me, twice, and then kept going with "Our Father ...". To this day, I still don't know whether or not I dodged a bullet.
Jim, you got it right, Descent of the Holy Spirit. Really the only change is that Thursdays are the Luminous Mysteries, which I kind of like, if I can remember them. Which isn't always. I heard a priest say once you could pick your own mysteries out of Scripture if you wanted to.
DeleteMy grandma was Legion of Mary. They used to take the traveling Mary statue around. My mom, a convert, didn't want to do the traveling statue because she thought it smacked of idolatry. Come to think of it she was kind of right.
When I was a wee tot, the traveling statue arrived at our house once. I think she was only allowed to hang out with us for an hour or two, and the guy who brought her over, in a special suitcase, stayed right with her the whole time - kind of like those guys who guard the Stanley Cup every summer while it rotates among the players. Our parents tried mightily to impress upon us what a big deal this was, but as was the case with many aspects of childhood, I didn't quite get it.
DeleteWe also had this gigantic statue of Mary come and stand in our parish parking lot for a couple of days - this would have been about 15 or so years ago. She was something like 30 feet high. She traveled around on a special trailer from parish to parish for a year or two, before ultimately ending up somewhere. When we had her, we had a couple of hundred folks who showed up in the parking lot for the rosary on one of the evenings. That was a grim crowd. 30 Foot Tall Mary didn't fill them with joy for some reason.
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/carl-demmas-mighty-metal-madonna/Content?oid=904608
Yes, a 30 foot tall metal madonna would be rather intimidating! Our church's Mary is of the lovely-lady-dressed-in-blue, standing on a snake variety. Neither she nor the snake look very perturbed.
DeleteSadly, I think that both Katherine and Jean are right. The GOP will continue to control Congress. They will point to the jobs numbers, and, maybe the GDP growth, which is not really all that spectacular, but Trump makes people think it is.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the economy and/or stock market will tank before 2020. And the housing market, which has already changed in most large cities from being a sellers' market into a "balanced" market, moving to a buyers' market. House sales have been down for five months now. Housing inventory is growing fast. Once people lose equity, they feel "poor", spend less, etc.
We are an economy based on Consumption (about 70% of GDP is consumption) and we have been on a spending binge. But inflation is going up, so interest rates are also going up. As the tariffs kick in, a whole lot of everyday stuff (especially electronics and cars) are going to cost more and people won't be able to buy quite as much stuff.
The stock market has been teetering back and forth for most of the year, and is still short of the high reached last January. The bull market is VERY old at this point, and the various pundits out there say it is "overvalued". I'm not a stock guru, so don't know if they are wrong or right, but I would guess more right than wrong. There is always a "correction" and it is overdue. The federal deficit has been blown sky high by the tax cuts - reaching the projected end of year figure by July. Interest rates will continue to rise.
So, if the economic stuff goes south by 2020, there may be some hope of getting rid of Trump. But, that also depends on the Dems not shooting themselves in the foot again, as Katherine has noted.
538 is cautious, but they still have the House going Democratic by 73.6%. I try to follow some districts I know. NY19 (John Faso the Republican who has been a staple faces Democrat Antonio Delgado. At the beginning I would have given Delgado a chance, now the race is a "toss-up." Faso has been running racist-like ads (Delgado Afr.-Amer and a former rapper and Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Law School grad). Naturally its the rapper past the Faso's ads look at. Okay more than you want to know about the 19th.. This will definitely be a turn-out race, but the fact that it's a toss-up is a plus.
ReplyDelete538 House predictions:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/?ex_cid=rrpromo
Delgado CV
https://ballotpedia.org/Antonio_Delgado
Should read: "At the beginning I would NOT have given Delgado a chance, now the race is a "toss-up."
DeleteMy own Congressman Jerry Nadler has a 99 percent chance of winning on the 538 scale...Talk about a blue district. BUT I am not happy about his announcement that if the DEMS take the House, his committee will look into impeaching Kavanaugh. I say move on!
DeletePeggy - National Review noticed Nadler's statement, and predicted it will get big play - on behalf of Republicans - between now and election day.
DeleteThat Delgado sounds like an interesting fellow. Which profile would we rather have on Congress: a Rhodes Scholar like him, or a barista like Ocasio-Cortez? Not that they are running against each other - just interesting that our times have surfaced these two different profiles of candidates. I don't underestimate her, but I suspect the music star and Harvard grad will find it easier to adapt to DC culture. But I guess that's an argument to let the elites continue to run the country.
Can we hope that both Delgado and Ocasio-Cortez, if elected, will succeed, and even cooperate?
DeleteWill she avoid the tempting impulses of youth to be public rather than political? Will he avoid the temptation to be a Harvard Law graduate? Mrs. Polly Anna speaking!
Margaret, about impeaching Kavanaugh, I'm with you, "move on".
DeleteI'm with Katherine and Margaret. The battle was lost and his appointment will likely cause harm to the country for the next 30 years. It won't impact my husband and I - old, white, educated, with enough money to last us- but it will impact our grandchildren, several of whom are biracial. I am more concerned with his possible rulings on civil rights issues impacting racial and religious minorities, and women, as well as his apparent bent to give the President more and more unchecked power than I am about his stance on abortion. Abortion will remain legal in the US, even if Roe v Wade is overturned. But those good Trump-supporting evangelical christian women in Alabama might have to travel to New York to obtain theirs. The studies show that making abortion illegal does not end it.
DeleteInstead of going through an impeachment trial, it's better to get people out to vote. The need is for good legislation.
Here is 538's analysis as of today (Oct. 9).
ReplyDeleteA BIG BLUE Wave.....
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-big-blue-wave-could-overwhelm-the-gops-advantage-in-the-house/
I can only hope that the Kavanaugh brouhaha will translate into a Democratic House. Although I have little hope that the Democrats except for those like Ocasio are the party to save us from anything.
ReplyDeleteTrump missed an opportunity to screw it up. A front page story in our local suburban newspaper this morning was headlined "Trump: Deputy A.G.'s job is secure". That is ... uncharacteristic of him. Methinks I detect the influence of advisers who somehow prevailed on him to not follow his normal instinct on this matter. But he's irrepressible: watch for an anti-Rosenstein Tweetstorm this weekend.
ReplyDeleteOh, Trump's been busy already. He's spinning the Democratic party as 'an out of control, angry mob". Because of course there is no reason for them to be angry.
DeleteYou're right, he's irrepressible. Might as well grab some popcorn. And hope that he just keeps on exhibiting how unfit he is for the job of president.
I noticed that the plane ride which concluded the peace deal ended with Rosenstein descending the steps with John Kelly at his side. At last! Kelly does his job--or does it publicly.
DeleteI have no faith in 538 since the Trump victory, and I cancelled my daily email updates. Fat big-mouth Michael Moore calls these things more accurately, possibly because he eavesdrops in Midwest airport bathrooms, heartland diners, and big city taxis. And also because, like me, he believes in worst-case scenarios. We live in Michigan, for God's sake.
ReplyDeleteTsk! Tsk! cutting off your nose .... 538 never plumped for Clinton being a sure thing, like all of us and James Comey, etc.
DeleteNick Haley is resigning as Amb. to UN. Running for Pres in 2020? Wants to spend more time with her family?
ReplyDeleteShe denies that she intends to run. I suspect that she does intend to run if it looks as though she will have a decent chance. In the meantime, she can start building an organization to be ready if the opportunity seems to be there.
DeleteMaybe she's getting tired of having to back Trump and all the idiotic things he says on the international scene. "Putting lipstick on a pig" is the saying that comes to mind. And sure, she probably does want to preserve and advance her own political future.
DeleteIt may not only be the idiotic things he says, but also being put in the position of having to defend the administration's policies on everything from trade wars to alienating our allies.
DeleteI would have left when the Bloated Toad said I was confused on Russian sanctions to cover his own giant confusion. To her credit, she shot back pretty quickly in that.
DeleteThe Kavanaugh debacle is also impacting his parish. Blessed Sacrament has long been the home of Washington's Catholic insiders and power players, but seldom have the political divisions caused a problem at the parish level. It seems that might be changing.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2018/10/05/brett-kavanaughs-nomination-fight-is-dividing-his-dc-catholic-church/?utm_term=.4130a5a6bcb2&wpisrc=nl_faith&wpmm=1
Anne, that's a pretty interesting article about the parish. Our parish has people with a diversity of views, too. (So does my household, for that matter -- kind of a microcosm of the parish.)
DeleteI wasn't aware that Kavanaugh brought his basketball team to sit through the hearings. That seems a bit over the top. I'd like to know if that was his idea or suggested by someone in the White House or the Senate. I'm sure that was a civics un-lesson for the girls.
And maybe it won't be the prez but uncontrollable shocks from the larger world that will hurt the Republicans. Seems the stock market is on a skid, caused by rising interest rates.
ReplyDelete