Mixed Up Confusion
We are four days away from a crucially important midterm election and no one knows what's going to happen.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
Greetings from Logan Airport, where, with the way my day is going, might soon become my new home.
So midterm elections are just four days away … and your guess is as good as mine!
According to FiveThirtyEight, Republicans are projected to win the House and Senate on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Marist, which is generally considered a solid pollster, has Democrats faring well in three high-profile Senate races:
In addition, friend of the newsletter, Brian Rosenwald, notes there have been four recent polls of the Pennsylvania Senate race (from well-respected pollsters), and they all point to a Fetterman win. Then again, President Biden is planning to visit New York this weekend to campaign for Kathy Hochul, who should be coasting to re-election. If Hochul is even remotely in trouble in a state that is one of the bluest in the country, that’s not a great sign for Democrats.
In Nevada, which is perhaps the only state where reading the early vote tea leaves can provide some sense of what might happen on Election Day, things aren’t looking great for Democrats … but the news is not entirely terrible either.
Bottom line: Republicans will likely win the House (15-25 seat pickup). At this point, it would be genuinely shocking if Democrats somehow kept control — and if that happens, it would mean that there’s been a relatively large set of polling errors. It’s not impossible, and I’ve long suspected that pollsters may be underestimating the inclination of Democrats to vote in this election. One can certainly imagine a scenario where Democrats dramatically overperform, but I wouldn’t wager on it happening.
In the Senate, the data are too muddled. Races are tightening in places where Democrats should be on reasonably solid ground (New Hampshire and Arizona), which would suggest that a red wave is coming. But then I see something like this from Wisconsin:
Marquette is considered one of the best pollsters in Wisconsin, and their numbers show Democrat Mandela Barnes picking up ground since early October (a 4-point shift), which is the opposite of what you’d expect in a wave election. So gun to my head, I still think Fetterman wins in Pennsylvania, which means Democrats likely hold the Senate. But I could not have less confidence in that prediction. There is a real possibility that Tuesday is a bloodbath for Democrats, and that outcome is probably more likely than a surprise Democratic win.
Who said American politics isn’t a laugh-a-minute?
What The Hell Is Elon Musk Doing?
Dave Karpf has a very smart take on Elon Musk’s no-good, terrible, borderline dumpster fire first week as the owner of Twitter.
What’s striking about all the chaos of Elon’s first week is that there is no reason for him to rush like this. Twitter is a private company now. He doesn’t need to impress shareholders or Wall Street analysts with his plans for cost-cutting and long-term growth. He doesn’t need to convince advertisers that a massive problem is being solved (quite the opposite! He needs to convince advertisers that the platform is going to stay basically unchanged.). He has to come up with an extra billion dollars per year to cover the debt payments he just added to the company’s books, but he doesn’t have to make up that shortfall immediately.
What we’ve seen this past week has been the actions of a gambler who is stuck $25-30 billion and is desperate to make moves fast and turn things around. The tech crash was bad luck. There was no reason to think in April 2022 that the 18-year bubble was about to suddenly burst. But bad luck early begets bad decisions late. Here we are.
The thing I find so odd about Musk’s tenure to date is that he a) seems to have no clue what he’s doing and b) spent no time seriously thinking about what he would do once he controlled Twitter. Usually, when you spend $44 billion on a company, you have a plan. Musk seems to be making up things as he goes along.
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