Stop And Smell The Flowers

Also, things are tightening in the race for the US Senate. Should Democrats be concerned? Will Herschel Walker survive? Dark Brandon strikes again and who are the best American bands.

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 received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up below.

Photo by Casey Murphy on Unsplash

So I’m still working on the longer Russia piece I mentioned in my post on Monday, but this week was sidetracked by Yom Kippur (for non-tribal readers, this is the Jewish day of atonement and the most solemn holiday on the Jewish calendar). I should state at the outset that while I have a solid Jewish identity, I am not, and never have been, religiously observant. I have a somewhat jaundiced view of organized religion in general, which always creates particular dilemmas when the Jewish holidays roll around. As a friend said to me recently, Yom Kippur is the perfect Jewish holiday — no matter what you do, it makes you feel guilty. That seems to be what happens to me every year.

This year, my kids were with me, and I struggled to figure out what to do with them since shul wasn’t really an option (they and I are not fans), and none of us are inclined to fast. So I decided to do a very untraditional Yom Kippur. First, we watched a Jewish-themed movie on Tuesday night (“American Pickle,” which was lovely and touching).

On Wednesday, I took them out of the city for a day trip to Princeton, New Jersey. I invited a friend, and we had a full day of toy, book, and record shopping that perhaps should have been more contemplative but ended up as an opportunity to spend time with family and friends and remind ourselves of the bonds in life that truly matter. I recognize that’s more of a Rosh Hashanah message than a Yom Kippur one, but life doesn’t always work out exactly as you plan — but sometimes, it still works out pretty well. It was a truly wonderful day — honestly, one of the best I’ve had in months. I don’t pass this along to boast (if I did, then I suppose I’d have to add that to the list of things I need to atone for next year) but rather as a reminder that sometimes the most memorable experiences in life are the simplest ones. We all benefit from every once in a while absenting ourselves from our daily routine and reconnecting with family, friends, and that which is truly most important and fulfilling in our lives. Don’t worry; there will still be plenty of time for atonement.

Midterm Update

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The big news in the race for the Senate this week is that the Cook Political Report has moved the Pennsylvania Senate between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz from “lean Democratic” to “toss-up.” While there’s no question that the race has tightened, I’m not buying this change … until there’s a single poll showing Oz ahead.

FiveThirty Eight

I get that in some of these polls, when you take into account the margin-of-error, Oz is tied. But according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, Fetterman is ahead by 6.6 points - 48.7 for Fetterman to 42.2 for Oz. That’s not really a toss-up race. Having said that, it’s clear that the race has tightened, which I’m guessing is a combination of two factors. First, Republicans who are not crazy about Oz (and didn’t support him in the GOP primary) are coming home. Second, GOP attacks accusing Fetterman of being soft on crime are taking a toll. But it still seems as though Fetterman has the upper hand.

There’s also another factor to consider — the governor’s race:

FiveThirtyEight

Josh Shapiro is up by double digits against a candidate who has little money, just ran his first state-wide ad (spending a very modest $1 million or so), isn’t talking to non-conservative media outlets, and is a lousy candidate. I get that there might be more ticket-splitting this cycle because of the plethora of bad candidates, but is it realistic to expect that Mastriano will (likely) lose by double digits but that Oz will outrun his ticket mate by such a large margin? I don’t see it, particularly in a state as blue as Pennsylvania.

If Fetterman was a terrible candidate, I might feel differently about his chances, but while he has some weaknesses, he’s far from terrible. So I still think he’s the heavy favorite to pick up this seat for Democrats in November.

This is also a big part of why I’m not sold on Democrat Tim Ryan winning in Ohio. The GOP governor, Mike DeWine, has a nearly 17-point polling average lead over his Democratic opponent. Am I supposed to believe that Ryan will outrun his Democratic ticket mate by that many points? In Ryan’s defense, he is ahead right now in the polling average — by 45.4 to 43.8 points. And in 2018, DeWine won the governor’s race by 3.7 points while Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown defeated his Republican opponent by 6.8 points — a more than 10-point gap. So there is a track record of Ohio voters recently splitting their votes in a pretty dramatic way. But Brown is a well-known politician with a solid independent brand. Ryan doesn’t have the same advantage. I’ll acknowledge that Republican JD Vance is a really bad candidate, but Ohio is a red state, and with his ticket mate DeWine running that far ahead, it would be an enormous upset if, in an era of rather intense political polarization, voters by a 17-point margin split their tickets this mightily.

Speaking of Really Bad Candidates …

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I have a longer piece going up soon at MSNBC about Herschel Walker’s latest scandal and the rank hypocrisy of the anti-abortion activists who have rallied around him. For those of you who missed the details, it turns out that Walker, who is unabashedly opposed to abortion, has compared it to “murder” and believes there should be no exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother … paid for his girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009. The Daily Beast, which reported the story and has been killing the Walker hypocrisy beat, even had pictures of a get-well card that Walker sent to his girlfriend and a check for $700 that he sent her to pay for the procedure.

Walker, at first, vehemently denied the story and said he didn’t even know who the woman was making the accusation. Then the Daily Beast reported that she is the mother of one of Walker’s children. Oops.

For MSNBC, I wrote about Walker’s hypocrisy, but let’s talk about the politics of this latest scandal. There was an interesting Survey USA poll out yesterday that had Walker trailing his opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock by 12 points. That feels very outlier-ish to me, but the poll was in the field for two days after the abortion story broke, so it’s possible Walker’s numbers tanked on those two days (it should be noted that Warnock has been steadily, albeit narrowly ahead in the polls for a while). But I’m not sure the story itself will hurt Walker. Anti-abortion advocates have repeatedly shown they will compartmentalize bad behavior from GOP politicians as long as they pledge to support abortion restrictions (see Donald Trump, for example).

I suspect the more significant problem for Walker is that after the Daily Beast story broke, his son Christian took to Twitter to deliver withering criticism of his father. That compounds Walker’s problems, but I also wonder if it drives on-the-fence voters to decide they’ve had enough of this family and they’re just going to vote for Warnock. In other words, if the polls are to be believed, Walker still needs to persuade some segment of the electorate to vote for him, and perhaps this is the final straw in persuading them not to. Voters generally don’t like drama, and Walker is the most dramatic candidate in recent memory. It’s not to say that he can’t win. He’s got a more than fighter’s chance, but the steady drumbeat of embarrassing stories takes a toll, and I wouldn’t be shocked if a good portion of the Georgia electorate has simply had enough.

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