The election’s outcome feels like the end of an elementary-school soccer season.
Everyone gets a ribbon. Everybody leaves with something to brag about. A very favorable electoral map allowed Republicans to expand their lead in the Senate.
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The final week of a midterm election is always brutal. Candidates rush from event to event, staffers debate the campaign’s closing message, fundraisers scrabble for the last dollar, and volunteers beg supporters to turn out to vote.
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‘I am on the ticket because this is also a referendum about me,” President Trump said at a Mississippi rally on Oct. 2. He is correct: Every midterm election is to some degree about the Oval Office’s occupant.
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Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings jolted Republican enthusiasm. The July 22 NPR/PBS News House/Marist poll, for example, found that 78% of Democrats and only 68% of Republicans considered this midterm “very important.”
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Many Republicans celebrated Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s swearing-in Monday as the end of a bitter confirmation battle. But the game isn’t over.
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Following last week’s extraordinary testimony by Prof. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh, public attitudes are split and malleable.
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Thursday will be an immensely consequential day for America. As of this writing, Christine Blasey Ford is scheduled to appear in the morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee, followed by Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
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The Democrats’ most potent national policy issue in the 2018 midterms is health care, and it’s showing up on TV. One Arizona ad says Martha McSally, the Republican congresswoman running for Senate, “voted to gut protections for people with pre-existing co...
