Tuesday, October 20, 2026
The New NBC Poll Has To Worry Republicans
The charts above are from the NBC News Decision Desk Poll -- done between September 28th and October 12th of a nationwide sample of 19,135 adults, with a 2.6 point margin of error.
It's Not Dems vs. GOP (Or Left vs. Right) - It's The People Vs. Big Money
This post is from the website of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:
America makes its choice two weeks from Tuesday.
It’s not really a choice between two parties. After all, a record 45 percent of American voters now call themselves “independent” and don’t align with either party. And most of us who still describe ourselves as Republicans or Democrats don’t have much love for whichever party we’re registered with.
Nor will it be a choice between the “left” and the “right,” as those terms have been used for the last half-century — representing preferences by the left for more and bigger social safety nets and by the right for lower taxes. These days, big business wants more government in the form of subsidies, bailouts, no-bid government contracts, and a giant military-technology state.
The real choice is between ever more concentrated wealth and power at the top — in the billionaire class, tech bros, Wall Street, and the C-suites of giant corporations — versus more wealth and power in what used to be the American working middle class.
That’s what the “affordability crisis” is all about. It also underlies America’s growing concern about corruption.
For the last few weeks it’s looked as if America was about to choose the second path, for The People and against Big Money.
But Big Money is now striking back. Elon Musk is pouring hundreds of millions into supporting Republican candidates, as are Big Crypto, AIPAC, AI, and Trump’s MAGA Inc. (and its related super PACs).
“Dark money” — anonymous campaign donations flowing through so-called “nonprofits,” mostly from wealthy individuals and CEOs — is also dropping into the system.
Democratic candidates are being outspent 2-to-1 by super PACs and megadonors. More than in any midterm since the Supreme Court’s shameful Citizens United decision, Big Money is going almost exclusively to the GOP. The Supreme Court has given Republicans an additional spending advantage by allowing super PACs to work in close cooperation with candidates.
Texas’s James Talarico hasn’t taken any corporate PAC money, for example, and has an army of volunteers going door to door for him and has accumulated one of the largest small-donor war chests of any candidate in this election cycle. But his opponent, Ken Paxton, is relying almost entirely on $158 million he’s got from Musk via a Republican super PAC.
This enormous gusher of Big Money for Republicans has no regulatory oversight because the Federal Election Commission has no quorum and therefore can’t function.
At the state level, Big Money is attacking ballot measures to increase taxes on the super-rich — such as California’s Proposition 40, a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires.
Google multibillionaire Sergey Brin is sinking hundreds of millions into defeating it.
Gavin Newsom also opposes it. But another California presidential hopeful, Ro Khanna, is pushing for it, to his great credit. (Note to California voters: Vote YES on 40 and NO on the poison pills, Props 41 and 42.)
This election is the clearest contest yet between Big Money and The People. Spending by super PACs and other megadonors in the current midterms is over 50 percent higher than in the 2022 midterms, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
I wish I were more confident that The People will prevail. Democrats are doing well in the polls, but polling is flawed when it comes to the influence of Big Money. Many so-called “low-information” voters are more likely to be swayed by media advertising and less likely to respond to polls or tell pollsters truthfully how they intend to vote.
When this is over, if the Democrats take back the House and at least come close to retaking control of the Senate, high on their agenda must be seeking to get Big Money out of our politics — via constitutional amendment or public financing of elections (matching small-dollar donations). And also going after the source of much of the Big Money by enacting a national wealth tax.
In the meantime: stay calm, support good candidates, do whatever you can to get out the vote, and vote as soon as you can.
What Will Trump Do When He Has Nothing To Lose?
The following is from the website of economist Paul Krugman:
According to CNN, all-out war with Iran may be about to resume:
The US military has developed new strike plans that include potentially using the so-called “mother of all bombs” to target Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites should President Donald Trump give the order to resume combat operations either before or after the midterm elections, according to multiple US officials familiar with the matter.
Trump says that he won’t order a strike before the midterms. But Robert Pape, author of the Substack Escalation Trap, argues that we shouldn’t believe him — that the bombs may well drop before the midterms. And while I am not a strategic expert, I believe that Pape may well be right, because his analysis of Trump’s political position is something I recognize from financial economics.
You see, it’s a well-understood proposition that the owners of businesses that are on the verge of going bust often engage in destructive behavior. And Trump is about to go bankrupt — not financially (he’s made billions through corruption) but politically. So he, like a failing businessman, has strong incentives to wreak havoc.
Pape’s argument is basically a version of the phenomenon — a particular form of moral hazard — often called “gambling for resurrection.” When a company is on the edge of failure, it makes sense for the company’s owner to make highly speculative, even crazy investments that are highly likely to fail but might, just might, make enough money to pull the company back from the brink. After all, for the owner it’s heads he wins, tails his creditors lose.
In Trump’s case, all indications are that his party is heading for defeat in the midterms. And while a normal president might be able to live with a Congress controlled by the opposing party, there has been so much corruption and malfeasance over the past two years that Democratic control of Congress, and the subpoena and investigative power that will bring, will have catastrophic consequences for Trump and everyone around him.
So Trump has an incentive to do something, anything, that might shake up this election. Attacking Iran would probably lead to an even bigger Republican defeat, but it might, just might, rally Trump’s base enough to change the outcome. True, a president who cared at all about what is good for America wouldn’t pursue disastrous policies for the slim chance of saving his own political skin. But this is, after all, Trump we’re talking about.
Pape’s argument, then, makes a lot of sense. But I suspect that Trump’s impending political bankruptcy will have even worse consequences than Pape suggests — and that these consequences will continue and intensify after the midterms.
When I read Pape’s analysis, I found myself thinking about a classic 1993 paper by George Akerlof and Paul Romer, “Looting: The economic underworld of bankruptcy for profit.” Akerlof and Romer were inspired by several historical episodes of widespread bankruptcy, including the U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. In these episodes, they argued, owners of banks and other companies on the verge of failure didn’t gamble for resurrection. Instead, they simply took the money and ran, transferring as much of their companies’ assets as possible into their own pockets before the hammer came down.
So what would looting by a politically bankrupt Trump administration look like? I don’t mean financial looting — Trump has been doing that all along, on an epic scale. What may be about to happen — indeed, is already happening — is what we might call policy looting: Trump using his remaining power to take actions that are both deeply unpatriotic and deeply unpopular but fit his own preferences and prejudices.
Freedom, wrote Kris Kristofferson, is just another word for nothing left to lose. Once the midterms are over, Trump, with nothing left to lose, will be free to be his worst self — a malignant narcissist who instinctively supports authoritarians and is preoccupied with revenge against anything and anyone that threatens his fragile grandiosity.
We can already see that happening in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. It has long been obvious that Trump loves dictators and despises democracy, and that he has special affection for Vladimir Putin and hatred for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. However, as long as there was some chance of limiting the damage in the midterm elections, Trump was cautious about explicitly taking Putin’s side. Over the past few weeks, however, Trump has grown ever more open about supporting Putin’s attempted war of conquest — buying Russian diesel, canceling sanctions, and most recently by attempting to sabotage Ukraine’s defenses by degrading its access to Starlink.
Something similar has been happening on domestic policy where, for example, Trump has increasingly stopped pretending that he cares about illegal immigration or immigrant crime, and is veering into flat, open racism — so far specially directed against Somalis, but it won’t stop there.
So will Trump resume the bombing of Iran before the midterms? Obviously I don’t know, but Pape is surely right that normal political logic, under which a deeply unpopular president would avoid resuming a deeply unpopular war, no longer applies. And anyone who believes that Trump will become more cautious, more moderate in the aftermath of midterm defeat just doesn’t understand the new political reality.
The truth is that political bankruptcy will free Trump to pursue his true desires. And those desires are horrifying.
Monday, October 19, 2026
Sunday, October 18, 2026
Most Voters Want The Use Of Marijuana To Be Legal
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between October 10th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 1,403 registered voters, with a 3.5 point margin of error.
Most Voters Want A Substantial Change In How The Country Is Run
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