Thursday, October 15, 2026
Two New Polls Have Talarico Leading Paxton - But The Race Is Tight
The chart above is from the ReconMR Texas Poll -- done between October 5th and 8th of a sample of 617 likely Texas voters, with a 4.4 point margin of error.
The chart above is from the Marist Poll -- done between October 8th and 11th of a sample of 1,196 Texas registered voters, with a 4.3 point margin of error.
Electoral Preference (And Trump Approval) Among Religious Groups
The charts above are from a Pew Research Center survey -- done between September 28th and October 4th of a nationwide sample of 5,062 adults, with a 1.6 point margin of error.
The Polls Are Looking Great - But Polls Don't Elect Candidates
The quote above is from respected pollster G. Elliott Morris (who does the Strength In Numbers Poll). His opinion is not out of the norm. Poll after poll shows Democrats leading, and making inroads in even bright red states.
It was expected that Democrats would likely take control of the House of Representatives (possibly by a large margin), but now it's starting to look like they can also take control of the Senate.
This is great news, and it should encourage Democrats across the nation (even those in normally red states). But it also poses a danger. The danger is that some Democrats and Independents will start to think the election is already a foregone conclusion - and that their votes are not needed. Thinking that could cause them to stay at home instead of voting (which could involve braving the weather and waiting in long electoral lines).
But polls don't elect any candidates. They are nothing more than at snapshot of how voters are thinking at a particular time. No poll can do a voter's job.
Only voters can elect a candidate. Don't get so over confident that you think your vote is not needed. It is badly needed. Every single vote counts!
Make sure you cast your vote - and encourage your friends and family to do the same. No matter how difficult voting may turn out to be, your vote is needed.
I believe there will be a huge blue wave on November 3rd. But that will happen only if voters turn out in large numbers.
Staying home is just a vote for Donald Trump and his Republican sycophants.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Americans Trust In Their Government Is Very Low
Massive Campaign Donations From Oligarchs Hurts Our Democracy
From the website of Paul Krugman:
Today a relatively short note about how some political news bears on a controversy that has been brewing among some economists. Basically, some analysts are saying that we talk too much about mega-billionaires, and not enough about the merely very rich. Thus a new book by Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick, “The Everywhere Millionaire” — their Substack is here — points out that there are about 5 million Americans whose wealth exceeds $5 million. Of these, 3 million are what they call Main Street Millionaires, wealthy small business owners. And as they say, “Collectively, Main Street Millionaires have more than thirteen times the wealth of the Forbes 400.”
And they’re right that focusing only on the extremely (obscenely) rich misses the role played by wealthy small business owners.
Yet dismissing mega-billionaires — hey, they only own 4 percent or so of America — is deeply misleading, for these ultra-rich are at the heart of the rising power of big money in U.S. politics.
First, an economic observation: While the ultra-rich still don’t own as much of America’s wealthy as some may imagine, they have played a dominant role in the rising concentration of wealth.
Using data from realtimeinequality.org, the share of the top 1 percent — roughly corresponding to Zidar and Zwick’s definition of the wealthy — in U.S. wealth rose from 23.2 percent of total wealth in 1979 to 38.3 percent today. So one might think that the great rise in concentrated wealth was a “1 percent” phenomenon. But if we look at the changes in wealth share within the 1 percent, we find that very little of it involved the bottom 90 percent of that group, and most of it came from the top 0.01 percent — the one percent of the one percent:
The big rise in wealth concentration has come from the soaring wealth of a very small group, not the everyday millionaires.
And when it comes to political influence, billionaires wield power that vastly exceeds even their share of wealth. The Forbes 400 may only own 4 percent of U.S. wealth; but the New York Times found that 300 billionaires accounted for 19 percent of all reported federal campaign contributions in the 2024 election. And these are only reported, cash donations. Include other forms of influence — exemplified by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his conversion of the former public square into a site that elevates extreme right-wing propaganda — and it’s obvious that the malign political influence of a handful of the ultra-rich is much bigger than even those stunningly large donations suggest.
Now the Times reports that Musk is giving even more money in an attempt to help Republicans stave off midterm disaster than he gave in 2024:
Oh, and you won’t be surprised to learn that Musk repeatedly pushed a quickly refuted smear against James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, and used his ownership of X, formerly Twitter, to amplify the smear.
Massive spending by Musk and other oligarchs probably won’t save Donald Trump’s party from a severe defeat — this time. And the vile smear against Talarico appears to be blowing up in Musk’s face (although how many voters heard the smear but never heard about its falsity?) But if Trump weren’t such a disaster as president, all that money might indeed have been effective.
And the only sustainable way to keep mega-billionaires from having so much power, so much ability to degrade democracy, is for them not to be so wealthy. Basically, a society that contains a class of ultra-wealthy oligarchs is well on its way to becoming a full-blown oligarchy.
So by all means let’s acknowledge that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg et al don’t own everything, that there are a lot of rich people who get less attention. But the oligarchs, not the Main Street Millionaires, are the clear and present danger to democracy.
Affordability Can't Be Fixed Without Attacking Corruption
From the website of Robert Reich:
In these last weeks before the midterms, Democratic candidates have been gaining ground by talking about two things: the affordability crisis and political corruption.
If Democrats regain control of Congress and genuinely want to respond to affordability, they’ll need to do everything possible to root out the corruption.
The two are inseparable. In large part, prices are rising faster than paychecks because so much of the economy has become subject to political bribery, Trump Republican pay-to-play schemes, and kickbacks to Trump and his cronies.
1. Trump’s war and the corruption underlying it
Trump’s war on Iran is causing Americans to spend almost 50 percent more on gas than before the war, on average. And the diesel fuel needed to transport almost everything else we buy now averages more than $6.00 a gallon, which is also being passed on to consumers.
These price increases due to Trump’s war tell only half the story. The other half is the political corruption at the root of the war — enriching Trump’s friends and family.
The war has been a huge windfall for Big Tech supplying the military — such as Palantir, a core artificial intelligence and data-integration partner for the U.S. Department of Defense, founded by Trump and JD Vance’s buddy Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk.
Musk’s SpaceX reportedly quintupled its connection fees for the Pentagon, from $5,000 per terminal to $25,000 per terminal for terminals integrated into U.S. “kamikaze” (LUCAS) drones deployed in the conflict.
Not incidentally, Musk has quietly funneled more than $275 million to Republican candidates in the midterms, making him by far the largest single donor to either party.
Meanwhile, investment companies backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have accumulated billions in Pentagon contracts and future contract options, according to the government’s official contract reporting. (Congressional Democrats continue to demand that the Pentagon’s inspector general investigate the approved deals.)
2. Trump’s tariffs and the corruption beneath them
Trump’s tariffs offer another example of higher prices connected to corruption. The tariffs are import taxes that have increased annual household costs by an estimated $1,100, according to The Budget Lab at Yale.
Again, though, the price increases tell only half the story.
Trump’s tariffs have enabled Trump to give out tariff waivers and carve-outs to industries and companies that do him favors.
After Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and promised major domestic investments, Apple got tariff exemptions for imported smartphones, computers, semiconductors, and flat panel displays, all of which saved Apple huge amounts of money.
After Elon Musk sank a quarter of a billion dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign, Tesla got a tariff exemption for electronics.
Reyes Holdings, a bottler that ranks among the largest privately held companies in the U.S. and is owned by brothers who have donated millions to Republicans, got a tariff exemption for polyethylene terephthalate, used to make plastic bottles. And so on.
3. Trump’s promotion of AI and the corruption underlying it
A third example linking higher prices to corruption is artificial intelligence. Together with the costs of Trump’s war in Iran, AI’s borrowing of over $500 billion so far this year has contributed to sky-high interest rates on mortgages, auto loans, and credit-card overdrafts. And AI data centers are raising electricity prices in areas where data centers are sucking up energy.
As with the war and the tariffs, Trump’s support for AI is tied to political payoffs. Tech companies and their executives donated over $300 million to support Trump’s 2024 reelection efforts and MAGA Inc, the political action committee aligned with Trump. (This doesn’t include Musk’s more than a quarter billion dollars in donations to Republicans.)
According to a CNBC analysis of FEC records, megadonor contributions from AI, crypto, and online gambling executives have overwhelmingly favored Republicans, with 14 of the 20 largest donor groups nearly exclusively backing GOP candidates or outside groups.
To see how Trump’s war, his tariffs, and his support for AI interact on prices, consider housing affordability, which is among voters’ top concerns.
While Trump’s war and encouragement of AI have contributed to the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rising to over 7 percent, Trump’s tariffs have caused the prices of lumber and building materials to soar. The National Association of Home Buildersestimates that tariffs on lumber and building materials have added $10,900 to the cost of constructing a new U.S. single-family home.
The price of copper, a key material for electrical wiring in residential and commercial construction, has risen 40 percent in the past year due to Trump’s tariffs and the demands of data centers — adding even more cost to building a typical home, which requires hundreds of pounds of copper.
4. Trump’s giant tax cut for the rich and the corruption it rests on
A final illustration of the close connection between rising prices and corruption is Trump’s tax cuts. Trump’s megadonors in the 2024 campaign demanded another big tax cut as a condition for their investments, which came in the form of Trump’s “Big Beautiful” (Big Ugly) bill.
But the tax cuts have come at the expense of healthcare for average Americans.
To pay for the tax cuts demanded by their largest donors, Trump and congressional Republicans have slashed Medicaid and failed to renew healthcare tax credits. As a result, millions of Americans are now forced to spend far more for health insurance coverage or do without it altogether.
5. The Democrats’ agenda if they retake control of Congress
If Democrats regain control of Congress, they will need to focus not only on alleviating high prices but also on eliminating the causes of those high prices. It will be impossible to do the former without attacking the latter.
In addition to ending Trump’s war and his arbitrary tariffs, they must reform campaign financing, and help reduce the influence of big money in politics. One method would be to match public financing with small-dollar donations.
They’ll also need to resurrect the systems of accountability Trump has dismantled —the independent civil service, independent inspectors general, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Federal Election Commission.
Under Trump and his Republican enablers, the richest Americans and biggest corporations have made out like bandits. Average working Americans are paying dearly for what the bandits have stolen. The grift and the graft must end.
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