Outsiderism 2026

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  In other books we trace Trump's outsiderism to earlier figures. As I mentioned in a previous post, Elizabeth Drew's Election Journal, I came across this passage, which sounds as if it could apply to Trump.

For a large portion of [his] supporters and would-be supporters, whether his proposals stand up to scrutiny is irrelevant. Their support for him is in a different category -- as the leader of a movement. [He] has become the vehicle for their discontent -- with current policies, with the other candidates. He stands in bold, interesting contrast to some fairly dull candidates. He is the anti-politics candidate. Measuring his program is linear, rational, while most of the support for him is based on emotion.

In this case, the candidate was ... Jesse Jackson. The comparison is less bizarre than it may seem at first. Like Trump was also a morally-compromised leader with deep prejudices and a disregard for factual accuracy Jackson was an sought adulation for himself while giving voice to the inchoate frustrations of large group of Americans who thought that the system was rigged against them. In the book, we quote Jackson's description of his followers: "My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised."

And once again, the Democrats and independents are the outsiders.  Mike Allen at Axios:

In red states and blue, unconventional candidates are downplaying — or even disowning — party labels to tap into voters' disdain for Washington, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.

Why it matters: They might not all win, but the sheer number of political outsiders connecting with voters tells us something about the electorate: It's angry and willing to take risks.The candidates — whether they come from the pulpit or the NFL sidelines — are making the same bet: Voters are tired of career politicians.

Zoom in: Consider three unorthodox Democrats leading Senate contests in red states: a Presbyterian seminarian in Texas (state Rep. James Talarico), a megachurch pastor in Kansas (Adam Hamilton), and an Alaska Native in that state (former Rep. Mary Peltola, who once skipped a week of House votes to go fishing when Chinook salmon were running).

• Traditionally blue Minnesota's Senate race features Michele Tafoya — a former NFL sideline reporter who's endorsed by President Trump but calls herself an independent Republican. She's mounting a serious challenge to Democrat Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor.
• In House races, Democrats are fielding a smokejumper in Montana (Sam Forstag), a 29-year-old barista in Colorado (Melat Kiros) and a Tejano singer in Texas (Bobby Pulido).

Four independent Senate candidates are courting Democratic voters without a (D) next to their names — and sometimes without a Democrat in the race.

1. In Nebraska, Dan Osborn, a union steamfitter and former factory mechanic, is mounting a serious independent challenge to Sen. Pete Ricketts, a former two-term governor whose family owns the Chicago Cubs.
2. In Montana, Seth Bodnar, a former Army Green Beret and University of Montana president, is running as an independent for an open Senate seat. Democrats tried to persuade their nominee to drop out, but she stayed in the race.
3. In South Dakota, Brian Bengs, a one-time park ranger, is challenging Republican Sen. Mike Rounds as an independent. Four years ago, Bengs ran as a Democrat against Sen. John Thune.
4. In Idaho, former Army tank commander and tech executive Todd Achilles is running as an independent against Republican Sen. Jim Risch. (Achilles previously served as a Democrat in the Idaho House.)

More Bad Numbers for the GOP

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Ben Casselman at NYT:

True, much of the data pointed to strength, or at least stability. Retail sales rose at a healthy pace in September. Filings for unemployment benefits remained low. Industrial output hit a postpandemic high.

But there was no relief on the issue that matters most to many voters, inflation. Consumer prices rose last month at their fastest rate since May, outpacing wage growth for the sixth month in a row. Producer prices, too, came in hot, as did prices for imported goods. And gasoline — the most visible price in the economy, and one that few Americans have any choice about paying — stayed above $4 a gallon nationally, where it has been for most of the past six months.

Little wonder, then, that measures of consumer sentiment have worsened, and that polls show voters are poised to punish Republicans for failing to keep the economic promises they made on the campaign trail two years ago.

The cost of living “is going to be the first issue on the scorecard in 2026,” said John W. Lettieri, president of the Economic Innovation Group, which last week published a survey of voter attitudes on the economy. “The results are not good on that top issue.”

Sahil Kapur at NBC:

Weeks ahead of Election Day, 71% of U.S. adults think the country is on the “wrong track.” It’s the highest share yet in President Donald Trump’s second term, illustrating the grim national mood his party faces in the midterm elections, according to a new NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey.

Poll respondents expressed deep unhappiness over economic conditions and widespread distrust toward both major political parties, but Trump and Republicans bore the brunt. For the first time in Trump’s second term, the poll has found the “right track” sinking into the 20s. A majority of Americans view the president’s administration as uniquely corrupt, even as they look skeptically at corruption in both parties. And they say Trump is failing to improve their material financial conditions.

13 min

 Dan Balz and Scott Clement at WP:

Two weeks from Election Day, Republicans face a bleak political landscape. President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a new low, and support for Democrats in the race for control of Congress is rising as inflationary pressures contribute to an acrid mood among voters, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

Trump’s approval among U.S. adults now stands at 33 percent, with 66 percent disapproving; 52 percent said they disapprove strongly. That approval rating is four percentage points lower than in July and eight points lower than at this point last year. Among likely voters, Trump’s approval is 38 percent, with 62 percent disapproving.

The poll also finds that, for the first time in more than a decade, Democrats are seen as more trusted to deal with the economy.

In the competition for control of the House, Democrats hold an eight-point lead among registered and likely voters, an improvement for the party since The Post’s July poll, when the Democratic lead was three points with registered voters.

Trump is central to Republicans’ struggles. In a separate question, the poll asked voters whether they would rather have a Democratic-led Congress acting as a check on Trump or a Republican one to support his agenda. By 58 percent to 39 percent, registered voters said they prefer the Democrats. That margin is roughly double what it was a year ago.

In other words, James Madison still rules America. 

Democratic Senate Candidates Haul in Campaign Money

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

If money is momentum, Democratic Senate candidates are poised for a monumental Election Day."Oh my god, holy crap," said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) when informed of Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico's $64 million haul in the third quarter of the year. "I mean, that's a number that's mind-blowing."

Why it matters: Republicans are awash in super PAC cash, but Democrats' advantage in hard dollars reveals a yawning enthusiasm gap — the kind of energy money can't buy.

Texas      

            James Talarico (D): $64 million
            Ken Paxton (R): $18 million

Georgia

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D): $33.1 million
Mike Collins (R): $2.8 million

Michigan   

            Abdul El-Sayed (D): $30.7 million
            Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R): $9.7 million

Ohio

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D): $23 million
Sen. Jon Husted (R): $5 million

Maine

Troy Jackson (D): $20.4 million
Sen. Susan Collins (R): $5.2 million

Alaska

Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D): $17 million
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R): $2 million

Iowa

Josh Turek (D): $12 million
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R): $3 million

North Carolina

Roy Cooper (D): $20 million
Michael Whatley (R): $2 million

Kansas 

Adam Hamilton (D): $11 million
Sen. Roger Marshall (R): $800,000

Between the lines: The figures reflect FEC filings as well as totals reported by the campaigns, some of which include money raised through affiliated joint fundraising committees.

Even accounting for those differences, Democratic Senate candidates are dramatically outraising their Republican opponents in several of the country's most competitive races

Corruption Update

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Along with war and inflation, Trump's corruption is bringing down the GOP.

AP-NORC:

Most Americans say President Trump has prioritized his personal financial interests and the interests of people close to him since taking office again in 2025. Far fewer say he has prioritized the country as a whole or people like them. Four in 10 believe he has done something illegal and another 18% see his actions as unethical but not illegal, though views diverge sharply by party.

More adults see Trump as focused on his own business interests and those of his inner circle than on the country as a whole or people like them. A majority, 56%, say Trump has prioritized his personal business interests “a lot,” and 54% say the same about the business interests of his friends and family. By comparison, only 23% say he has prioritized the country overall “a lot,” and just 11% say he has prioritized people like them “a lot.” Half of Americans say Trump has not prioritized people like them at all.

Democrats and independents overwhelmingly say Trump has prioritized his own business interests and those of his friends and family “a lot” or “some,” and about half of Republicans agree. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats or independents to say the president has prioritized the country overall or people like them.

Trump fired Kim Guilfoyle as Ambassador to Greece for allegedly selling access. 

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

Indeed, by comparison with the charges leveled at others—including against the president himself, who seems utterly unconcerned with notions such as “emoluments”—Guilfoyle is decidedly a small-timer. This past spring, for example, the Financial Times reported that a broker for Pete Hegseth attempted to make a big investment in defense industries just before the Iran war, raising suspicions of insider trading. FBI Director Kash Patel has been accused of using government money as a slush fund to pay improper bonuses to his favorites within the Bureau. “Border Czar” Tom Homan was caught on audio in 2024 accepting $50,000 in cash (wrapped in a Cava food bag, always the sign of a deal on the up-and-up) from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives, and yet he remains in his job. Hegseth and Homan deny any wrongdoing; Patel and the FBI have offered no comment or explanation. And the journalist Dexter Filkins recently described Trump’s son-in-law and roving minister-without-portfolio Jared Kushner as representative of “a new kind of Washington figure, for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth.”

Guilfoyle may have been a relative piker among giants in the grift game, but her real sin was the pathetic and humiliating nature of her behavior. (Even Homan managed not to seem quite so grubby when reportedly accepting a bag of greenbacks.) Her messages to a Trump donor asking for money to help pay her huge credit-card bills are cringe-inducing. “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she wrote to the Trump supporter Eric Deters when asking him to wire a cool $100,000 directly into her American Express account in July 2025, just before her confirmation hearings.

Worse, she continually told Deters to stop writing things down and just contact her on Signal. “What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing,” she said. This was apparently Guilfoyle’s version of the infamous “Stringer Bell rule,” named for a character from the television series The Wire who dressed down one of his drug-dealing accomplices for being stupid enough to keep written notes on a criminal conspiracy. The problem is that she, too, violated that rule: She made her requests to Deters to stop writing things down in writing.

GOP Dunkirk

  Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  In 2024, the book explains, the Democrats' problems involved reality, not just messaging.  Two years later, Republicans own the reality problems, including the Iran quagmire and the resulting economic pain.

Meredith Lee Hill, Andrew Howard and Mia McCarthy

Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.

Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told POLITICO the House had all but slipped away.

One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.

“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”

A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.

Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”

Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.

Asked how he plans to reach voters without RGA-funded ads, James cited his efforts to talk to reporters, whom he described as "vital truth tellers."

— Craig Mauger (@CraigDMauger) October 12, 2026

Another Oppo Fail

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Oppo is part of the story.

Bayliss Wagner at NYT:

After James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, spent more than a week with no campaign appearances because of what he and his aides described as a bad case of the flu, a false rumor circulated by conservatives exploded online.

By Sunday, a post on X claiming that Mr. Talarico had been at a mental health facility in Ohio — a story promoted by Republican allies of Mr. Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton — had been viewed millions of times. Then the Ohio facility took the remarkable step of publicly announcing on Sunday night that Mr. Talarico had in fact never been treated there.

“I’ve never even been to Ohio,” Mr. Talarico, who returned to the campaign trail on Friday, wrote in a post sharing the center’s statement. He called the theory “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard” in an interview with MS NOW.

The New York Times reviewed time-stamped images from a security camera at Mr. Talarico’s home, which were provided by his campaign on the condition they not be published for security reasons. The images showed Mr. Talarico around the exterior of the home and at its entrances between Oct. 1 and Oct. 8.

Probably Sunday's best moment in Texas politics: @CurrentRevolt loses it over how shoddy the work was by the MAGA influencers trying to convince you that Rep Talarico was in a mental hospital: "This story sucks, man...this is shit work, bro... I'm actually upset" https://t.co/oAwJnWvh00

— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) October 12, 2026

MAGA operative's Talarico denial explodes in his face as tape of confession surfaces #RawStory https://t.co/vGC7BwIV2f

— #TuckFrump (@realTuckFrumper) October 12, 2026

On the Menu: Baked Midterm

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections

Erin Doherty and Jessie Blaeser at POLITICO:

Republicans are running out of ways to reverse their gloomy midterm prospects.

The POLITICO Poll finds most Americans see no clear way for the party to regain the advantage as the election reaches its final weeks, with even Republican voters skeptical that President Donald Trump could pull off a last-minute move that could shake up the campaign. And majorities of voters say they would not be more likely to vote Republican even if Trump were to pull off a major political feat before November — like announcing the Iran war was over, bringing the price of gasoline down by $1 or creating 100,000 new jobs.

That’s especially true of Democratic midterm and undecided voters: No matter the scenario or how significant the accomplishment, both groups hardly moved, the poll shows.

Voters’ perception of Trump’s actions and the economy are largely baked — a worrying sign for the GOP staring down an increasingly difficult landscape.

 “I think a lot of the die is already cast,” said Mike Noble, the founder of Arizona-based polling firm Noble Predictive Insights. “It’s tough talking to Republicans, unless they’re just incredibly big die-hards. Like, how do they get motivated right now? Democrats are clearly motivated.”