Frontpage Commentary - 6 articles

I spent six years as a press secretary on Capitol Hill and 25 years in media and public relations. Those jobs required a deep understanding of trends, gauging the mood of ordinary people, and analyzing economic data — whether people could afford to pay a little extra or were looking for ways to spend less.

You learn to sense where public sentiment is heading and how much of it comes down to what's in people's wallets. I've also studied and worked on campaigns since the 1980s, and I have never seen a landscape like this midterm election or a storm so perfect.

At the risk of repeating every political pundit, James Carville was 1,500% right — as Donald Trump might claim. It's the economy, stupid. Always. That's because prices are the nearest and dearest thing to the average voter, and their main connection to politics. When groceries, gas, health care, and electric bills climb, voters look for someone to blame or someone to help them....

In response to reports in The Wall Street Journal that Elon Musk personally ordered the deadly slowdown of internet access to Ukraine and that Trump then called and begged him to get it restored, Nobel Prize-winning economist and all-around genius Paul Krugman called yesterday for the United States to nationalize Musk’s Starlink/Starshield array of thousands of satellites providing internet service around the world.

On MS NOW, former Bush speechwriter and columnist (and guest on my show) David Frum echoed the sentiment in an interview with former Bush White House Communications Director Nicolle Wallace. And Matt Stoller — often brilliantly on the monopoly beat — is also writing thoughtfully about what to do about this terrible situation.

Senator Adam Schiff framed the issue when he wrote on Musk’s Nazi-infested social media site:...

An entirely unscientific look at things that are guaranteed to happen on Election Night, if recent history is an accurate indicator:

• Donald Trump will accuse the media of deliberately failing to report something it has been reporting nonstop for nine consecutive hours.

• At least one of Trumps’s Truth Social posts will contain more capital letters than a Times Square billboard.

• Whenever a Republican candidate is projected to lose a race early in the evening, Trump will blame the “millions of mail-in ballots that mysteriously appeared in the mail. Nobody knows where they came from.”

• When a Republican candidate is projected to lose just after the polls close in the East, Trump will accuse Democratic cities of manufacturing votes. He will write over Truth Social, “Philadelphia. Detroit. Atlanta. Amazing how all of these noncitizens keep figuring out a way to vote there.”

• When a Republican candidate is projected to lose late in the evening, Trump will demand an investigation. “We were winning at 9 p.m. Then they started counting more votes. Very suspicious.”

• Throughout the night, Trump will insist on Truth Social that all losing Republicans were victims of fraud while all winning ones were elected fairly. “Same state. Same machine. Same election. Totally different levels of honesty.”

• Early the following morning, Trump will declare the election both hopelessly rigged and an historic triumph, writing, “The Democrats stole the election, but we actually won by a landslide. No one has ever seen a bigger victory in a stolen election. It’s incredible.”

• Democrats will spend the first two hours of the night convinced that everything is going horribly. If the results improve, they’ll worry that the improvement is coming too quickly.

• No matter how well things are going, a Democratic strategist will announce that the party must immediately begin worrying about 2028.

• At least one Democratic tactician will announce that he is “cautiously optimistic,” which in party terminology means they have briefly stopped hyperventilating.

• Someone will warn Democrats that celebrating a victory could be interpreted as arrogance.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will suggest that the real threat to American democracy is seed oils.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson will invoke God’s will, leaving theologians to explain why the Almighty is apparently so interested in congressional redistricting.

• Elon Musk will post on X something incomprehensible, followed by a rocket emoji and the word “interesting.”

• At least one Trump loyalist will insist over Fox News that a disappointing election result is actually a brilliant strategic victory nobody else is smart enough to understand.

• A Fox News guest will claim that the mainstream media is hiding the truth while broadcasting that claim to several million viewers.

• At least one Fox News anchor will remind viewers that California is still counting ballots, as though the state were doing so out of personal spite.

• Rachel Maddow will deliver a historical explanation of the election over MS NOW that’s so detailed it begins with the Treaty of Versailles.

• Someone else on MSNOW will caution that a favorable result could actually be a trap.

• Someone else will warn that a disappointing result could actually be an opportunity.

• A CNN analyst will explain why a county containing 2,700 voters could determine the future of Western Civilization.

• Someone on CNN will describe a result as “fascinating” when they actually mean “incomprehensible.”

• A political commentator will reveal that the country is “deeply divided,” confirming what approximately 340 million Americans already understood.

• Someone will insist that the election represents a fundamental realignment of American politics based on the results from three suburban precincts.

• Someone will accuse Democrats of harvesting ballots, as though they were growing absentee voters in a greenhouse.

• A Republican strategist will announce that the party must improve its appeal to women while appearing on television with 11 other men.

• Someone will blame Taylor Swift simply for existing.

• Someone else will blame George Soros for masterminding the most diabolical election theft in American history.

• Someone will deliver a victory speech in front of a crowd of approximately 14 people who have been instructed to cheer as though they just won the Super Bowl.

• At least one TV journalist will stand outside an empty campaign headquarters and describe the mood inside as “tense.”

• Someone will announce that a race is “too close to call” and then spend the next 45 minutes calling it anyway.

• At least one television anchor will describe a perfectly ordinary electoral development as “absolutely unprecedented.”

• The words “breaking news” will continue to be applied to information that broke several hours earlier.

• A Republican strategist will announce that the party needs to connect with ordinary Americans, preferably from the first-class cabin of a flight to a donor retreat.

• Fox News will explain why the election wasn’t nearly as consequential as Democrats claim.

• MSNOW will explain why the election was even more significant than Democrats realize.

• CNN will assemble 16 analysts to determine whether or not the election really mattered all that much, with results expected sometime in December.

• During a 93-post rant taking up several hours, Trump will variously blame the media, the Democrats, the courts, the pollsters, the Federal Reserve, California, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell for the blue wave that washed over his party.

• Trump will also, however, claim credit for every Republican victory, including those in districts where the candidate begged him not to visit.

• A Democratic campaign headquarters will run out of champagne, while a Republican campaign headquarters will insist that champagne is a coastal elitist beverage.

• Stephen Miller will appear on Fox News looking as though somebody just told him the Statue of Liberty has renewed her visa.

• By sunrise, political consultants will have produced 47 contradictory explanations for what happened, each accompanied by a fundraising link.

• Fox News will decline to cover any dancing in the streets, opting instead to report on the migrant caravan that had been spotted 1,700 miles from the U.S. border and the transgender athlete who finished third in a high school track meet.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

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This Halloween costume is set to petrify — and unfortunately, it's a nightmare come true.

Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.

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There is a peculiar affliction spreading throughout Liberal America as Tuesday approaches. Call it Anticipatory Catastrophe Syndrome. It’s the conviction that even if voters deliver the massive electoral rebuke all the polls and pundits are predicting, Donald Trump will somehow find a way to transform defeat into victory, democracy into dictatorship and Election Night into a hostage crisis.

To which I would respond: must we always rehearse the worst possible ending before the opening credits have even had a chance to scroll past?

Of course, vigilance is always warranted. So is healthy skepticism. And anyone who thinks the president will somehow respond graciously (cue laugh track) to political defeat has apparently been living without electricity since 2015....

With the midterms upon us, the nation is on edge. Political analysts, writers, and resistance organizers are jittery and leery, aware that our efforts may not be enough.

People who read beyond the headlines understand that we’re at the fork, a pivotal moment that will take the nation in one direction…. or another. They also know that an adjudicated insurrectionist who assembled an armed mob to cling to power the last time he lost is at it again, only this time he’s more dangerous.

The J6 tinderbox has grown larger and more flammable, thanks to Congressional inaction, because the insurrectionist has now formed his own Praetorian Guard and commands the U.S. military. A looming unknown is: what percentage of U.S. service members will take their oath to the Constitution seriously enough to refuse to follow any illegal commands? How many would shoot protesting Americans if a roided-out, dry drunk SecDef gave the order?...

MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough said on “Morning Joe” that President Donald Trump’s explanation for canceling a rally is “a lie,” citing Republican operatives who told him the Kansas Senate race is already lost.

Scarborough said Trump was “giving lectures now on people’s mental health,” then said that what Trump has said about canceling, and why, is untrue. He said that Wednesday afternoon, Republican operatives called him and, in his words, said “this race has been gone for a week.”

Additionally, Scarborough said Democrats were surprised the president canceled at the last minute, but that the reason, in his account, is that Republicans feel Sen. Roger Marshall “has blown that race.”...

CNN's John Berman said Friday that he finds the White House’s sudden campaign cancellations “very, very odd,” just days before the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump canceled planned rallies for Sunday in Salina, Kansas, on Saturday and Dubuque, Iowa – where both states have competitive Senate races – and Vice President JD Vance also canceled a trip to Minnesota, another state with a competitive Senate race, where he was set to speak about fraud.

“Why is the White House pulling back from campaign trips just as we’re getting closer to Election Day?” Berman asked....

Onlookers were dismayed Sunday after Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) gave one of the most bizarre interviews to Anderson Cooper of CNN.

Stevens was interviewed Sunday on CNN's "Midterms 2026: Countdown to Election Night," where Cooper asked her why she abruptly changed her mind from supporting Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed to endorsing Republican candidate Mike Rogers, who is a close ally of President Donald Trump's. Stevens claimed earlier in the day that El-Sayed had effectively banished her from his campaign after she endorsed him, and that was at least part of the reason why she decided to support Rogers.

Things got even stranger during her appearance on CNN. At one point, Stevens told Cooper that El-Sayed had gotten "angrier" throughout his campaign, a claim that Cooper didn't buy. ...