And If You Look A Little Deeper You’ll Really See How NOT A Slam Dunk This Is
According to the first set of election projections put out by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, Democrats have about a 75% chance of flipping the House. And while many criticized Silver for being way off in 2016, we remember him being dead on when he said Trump still had as much a chance to win as the Chicago Cubs did to come back from an intimidating deficit to win the World Series. And they did.
But even more significant to us in Silver’s fascinating analysis, is just how many traditionally Republican districts Democrats will have to flip and/or strong Republican incumbents Democrats will have to vanquish. Out of the 25 districts FiveThirtyEight identifies as “most likely tipping points”, only six are vacant seats. The rest are held by Republican incumbents who will be running. Very similar to the types of districts Democrats have been coming close in, but consistently failing to win in special elections.
So what does this all mean? Democrats will have to do just that much better. How does that happen? Only one way: turning out in far greater numbers. How does that happen: 1) Be sure to vote, 2) Convince reluctant friends/neighbors to vote, 3) Spend at least a few hours of your week phone banking, text banking whatever you think might help. Here’s a good group that’ll help you get set up (we have no formal affiliation with them; we just like): https://www.openprogress.com/text-troop/
Meanwhile. Republicans seem to be revealing more of their strategy on how they’ll approach this fall, making the election not so much about protecting Republicans, but “saving” Trump. That’s what they think is going to get the vote out on that side.
Trump Might Not Get His Military Parade, Not Right Away…
None of the stories we’ve seen so far have any explanation of who made the decision, why it was made, and why Trump isn’t publicly pushing back against it in light of the fact that it seemed to be such an important priority for him. But so far at least at time of publication of this newletter, not a single Tweet.
The only hints came from several news organizations quoting confidential sources within the Pentagon, who say the costs of holding that parade have ballooned astronomically from what the White House originally said it was going to cost. According to CNBC, the price tag had grown to $92-million vs. the $12-million projected just a couple of weeks ago. That sum would mostly go to temporarily relocating personnel and materiel for the parade, in addition to security.
But while Trump says he prides himself on always coming in “ahead of schedule and under budget”, he’s been willing to go way over initial projections on items of import, such as his wall. Then again, the border wall isn’t really getting built yet either. And as is the case with “the wall”, the parade too could still happen, just at a date next year.
So is his failure in pulling this together some kind of turning point? Or a common sense collaboration between Chief of Staff John Kelly (a former Marine General) and the Defense Department that they were someone able to sell Trump on?
