It’s 63 days until election day; tick tock, motherfuckers. Harold Lloyd and I are hanging in there. It’s the first of September and it’s time to become fully engaged in the 2026 election. As always, this will not be a post about polls. I may allude to them but, unlike presidential performance polls, horse race polls are notoriously skewed as we saw in the El-Sayed-Stevens senate primary in Michigan and the Nixon-Vindman race in Florida.

Despite all the talk of ratfucking coming out of MAGA, I’m optimistic. Initially, I thought 2026 was going to be like 2018, Trump’s first mid-term. Instead, it feels more like 2006 with an unpopular president presiding over a shitty economy and a futile war in the Middle East. The primary difference between Bush the younger and Trump is that the former has better manners. Both were rotten presidents, make that is in Trump’s case. They occupy the bottom two slots on my presidential ranking, both left James Buchanan in the dust years ago.

While I’m loathe to dust off my crystal ball, the House is already lost for Republicans. The only question is how big of a margin. GOPers have tried rigging the House with egregious mid-term gerrymandering, but it may backfire because of the extraordinary unpopularity of their president. I keep hearing people say Dems needs a detailed agenda to win but their platform should be TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP.

Democratic candidates have overperformed in every election this year even in defeat. This is why: TURNOUT, TURNOUT, TURNOUT.

The senate picture is less clear but it’s a good sign that red states like Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas are in play. Georgia and North Carolina are likely to go blue because of strong candidates facing MAGA puppets. Roy Cooper seems poised to win his seventh statewide election in the Tar Heel state and Jon Ossoff is generating presidential buzz with his oratorical prowess.

I’m more optimistic about Iowa than Maine or Michigan at this point, but the revived trade war on Canada helps candidates in all those states. I can’t wait for the Insult Comedian to go to Iowa and say horrible things about Josh Turek. If he says, “who wants to see a senator in a wheelchair,” Dems should respond, “who wants to hear that shit?”

Josh Turek has won a special place in my heart by invoking the name of the late great Iowa senator Tom Harkin the lead senate sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Harkin used to form the senate’s oddest couple with Chuck Grassley who played right-wing straight man to the wryly humorous Democrat. Harkin ran as a prairie populist, so is Turek. Good luck, Josh.

There are still doom scrollers and bedwetters in the media and on the socials. The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait is obsessed with the DSA and its potential to drag Dems down to defeat. Chait needs to get a grip and change his Depends. I’m not a fan of the DSA, too many of them are like the worst of the Bernie bros in 2016. BUT my differences with them are tonal, not substantive. Besides, DSA backed candidates are not as obnoxious as the group’s leadership. Dr. El-Sayed has reached out to his defeated opponent and showed grit and grace in his race. Somebody has to rhyme for our side since Jesse Jackson is no longer with us. RIP.

The dark cloud hanging over this election is the Insult Comedian’s anti-mail voting executive order authorizing the Postal Service to intervene in the election. A reminder that the pre-MAGA GOP pioneered voting by mail.

Lower courts are rejecting this illegal and unconstitutional scheme. Presidents aren’t mentioned in the constitution’s  election clause and the post office is charged with delivering ALL MAIL. The joker in this deck is SCOTUS. A 5-4 ruling against Trump is the best we can hope for since Kavanaugh and Gorsuch have joined Thomas and Alito in the court’s MAGA amen corner.

I’m a firm believer in the big tent. The Democratic party has always been a coalition. FDR had northern liberals, midwestern populists, and staunch segregationists inside the New Deal’s big tent. That coalition went bust after 1968 but it was a powerful force for decades. It’s time to disband the circular firing squad and win this election.

Nothing is permanent in politics. Iowa and Ohio were still swing states in 2016 and the pendulum shows signs of swinging to purple. A reminder that Republicans won California in every presidential election except 1964 from 1952-1988. I’m big on reminders today.

Repeat after me: Nothing is permanent in politics.

Finally, some unintentionally funny campaign news: the Kaiser of Chaos plans to make the midterms about him. I laughed for a full five minutes when I read the news. He’s sitting on a huge war chest, which he seems ready to spend on ads touting his dubious accomplishments as POTUS. Money is important in politics but it’s not everything, something the legacy media will never understand.

I’ll be checking in more regularly about the campaign in the coming weeks. For now, all I have to add is this: It’s 63 days until election day; tick tock, motherfuckers.

The last word goes to Yes West: