MY FIRST GOOD MOOD SINCE JANUARY 2025 (The Daily Whatever Press)—With 12 days to go before the midterms, the news is good, and I don’t know what to do with my hands.
I’m a gay man who came of age in the AIDS years (have I mentioned that? Yes? Every time, you say? It might have done something to me…), so my nervous system treats good news like a suspicious package left in the lobby. But the numbers are the numbers, and this week nearly every one of them points the same way. The person most responsible is Donald Trump, who has spent 21 months as the Democratic Party’s hardest-working unpaid field organizer. He doesn’t even get a lanyard.
So, in the spirit of Casey Kasem, who counted down the hits on American Top 40 every weekend of my childhood, here are the top seven good signs, from No. 7 all the way up to No. 1. Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the poles….erm, polls.
No. 7: His approval rating found the basement and kept digging
Reuters/Ipsos has Trump at 31%, a record low. CNN’s new poll has him at 32%, also a record low. The New York Times/Siena poll of 3,494 likely voters, the one Republicans love to quote when it’s nice to them, has him at 36%.
For scale, Gallup had him at 44% at this point in 2018, and that November Democrats picked up 41 House seats and the gavel. He is now somewhere between eight and 13 points below the guy who lost the House last time. Not a great trajectory, don’t you think?
On cost of living, AP-NORC has his approval at 17%, a number usually reserved for a phone battery about to die in a parking garage. Whoooooo!
No. 6: The generic ballot looks like a typo
The Times/Siena poll has Democrats ahead 52% to 41% on the generic congressional ballot. CNN has it 49% to 39%. G. Elliott Morris’s Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll puts Democrats up 12 among likely voters, the biggest lead in the series, with Republicans stuck at 41% among registered voters, the lowest the GOP has ever scored in it.
In 2018, Democrats won the national House vote by about eight and a half points. Eleven is bigger than eight and a half; I checked twice, on my fingers, like a professional.
The real kick in the MAGA hat is the issue numbers. Trump’s ratings on immigration, border security, and deportations all hit new lows in that poll, and Republicans no longer lead Democrats on immigration or deportations at all. The man spent 10 years running on one issue and managed to lose it to the party he calls “open borders.” Hahahaha. Why can’t I stop laughing?
No. 5: Cook keeps rearranging the furniture
On October 9, the Cook Political Report moved 18 House races toward Democrats. A week later, it moved 11 more. That’s 29 races in seven days, and about half of the newest batch sit in Ohio, Nebraska, and Kansas, three states where Democrats don’t usually get to pick out the curtains.
Cook says Republicans’ troubles run deepest in Midwestern red states, where voters are fed up with how Washington and their own statehouses have handled the economy. The tariffs came home to the heartland, and the heartland read the price tag.
No. 4: Georgia shattered its record on the first damn day
More than 188,000 Georgians voted on the first day of early voting. In 2022, itself a record year, the first-day number was a little over 135,000. The secretary of state’s office, which is run by a Republican, used the word “shattered.”
This is the same state whose Republicans made it a crime in 2021 to hand a voter in line a bottle of water. More than 40,000 extra people stood in line anyway. Stay thirsty, my friends.
No. 3: Dallas County doubled itself and then some
Texas opened early voting on Monday, and Dallas County cast 76,079 ballots on day one. On the first day in 2022, it was 32,605. Dallas even beat its first day of the 2024 presidential election, 56,431, which is the midterm equivalent of the opening act outselling the headliner.
Next door, Tarrant County went from 29,197 to 50,409, and Harris County is setting records too. Everything’s bigger in Texas, amirite? Including the line.
No. 2: Democrats keep winning where they have no business winning
Across 37 contested state legislative special elections from January through April, Democrats beat Kamala Harris’s 2024 margins by a median of 10.4 points, according to MultiState. Since May, it’s 10, and unlike in 2018, it didn’t fade over the summer.
My favorite is Taylor Rehmet, a machinist, union leader, and Air Force veteran who flipped Texas Senate District 9 in January. That’s Tarrant County, a district Trump carried by 17 points and Republicans had held for decades. Rehmet won it by more than 14.
Before the vote, Trump posted in support of the Republican, Leigh Wambsganss, and called her “an incredible supporter” of his movement. Womp womp.
In an FT/Focaldata poll, 43% of voters said a Trump endorsement would make them less likely to back a candidate. Everything he touches turns to Democrat.
No. 1: They flipped Mar-a-Lago
In March, Democrat Emily Gregory of Jupiter won the special election for Florida House District 87 in Palm Beach County, a district that includes the home of President Donald Trump. Yes, that home. The gold one.
His own neighbors got a year of him up close and sent a Democrat to Tallahassee.
Mar-a-Lago? More like Mar-a-Lost-o!
Pssst, Donald. Your neighbors are talking about you, and they used a ballot to do it.
Now the part where I stop smiling
Polls are not votes. I watched Hillary Clinton’s October numbers in 2016, too, and I still haven’t fully recovered from that hangover. None of it counts until it’s in the ballot box.
So vote early. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. Most states let you vote early in person, and every state offers some form of absentee voting. Texas early voting runs through October 30. Look up your dates and polling place at vote.org today, while you’re thinking about it.
If you vote in a mail-in state, drop your ballot in a drop box by hand, and make sure it goes in! Tin foil hat time, but I don’t trust the post office, or a crazed MAGA weirdo from stealing and “losing” your ballot.
An early ballot can’t get rained out, stuck behind a flat tire, or canceled by a kid with a 102-degree fever on Election Day morning. And every ballot banked now lets the campaigns stop chasing you and go find the neighbors who haven’t voted yet. Grab one of them on your way.
Donald Trump spent 21 months building this wave by himself. Go vote early, and make sure it actually hits the beach.
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“so my nervous system treats good news like a suspicious package left in the lobby.”
Me, too. This kind you don’t even want to poke with a stick🫣🫢
He has engendered a whole new kind of PTSD.👊🏼💜
Got my sticker on the 19th =)