Jun
5
2026

They Can Dream, Can't They?

George Will tries to provide a reality check: Democrats’ midterm ‘blue wave’ dreams face an icy challenge. (WaPo gifted link)

Speculation about a November “blue wave” wafting Democrats into power ignores the Law of Political Hydrology: There are no waves on frozen seas. The sheet of ice suffocating politics represents a balance of negative partisanship: Millions of voters have mild, flickering affection for their party, but detest the other one.

In the 25 presidential elections since 1928, eight were won by 10 points or more. But the last such landslide (Ronald Reagan’s 1984 defeat of Walter Mondale) was 11 elections ago. Since Republicans ended 28 years of Democratic control of the Senate in 1980, Republicans have controlled it 12 times, Democrats 11 times (once because a Republican senator defected). Forty-eight of today’s 53 Republican senators represent states Donald Trump carried by at least 11 points in 2024.

The last time I confidently predicted an election outcome was … President Hillary in 2016. That was enough to make me swear off predicting elections. I'll report on polls and prediction markets, fine.

And, as long as I mentioned it: the Lott/Stossel Election Betting Odds site gives the GOP a 54.9% chance of keeping hold of the US Senate, as I type. The Democrats have a 75.6% chance of taking over the House.

Also of note:

  • WHO: Do you trust? Bjørn Lomborg writes at the WSJ "Free Expression" newsletter: Global Warming or Just Getting Old?

    The World Health Organization is at it again. A top commission—stacked with a former European Union climate commissioner, a former prime minister of Iceland, other former ministers and environmental campaigners—has recommended that the health body declare climate change a global health emergency. The commission’s headline evidence is a Lancet study showing heat deaths in Europe are rapidly rising, reaching 63,000 a year. This study shows that European heat-death risk has risen 82% since 1990.

    But the study and the commission report both ignore a crucial factor: Heat mortality risk rises sharply with age, and Europe has aged dramatically. Since 1990, the share of Europeans over 70 has increased by 78%. Aging alone explains virtually all the observed increase in heat deaths.

    Bjørn (I like to type his name with a slashed o) also notes that the WHO ignored the decline in cold deaths. That decline was about 250 times larger than the age-adjusted rise in heat deaths.

    So maybe ("at my age") I should break down and buy an air conditioner?

  • Gee, that's too bad. You can almost hear Jim Geraghty chuckling as he typed this morning's "Morning Jolt" newsletter: The Graham Platner Candidacy Keeps Getting Worse.

    The claim from Graham Platner on MS NOW last night was that his girlfriend from 2013 to 2015, conservative activist Lyndsey Fifield, knew that the tattoo on his chest was a Nazi SS Totenkopf, and she told her friends that he had a Nazi tattoo, but she never told him that she recognized it as a Nazi tattoo, never discussed it with him, and that she is lying when she says he referred to it as “my Totenkopf.”

    “I feel like, you know, we’re kind of rehashing the thing we’ve been through. I’ve had that tattoo for 17 years,” Platner whined last night.

    Well, when the tattoo on your chest is the insignia on the hats of the guards in the concentration camps of the Holocaust, people are going to have a lot of questions, and they’re going to have a very hard time believing that a “military history buff” who chatted about World War II on Reddit threads never recognized it over an 18-year period.

    Jim also links to Lyndsey Fifield's tweet that expresses her disappointment with the coverage her accusations against Platner received in the NYT, after weeks of back-and-forth with their journalists.

  • Already? It doesn't seem possible that it's Friday already, but here's Nellie Bowles, who's back with her TGIF newsletter. RTWT, but I smiled at:

    → Jill Biden worried Joe was having a stroke onstage: Jill Biden gave an interview to CBS News (a great network, if you haven’t heard of it) about her book, and described how she felt watching Joe Biden in that fateful 2024 debate: “I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never. . . . I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.” I really get that. I’d feel the same way, Dr. Jill. Which is weird because afterward, that same night, she went onstage with Joe and led a chant of “four more years” and congratulated him for “answer[ing] every question.” In other news, Joe Biden has his own book, which he said comes out in September.

    In our last Biden family update—god bless these deli Kennedys—Hunter Biden is on X engaging with everyone who writes to him. He’s funny, he’s sarcastic, he’s got that Biden charisma mixed with some former crackhead energy. It never fully leaves your system, not really. Polymarket is putting the chances of Hunter Biden announcing a bid for president before 2027 at 11 percent.

    And then:

    Oh, he’s running. Once you start talking about the Epstein Elite Oligarch class, it’s game over. Someone print the lawn signs and tell the hookers to put on their Sunday thongs—we’re going on the road.

    Despite my disavowal of predictions above, I'll go out on a limb here: Hunter will not be elected President in 2028.