Today’s Election Day and there’s still so much to talk about. Here’s the second part of an effort that I began yesterday. I asked what you wanted to know about the election. Let me know what you think. –JS

What are the chances of Democrats picking up the House and keeping the Senate? I’m curious whether voters’ negative sentiments toward Trump mean trouble for other GOP races. – @SnarkyLibruhl

The Democrats have a good chance of retaking the House. The most likely path is red districts in New York and California that Joe Biden won in 2020. Democratic opponents have pushed incumbents up against Trump while presenting themselves as practically nonpartisan. 

It’s obvious to say that abortion will be a main issue but less obvious to say that immigration will be. The Republican voters in these districts tend to be highly educated and affluent, and they do not inhabit the bubble of white-power politics in the same way that JD Vance does. 

These voters believe there is a border crisis and they were not happy when Trump and the House Republicans killed the immigration reform bill that was co-written by one of the Senate’s leading conservatives. With that, Trump made clear that problems aren’t for solving but exploiting. And that made vulnerable Republicans more vulnerable. 

(Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that there are now enough votes for the Democrats to retake the House and for New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries to be the next House speaker. She said she didn’t know the margins, but she did know the votes. I don’t know what she knows exactly, but I do know she knows how to count votes.)

Keeping the Senate is less likely, which is not to say unlikely. It just means that everything is probably going to come down to turnout. Sherrod Brown in Ohio is in trouble, as is Jon Tester in Montana. They are Democrats representing red states. They might be all right if there’s enough momentum for Kamala Harris. Then again, there may be enough Republican voters who are planning to split their votes. 

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE FOR JUST $6 A MONTH!

---

Click here to leave a tip. 10? Thanks!

---

Will Harris have a mandate? Will we have a majority in Congress? Will they enshrine abortion access? Will the Republicans reevaluate their party? Will they nominate that guy again in four years? Will I have a good 40th birthday? Will there be cake? – @thesarabear

1. Mandates are kinda sorta real, but not that real. To the extent that they are, Harris will have one, because if she wins, and I think she will, she will also win the popular vote. Don’t buy into the mandate stuff too much, though. The Republicans who refuse to accept her legitimacy will do so on the basis that she does not have a mandate. What they will say will sound like a higher-order principle, but what they will mean is that most white people didn’t vote for her. If you buy into the mandate stuff too much, you risk validating their racism. 

2. I think the Democrats will take the House. (Nancy Pelosi agrees!). Will they take the Senate? I don’t know. (See previous answer.)

3. If the Democrats have control of the Congress, I would expect Roe to be codified before the next congressional midterms. If they lose the Senate, however, Dobbs will continue to be the law, making the 2026 midterms that much more important to reproductive liberties. 

4. If Trump loses, he’s done. He will not run again. I say this, because he’s 78-years-old. He’s already badly diminished. I think he has dementia. Whatever is waiting for him, it won’t be a podium. It won’t be his adoring cult followers. He will probably go to prison, flee the country for someplace without an extradition treaty with the US or, the most likely near-term outcome, die suddenly of natural causes. 

Will the Republican reevaluate? Sure, if by reevaluate, we mean blame Trump for everything. We’re already seeing that in his campaign, with staffers who want to work on future campaigns telling reporters what a horrible, ugly person he is. The trick for the GOP will be how to blame Trump without drawing attention to what the man represents. Odds are that the party will continue trending toward fascism, but invest more energy into finding a candidate who puts a nice face on it. 

5. You will have a fabulous 40th. I promise.

6. Yes, you will have cake. Have an extra slice, on me.

Once Trump is out of the picture, how many more years will maga be a serious threat to democracy and the rule of law? – @grantra

Let’s remember that Donald Trump is not the cause. He’s a symptom. He rose to prominence nearly a decade ago by riding a white-power backlash against the election of the country’s first Black president.

With his departure from the national scene, God willing, will also come the departure of one of the symptoms of white-power politics. The disease, however, will remain for a long time, perhaps forever. This is America, after all. Our forebears founded the republic on slavery. 

But unlike Barack Obama, Kamala Harris almost certainly won’t face the same kind of backlash, because white-power politics is no longer in disguise. Thanks to Trump, it’s out in the open. Everyone can see it. No one’s going to talk about a “post-racial America” the way we did after the 2008 election, because after 2024, no one is going to believe it. Tens of millions of Americans will have voted for white power.

Harris will face her own kind of backlash, as all presidents do in one way or another, but she will have the benefit of governing the country in the years after the former president tried to bring it down with an attempted paramilitary takeover as well as after whatever election-denial schemes Trump is planning this time around. 

Point is that white-power politics isn’t going away post-Trump, but it can be managed, like some incurable diseases can be managed. The key is building a national consensus that’s aware of the illness and aware that the coalition’s integrity is central to controlling it, which is to say that if the coalition falls apart, the disease will flare up again.

Maga will continue to be a threat to democracy and the rule of law, as it has been since the end of the Civil War. But with consensus-seeking leaders like Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden before her, maga can be sent back to the margins of government and civil society, where it belongs.

Can you explain how internal polling works? I always read about campaigns and their internal polling numbers. How are those different from other polling? Thanks! – @WeAreVerySorry

Internal polling and the kind we read about in the press are basically the same thing in terms of what they do. They ask people questions and compile the outcomes. The biggest difference is reliability. 

Polls we read about are for public consumption. We do with them what we will. But polls for campaigns are for real-world use. Candidates are making calculated decisions based on that information. It has to be good, because a lot is riding on its predicative value. Polling isn’t cheap, but internal polling is very expensive. Much depends on it.

So it’s newsworthy when a presidential campaign reveals the contents of internal polling, especially if its finding are difference from what we read about in the press. Rule of thumb: if internal polling and public polling at odds, the internal polling is the right one. If a public poll and an internal poll are similar, the public poll has greater credibility. 

The Trump campaign seems to have relied on public polling more than a campaign usually would. That suggests their own polling isn’t showing them what they want or that they don’t have their own polling to speak of. Axios reported on a leaked campaign memo that cited the aggregated polling of RealClearPolitics in order to argue that Trump is on the verge of winning the election. That has all the hallmarks of trying to please a candidate who doesn’t want to hear bad news.