You know… Chuck Klosterman’s book I Wear the Black Hat…

Doesn’t really stand up to the test of time.  Or at least some of his villains and some of his “escaped villainry”…

There are three things that stick out here…

#1:  Bill Clinton.  In this book, Clinton sails away.  Now, ignoring that he’ll be ignoring the whole swarm of anti-Clintonites who stick to the “Er… porked an intern and then lied about it?”…Power Imbalance, anyone? …  it does appear that, finally, at long last, that group who’d be considered hypocrites — now that it is no longer Clinton that’s standing before any erosion of Roe V Wade against those damned Republicans — and now that everyone’s in a not as to “what happened with Hillary” — and in the wake of MeToo… the opinion of his culture definers has shifted…

… just as it might with Grover Cleveland if anyone were bothering to reopen the Grover Cleveland files.

#2:  Political Correctness.  He calls it a dead issue, only fit for a Charles Krauthammer (rip) editorial.  The “progressive” trajectory of all things lay all things aside into a waste repository.
If you say so.  Beyond polls showing everyone everywhere gnassing their teeth on this, who the hell did we just elect and why, and why is nobody anywhere happy with lines of illiberalism forming about college campuses?

#3:  Tied in with the pc comments, Andrew Dice Clay.  The book pooh poohs the career he had, appearances on Entourage, as though it were nothing.  Except it isn’t nothing — it’s… a career… in the shadow of his time in the spotlight.  As fodder for the sitcom “The Goldbergs” — the abrasive offensive character comedian that befuddles the grampa, he moves on to an interesting sounding new show.  His career looks like its ending up shining more brightly than Louis CK, who… you know, we know his act wasn’t precisely an act… though, the career trajectory seems to have split — we’ll see when Louis CK ends up doing something on film instead of random club appearances…

That last senate race of 2018, the Mississippi Special run off election, shifts slightly in he Dem’s favor, chances moving from none to slight — making a whole trajectory of slight to none to slight again.

And the reason for the race tightening.

Yet the trajectory of the election was thrown into doubt last week when a video was circulated showing Ms. Hyde-Smith, 59, praising a supporter by telling him that if he invited her “to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”

How one reads this — in a world where expressions sometimes have ugly roots — and I guess hopefully she never said “eenie meenie minie moe” lest everyone ponder what exactly a “tigger” is — determines parts of the election.  I suppose, in theory,she shoulda transferred her hyperbole of public execution to the guillitone — removing the historicality from what was fashionable in the immediate vicintity over to Revoultionary France.

What strikes me is the strategy of… hide.

Facing an uproar in a state divided by race and deeply scarred by a history of lynchings carried out against African-Americans, Ms. Hyde-Smith has since retreated from the campaign trail, ducking reporters’ questions and declining to apologize. A former state agriculture commissioner, Ms. Hyde-Smith has instead pursued a strategy aimed at shoring up her support with conservative whites, and she enlisted President Trump to campaign for her on the eve of a Nov. 27 runoff vote.

Likewise, Mike Espy’s best bet is… rougly the same, with some shifting fissures.  He has the Dou Jones trick where — seeing a race where they have a clear impact the black vote would come out en masse, and probably hasta hope Donald Trump says some things in his free floating solliquay that offends Suburban white female voters.  The bifrocated strategy, alerting neither wing to the other wing.

Two candidates move to the rope-a-dope strategy.

Well, I suppose there are some thematic parallels of self afflicting wounds with Cindy Hyde-Smith and … Martha Coakley, 2010.  We’ll… see.

All the votes weren’t counted in Airzona, and Krysten Sinema moved from being behind to being ahead.  It happens.  Not really anything to see here, other than a strange desire to declare victories on election night.  What would have been ironic had Sinema lost is that she’d have lost with the aid of the Green Party candidate — the Green Party being Sinema’s one time political home… the one time spoiler becomes the spoiled.

Bill Nelson’s lawyers insist that he’ll win in the end — a stance I’d like more if he can lay the statistical numbers out to exacting detail.  (The Al Franken team did so in 2008).  Lawyers for Rick Scott and Desantis as well they themselves blow up smoke about voting fraud and … we’re down to this…
“The human eye can make judgments on voter intent that machines can’t,” Elias said.
Possibly.  But we can formulate an angry mob at the doors of someone peering at the ballots and create wonderful agitprop ala 2000.
What Bill Nelson is down to in Florida is… hoping that the bad ballot design didn’t steer voters in Broward County away from the Senate race and hope that an under-vote has something to do with machine malfunction.
Rick Scott is the governor of Florida.  The election’s going his way.

But if Bill Nelson’s lawyer is correct, (and I guess we’ll see sooner than later, at least with his formulation)… something a little amusing happens with the Senate elections.  The Republicans just picked up one seat in this supposed bifurcated election… which, if Mike Espy wins in the Mississippi run -off… unlikely, don’t hold your breath… would be down to zero.

I think when Nate Silver and 538 conjure up a narrow loss by Beto O’Rourke as a good thing for his 2020’s presidential ambitions because it leaves him unencumbered, that he is joking.

I … think.

But now I get this “take away” from David Frum positing something of the opposite.

If Beto O’Rourke had eked it out in Texas, Democrats might well have nominated him for president in 2020, almost guaranteeing a debacle. 

Har de Har har.

Looking around, and as always elections bring with them weird maps to ponder, unlike previous midterms the two political parties were energized to vote.  So there isn’t any giant whalloping that’s coming here.  Just… the post Trump realignment of a bunch of Romney — Clinton districts that didn’t take place two years ago (because the message Paul Ryan had in touting Republican congress candidates was a “Vote for –! Vote for Pence!  And, Trump, I guess…”)  and the fact that the possible Obama — Trump senate seat pick up possibilities were hold over from Democratic victories six years ago.  Meantime, the relative closeness of the lackadasical Senate election in Michigan (Stabenow beat a “John James” by 6 percentage points) and for that matter Ohio and Minnesota’s special, as too some gubernatorial races … doesn’t really argure well for Dem’s chances in 2020.  Florida is bizarrely fixed at precisely the political partisan alignment of two years ago, which … extrapulate that across the Southerner tinged bases of the rust belt map…

… Maybe Beto O’Rourke is vice presidential timber to try to pull down Texas?

I suppose purely optics based, the visual of Nancy Pelosi sitting behind Trump at the State of the Union for the next two years has… something of appeal.  At least thee’ll be the spectacle of Pence jumping up as Pelosi tries her hand at the Ryan stone slight frown face.  And Trump does as every conventional president does after the election — fire Jeff Sessions.  Replace him with someone obsessed who thinks the real story is Clinton’s email trail.

And I just want to know where the whole mass of ballots in Arizona are from…

My bi-annual search on the continued existence… in one form or other… by ballot… of the Natural Law Party.

It still exists in Michigan.  For the hobby candidates.

“Less than 2 percent of the vote”.  Which is plenty.

The “Modern Whig Party” got a boost from David Brooks, who referenced it because… he thinks he’s tracing his political lineage these days to Henry Clay and Zachary Taylor.  They have as many people running for office as the Old Whig Party does… zero.  So The Natural Law Party still beats them.

Well, there’s always the good old Prohibition Party — which, after a couple of their long-term holder of the faith have died off — have a three way primary coming up for president in 2020.

Joe Donnelly pumpin up facebook ads for the libertarian.  Wait.  Wasn’t this what Putin was up to in the last election?

The Libertarian jumped out of the race in Montana to endorse the Republican.  The Green just jumped out in Arizona to endorse the Democrat (Kyrsten Sinema.)  Dont these third party candidates have the courage of their conviction?

Here’s how Jon Tester in Montana is working to distance himself from the national Democrats like some of his “red state” colleaues in the “bashing fellow Democrats” ame (re: McCaskill): he weighs in on Elizabeth Warren’s dna test.

I suppose wikileaks will reveal a bunchof Joe Manchin-isms any day now.  See if they email like Snuffy Smith?