Fetterman (D) leads in this poll 45-41, Shapiro (D) leads 51-40. Fetterman’s voters are strongly enthusiastic (65%), and/but Oz voters not so much at 38%. Shapiro’s enthusiasm numbers are at 69, and Mastriano at 50.
PA Republicans do not love their candidates. It’s a hold your nose election for them.
Dave Wasserman/Cook Political Report:
It’s “Oppo Dump” O’Clock: OH-09 Moves from Toss Up to Lean Democrat
With less than six weeks to go, it’s “oppo dump” o’clock — the time when both parties start unleashing their most damning opposition research about the other side’s candidates on the airwaves or leaking it to friendly (or curious) media outlets.
So far, according to data compiled by the California Target Book’s Rob Pyers, Republican outside groups (led by the NRCC and CLF) have spent $77 million across 54 competitive House seats to $57 spent by Democratic groups (led by the DCCC and House Majority PAC) across 50 races, partially offsetting Democratic incumbents’ cash advantages. As in any year, the vast majority of both parties’ communication has been negative.
Sometimes brutal narratives stick, and sometimes they fall flat. Because so many of this year’s GOP nominees are non-incumbents who haven’t faced intense scrutiny before, the bulk of new revelations are impacting Republicans. But unflattering stories have surfaced regarding several Democrats as well, threatening to derail their prospects. The final weeks will test who has the skills to deflect and pivot to offense, and who wilts under attack.
Lobster feud boils over in Maine
Rep. Jared Golden, fighting a tough reelection campaign, is attacked for accepting a donation from anti-lobster group.
Golden, embroiled in an intense battle for reelection, accepted in 2020 a donation of $667 from Julie Packard, the executive director of Seafood Watch and critical donor to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which houses Seafood Watch.
The prickly dispute boiled over this week when one of Golden’s opponents, former Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, broadsided the incumbent at a recent debate over refusing to return the donation.
“During the debate … Jared Golden refused to return a donation by Julie Packard, the multimillionaire heiress director of anti-lobster group Seafood Watch,” Poliquin’s spokesperson said in a statement from his campaign. “If Jared Golden will not return Seafood Watch’s donation, then that tells Maine lobstermen all they need to know about him.”
Asked about the donation, Golden said Poliquin is “pretty desperate if he’s going through FEC reports looking for stuff like this and he finds a $600 check which we weren’t even aware of.”
Oppo Dump O’Clock and “all politics is local” walk into a lobstah shack…
Republican incumbents also tout the results and benefits of bills they voted against. It’s election season, and we’d all be okay if that were the extent of it, and the nonsense stopped there. But, see, there’s this Big Lie….
Truss Tried to Reassure Britons With Media Blitz. Her Woes Multiplied.
In a round of interviews, the prime minister showed little sympathy for the pain that high interest rates could inflict on mortgage holders, critics said.
For Prime Minister Liz Truss, it was a chance to steady the waters after days of turmoil in the financial markets over her new fiscal plan: eight rapid-fire interviews with local BBC radio stations from Leeds to Nottingham.
By the time Ms. Truss signed off from the last one on Thursday morning, her political woes had multiplied, leaving her new government in a state of disarray almost without precedent in recent British politics.
She was, critics said, robotic in defending a tax-cut plan that had been eviscerated by the markets, and showed little sympathy for the pain that high interest rates could inflict on mortgage holders. One host described her as a “reverse Robin Hood.” A listener on another station asked, “Are you ashamed of what you’ve done?”
Barely three weeks into her job, Ms. Truss has suffered a dizzying loss of public support. Her Conservative Party now trails the opposition Labour Party by 33 percentage points, according to a new poll by the market research firm YouGov. That is the largest Labour lead since Tony Blair’s early days as prime minister in 1998, and the kind of gap that usually results in a landslide election defeat.
That’s a steep slope.
Seven days that shook the UK
With the Conservative party locked in a stand-off with the bond market, Liz Truss’s political capital is crumbling
While previous generations of Tories saw financial markets as being neutral truth-tellers to feckless governments, many on the rightwing of the Conservative party now see the markets as part of a detached elite that does not understand the potential of tax cuts to stimulate growth. Lord David Frost, former Brexit minister, is among those urging Truss to stand firm against the “ghastly crew” of the economic establishment. In a Friday column in the Daily Telegraph, he listed the IMF, the European Commission, the FT, the Economist and former Bank of England governor Mark Carney as being part of “the international hectoring classes” and insisted the government rejects “that defeatism”.This viewpoint, familiar from the 2016 Brexit debates when “experts” were derided by the Leave campaign, is important in understanding the frame of mind of Truss, as she stuck to her guns through a torrid week.
Ed Yong/Atlantic:
The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear
All of this will happen again.
American leaders and pundits have been trying to call an end to the pandemic since its beginning, only to be faced with new surges or variants. This mindset not only compromises the nation’s ability to manage COVID, but also leaves it vulnerable to other outbreaks. Future pandemics aren’t hypothetical; they’re inevitable and imminent. New infectious diseases have regularly emerged throughout recent decades, and climate change is quickening the pace of such events. As rising temperatures force animals to relocate, species that have never coexisted will meet, allowing the viruses within them to find new hosts—humans included. Dealing with all of this again is a matter of when, not if.
Michael E Mann and Susan Joy Hassol/Guardian:
Hurricane Ian is no anomaly. The climate crisis is making storms more powerful
Too often we still hear, even from government scientists, the old saw that we cannot link individual hurricanes to climate change. There was a time when climate scientists believed that to be true. But they don’t any more. We have developed powerful tools to attribute the degree to which global warming affects extreme events. One study found, for example, that the devastating flooding from Hurricane Florence as it made landfall in North Carolina four years ago was as much as 50% greater and 80km (50 miles) larger due to the warmer ocean.
Derek Thompson/Atlantic:
What Americans Don’t Understand About Teachers and Professors
Given that education has become polarized and politicized, it makes sense that educators feel misunderstood and underappreciated.
Last week, I asked readers to tell me what people don’t get about their job. In an economy with thousands of occupations and hundreds of sectors, and where many people within the same large company have no idea what their colleagues do all day, I thought hearing from dozens of people about the reality of their work would be valuable.
I received several hundred replies—from opera singers, TV screenwriters, chefs, neuroscientists, and more. However, no category of workers wrote back more than teachers and professors. Given that education has become polarized and politicized, it makes sense that educators feel misunderstood and underappreciated.
By a wide margin, the most common reply among college and university professors was that teaching is just a small part of the job. “Standing in front of a classroom full of undergraduate students represents about 5 percent of my time,” said a tenured geology professor in Canada.
I’m a journalist who specializes in investigative reporting and writing. I have written for the New York Times and other publications.