Slate Voice

Following House Democrats’ first full meeting with both their departing members and incoming members-elect, reporters asked Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan—who’s organizing a suddenly serious opposition to Nancy Pelosi’s bid for speaker—whether he and his allies would really follow through with the effort that’s driving such a rift within the caucus, on its first day in charge, during its first vote. “Yes,” he said. He didn’t miss a beat.

This story originally appeared on AndrewGelman.com and has been republished here with permission. What can we really learn from what happened in the 2018 midterm elections? When we talk about election results, we’re always discussing them on three levels: their direct political consequences, their implications for future politics, and what they allow us to infer about public opinion.

This article is part ofWatching Fox, a Slate series about Fox News. When the sun rose on Wednesday morning, Steve Doocy was pouring coffee at a diner in Branson, Missouri. The Fox & Friends co-host had been in Springfield the night before, reporting on Missourians’ reactions to the midterm election results, and he had gone out for some breakfast.

Ever since Donald Trump won 53 percent of white women’s votes in the 2016 election, a predictable back-and-forth plays out in progressive circles when exit polls trickle in from right-leaning states and districts. Analysts and activists tweet out the numbers, remarking that white women supported the Republican candidate over the Democratic one.

In the nine months since Jaclyn Corin survived the Februaryshooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, she hasorganized a lobbying tripto Tallahassee for 100 of her classmates, traveled the country registering young people to vote, and helped lead amarch of thousandson the National Mall.

If you, like me, are a pessimist, you may be startled by the extent to which Tuesday’s election felt improbably hopeful. I expected the far-right takeover to accelerate, as often happens when you concentrate wealth with the rich and leave people to squabble in a state of artificial scarcity.

There are three things you can count on after every election: panic, clichés, and self-serving bullshit. The president will claim to have buoyed his party. The gun lobby will claim to have punished its enemies. The left will fret about racism. The right will boast of a backlash against the left. People on all sides will interpret the results as mandates for their agendas. Fortunately, there’s a way to sort out what’s true and what isn’t: by studying exit polls.

What is it about Democrats’ 2018 election performance that feels so… meh? So bleh? A couple of things pop to mind. The general-election candidates that Democrats became so emotionally invested in nationally—Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and Andrew Gillum in Florida—all lost (or appear headed for certain defeat). Gillum’s loss was especially painful, since he was ahead in just about every poll of the state.

DALLAS—On an October Saturday morning in a quiet, residential north Dallas neighborhood, one of the most powerful elected Republicans in Washington was wearing a neon-green raincoat, cargo pants, and hiking shoes while holding a half-eaten breakfast burrito on one of his supporter’s lawns. About 50 or so staff and volunteers had joined Texas Rep.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that public-sector employees who are represented by unions in collective bargaining can’t be obligated to pay dues to those unions. Legal observers say that decision, in Janus v. AFSCME, could presage a similar ruling regarding private-sector unions. More broadly, Janus was a stark victory for the 1 percent, underlining a decades-long trend of working- and middle-class wage stagnation.

Vanessa Arredondo began her teaching career five years ago in Phoenix with about 30 students in her second-grade class and a list of supplies she had to pay for out of her own pocket. In her first year, she watched veteran teachers quit out of frustration or desperation, leaving behind their overstuffed classes to ill-equipped substitutes.

Now that Brett Kavanaugh is sitting on the Supreme Court, Christine Blasey Ford is no longer making daily headlines. But she’s still making money via GoFundMe, where one of two massively successful fundraising pages is still collecting donations for a no-strings-attached pot that currently contains more than $633,000. An Oct.

By now we’re all sadly familiar with the terrible crime that was committed last week: President Donald Trump was accused of fomenting violence. Some people believe that the true victims were the people targeted, wounded, or killed in multiple attacks. They say pipe bombs were sent to public figures the president had vilified and a Trump supporter was charged with sending them.

Perhaps we should start here: We don’t yet know what we don’t know. Twelve people have been shot, 11 are dead at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. Six are injured. Four law enforcement officers were injured before the gunman was apprehended.Pittsburgh’s Public Safety Director, Wendell Hissrich has called the crime scene “one of the worst I have ever seen.

This article is part ofWatching Fox, a Slate series about Fox News. Around 12:20 on Friday afternoon, in the middle of Fox News’ Outnumbered, the tarp came off the van. The van in question reportedly belongs to 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc, who was arrested that morning in connection with the pipe bomb incidents that have roiled the country all week.

This article is part of Watching Fox, a Slate series about Fox News. Viewers of the country’s most popular and least credible cable-news morning show woke up Wednesday morning to breaking news of America in crisis. “This is a Fox News alert,” announced Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy at 6:02 a.m. “[The] Wall Street Journal is talking about a new caravan—” “Ugh,” interjected Brian Kilmeade, the program’s foremost interjector of grunts.

On Monday night, President Trump declared himself a nationalist. At a rally in Houston, he distinguished nationalists from “globalists,” people who, according to Trump, care more about the world than about their own tribe. Nationalism has a fascist pedigree, and Trump has a history of using race, religion, and ethnicity to turn the people he sees as real Americans—people who look like him—against those who have “Arab” or “Mexican heritage.

Donald Trump runs on fear. Once again, he’s closing out an election season with a direct appeal to the darkest impulses of the American psyche. “The Democrats don’t care what their extremist immigration agenda will do to your communities,” he said at a rally in Arizona last week, packing xenophobia into the false assertion that “Democrats want to throw your borders wide open to deadly drugs and endless gangs.

DALLAS—The morning after his second and final Senate debate with Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Ted Cruz was happy to see me. Late the night before, I had published an assessment of the debate, crediting Cruz with getting the job done, but also mocking his over-the-top, fear-mongering portrayal of Texas under Democratic control, delivered in that famously smug voice that’s riled up millions—not all of them Democrats—for the last five years. Cruz said he liked the piece.

On Thursday night, President Donald Trump celebrated a violent crime. At a rally in Montana, Trump saluted Rep. Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty last year to assaulting a reporter. Trump mimicked Gianforte’s takedown of Ben Jacobs, a Guardian correspondent who, on the final day of a special congressional election in May 2017, had tried to ask Gianforte about health care.