An Air Of Normality

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil. It can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

© Robert Fripp, 1973

Against stupidity, we are defenceless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears. Facts that contradict one's prejudgment simply need not be believed. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Back in the UK this time, with a soundtrack from King Crimson's live album USA, first released in 1975, and then upgraded in 2002, 2005 and 2013. The final version is the full concert played at the Casino Arena, Asbury Park, New Jersey on the 28th of August, 1974. In my opinion, that's the most sensational progressive rock live album ever released by any band, so listen and enjoy. Even the harder stuff is more than worth it.

As always, click on the images for bigger and clearer versions.

If anything, we are now suffering of a scarcity of polls. And that's also a King Crimson reference, if you know, you know. Just eight voting intentions polls since the general election, which is fewer in almost three months than we got in one week in June. That's clearly dereliction of duty by the pollstertariat, as enough has happened in these three months to let us guess that voting intentions have plausibly changed a lot. Eight polls are definitely not enough to see genuine patterns and trends emerge. But, contrary to common wisdom and scientific evidence, we can for once clearly see what is not happening. There is no honeymoon for Starmer, no grace-under-pressure period, no sense of 'first hundred days' expectancy. More than anything else, the dominant feeling is a clear sense of unpreparedness and improvisation, which is quite alarming for a party that had two full years, since Boris Johnson's resignation, to really get their act together. Besides, the "we didn't know it was so bad" excuse does not sound that credible when you consider that seventeen members of Starmer's Cabinet and fourteen of his Junior Ministers have been members of the Privy Council for years, and thusly granted access to more detailed and confidential information about the state of the State than anyone else.

There has not been much polling of Keir Starmer's popularity either. To be fair to him, he has never been really popular, no matter what the proverbial Other Lot were doing to boost his credentials-by-default. Most of the time, the public has been split three-ways between those who like him, those who don't, and those who don't give a frying duck. But it's getting worse since he has been anointed Big Dog, and the Great British Public are slowly awakening to the reality of a bloke who has more political blunders than Rishi Sunak and more PR disasters than Humza Yousaf to his credit, and probably more skeletons in the closet than Boris Johnson. After a brief period when people seemed ready to grant him the benefit of the doubt, his net ratings are now double-digit negatives for most pollsters. That's quite an achievement after barely three months in charge, and only Liz Truss's credibility eroded faster than that in recent times.

It's really unlikely that the Labour Conference will offer Starmer, Rayner and Reeves a breath of fresh air. Even with the best thought-policing of delegates by the Starmer Stasi, it's likely to be noisy and doused with infighting, as they all know they did not win the election on their own merits and many of their voters are already questioning the way they won it. Deception barely covers it. It surely doesn't help when Angela Rayner, supposedly on the left flank of Starmerism, has no better punchlines than 'it will get better later' because they are 'fixing the foundations' by 'being responsible'. Even The Hipstershire Gazette can't hide their scepticism over this sort of blandness, that would just as well fit in the mouth of a Conservative minister. The irony is that Conferences, besides the really important work done there (naw, just kidding, mates, there isn't any), are also an opportunity for donors to get their moment in the company of the high and mighty, and some photo ops for their Insta. Which is probably not what we can expect at this year's Labour Conference, after ClothesGate and stuff. Then there is still the prospect of another confrontation between Jess Philips and Owen Jones, for our entertainment. 

I was dreading the Starmer regime, thinking it would be slow death by stupidity. But I’m quietly encouraged by the sheer kamikaze lunacy of it all. It’s like watching a masturbating chimpanzee host a dinner party. I don’t think they’ll make it past hors d'oeuvre.

(Dr Philip Kiszely, Twitter/X, 10 September 2024)

© Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Richard Palmer-James, 1974

The fact is, a lot of politics is just shit, it’s choosing the least bad option. Life would be easier if colleagues paid their expenses on time, and didn’t snort coke and sodomise each other.

(David Cameron, some time in 2014)

Seat projections are always a risky business, even when you have a fuckload of polls to back them, but I will nevertheless venture one here and now. We have had two GB-wide voting intentions polls in September, for a super-sample of 3,659, as usual excluding Northern Ireland. On top of that we also have had two dedicated Scottish polls this month, which I will come back to later, for a Scottish super-subsample of 3,257. These polls are not a complete disaster for Labour, even if the party in government doesn't usually lose that many votes so quickly after a massive election victory. Even John Major did better in the first three months after the 1992 election and even longer, until the Sterling Meltdown doomed him. In 1997, Tony Blair even managed to almost treble Labour's lead in some polls, and double it in the very last polls of the year. Keir Starmer can obviously not expect anything of that sort this year, and all because of self-inflicted wounds when he is enjoying a very weak opposition, totally embroiled in their own self-destruction process.

The Labour vote has decreased quite visibly, but the Conservative vote has too, so we have just a very tiny swing of 1.3% from Labour to the Conservatives. What is more significant is that the Liberal Democrats are holding their ground and then some, and that Reform UK is on the rise again after a rather lacklustre performance at the general election. There is another worrying factor for Labour in there. The Independent Left vote, namely the 'Gaza candidates' and Jeremy Corbyn, may not be massive at first glance, but they don't need a strong evenly spread vote to be a real pain in the arse. All they need is holding their ground where they came first or second on Election Day, and they're doing just that and even better in London. They may even surpass this if Jeremy Corbyn's plan for a new radical left party comes to fruition, and manages to coalesce the dissident voices to the left of Labour, that have also been tempted by a Green vote at the last election. That would undoubtedly be an odd patchwork of wokeism, political Islamism, student politics, populism and Putinism, but Labour should never underestimate the strength of deliberately simplistic sloganeering from the Loony Left.

Labour would hold a strong majority on these numbers, but there are numerous warning signs all over the map. Reform UK may even be the least of their worries, despite quadrupling their number of seats, including an unlikely one in Wales. Nigel Farage has high hopes for Reform UK and their electoral prospects, but we're definitely not quite there yet. Especially as his own constituents in Clacton are not conclusively happy with him. Capitalising on the Vote Of Discontent all the way down the East Coast, from Fraserburgh to Thurrock, does not a majority make. Ed Davey probably has more reasons to be cheerful, though he shouldn't entertain too great expectations about being propelled to Downing Street any time soon, other than as a guest. Mister Ed should realise that the Liberal Democrat vote is quite fragile in some parts of England, with evidence in the seat projection. They would hold all their seats in regions where the Conservative vote is going down again, but they are predicted to lose one in London, where the Conservatives are quite unexpectedly improving their position. London, quite ironically, is also where these polls predict Labour would suffer their most symbolic and embarrassing defeat, with Wes Streeting losing his Ilford North seat to one of Corbyn's associates.

What we ended up with, over the last fourteen years, was the worst Prime Ministers in the wrong order.

(Graham Brady, The Telegraph, 13 September 2024)

© Robert Fripp, David Cross, Richard Palmer-James, 1973

Magpies. You want to sum up how broken the whole thing is, you can do it in one word. Magpies.

(Paul Peveril, Nightsleeper, 2024)

It looks like the Labour government's most damaging own goal, so far, was their decision to cut the Winter Fuel Allowance for pensioners on pension credit. It passed, but with a significant level of dissent among Labour MPs. There were in fact two votes. In the first, and most significant, vote, 348 MPs voted to enforce the cut. In the second vote, which was more of a Conservative rear-guard action, 335 MPs voted for the cut. To their credit, the SNP MPs were all present for both votes and all voted against the cut. The way the government defended it, including Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds pretty much feeding us Margaret Thatcher's 'there is no alternative' catchphrase, is evidence that they were fully aware of the discontent, and possibly felt quite uneasy about it. Pensioners are obviously and justifiably outraged, but they're not the only ones. More In Common fielded an instant poll just after the vote, which shows less that a third of Brits approving the cuts.

Opposition to the cut is quite widespread across the generations and political persuasions. Only the 25-34 age bracket and Labour voters are split, and opposition neatly outweighs support in all other demographics. The wording of the options offered by the poll may look biased, but the government themselves opened that door. It's quite appalling that this supposedly smart lot did not see that they offered the right a golden opportunity to pit the train driver on £70k, who will get a 9% rise, against your granny on a £10k pension, who will either have to eat her kitten or freeze to death. That was so fucking predictable, on top of the classic rhetoric about Labour being the hostage of the public sector's unions. The discontent is also widely shared among all Three Nations that were polled, Northern Ireland being again ignored. Even Labour MPs from Scotland have to reluctantly acknowledge it, while still promising to double down on it when the opportunity arises. From Keir Starmer's perspective, the most damaging part is that opposition to the cuts is dominant in all regions of England, whether they voted Labour or not. Only London is an odd one out, kind of. Look no further to find the explanation of Labour's slump, and Reform UK's localised surge, in voting intentions.

Now, the most alarming part of this fiasco is that it is obviously just the first of many 'tough choices' that Keir Starmer will blame on the previous Conservative government. This argument will soon become inaudible, not because it is wrong, but because it reflects the government's total lack of imagination in seeking proper solutions to the budget's black hole. Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed it when she doubled down on it, with a statement announcing more austerity, proving that she treats the budget as a zero-sum game, where spending in one area has to be balanced by cuts in another. This bold statement will obviously make her even more unpopular than she already is, as a YouGov poll showed that a majority of Brits think that 'sorting out public finances' should not be Labour's priority. It comes third, with less than one-in-seven supporting it, while the people's first and foremost priority is cutting NHS waiting times. Which, I feel compelled to remind you, would apply only to NHS England, as Whitehall and Westminster have no authority over the three devolved NHSs. I see another problem ahead, as Keir Starmer's 'reform or die' approach, to fix the 'critical condition' NHS England is reportedly in, is unlikely to meet popular assent. I also have a hunch that his 'controversial major surgery' will not include sacking the massive number of useless 'DEI managers', who get paid more than a Band 8a 'advanced clinical practitioner' and contribute fuck all to public health. Just saying.

As apart from any reality that you've ever seen and known, guessing problems only to deceive the mention

Passing paths that climb halfway into the void as we cross from side to side, we hear the total mass retain

(Jon Anderson, Close To The Edge, 1972)

© Robert Fripp, John Wetton, David Cross, Bill Bruford, 1974

I believe the SNP an irrelevance to the real needs of the people of Scotland, which is to remove the Conservatives from Downing Street. A party with three MPs is never going to rid Scotland of the Conservatives.

(Douglas Alexander, Perth and Kinross by-election campaign, May 1995)

We may lack generic voting intentions polls, but we have been gifted a quartet of Scottish polls, not all of them Full Scottish, in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the first Independence referendum. More In Common polled just the independence referendum and directly related topics. Survation did too, in a poll commissioned by Scotland In Union, which also included Holyrood polling. As always, I have chosen to ignore their independence part, because it used the biased manipulative Leave/Remain wording imposed by Scotland In Union on their pollsters. Then Opinium and Survation again, this time on behalf of Progress Scotland, probed the whole trifecta of IndyRef, Westminster and Holyrood. What the various pollsters found about the not-incoming Independence referendum is not encouraging, as we now have a 54-46 split, worse than what we had in the spring. The weighted average of the last six polls, covering half of the summer, says so. Not one poll in the last three months has found Yes ahead, and just one predicted a tie. The More In Common poll also showed a more worrying side of the situation, with an extra question that nobody had asked before. Less than a third of the Scottish public think that Independence will be achieved during their lifetime. And the current incarnation of the SNP are doing jack shit that could restore faith and hope.

I also feel much less buoyant than The Scottish Pravda in their selective headline about the results of the Opinium poll. Of course, when you boil it down to a very binary spin, not The National's preferred approach usually, a clear majority of Scots want a second referendum some time in the future. But the full spectrum of options shows that the Scottish public are not really in a hurry to see it happen. Only a quarter want it during the current Holyrood term, fewer than those who prefer having it later. The Great Scottish Public agree that we should be able to have that referendum without asking permission from the colonial government of the UK with our cap doffed, but are definitely not optimistic about the prospects of an Independent Scotland. Opinium polled it and found that the net ratings are negatives on everything except the environment and, very narrowly, the NHS. This bleak vision clearly says that a lot of work still has to be done to counter the Unionist narrative embedded in GERS and most of 'Scottish' Labour's talking points. Sadly, what we have seen over the last ten years proves that we can no longer rely on the SNP to do that, least of all on John Swinney.

There have been three polls of Scottish Westminster voting intentions since the general election. First came Norstat on behalf of the Sunday Times, showing very little movement that could significantly impact the allocation of seats. Then we had an Opinium poll and a Survation poll, that contradict each other, but paint situations that could very plausibly happen at a general election. Namely a reversal of fortunes putting the SNP back in the lead, for Opinium, who fielded their poll right in the aftermath of the massive outrage over cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance. Or, per Survation, Labour and the SNP tied in the popular vote, not because the SNP is massively gaining back voters, but because Labour is losing quite a lot. Before the 4th of July election, a tie usually delivered a narrow plurality of seats for Labour. These new simulations show that the new voting patterns inherited from this election have massively changed what you can expect from a tied vote.

My model and Electoral Calculus agree on the Norstat poll, which is not surprising when you have a poll that says nothing would change. They also agree on the impact of a major change in the popular vote, as predicted by Opinium, and don't differ too much when we have a tie, as seen by Survation. But the overall picture is the same in all three cases. Labour got a full slate of the marginal seats at the last election, and with such a swing from the SNP that most have now become solidly Labour. Only one Labour seat, Stirling and Strathallan, was won by less than 5%. But 30 out of 37 were won by more than 10%. This means that the era of small swings delivering big gains is over, at least for the SNP. The 4th of July results say that the SNP would need an average swing of 8% from Labour to gain back a majority of Scottish seats. And this trio of polls confirm that. A 2.5% swing from Labour to the SNP, resulting in a tie, would still grant Labour a clear majority of Scottish seats. A 6% swing, putting the SNP almost 7% ahead in the national popular vote, would still leave Labour narrowly with the most seats. No matter how unpopular the Labour government has become in Scotland, and is not likely to see that improve any time soon, I don't see a reverse landslide coming. Yet.

I think loyalty is, it's not everything but it's almost everything. Comradeship, solidarity. Although loyalty isn't everything because talent, ability, performance matter a great deal, but it's almost everything.

(Alex Salmond, Salmond And Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, 2024)

© Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Richard Palmer-James, 1973

Loyalty is the characteristic without which the SNP will never achieve its objectives. The only way an organisation can upset the applecart of the British State is if it is together and cohesive.

(Alex Salmond, Salmond And Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, 2024)

For the tenth anniversary of the referendum, the English pollsters have walked the extra mile, and asked many follow-up questions that are like a treasure trove if you want to better understand what could motivate the Scottish public for or against independence. Opinium even devoted a whole pamphlet to it, while The Hipstershire Gazette solicited enlightened point of views from various players who may have had a part in the 2014 campaign. Then watching a full hour of full-blown inspired satire is surely a better use of your time than reading the sanctimonious ramblings of political grifters who sacrificed Independence to pursue extremist woke student politics that a majority of Scots reject. Now, even the SNP's Depute Leader has conceded that we will never get a Section 30 Order ever again, but the people still have an opinion about when the second referendum should be held. YouGov and Opinium have both polled it, with different options and quite similar results.

You can clearly see here that there is no apparent sense of urgency among the Scottish public, which a bit surprising, and might be due to either deep disenchantment or just brutal pragmatism. No pollster has ever tried a radical option like a popular insurrection or a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI), though it would surely be interesting to know how Scots feel about both. Even if they avoided these extreme options, YouGov, always eager to please and answer questions nobody asked, probed the Great Scottish Public about a rather wide array of constitutional arrangements for the future of Scotland. Some of these options may very well be on the table at some point during the next five years, even if a couple never will and were probably thrown in just to test the most extreme options at the opposite end of UDI.

The level of support shown here for independence is quite close to what the average of polls predict, on 53% No to 47% Yes with undecideds removed. So the other findings definitely have some credibility. It is quite clear that the Labour government will neither abolish devolution, nor reduce the powers of the Scottish Parliament and Government. This is neither in their manifesto nor in their best interests, if their plan is to win the next Holyrood election. This is fortunate, as these are the two least popular options. What remains then is quite surprising. The status quo is more popular than either independence or the 'all powers' option that is, for all intents and porpoises, federalism, even if YouGov avoided the proper descriptor. So the most popular option, and the only one supported by a majority, is the proverbial and elusive DevoMax. Which will obviously please Keir Starmer, as we have massive hints already that it is just what he intends to do, so that Scotland does not feel left behind by his 'English Devolution' project. Finally, to take us full circle to the Independence debate, YouGov also tested support for it with various strings attached, not all of them negative.

Unsurprisingly, independence is far less popular if you link it to a rising cost of living, border checks or an exodus of businesses. All of which were perfect talking points already for Better Together ten years ago, and could easily be recycled in a future campaign. Then we have the two most tricky issues, which are just the kind of 'gotcha questions' that could be weaponised against both the SNP and Independence, and deliver totally contradictory replies. Joining the EU boosts Independence, but leaving the pound hurts it. Problem is that, in the real world, the two don't and can't fit together. Here we need to go back in time. A few years ago, saying that joining the EU would coerce Scotland to join the Euro was a blatant lie under then-existing EU rules. But the rules have changed, and now joining the EU does imply joining the Euro. Unless the Independent Scottish Government deliberately gambled on never meeting the Eurozone's convergence criteria, which would be risky, disingenuous and plain stupid. In the short term, the SNP's obsession with linking Independence and re-joining the EU could very easily blow up to their face if the Unionists use it to trigger summat like a currency scare. Even Alex Salmond stumbled on the currency issue, and I don't think anyone has found a way to avoid that trap. Yet.

It's one thing to not think you can achieve the referendum which had been promised in successive polls. It's another thing to keep announcing you're going to do it and then not doing it, and that has a demoralising effect.

(Alex Salmond, Salmond And Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, 2024)

© Robert Fripp, 1974

You LizTrussed your way into that position, ignoring every warning, and now you've just got to accept the consequences.

(Paul Peveril, Nightsleeper, 2024)

Two weeks ago, the Scottish Government suffered two symbolic defeats in Parliament. They are symbolic because the opposition motions on free school meals and peak rail fares are non-binding. They are nevertheless politically significant because the Greens voted for both motions and celebrated the SNP's defeats with glee. They are also a bad omen of dark skies to come, as the two issues will unavoidably resurface when Parliament will debate the budget. If the Government fails to get a budget passed by the usual deadline, which would be 28 February 2025, odds are it would lead to a vote of dissolution, which requires a two-thirds majority, and an early election. If this happens, it would be an awkward situation for everyone involved, as Section 3 of the Scotland Act 1998 stipulates that a Parliament elected at an early election can only serve for the remainder of the term, unless it happens less than six months before the ordinary election. So, a major political crisis leading to an early election in March or April 2025 would still have the scheduled election happening on 7 May 2026 anyway. Besides, the current trends of Holyrood polling show that nobody should be wishing for an early election.

There is a reason why the French call a hot-and-cold shower douche écossaise. That's a tribute to the Scottish people's uncanny ability to say two totally contradictory, and mutually exclusive, things in quick succession. The French know best, they have had since the days of the Auld Alliance to learn that lesson. We have had three polls of voting intentions for the next Scottish Parliament election since my last Scottish article, over just two weeks, that prove just that. Survation went first, in the field between the 27th and the 29th of August, and it already hinted that something was not quite right. They found Reform UK suddenly jumping to almost 10%, within shooting range of the Conservatives, and a tie between the SNP and Labour. Then we had Opinium, in the field between the 5th and the 11th of September on behalf of The Times, who credited the SNP with a significant lead. To their credit, they also identified a surge of the Reform UK vote on the regional lists. Thirdly, Survation were at it again, between the 10th and the 13th of September, having changed sponsor from Scotland In Union to Progress Scotland. And they again found a tie between the two Big Dogs, plus a substantial slice of the vote for Reform UK.

I don't know which of these pollsters we should believe, as neither has a brilliant record at predicting past elections, whether Scottish Westminster or Holyrood. But the seat projections from their findings make for interesting reading, confirming Ian Murray's educated hunch that Labour still have a steep hill to climb before they become the next Scottish Government. As usual, a tie delivers a plurality of seats for Labour, but even a 7% lead does not protect the SNP from heavy losses, including the near certainty of Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf losing their seats in Glasgow. We now have two polls out of three putting Labour at the top, who would then be faced with a tough choice. On paper, both the Unionist Great Coalition and the 'progressive' Traffic Lights Coalition would get a majority from these two polls. But both would be doomed from the onset by the presence of mavericks in their ranks, Reform UK on one side and the Greens on the other side. If Labour have learnt just one thing from the SNP's recent shenanigans, it's that you never put your fate in the hands of fucking extremist lunatics, and that alone would rule out both of these coalitions. So, in a not-quite-so Sherlockian way, all that remains after you have eliminated the impossible is the implausible. Once again, a Labour-SNP coalition, that would also conveniently be the one with the largest number of seats, whichever projection you pick.

Now, you can also legitimately ask what the point of a nominally 'pro-independence' majority would be, when the pretendy 'pro-independence parties' joined forces with the Unionists to defeat a motion that affirmed and validated one of the SNP's own talking points for the next Scottish Parliament election. One they even once promoted as their sole strategy for that election. Just because it came from Ash Regan, the Alba Party's sole MSP, and the SNP are using the same stunt they so vociferously whined about when Labour used it. The Bain Principle has become the Swinney Principle. But is there more than meets they eye here, and should we look at it more cynically? Could this be the first step the SNP leadership has chosen to take to normalise the unthinkable, the unholy alliance with Labour after the next Scottish Parliament election, thusly ditching any vestigial pretence they are still the Party Of Independence and not closet devolutionists? After all, Stewart McDonald, the former SNP MP for MI5 who was quite rightly dubbed Little Shit by the Great Dennis Skinner, has just had a column published by The Spectator and relayed by The Scottish Pravda, advocating just that. Did John Swinney and the SNP's Ninth Circle give the imprimatur to this? Or are they keeping their powder dry for now, thinking, "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it"?

I know the feeling and it was never in response to anything like this actually happening. It was just the fear of it by people thinking, as people always do, something never having happened, or just never happened to them, means that it never will.

(Paul Peveril, Nightsleeper, 2024)

© Robert Fripp, John Wetton, David Cross, Bill Bruford, Richard Palmer-James, 1974

Some railway stations have clocks that have three hands. You see, time didn't really exist before the railways, you know? Like it is now. People went by the sun. Their own time. Then London stepped in, as London does, you know?

(Fraser Warren, Nightsleeper, 2024)

There are more bad news for the Labour Party coming from Wales, of all places. They were already not doing well in Senedd voting intentions before the general election, and it has not improved since. There is no doubt that Welsh Labour have been deeply hurt by Vaughan Gething's shenanigans and all the hoopla surrounding his reluctant resignation. Their collective image has surely not improved either by the way they avoided a full-blown War Of Succession. Which was basically strongarming all alternative candidates at the previous leadership contest to sit that one out, so the party establishment could shoehorn Eluned Morgan into the First Minister's chair. It is quite telling that Morgan's first two significant moves were to reshuffle her Cabinet after barely six weeks, and then ditch plans for 'gender equality' in the Senedd, that had been denounced as bringing back gender self-identification through the back door, after the Welsh Government was warned it would be illegal under reserved UK legislation and likely to be denied Royal Assent if passed. The trends of Senedd polling show that the good people of Wales are not amused, let alone convinced, by this new variant of a Labour Government.

You have to wonder now if Welsh Labour still think it was a brave, stunning and clever move to change the electoral law to full proportional representation, instead of the previous mixed system. They gave away their built-in advantage embedded in the first-past-the-post component, just when they would need it the most. Now we have four parties nationally clearing the D'Hondt quota hurdle of one-seventh of the popular vote, which is the implicit threshold for guaranteed representation in six-member constituencies, even if the exact breakdown of the vote can get you a seat on a lower share. The more votes the smaller parties bag, the lower the hurdle gets, possibly as low as 11%. The latest Senedd poll, from Welsh Election Study on behalf of Cardiff University, is the worst for Labour since the last election. Not only does it show Plaid Cymru breathing down their neck, but it also confirms Reform UK as a growing force in Brexit-friendly Wales. We still don't have, and probably never will have, a breakdown of votes in the sixteen new constituencies, but we can still approximate it using known trends in the former five electoral regions.

The only flaw in Meddwl Cymru's seat projection is that it fits what you could infer if there was just one massive 96-seat constituency, or national lists for short. But access to representation will be more difficult in the real six-member constituencies. I'm cautiously confident that my own projection, even if it has its own embedded flaws, is closer to what the next Senedd is likely to look like. We nevertheless agree on one conclusion, it would be a very close shave for Labour, with Plaid Cymru finishing just one seat behind. This opens the way to some sort of 'progressive' government alliance between the two parties, summat like a Great Welsh Coalition mimicking German practice. It's hugely unlikely Plaid Cymru would turn down such an opportunity, even if they vociferously walked out of an earlier deal with Labour, and they would surely be less lunatic and embarrassing partners than the Greens were in Scotland. Especially as the constitutional debate, Independence in plain English, is much less prominent in Welsh politics. Quite opportunistically, YouGov probed their Welsh panel about the same set of constitutional arrangements as their Scottish panel, with some intriguing results.

The most interesting result, though it is not surprising if you are familiar with Welsh politics, is that abolishing devolution is more popular than independence, and almost as popular as Labour's implied policy of federalism. Just like in Scotland, DevoMax is the preferred option. But you can genuinely call it 'most popular' in Scotland, and just 'least unpopular' in Wales, as it does not have the support of a majority and only a very tiny net positive. No Welsh party, and Plaid Cymru even less than anyone else, has a vested interest in making independence a core issue in future campaigns, as it would conclusively fail if a referendum was held. Plaid Cymru's best strategy is obviously to highlight the Welsh government's multiple failures, from the demise of Part Talbot to skyrocketing NHS waiting times, and the widening rift between Welsh Labour's 'progressive' politicking and New Model Labour's 'Tory-lite' approach in Whitehall. Only this sort of aggressive campaigning would save them the bother to fully disclose their own solutions, which might not be that different from Labour's anyway. So we can probably expect the next Senedd election to be quite a shitshow in its own right, surpassing the next Holyrood election in that respect.

People didn't like it, but they had to tolerate it, you know, if they wanted to catch a bloody train. But they had no intention of giving anything up. So they kept their own time as well. And stuck a third hand on the clock.

(Fraser Warren, Nightsleeper, 2024)

© Robert Fripp, Michael Giles, Greg Lake, Ian McDonald, Peter Sinfield, 1969

She Was Moving Like A Dragon Princess

To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators, it is simply unthinkable. Make no mistake, we will not bow down.
(Joe Biden)

© Charles Hickox, 1976

Democracy is never guaranteed. Every generation must preserve it, defend it, and fight for it.
(Joe Biden)

There is nothing really thrilling happening in the United Kingdom right now, is it? Other than Keir Starmer reneging on more pledges as Prime Minister than he did as Leader of the Opposition, that is. So it's time to switch our attention to the elections that will shape the future of civilisation-as-we-know-it, the whole batch held in the United States on the 5th of November. Which is unfair to our Conservative Party, as it will wipe the election of their new leader off the news cycle pretty fast, but never mind. I stick to the pattern established in my previous entry, using a full album in running order as the soundtrack, instead of a cleverly witty compilation. Since we're heading for the USA this time, I have picked Jefferson Starship's Spitfire, released in 1976, their first album to chart in the UK.

As always, click on the images for bigger versions, you're really gonna need it this time.

Let's have a look first at nationwide presidential polls, the most widely fielded ones that pit only Donald Trump against Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris. This is only a partial vision, as it omits third-party candidates, but it is significant because it's what the electorate generally have in mind. It definitely proves that Joe Biden's dismal performance in the debate against Trump was a major factor, that could have sunk the Democratic Party for good. But then miracles happened, as they always do in American TV series and corny movies, and Democrats have high hopes and boosted morale again.

There were three main factors at play here. Obviously Kamala Harris instantly emerging as the new candidate, and not a substitute. She would have been on the ticket anyway, and her competing for the top slot just happened four years earlier than anticipated. Then there was the Democratic Convention, so carefully orchestrated to project an image of happy unity, which did work. And finally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropping out of the race, as the trendlines show that it helped Harris even if Kennedy chose to support Trump. The aggregate of polls in July, when Biden and Kennedy were still running (which, as you know, is, in this context, American for standing) and in the most recent batch, with Harris in and Kennedy out, clearly show what happened.

Kennedy's campaign was obviously running on fumes some weeks before he dropped out, but he was still bagging 5% to 6% of the popular vote, with the potential to harm the Democrats in some key states that will likely shape the result. After the debate debacle, Biden was clearly losing, not just his marbles but also the election. Harris has not yet turned the tide back to where the two major candidates stood in 2020, but she is already in a much better position than anyone expected. The remaining candidates (Jill Stein for the Green Party, Chase Oliver for the Libertarian Party, Cornel West as some sort of alienish radical left woke independent) will probably leave less a of mark than they did in 2020, and are totally unable to influence the outcome in any state. It's already clear that none of them will be able to appear on the ballot in all 50 states, which can happen because candidacies are not national, but validated separately by the states with different requirements and deadlines. The fight will be then only between the two main candidates, which is actually the normal state of things in the USA, outwith very exceptional alignments of the stars like in 1912 or 1992. And it will be up to Harris to debunk Trump's lies and fake news, and also build a strong counter-narrative in advance of Trump's very predictable claim that the election has again been rigged and stolen.

For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders. Insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before.

(Matthew, 24:24-25, 21st Century King James Version)

© Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Marty Balin, Craig Chaquico, Pete Sears, 1976

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realise half of them are stupider than that.

(George Carlin)

It is common wisdom that the American electoral system, with the President being elected by the Electoral College, means that the popular vote is not the most important factor, but the states where the candidates get their votes are. Technically Joe Biden won the 2020 election by 7 million votes and change. In reality, he won it by 123,473 votes total in the four states that propelled him past the tipping point to victory (Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). One British pollster, Redfield & Wilton, have added probing swing states to their to-do list, usually fortnightly. They started with six (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania), then added two more that are genuinely swing states (Nevada, Wisconsin), and finally two who genuinely aren't (Minnesota, New Mexico). For a broader picture, I added two of my own (Texas, Virginia) that are perhaps not the first names that spring to mind, but you never know. Various American pollsters have also been polling their own picks of swing states quite regularly, so we a have a pretty good picture of what is happening in all of them. Let's go to Arizona first.

The last time, before 2020, Arizona voted for the Democrats was 1996 for the Clinton-Gore ticket. Then it went reliably Republican for five successive elections, before going for Biden-Harris by just 10,457 votes and 0.30%. It was the closest result in raw numbers and the second closest in percentage. It is poised to be on the knife-edge again this year, which is why Arizona Senator Mark Kelly was rumoured, and probably actually considered, briefly as Kamala Harris's running mate. Kelly clearly ticked far different boxes from Harris's final choice Tim Walz, as he has more of a centrist non-woke tough-on-crime profile, so this was really a purely ideological choice from Harris. So far, she has had no reason to regret it, but will the woke-plus-woke double bill stay on top until Election Day? Arizona voters are visibly not impressed by it, so I see it narrowly flipping back to Trump for now. Florida next, which you may remember decided the election in 2000 and brought George W. Bush to power, for worse or worst.

Florida went to Donald Trump by only 1.2% in 2016 and 3.4% in 2020, after going to Barack Obama twice, so it's definitely a legitimate top-tier target for the Democrats. They thought they would be helped by the state's fast evolving demographics, but it didn't quite work. The Republicans have even gained ground in Florida at every election since the 2018 midterms. Biden's numbers were quite bad down there and Harris's are barely better so far. There is also a high-profile Senate race there, which I will discuss later, so you can expect the Republicans to do everything they can to lock it. On top of that, Governor Ron DeSantis was conclusively flattened into the ground by Trump in the Republican primary, so he certainly needs his self-esteem restored by offering the Republican Party a win in his home state. Before the next musical interlude, we have room for Georgia, which was the biggest upset at the 2020 election when it flipped to Biden after going to the Republican candidates for six presidential elections in a row.

Biden won the state last time aboot by 11,779 votes and 0.23%, the closest in percentage and second closest in number of votes. In 2020, Georgia also elected two Democratic Senators, the first time they had one since 2004, and the first time they had two since 2002. In the same period, the Democrats managed to only slightly dent Republican majorities in both Houses of the State Legislature, but failed to get more of the state's House of Representatives seats. So there is still a lot of work to be done for the Democrats, who rely heavily on massive GOTV in Fulton County, the most populous in the state, that also covers 90% of the State Capital Atlanta. It has only 10% of the state's population, but a very strong turnout there might be enough to flip a vote that's decided by a fraction of a percent. It worked in 2020, and also at the 2022 midterms when one of the Senate seats was up for election again, so the Democrats will certainly make it a priority. So far, poll aggregates rate it as a tossup, which you surely remember is American for tie, but I consider it a very weak Republican gain, while not discounting local Democrats again achieving a last minute surge.

What would you rather do? Go round and round on the hamster wheel or actually make a little bit of difference once in a while?

(Shane Bradley, Blue Lights: The Stamp Of Nature, 2024)

© Grace Slick, Pete Sears, 1976

The thing about self-destruction, it’s not something you can blame on someone else. The clue’s in the wording.

(Madeline Crow, Douglas Is Cancelled, 2024)

Then we have what are probably the most watched states of all, the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. When you look back at their electoral history, it's a bit odd to call them 'swing states' at all. The last time all three went Republican was 1984, Ronald Reagan's second election. They were split in 1988, and then all three went Democrat continuously from Bill Clinton's first election in 1992 to Barack Obama's second in 2012. Then they swung twice. To Trump in 2016, and their combined 46 votes were enough to cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. Back to Biden in 2020, and their votes would have been enough to make him President, even if he had not gained Arizona and Georgia too. Their iconic status rests on something else, being the prime American example of the post-globalisation industrial wastelands that were deluded into thinking that the populist xenophobic far-right would solve all their problems. That's the transatlantic equivalent of the English North, who cemented Boris Johnson's victory in 2019 and gave Reform UK their biggest vote shares in 2024. Or the German Länder of Saxony and Thuringia, who have just granted the far-right Alternative für Deutschland major electoral successes. So let's start with Michigan.

Michigan is definitely in the danger zone for Harris, having gone to Trump in 2016 by 0.2%, and to Biden in 2020 by only 2.8%. Its largest city, Detroit, and other iconic once-industrial cities like Flint have often been chosen as the perfect examples of the massive post-industrial decay of once thriving parts of the American North East. There were signs of discontent already during Barack Obama's presidency, with massive Republican gains at the 2010 midterms. The Democrats then gained back the governorship in 2018, but had to wait until the 2022 midterms to narrowly switch the state legislature and the House of Representatives delegation back to their side. Statewide polls show that it was a lost cause as long as Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate, and that Robert Kennedy Jr's withdrawal benefited Trump more than Harris there. It could be a very narrow hold for the Democrats, but sounds more like an ultra-marginal that still could go either way. The next one in this Trio Of Doom, Pennsylvania, does not look much better for Harris.

Pennsylvania was the tipping-point state in 2020, going to Biden by a meagre 1.2%, after going to Trump by a just as measly 0.7% in 2016. The 2022 midterms were less successful for the Democrats than in Michigan. The Republicans actually gained the positions of State Treasurer and Auditor General after 20 years in Democratic hands, held control of the State Senate, and conceded the State House by just one seat. Democrats also flipped the state's House of Representatives delegation by just one seat, quite a success in a state that is notorious for repeated outrageous Republican gerrymandering of its Congressional districts. Which, as you surely remember by now, is American for constituency. Statewide presidential polls were bad for the Democrats under Joe Biden, and have not gone conclusively better after Kamala Harris took over. Here too, Kennedy's withdrawal was more beneficial for Trump than for Harris. Right now, I count it as a very narrow ultra-marginal hold for Harris, as the Walz factor might work here to her advantage. Then we have Wisconsin, which was the closest of the three in 2020.

Trump's gain in 2016 was hardly brilliant, on just 0.8% of the vote, but neither was Biden switching it back in 2020, on an even less impressive 0.6%. The Republicans have held firm control of the State Senate, the State House and the state's House of Representatives delegation in 2022. They even increased their number of seats in all three, which was not the most common situation at those midterms, and definitely not a good omen for the whole array of 2024 elections. Presidential polls have nevertheless been more regularly good for Kamala Harris here than in the two other Rust Belt states. The Democratic presidential ticket may also benefit from greater mobilisation here, because of a high-profile Senate race. Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin, who was the first openly lesbian candidate elected to the House of Representatives and later the Senate, is seeking a third term. A staunch 'progressive' by American standards, Baldwin can be expected to throw her full support behind Harris, and her personal standing makes Wisconsin a very likely, though plausibly quite weak, Democratic hold in the Electoral College this time.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

(James Baldwin)

© Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, Jesse Barish, Craig Chaquico, Thunderhawk, 1976

To everyone keeping up the fight, you are doing something. You are the reason I know we are going to bring our country closer to realizing its great promise.

(Kamala Harris, Medium, 15 August 2017)

Redfield & Wilton belatedly added Minnesota to their list of select swing states, after Kamala Harris chose its Governor Tim Walz as here running mate. The one Republicans so cleverly nicknamed Tampon Tim after he had tampon dispensers installed in the loos of high schools in his state. Because, obviously, nothing says 'we know what a woman is' louder than 'why the fuck would anyone offer free tampons to teenage girls?'. To be fair to them, Tampon Tim also had those dispensers fitted in male loos, but who are we to second guess what a teenage boy might pick as a Valentine's gift, especially when it's free? Minnesota does not qualify as a genuine swing state as its presidential vote has been steadily Democratic since Jimmy Carter's first candidacy in 1976, and resisted the Reagan Wave of the 1980s. It was one of only six states that stayed with Jimmy Carter in 1980, and the one and only that went to Walter Mondale in 1984, obviously helped by Mondale being a local and one of the state's Senators before becoming Carter's Vice-President.

Minnesota is also an odd one out in American politics, being one of only two states where the Democratic Party technically does not exist. The local brand of the Left is the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, a mix of traditional blue-collar populism and the variant of agrarian populism that was quite a thing in the Northern Midwest before World War Two. This is definitely one of the states where the Democrats can safely ignore Labour spads offering free advice on how to win an election. Saying that the winning formula is targeting key groups of "squeezed working-class voters who wanted change" is a bit rich, coming from the party who scored big gains in the English North and Midlands only because the disgruntled working-class swung further to the right to Reform UK, and thusly doomed the Conservative intake of 2019. Furthermore, that kind of tip is totally useless in Nevada, another swing state where the Democratic ticket is at risk, and where voting patterns look nothing even remotely similar to Minnesota, let alone the English North.

Nevada is quite a tricky state for the Democrats. They have often been predicted electoral doom there, but prevailed most of the time. It is also more of a bellwether state than a swing state, having voted for the winning ticket at 32 out of 40 presidential elections since it was granted statehood 160 years ago. The Democrats also have a few precedents to reassure them. At the same point in time in 2008, Barack Obama was predicted to lose Nevada by 4%, and he ended up winning it by 12%. In September 2016, it was on the knife-edge with Trump and Clinton alternatingly coming on top in statewide polls, and Clinton won it by 3%, one of the few times it went against the national result. One of the keys here is the Latino vote, that has very rarely failed the Democrats. It is more socially conservative than average, so Harris will have to tone down here usual woke rhetoric here. But she can also paint Trump's, and especially Vance's, obsessively anti-immigration discourse as a threat to even those who live legally in the USA. Because it actually is, and even viciously attacks those who have become American citizens. That's the same kind of deliberately offensive talking points from the Republicans that will help Harris in neighbouring New Mexico.

I was really surprised when Redfield & Wilton added New Mexico to their selection of swing states to poll, as it actually isn't one. It has failed the Democrats only once in the last 32 years, going to George Bush in 2004 by a tiny 0.8%. More revealingly, it elicited very little interest from American pollsters, even when Joe Biden was still in the race, and polls predicted that the underlying libertarian streak in parts of the state would switch many Democratic voters to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. These Libertarian leanings have been observed at the 2016 presidential election, when former Governor Gary Johnson, a former Republican turned Libertarian, bagged 9.3% of the state's votes, the highest Libertarian vote share nationwide. Johnson did even better at the 2018 Senate election, on an unprecedented and also unexpected 15.4% of the popular vote. But the twin withdrawals of Biden and Kennedy have cleared the way for a solid Harris win there. It seems fairly safe to bet that it will be quite similar to Biden's win in 2020, on a margin of more than 10%.

I believe in that old adage that 'as goes California, so goes the country'.

(Kamala Harris)

Ozymandias © Paul Kantner, Craig Chaquico, John Barbata, David Freiberg, Pete Sears, Grace Slick, 1976

Don't Let It Rain © Paul Kantner, China Wing Kantner, 1976

When seagull droppings landed on my head at a campaign event two days before Election Day, I chose to read it as a sign of a coming success.

(Joe Biden, Promises To Keep, 2008)

The most fun part so far is that some British pollsters, feeling a bit neglected since nobody orders general election polls any more, have polled their British panels about whom they would vote for at the American presidential election. Both YouGov and Deltapoll now tell us we want Kamala Harris for President, as if it mattered. Spoiler alert, mates, nobody in the USA gives a fucking shit about that. But they're definitely interested in what may, or may not, happen in North Carolina. Which may be an upset of the same magnitude as when Biden flipped Georgia in 2020, or a big fucking dud if it stays in the Republican column. But just the fact that it appears to be in play right now, and just marginally favours Trump, is in itself quite an event. Of course, it went to Trump by only 3.7% in 2016 and 1.4% in 2020, his closest result of all. The Democrats even managed to split the state's delegation to the House of Representatives down the middle, 7-7, at the 2022 midterms, which is a better result than in Arizona and Georgia, as both returned Republican majorities. So I count it as a very weak Republican hold in this year's Electoral College, with the plausibility of an upset.

North Carolina is also summat of an odd one out among Southern states as it has never become a Republican one-party-state. The Republicans have strong majorities in both chambers of the State Legislature, but Democrats hold the Governorship and three of the other elected executive positions in the Council of State, a uniquely North Carolinan thing dating back to the days of the Thirteen Colonies, and fulfilling the duties of a government. At presidential elections, North Carolina has been reliably Republican since 1968, with only two exceptions. Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008. Current polls are so close that it could very plausibly be this year's upset. There is even a not very likely, but still possible, scenario where the election is so close that North Carolina becomes the tipping point state. The one that swings the Electoral College to Kamala Harris, and that would be fucking ironic. Next, I have picked Texas on top of Redfield & Wilton's selection, as it is definitely a battleground, and plausibly more of a swing state that some of their picks. It went to Trump by 9% in 2016 and 5.6% in 2020, and Democrats entertain high hopes of it flipping because of changing demographics. Maybe in 20 years, though, as we are not quite there yet.

We tend to have this image of Texas as a Rust Red state because it is the Bush family's home state and headquarters, and has steadily voted for Republican presidential candidates since 1980 and Ronald Regan. But there is a another side to this story. When George W. Bush first became Governor in 1995, he had to share power with a Democratic Lieutenant Governor and Democratic majorities in both chambers of the State Legislature. Republican dominance over the state's politics didn't actually happen until 1999, and it did not become a Republican one-party-state until 2005. That's not even 20 years, and it had been a Democratic one-party-state for 120 years, give or take, before Bush became Governor. Current polls say that it won't switch to Harris this year, but the result could be closer than in 2020, possibly down to a 4% lead for Trump. This is in itself good news for the Democrats, just like a too-close-to-call situation in North Carolina, as it would force Republicans to spend more resources there than they originally intended, thusly counter-balancing the Democrats having to spend significant amounts in other swing states like Virginia. Neat transition to my second and last pick, a Democratic state that is definitely in the Trump campaign's crosshairs, and for good reason.

Democrats are an acquired taste in Virginia, which didn't even vote for John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and switched only in 2008. Joe Biden may have carried it by 10% in 2020, but it still elected three Republicans to its three executive positions a year later, as state-level elections are held on odd years there, contrary to the common pattern of having them on even years to coincide with the national election cycle. There was a slight Democratic surge in 2023, which granted them narrow majorities in both chambers of the State Legislature. All things considered, Kamala Harris has rather good odds of carrying Virginia, better than Joe Biden actually, as Barack Obama did before, but it's not a shoe-in. There is some irony in there when you look back in history, where you see that Virginia was the state that demanded that the land they had contributed to establish the District of Columbia be given back to them, and later turned their state capital Richmond into the capital of the Confederate States, besides being the home state of James Madison, a President and slave-owner who was the architect of the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise embedded in the original text of the United States Constitution. And also a major character, performed by black actors, in the woke revisionist musical Hamilton two centuries and change later.

I don't feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation. And I'll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.

(Joe Biden, An Interview With Joe Biden, 13 September 1975)

© Marty Balin, Joey Covington, Vic Smith, 1976

Survival is a nasty piece of business. But we do what we have to do. We reconfigure. We reinvent. We rearrange. Let’s put our hope in our own hands.

(Cornelius Hickey, The Terror, 2018)

Before I go further into the possible make-up of the Electoral College, a reminder of the rules, like I'm required by law to do every four years. Each state has as many votes in the Electoral College as it has seats in Congress, House and Senate combined. Washington D.C., which is not represented in Congress, has by law as many votes as the smallest state, so three. And that makes 538 Electors in total, and 270 needed to win. 48 states and the District of Columbia go full first-past-the-post and give all their votes to the statewide winner. Nebraska and Maine give two votes, those representing the Senate seats, to the statewide winner. Then allocate the rest, three in Nebraska and two in Maine, by Congressional district. That's how Biden got one vote in Nebraska and Trump one in Maine in 2020. Before we look at the current situation, we have to go back in time just a wee bit, and take a look at what state-level polling predicted for the Electoral College on the day before Joe Biden was strongarmed into standing down by his wife and Chuck Schumer. Which, as you might expect, was not a pretty sight for the Democrats. And that's where you really need to click on the image if you want to actually see what's in it.

That's the stats Kamala Harris and the party leadership had on their iPads on that fateful day. Trump winning by a wider margin than Biden in 2020, after flipping six states and the 2nd district of Nebraska. So that definitely required a fucking intervention to convince the old man to let it go. And the miracle happened, as you surely remember from the trendlines of nationwide polls and the select sample of swing states. But just. The tide may have turned, sort of, but it is still not strong enough to carry Harris safely up the Potomac to the White House. What we have now is Arizona and Georgia flipping to Trump, and the 2nd district of Maine to Harris, for a 277-261 split in the Electoral College. It is so uncomfortably close that it will take more than the quintessentially American belief that the righteous shall be protected and the deceivers will perish, as the saying goes, to propel Harris successfully past the finish line. Some elbow grease and Hollywood money is needed here, and grassroots boots on the ground will be more useful than woke incantations. Unless the unexpected support of Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz flips enough voters to Harris. Naw, just kidding. It's make or break for both candidates, they know it, the Great American Public knows it, so it can only get dirtier from whence on. Tonight's debate, which will surprisingly not be simulcast on the BBC, will certainly be the first step in that direction.

Speaking of which, the United States Department of Justice have indicted a media company that employs a number of right-wing influencers, all close to Trump's MAGA mob, that has been funded by the Kremlin for years. Its mission, handsomely paid in the millions of dollars, was to flood the American public with Putinist propaganda and lower support for Ukraine in the USA. The final goal being of course to have Trump back at the White House, and as many MAGA maniacs elected to Congress as possible, to stop military and financial aid to Ukraine, giving Putin the USA's blessing to totally invade it and enslave it. That's definitely something Kamala Harris could and should use. It's a golden opportunity on a silver platter to paint Trump as Putin's candidate and the MAGA mob as Putin's agents, shitbrained traitors. Of course it would sound better if the Biden Administration were not Putin-enablers themselves, with their insanely criminal and irresponsible restrictions on the use of American weapons by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. But Harris surely must use any ammunition karma casts her way, as the projected Electoral College is far from being favourable enough for her to start planning her Inauguration. Four of her states (Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) and three of Trump's (Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina) are too close to call with complete certainty, so the competition is still wide open.

This is actually a very tricky situation for both candidates, because there is still a path in there to a perfect 269-269 tie in the Electoral College. In which case the Constitution stipulates that the House of Representatives elects the President and the Senate elects the Vice-President. This is called a contingent election, and it has happened only thrice. In 1801 for both positions, in 1825 for the President only and in 1837 for the Vice-President only. This was before either of today's two main parties existed, and party lines tended to be blurred by very personal considerations. It doesn't work that way anymore, with the partisan divide stronger than it has ever been, and the system favours the Republican ticket. Because the contingent election is not one-person-one-vote, but one-state-one-vote. Right now the Republicans have a majority in 26 House delegations and the Democrats in 22, with two tied. The Republicans hold both Senate seats in 22 states and the Democrats in 23 states, with five having a Senator from each party. Odds are that the next Congress, the one who would be voting for the hypothetical contingent election, will have a majority of Republican states in the House of Representatives and a plurality in the Senate, and would thusly get the Trump-Vance ticket elected. Definitely not the best way to start a new term.

“Truth is subjective” is precisely the key tenet of postmodernism. This is why I refer to it as the granddaddy of all parasitic idea pathogens.

(Gad Saad)

© Grace Slick, 1976

If only you believed like I believe, baby, we'd get by. If only you believed in miracles, so would I.

(Marty Balin, Miracles, 1975)

The 435 seats of House of Representatives will also be up on the 5th of November. The previous elections, in 2020 and 2022, delivered only narrow majorities, once for Democrats and once for Republicans. The two years of the 118th Congress were marred by the Republicans granting disproportionate power to their loony Putinist MAGA faction, which blocked the biggest aid package to Ukraine so far for seven months. Alas, little did we know that the Biden-Harris Administration would then drag their heels in Ukrainian blood. First failing to deliver all of what had been approved by Congress, as $6bn from a previous Act will expire unused at the end of this month. Then denying Ukraine their unalienable right under international law, to strike back at the invading war criminals on their own soil with all they have, in the name of imaginary red lines and outdated Cold-War-era bureaucratic groupthink. But Ukraine is not at the top of the Great American Public's list of priorities, so generic polls, after many twists and turns, are now quite favourable for the Democrats.

We may have some interesting situations in Congressional districts that went against the current in 2022. Eight districts elected Democrats in 2022, that had voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Eighteen districts elected Republicans in 2022, that had voted for Joe Biden in 2020. If all realigned with their presidential vote, which will obviously not happen, that would be a bonus of ten seats for the Democrats and narrowly flip the House back to them. More realistically, it is not unreasonable to expect Democrats to lose seats in North Carolina, while Republicans would lose some in Alabama, California, Louisiana, New York and Oregon, and the rest would follow the general trends of polling. Even that low profile scenario would generate a bonus of seven seats for the Democrats, as more marginals went to the Republicans in 2022. So my projection now delivers a majority for the Democrats, albeit not a massive one.

The most recent batch of polls predicts a reversal of fortunes, with the popular vote pretty much returning to what it was in 2020, give or take a few decimal places. This would deliver a few more seats to the Democrats, given the number of marginal seats inherited from the 2022 midterms. This does not mean massive changes in policy, even domestically. Democrats have a two-tier approach to women's rights, standing strongly in favour of abortion rights, but also in favour of gender ideology. Nothing will happen about abortion, as the Supreme Court has taken the issue out of the hands of the federal government and Congress, and handed it to the individual states. Any attempts to reverse that would trigger a massive legal war lasting for years and years, that Harris will be unwilling to wage. Most 'trans issues' are also within the prerogatives of individual states, with only generic anti-discrimination legislation being decided at the federal level. The Biden Administration tried to tweak it without approval from Congress, and this has fortunately been blocked by a District Court in Kentucky, ruling on a case originally filed in Tennessee. But a Harris Administration, especially if they feel emboldened by Democratic gains in the House, will surely choose this as one of their hills to die on, in the name of wokeism.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened'.

(Joe Biden, CBS Evening News, 22 September 2008)

© John Barbata, Joel Scott Hill, Chris Ethridge, 1976

Make sure of two things. Be careful, microphones are always hot, and understand that in Washington, D.C., a gaffe is when you tell the truth. So, be careful.

(Joe Biden)

As I pointed out already two years ago, and four years ago, and six years ago, but not eight years ago as this blog did nit exist yet, the elections for the United States Senate have a life of their own, which does not always follow the pattern of other elections held on the same date. This partly because of the inbuilt inertia of the Senate, that is up by thirds every two years. So a political earthquake would need a full cycle of six years to really impact the Senate, which has rarely happened because six years is more than enough for another political earthquake to happen, but in the opposite direction. This year, 34 Senate seats are up, 33 Class 1 seats as part of the scheduled cycle, and one special election (which, you surely remember, is American for by-election) in Nebraska to fill the Class 2 seat vacated by Republican Ben Sasse, for the remainder of the term ending in January 2027. 19 Democratic seats are up, with 15 incumbents seeking re-election. Republicans have 11 seats up and 9 incumbents seeking re-election. Independents have four seats up, with two incumbents who were elected as Democrats standing down. So the punditariat's common wisdom is that it is a tough cycle for the Democrats, who can only lose a shitload of seats. But I allow myself to have a dissenting opinion on this, not on the probability of losses, but on its magnitude.

I have included the composition of the Senate after the last three elections, 2018, 2020 and 2022, to cover the full length of the election cycle. And also the current composition, to come closer to what the punditariat base their verdict on. It's easy to see here how you can draw opposing conclusions from the same facts. If you do it the English way, you will compare the expected results to the last time the same seats were up, because that's how it's done for their Council elections that also have staggered terms on a multi-year cycle. You thusly conclude that Democrats will gain seats and Republicans lose seats, because that's what the 2018 results tell you. If you do it the American way, ruthlessly pragmatically, you compare the expected results with the current composition. Which leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the Democrats will lose seats and control of the Senate. And, for once, the Americans are right here, as what matters is the political impact. And that is clearly that the next President will have to deal with a Republican majority in the Senate. All good for Donald Trump, bad news for Kamala Harris. The seat-by-seat detail shows how we get there.

Based on the incumbents, Democrats are predicted to gain one seat from Independents (Arizona) and lose one to Republicans (Montana), while Independents would lose West Virginia to Republicans. Compared to the allocation of seats after the 2022 elections, it's Democrats losing two to Republicans (Montana, West Virginia). Don't worry if you need a deep breath and a dram before it all clicks, it took me some thought to get my head around it too, as the numbers did not spontaneously add up. All of this because of the two elected-as-Democrats who then chose to sit as Independents, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and are now both standing down anyway. Independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine are counted on the Democratic side as they both caucus with the Democrats, which is pretty much the equivalent of 'taking the Democratic whip' in British Parliamentary English. These last of the independents are an interesting pair as they are both in their 80s, which puts them past shelf-date and long due retirement in the real world. But not in the United States Senate, where there is no limit on the number of terms you can serve. Robert Byrd of West Virginia sat for six years in the House of Representatives and then an uninterrupted fifty-one-and-a-half years in the Senate before dying in office at 92, right in the middle of his ninth term. Whatever they do, Sanders and King will never beat that record.

Full disclosure: I do not have absolute faith in the judgment and wisdom of the American people.

(Joe Biden, Promises To Keep, 2008)

© Jesse Barish, 1976

It required a lot less energy, intelligence, and competence to run against government than to try to make government work.

(Joe Biden, Promises To Keep, 2008)

The United States Senate is a slow moving organism as Senators serve six-year staggered terms. This pretty much rules out anything resembling a landslide. Though one does happen occasionally in some serendipitous alignment of the stars, but may take three election cycles to reach its full effect. The most sensational case was the 1932, 1934 and 1936 elections, the first three of the FDR era, that reduced the Republicans from 50 to 17 seats out of 96. Even the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s and the Conservative Revolution of the 1990s failed to match this, despite much media hype, as the losing Democrats never fell below 45 seats out of 100. But it's not uncommon to see four to six seats changing sides at any election, which does not always mean a change of Senate majority. All depends on where you start from, and usually triggers media interest in a batch of key Senate races. I have identified twelve such seats this year, nine with Democratic incumbents and three with Republican incumbents. All were last up for election according to the regular cycle, six years ago in 2018.

In this first quartet, Arizona and Michigan show how Senate elections follow a different logic from the presidential election. Both states are too close to call for the presidential election, but are predicted to elect a Democrat to the Senate on a larger share of the popular vote than in 2018. Interestingly, the Democratic Senators elected in both states in 2018 are standing down this year, which hints that the mythical incumbency bonus is not always a thing. Conversely, it seems to work in Florida, a seat Republicans gained from Democrats by a hare's breadth in 2018, and are now predicted to hold, albeit on a narrow margin again. The incumbency bonus doesn't work at all in Montana, where Democratic incumbent Jon Tester is predicted to lose his seat after three terms. Tester was elected with narrow margins all three times, in a state that usually favours Republicans, so his luck may have run out this time. Unless he can channel his 'one of your boys' agrarian populist persona again in the last mile, as that worked quite well at previous elections.

The Senate race in Nebraska is one of these uniquely American oddities that don't actually happen very often, even in the American Midwest. Independent Dan Osborn seems to have been offered the endorsement of the state's Democratic Party, and refused it, though the stories differ. Whatever actually happened, the Democrats don't field a candidate there, so we may witness a real upset on Election Night, with a really independent Independent kicking out a Republican incumbent. Then we have three cases of the American Election Paradox. Nevada and Pennsylvania are marginal swing states at the presidential level, and nobody doubts that Ohio will go to Trump. But all three are predicted to convincingly re-elect Democratic incumbents to the Senate. Interestingly, not one poll in any of the three has found the Republican candidates ahead since serious Senate polling started in mid-2023. So the incumbency bonus does work wonders sometimes after all.

The final quartet includes really interesting situations. In Texas, Canada-born Republican incumbent Ted Cruz, affectionately nicknamed 'the American Taliban' by some of his opponents because of his radical religion-infused stance on social issues, was clearly in the danger zone in 2018. He looks safer this time, but not massively, which totally reflects the state's rather weak support for Trump at the presidential election. In West Virginia, we are likely to see the Senate vote align again with the presidential vote. Former Governor Joe Manchin, who finished his last Senate term as an Independent, won this seat as a Democrat thrice solely on his personal credentials as a social and fiscal conservative in a state that has voted for the Republican presidential ticket at every election since 2000. Manchin was summat like the sole survivor of that brand of maverick conservative Democrats who roamed the American Global South unchallenged for more than a century after Reconstruction. He is retiring now at 77, and his seat will go to the Republicans in the same proportions as the state's presidential vote will go to Trump. Finally, in Virginia and Wisconsin, Democratic incumbents, who were comfortably re-elected in 2018, are facing tougher challenges this year. They don't look actually threatened, but it fits with both states' marginal status in presidential polls.

To close this chapter for now, I offer you a bonus track that was not on Spitfire. Jefferson Starship's guitarist Craig Chaquico wrote it for the Star Wars Holiday Special that was broadcast on CBS in 1978, and it does not appear on any of the band's regular releases, but only on the Gold compilation of 1979. Maybe some of the candidates will follow it to the letter, with celebratory fireworks on Election Night. You never know.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

(Sun Tzu)

© Craig Chaquico, 1978