We begin with The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson who frames the importance of the upcoming midterm elections:
In four short weeks, the nation faces the most important midterm elections of my lifetime. This year, the choice is between our democracy as we know it — messy, incremental, often frustrating — and a hard-edged performative populism fueled by resentment, misogyny and racism. To have any hope of building a better future, we must make a stand here.
It is hard for me to write those words because one of the first things I was taught as a young journalist was to be wary of superlatives. But the truth is plain — and painful: Democrats must keep control of at least one chamber of Congress, and preferably both, because the Republican Party has become a danger to the American experiment.
More analysis of the midterms from Jeet Heer at The Nation:
[E]ven before the election, it’s clear that MAGA will be in charge of the GOP. This will be even truer if the GOP sweeps the midterms. [...]
Imagine an entire Congress dominated by this faction. It’s a recipe for more government shutdowns, more meaningless investigations like the Benghazi hearings, more spurious impeachments like the 1999 war against Bill Clinton. It also promises that in 2024, secretaries of state like Marchant (if he wins) will thwart the will of the people.
At The New York Times, Jamelle Bouie warns of what happens when election deniers “let their freak flag fly”:
Here’s a prediction: If Donald Trump is on the ballot in 2024, there is little reason to think that the United States will have a smooth and uncomplicated presidential election.
Just the opposite, of course. Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state who are aligned with Trump have promised, repeatedly and in public, to subvert any election result that doesn’t favor the former president if he runs again.
Meanwhile, over at The Daily Beast, Kelly Weill analyzes disinformation attempts by Peter Theil:
In the past, much of the network has been limited to news websites. But as the 2022 election season comes to a head, some of those publications have ventured into print.
Illinois residents may not have subscribed to newspapers with titles like the Chicago City Wire or the DuPage Policy Journal. But they’ve arrived on doorsteps across the state, with front-page headlines like“It’s going to be literally the end of days” and “No more boys and girls? Pritzker family leads push to replace ‘myth’ of biology.”
“Despite different names for the publications, all feature nearly identical stories,” the Chicago Tribune reported last month.
The papers, many of which attack Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, are imprints of LGIS, a company Timpone launched with Florida-based Republican strategist Dan Proft. Proft, who did not return a request for comment, runs the “People Who Play By The Rules” political action committee.
On a final note, in case you missed it, here are highlights from yesterday’s Ohio debate between Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance:
And here’s how to watch. more upcoming key debates.