I write this knowing this advice will come too late for many. We are currently in the midst of "debate season" where candidates for office face each other across a stage and trade political blows. Many such debates have already happened, which is what prompted me to write.

In these debates, Republicans have adopted a: "No I'm not, you are!" playground response on the issue of abortion. Republicans, obviously, are the ones trying to strip rights and freedoms away from women. This is, again pretty obviously, extreme. The only question Republicans really face about their abortion position is: "How much of an extremist are you?" Which Draconian laws do they support? Which exceptions would they allow to these Draconian laws?

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Republicans have always had a good chance of winning at least one house of Congress in the upcoming midterms. As things stand, it looks a lot more likely that they'll take control of the House, but they could also win the Senate. So what would they do if they did win control of either one or both houses? Probably not a whole lot, in terms of substantive legislative goals, since Joe Biden will still be sitting in the White House (with a veto pen at the ready). But Republicans aren't really campaigning on substantive legislative issues much anymore, because they have followed the lead of their base and are much more interested in style over substance. What we can definitely expect from a Republican Congress is spleen-venting, and lots of it.

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Maybe he'll actually take the bait, who knows?

Maybe Donald Trump's planet-sized ego and rampant unbridled narcissism will convince him that there just is no possible downside to testifying in front of the January 6th House Select Committee. This isn't just idle speculation, as hours after yesterday's hearing New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman posted the following (which has since been similarly reported in multiple media outlets):

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The House Select Committee investigating January 6th presented the ninth in their series of televised hearings today, although (as we were informed at the start by Chair Bennie Thompson) this was not technically a hearing, but rather a business meeting for the committee. The reason for this change became evident at the end, when the committee voted publicly and unanimously to subpoena the testimony of Donald John Trump.

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The moral divide between the two major American political parties has become pretty stark. On the one hand, you have a party which stands for respect, inclusiveness, diversity, and multiculturalism; and on the other you have a party which no longer even feels the necessity to cloak its racist language in "dog whistles" anymore. Dog whistles are so passé, at least over on the Republican side of the aisle today. All manner of bigotry (including racism) is now not something for the GOP to condemn or punish or even be ashamed about, instead it is to be either enabled (by saying nothing) or actually celebrated in front of throngs of cheering crowds.

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We seem to be entering the homestretch of the midterm election cycle, and I should begin by pointing out that this term is loaded with meaning. A "homestretch," of course, is the last part of a race, generally a horse race. So that's what the political media reports on -- the "horserace" aspect of the contest. Or, put more simply: the polls. But the reputation of professional pollsters has taken quite a beating over the past six years, as they have been proven surprisingly wrong time and time again. So everyone should cast a very skeptical eye over all the polls we'll all be hearing about over the next month. Because the recent polling miscalls (most notably in 2016 and 2020) can all be boiled down to one key cause: pollsters cannot accurately predict who is going to turn out to vote.

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We were reminded of an old political saying this week: "Only Nixon could go to China." Only a president who was long known as a staunch anti-communist warrior could open up American relations with communist China in the depths of the Cold War, without being painted as some sort of pinko/commie back home. This week's update might read: "Only Biden could pardon weed crimes." Joe Biden, before he became Barack Obama's vice president, had spent much of his life in the Senate being the biggest, baddest drug warrior around. He actually coined the term "drug czar" and worked with the Reagan administration to make the Office of National Drug Control Policy a reality. He's never been pro-legalization in any way, a fact that didn't exactly help him in the 2020 Democratic primaries. But there he was yesterday, taking the first steps away from the War On Weed that any U.S. President has ever taken.

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The Republican Party has gone through a number of complete 180-degree ideological turns in the past few years (since Donald Trump's hostile takeover bid), but one of the most shameless is how they have now perfected a tactic they used to roundly criticize Democrats for using: "Playing the victim card." A few decades back, when marginalized groups started demanding real political power (or even just "a seat at the table"), Republicans would heap scorn on them for "playing the victim card." To them, this meant these marginalized groups were trading on the injustices they had suffered throughout history to get favored status that would dilute the power of straight White males. They rarely came out and admitted it in such stark terms, but that was at the heart of it. By their rights, these marginalized people should have just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and achieved the American dream and power without any help or consideration from society at large. As far as Republicans were concerned, playing the victim card was a bad and weak and shameful thing to do.

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We've long thought that America is at her best when disaster strikes. We've thought this since the massive 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, in fact, which we rode out in San Francisco. And we saw firsthand that when life is disrupted, it is disrupted equally. Everyone is affected, so everyone puts aside all their differences and just pitches in to help in the immediate aftermath. Maybe this is a rosy-tinted view, but it still holds mostly true.

Case in point is Hurricane Ian, which just devastated Florida and seems on its way to devastate the Carolinas next. Ian has been one of the biggest hurricanes in American history already (fifth-largest, from one news report) and we haven't even begun to comprehend the scope of the damage or how long it will take to recover from it. The damage isn't even over yet, and most of the East Coast will at least get some heavy rains before Ian disintegrates.

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A U.S. senator just got his comeuppance this week, and it really couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy. Senator Joe Manchin was forced to pull his pet bill (that would have greenlighted a pipeline in West Virginia), due to lack of bipartisan support. Because he backed down, the government now appears to be in no danger of shutting down this Friday. Both the Senate and the House appear to be on a glide path to passing a short-term budget deal that will kick the "government shutdown" can down the road to mid-December, at the end of the lame-duck Congress. So all around, it's good news: the government will continue to be funded, and Joe Manchin has now gotten a taste of his own medicine.

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