Get the all the facts before you make up your story, says the bible. Well, not the bible but still a good rule of thumb. It’s one Herschel Walker’s campaign didn’t go with apparently. The Daily Beast has a follow up story to the abortion story which triggered the (I think even more damaging) attacks from his son. Walker categorically denied the story and claims he has no idea what woman might be leveling the accusations. Since Walker appears to have had quite a few out of wedlock children, one might snark that … well, maybe he doesn’t know who she is. After all, there are so many.

This is quite a statement in Walker’s defense from many vantage points.

Newt Gingrich: “I think he is the most important Senate candidate in the country because he’ll do more to change the Senate just by the sheer presence, by his confidence, by his deep commitment to Christ,” Gingrich said. “You know, he’s been through a long, tough period. He suffered a lot of concussions coming out of football.”

My friend Steve Clemons, now of Semafor, says that RNC officials believe the Dobbs backlash is fading and popular concern is refocusing on inflation and economic woes. That’s one strain of argument we’ve heard a lot recently and it’s what you’d expect people at the RNC to say. But it’s also potentially in line with recent polling which has showed some ebb of the Democratic momentum which started in the aftermath of Dobbs and accelerated with declining gas prices.

Meanwhile, today OPEC+ — led by Saudi Arabia — announced a substantial lowering of production which seems certain to spike gas prices. The White House had been pulling out all the stops trying to prevent that, unsuccessfully. File that away in your folder of whether Saudi Arabia is an ally of the United States or of the GOP.

All this said, the actual picture on the ground seems muddled.

From TPM Reader JS …

I think you’re spot on that climate is the underlying stressor. Since we live in such a complex society, it’s usually hard to see down to the fundamentals how easy it is to disturb. Covid showed that just a few failures can rapidly spread. We’re never that far away from a collapse.

But what impressed me about a book I recently read about the collapse of Sub-Roman Britain was a phrase the author repeated, and I’m not sure it’s his, anyway, it was “the four horseman ride together.” In other words, some natural disasters happens, say, a famine, and then disease results, then war, and so on. I’m struck that, apparently, one day, the government just stopped sending bullion to back coins, and a warlord took almost the entire army to Gaul to where they had a mint to get the soldiers their pay and just never went back. 

Because of the Holiday, no podcast this week. We’ll be back next week.

Axios reports that after 18 hours to think over a highly credible report that the abortion restriction absolutist paid a girlfriend to get an abortion, they decided he’s good to go. After the same time to evaluate his son’s claims that he abandoned his family and repeatedly threatened to kill his him and his mother, Walker’s then-estranged and now-ex-wife, Republican powerbrokers similarly decided Herschel Walker is the man to make America great after all. So it’s full speed ahead. Prominent abortion groups have also reaffirmed their support for Walker. Ronna McDaniel, Rick Scott along with family men, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump are all vouching for Walker’s character and say it’s on to victory.

I’ve heard directly and indirectly over the last couple days from various campaigns , strategists, pols that abortion rights is the issue Democrats need to close on, how they’re shifting this or shifting that. Is it too late? I’m not sure. Of course, it’s not like abortion hasn’t figured prominently in this election cycle. But it certainly hasn’t been placed at the center of the campaign as it could have been, and perhaps still could.

It is such a breath of fresh air, seeing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson say from the bench what the 14th Amendment actually says. “It’s not a race-blind remedy,” she says, in something of an understatement. But we can actually go well beyond this since so much of modern jurisprudence, mostly but not only from the right, is based not only on ignoring the context and plain text of the 14th Amendment but pretending that the real Constitution — albeit with some additions and fresh paint jobs — is the one finalized in the first Congress as the first ten amendments. The Civil War amendments are not only not race-blind. They reflect a larger realization and aim: that the whole state thing just hadn’t worked out.

Twitter has flagged as “sensitive content” an abortion ad from former Congressman Max Rose. (This means that if you’ve set the check box that you don’t want to see images of crime scenes and beheadings the ad won’t show up for you.) This is the always hotly contested Staten Island seat, currently held by Republican Nicole Malliotakis. The ad is about a woman dying after she was unable to receive an abortion when her life was in danger.

Here’s the video.

Yesterday I noticed the irrepressible Josh Kraushaar’s report on the Senate campaign. He’s one of the most notorious of DC reporters, now predictably working for Axios. He was positively giddy at newly good news for Republicans hoping to retake control of the Senate. But he’s not altogether wrong. Kraushaar focuses on two races — Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Democrats’ Mandela Barnes is now running behind Ron Johnson and John Fetterman’s once huge margin over Mehmet Oz has shrunk to mid- or low single digits. Kraushaar says Republicans are making gains by switching the discussion to crime. (Generally, he goes with his perennial hobbyhorse: Democrats are too liberal to win elections.) But I don’t think crime politics is precisely it.