I’ve been dunking wildly on the on-going implosion of the British political system. I am going to continue to do so — both because I enjoy it and because “implosion” is an accurate representation of what has happened. But there’s one uncomfortable reality I need to address. Liz Truss came into power on the votes of a minuscule slice of the population which is traditionalist but marginal to the current UK — 70k or 80k mostly older white conservative men from Southern England. She pledged to defy reality with old school British tenacity. Everything blew up in her face and now after six weeks she’s out on her ass as the shortest tenured British PM in history. (Some say in three hundred years but people before 300 years ago weren’t PMs.)

Here’s my saying “hahahaha.” But let’s be clear that this is a political system working. Yes, shambolically and after years of dysfunction. But this is a political system working and one working in ways ours seems increasingly unable to.

I really, really want to see it change. And it may change. We’re still two and a half weeks before Election Day. But I don’t think there’s much question now that there’s a late GOP surge in the polling data. You see this showing up clearly in the congressional generic ballot numbers. Hopefully, the Dems’ Senate majority can withstand that. There are still many advantages the Dems have in those handful of Senate races that will make a difference. We don’t know this is the last shift. And the polls remain close enough to make the assumptions of the pollsters as critical as last minute trends. But Democrats need to leave absolutely everything on the field.

Bloomberg reports that administration officials are for the first time considering national security reviews of Elon Musk’s increasingly international-man-of-mystery business deals stretching from Silicon Valley to Crimea. The specifics turn on the effort to buy Twitter, now with what appears to be an opaque group of foreign investors as well as his on-again, off-again hints that he might block access to his StarLink telecommunications system over Ukraine.

Of course all of this is playing out with the backdrop of his increasingly pro-Russian comments about the war in Ukraine.

Last night the ABC affiliate in Phoenix reported this incident of what appears to be harassment of a voter at a ballot drop off box. The parking lot is crawling with “activists” who are the legally prescribed number of feet from the ballot box. But one guy drives up in a car and allegedly accuses the voter of being a “mule.” Here’s video the ABC15 posted last night on Twitter.

You’ve likely seen some headlines today about the trove of ex-Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s texts that were obtained by reporters for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and, later, Politico. AJC’s article, published last night, detailed the messages’ highlights, and said they came from an anonymous source. The 59-pages worth of messages are from Loeffler’s final weeks in office before she was defeated by Sen. Ralph Warnock (D-GA) in the January 2021 runoff election.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss polls, debates, and late-breaking stories as the midterms approach.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

I’ve been laughing at and really endlessly entertained by Liz Truss’s momentary pratfall Prime Ministership. There’s much discussion of the UK’s now apparently chronic political instability. There will soon have been five Tory Prime Ministers in the last seven years. In the 31 years between 1979 and 2010 the country had four Prime Ministers. Having “reclaimed its sovereignty” in 2016 with Brexit, the country is now firmly shackled to the judgment of the bond markets. I laugh at this chaos; you may laugh. It’s funny. But any laughter should come in the realization that all of this is the impact and inevitable collateral damage of the Brexit vote in 2015 in which the UK simply decided to light itself on fire for no reason at all.

You can look at the averages and — unfortunately — they keep ticking down for Democrats as we careen toward the big day on November 8th. Of course, the election is already in full swing in numerous early voting states. To keep up on early voting trends I always recommend following Michael McDonald who is the source on this topic. You can follow his feed here on Twitter. (He’s not the Doobie Brothers keyboardist, but still first rate.)

The fast-ending premiership of the comical Liz Truss appears to be on the verge of finally concluding. Reports have gone out that she will resign imminently and a lectern is being wheeled out in front of Number 10.

Late Update: And it’s official, she resigned. Immediate resignation as head of the Tory Party. New party election within the next week, at the conclusion of which she will resign as PM.

Back during the 2020 Senate election in Georgia, the campaigns of the two soon-to-be-defeated GOP senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, were both accused of digitally altering images of their Democratic opponents in negative campaign ads in racist and antisemitic ways.