Josh Marshall
9:42 PM: The abortion referendum in Ohio is definitely going to win. It’s been called. It’s currently at about a 10 point spread and I’ve seen some saying this is a slight underperformance against expectations. But just looking at the big urban counties it seems like there are a lot pro-abortion votes still out there. This is me eyeballing the counties myself rather than cribbing from some smarter person. But it seems like that percentage should go higher.
9:36 PM: Check out this little update at 538 about Democratic turnout advantage in Ohio.
9:25 PM: Just to make this official: The Ohio state constitution will now guarantee abortion rights and other reproductive rights.
9:19 PM: Also, doing my best to avoid typos tonight. But I’m flying solo tonight and eyeballs deep in numbers. So more difficult than usual. Appreciate the congrats.
9:18 PM: Definitely seems possible that Democrats recapture the Virginia Assembly, thus sending the battleship of Youngkinism to a watery grave.
9:12 PM: I’ll restate the point I made below. You’ve got this pretty bad poll out tonight for Biden. Trump four points ahead of him according to CNN. But Democrats are having somewhere between a decent and strong night. That’s not what you’d expect if that poll is accurate. I’m not saying the poll is wrong, as in technically flawed. But is it predictive? Or is it that we’re in a strong Democratic environment but Joe Biden himself is just wildly unpopular and so is losing to Trump? I’ll try to discuss this tomorrow. But there are decent arguments for both interpretations. And for the first interpretation the argument would be that a lot of Democratic voters are expressing dissatisfaction with Biden in these polls but when it actually comes time to vote will tend to come home for him.
8:58 PM: Another key question. There’s been this idea out there that Democrats have only been over-performing in special elections because they’re super low turnout contests. But tonight’s numbers really put that in doubt. The trend seems to be continuing. Some of that is relative to Joe Biden in 2020. But some of it is relative to expectations. And “expectations” requires some explanation. Democrats are generally having a pretty good night tonight. But it’s hard to get a handle on the battle for a state legislature since there’s so little race by race polling. A lot of it is conventional wisdom and vibes. Those seem to have at least slightly overstated Republican chances. We still need more results and I still need to look at more races. My sense is largely impressionistic so far. But at least so far it really seems like we continue to be in a post-Dobbs electoral environment in which Dems tend to out-perform recent benchmarks. Just keep it in mind.
8:46 PM: Just to connect the dots, with these results there will no be an abortion ban in Virginia. Youngkin needed a trifecta. He’s not going to get it.
8:40 PM: Things are looking pretty good for Dems in the Virginia Senate. Having a hard time keeping track of all the different races. But the ones that are showing are good for Dems.
8:15 PM: Early but the abortion rights referendum in Ohio certainly looks like it’s on its way to victory. We’ve expected this to win. So that’s not a surprise. And we still need to see more. But looks like it’s going to win.
8:09 PM: There’s another poll out tonight to send Democrats swooning. CNN has Trump 49% to Biden 45%. Yet Democrats seem to be doing at least fairly well tonight. So polls vs. results. What’s also interesting is that that pattern of Dems overperforming polls seems to be continuing. So the idea that it’s just extremely low turnout elections where Dems do well with voters who also turn out doesn’t seem right. That CNN poll … yikes! But again, we need to look at the overall picture.
8:05 PM: Earlier I said that Kentucky was “widely called” for Andy Beshear. I should have been more clear that it’s the more niche watchers I follow, people like Dave Wasserman, Split Ticket etc. But it seems like many networks haven’t called it yet. I’m quite confident of those calls. But just to be clear the networks may be holding off.
7:46 PM: As we’re waiting for more results, here’s something to keep an eye on tonight and going forward. As we know, Donald Trump heavily partisanized early voting. True Republicans voted on election day. But over the last three years Republicans have increasingly decided (correctly) that this is incredibly stupid when it comes to anything but sustaining the myth of the rigged 2020 election. So they’ve started telling Republican partisans to forget all that and start voting early. While early and same day voting will likely continue to have a clear partisan split it will be getting smaller over time.
7:37 PM: Race widely called for Andy Beshear now. Not close.
7:17 PM: Continuing to see the strong Beshearmentum. As I said, he’s his own brand in Kentucky. So that doesn’t tell us a huge amount about the national environment but certainly better than him doing poorly. And yes, if he were doing poorly it would be treated as a sign of the Dempocalypse. But just trying to keep it real here.
7:07 PM: Looking very solid for Andy Beshear in Kentucky.
7:01 PM: Continuing to see good signs for Beshear. Still too early for people to be confident about the result. But the benchmarks all seem to be pointing to Beshear. The bad thing for Democrats is that in Kentucky there are Republicans, Democrats and Andy Beshear. He’s really his own brand.
6:55 PM: I’ve mentioned it many times. But my go to for election nights is my numbers analysts Twitter list which you can find here.
6:48 PM: Over the last few years Nate Silver has really leak his idiosyncratic, contrarian flag fly. But whatever Nate’s current opinions, 538 legitimate spurred a generation of young data analysts who’ve revolutionized the kind of data and analysis you can get on election nights – and the months and years between elections. Some of them started at 538 and have fanned out to other organizations. One of these is a small outfit called Split Ticket. I don’t know too much about their inner workings. But they’re really good. Tonight they’re doing a livecast that I’m watching on Twitter. You can see it here. Literally four guys and a spreadsheet. Really good. (7:18 PM: And yes, hardcore election nerd stuff. But I’m here for it. And maybe you are too.)
6:37 PM: Not much to report so far. Some decent early signs for Andy Beshear in Kentucky. But just hints. Exits look good for the abortion referendum in Ohio. But we expected that. And remember: exit polls get revised. So don’t put too much stock in any exits.
As you know there are key elections today across the country. The ones we’re following most closely are the constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights in Ohio and the legislative elections in Virginia, in which abortion is also a major issue.
One big thing to remember is that in something like the Virginia legislative races, the battle for control of the state Assembly and Senate will likely come down to a pretty small number of votes, perhaps just one or two races. A win is a win. That’s our system. But the electoral significance of a win for the future is much less clear. Given the frenzied panic among many Democrats right now, if Republicans take control of the Virginia House and Senate, it’s likely to send Democrats into full apoplexy and the national news media into a full Biden death watch. But the difference between that outcome and a Democratic win, which would led many to think that Times/Sienna poll wasn’t such a big deal after all, is likely to be a pretty small number of votes. Just keep this in mind as we go into the evening regardless of the result.
Further Observations on the Israel-Hamas War 
As with my post yesterday, this is a notebook of observations about various issues tied to the Israel-Hamas war.
Invisible War
As I noted yesterday, what amazes me is how little we know about what is happening on the ground in the battle between Israel and Hamas. The US press is filled with reporting on the domestic repercussions of the conflict; there’s lots of reporting on the civilian death toll in Gaza. Those issues deserve lots of attention. But Israel’s core goal is to physically eliminate Hamas’s de facto army, usually estimated to number around 30,000 militants; its arsenal of weaponry; and its complex of tunnels. It is very hard to find much solid information, from either side, on how much success they are having accomplishing that.
Read MoreA Jewish man in his late 60s (reports about age vary), Paul Kessler, has died after being struck by a pro-Palestinian protestor in Westlake Village (a city in Los Angeles County) yesterday afternoon.
Reports are still sketchy. But there were apparently dueling demonstrations at an intersection in Westlake Village. There was some sort of interaction between one or more pro-Palestinian demonstrators and Kessler, a pro-Israel demonstrator. The pro-Palestinian demonstrator apparently hit Kessler on the head with a megaphone. Kessler then fell back and hit his head on the concrete. Looking at all the reports together, it seems like hitting his head on the concrete may have been the injury that eventually killed Kessler. Not all reports include the hit with the megaphone. Some simply report a scuffle which led to Kessler’s fall.
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That Scary Biden-Trump Poll
As many of you have likely seen, over the weekend The New York Times and Siena released a poll showing that President Biden is running behind Donald Trump in all the big swing states with the exception of Wisconsin. Meanwhile a “generic Democrat” is polling ahead of Trump basically everywhere. Not surprisingly this has again released flurries of questions about whether Biden should be running at all or whether he should be replaced with another candidate younger and with less baggage. TPM Reader LD wrote in to ask, “Is TPM’s position still that we need to sit down and shut up if we have doubts about Biden’s appeal to the coalition necessary to win?”
Let me first respond to LD’s grievancy gripe. The dynamics of the online world make us all reflexively assume the posture of fed up little guy in a battle with the elites. But the truth is that I never said any such thing. (By the way, LD and I talked it over and now I think we’re back to being best pals.) What I said is that I don’t think anyone but Joe Biden will be the nominee and I don’t think we have any realistic way to change that. (Just why I think that you can see in the earlier posts.) So I’m focused on getting this guy reelected rather than imagining some alternative, usually fantastical scenario. As I told LD in my initial, slightly volcanic response, by all means go out and advocate for Biden to step aside. I’ll be here in what I take to be the real world trying to get him reelected. I don’t control people. I certainly don’t control Biden. This is just my interpretation of the situation before us.
But this isn’t the whole story.
Read MoreI wanted to share some thoughts on a miscellany of topics that have come up over the weekend in Israel/Palestine. Most aren’t the ‘big picture.’ Partly I’ve run out of things to say about the big picture and, to an extent, the emotional energy to say it.
These are just observations on topics just beneath the headlines.
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Are American Jews Caught in a Tide of Anti-Semitism?
It’s hard to analyze public questions with dispassion and wisdom in today’s brutal cacophony of social media driven public conversations. It’s hard to do that when you bring deeply felt and even personal commitments to the questions at hand, though I seldom write about things I don’t have strong beliefs about. I wanted to share a few thoughts about the current arguments about anti-Semitism and Zionism.
There are a lot of American Jews at this moment who feel like they are seeing a wave of unconcealed anti-Semitism that they haven’t seen in their lifetimes.
Is that really true?
As the Israel-Hamas war grinds forward an emanation of that conflict is playing out in the United States with protests and counter-protests, fights over symbolic public actions, manifestos and public letters. Each in turn spurs a public debate about just what was going on in this or that social media viral video. Social media amplifies and accelerates every cut and thrust. What is anti-Semitic, what is simply protests against a war with harrowing numbers of civilian casualties? We see the same well-worn public debates, or rather yelling matches, about what’s anti-Zionism and what’s anti-Semitism, whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
It may help to start with some definitions and history, their relevance and often irrelevance.
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When Your Country Has Its Back Against the Wall
Recently I’ve been thinking about a story I first read decades ago. In his mid-50s Winston Churchill wrote an autobiography covering his life through his mid-20s: “My Early Life, A Roving Commission.” Churchill was born well past third base. He was the nephew of Lord Marlborough, one of the most exalted British noblemen, and ended up a commoner only by a small accident of birth. But in his own world he was something of a reject. And that gives his account a sympathetic or emotional approachability it might otherwise not have.
Churchill’s father found him a disappointment, not bright enough for anything but a career in the army. It was a judgment he took little trouble to hide. When Randolph Churchill sent his eldest son to the Sandhurst military academy, the young Churchill thought his father had great expectations for him as a heroic warrior. He only later realized his father doubted he had any ability for anything else. Churchill’s mother, an American heiress, also had little time for him and spent much of her life in serial affairs. Only later did she take much interest in him, using her accumulated friendships with powerful men to give him critical assists in his improbable ascent. So Churchill is packed off to military school and ends up in India on his first deployment.
In India, he’s generally bored. He begins reading a lot and gets it in his head to be a journalist. Over the next few years, in large part through his mother’s connections and their deepening relationship, he gets a mix of military leaves, postings and journalistic assignments that lead him on a kind of grand tour of the conflict zones of the world. Over a couple years he’s in Cuba for the Cuban war of independence; he’s in Africa for the reconquest of the Sudan after the Mahdi rebellion; he catches one military expedition on what is now the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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