Tomorrow is primary day in a number of states. Michigan is the state that will get the most attention. There are several big primaries but the Senate one on the Democratic side will get by far the most attention. It pits Abdul El-Sayed against Rep. Haley Stevens. Unless the polls are wildly far off the mark (not impossible in a primary election), El-Sayed will win handily. About a half dozen polls conducted over the last two weeks show El-Sayed winning by 10 points or more, many in the mid to high teens. Meanwhile the balance of general election polls show Stevens very narrowly beating former Rep. Mike Rogers while El-Sayed very narrowly loses to him.

This is not a large point but it’s one worth articulating explicitly.

Politics, like life, isn’t fair. One of the surest examples of this is that presidencies rise and fall with gas prices. Those presidents usually didn’t really do anything to make them rise or fall. And it’s quite difficult for a president to pull them lower, except on the margins. Donald Trump’s recent, ongoing slide tracks closely with gas prices, repeating a decades old pattern — even down to this later (?) part of the Iran War in which faux ceasefires and collapses drive short term ups and downs. But Trump is close to unique in being more or less 100% to blame for them. Current gas prices are almost entirely because of the war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump started that war. And, as I argued last week, he started it more or less out of the blue.