Congress’s top four – Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and their respective Minority Leader counterparts Mitch McConnell and Hakeem Jeffries – were asked by Punchbowl News how they see November playing out for the teams, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. All of the the strengths were anodyne – McConnell says its the map, Schumer and Johnson say their candidates are solid, Jeffries says it’s House GOP dysfunction – and three of the weaknesses were predictable – McConnell says “candidate quality,” Jeffries and Schumer say the GOP’s lies distorting the Biden Administration’s and Congressional Dems’ record of accomplishment.

Johnson also cited “lies” as a weakness for his side but didn’t sound quite as, uh, reality-based as the two Democratic leaders. “I would say the level of misinformation that’s out there. I feel like the entire establishment media, mainstream media, obviously, is against us and our candidates. Kamala Harris gets an in-kind donation on prime time on almost every channel, every single night. And they’re constantly criticizing our nominee for president and elevating her and so that has an effect on people who are not fully informed,” Johnson said, as if there isn’t one person in particular who could maybe be to blame for the media portraying him as a criminally insane fascist sociopath.

“Really, I think Kamala Harris has run a campaign based on a fantasy. And if this election is about record and not rhetoric, if it’s policy not personality, there’s no way that our side can lose,” Johnson continued. “Kamala Harris never answered the first question she was asked in the debate: ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago.’ She can’t answer that because everybody knows the answer.” This is as if Trump didn’t scream about Haitians eating dogs and cats in the debate.