This clip’s a little dated as you can tell by the “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” part of the chyron. Not that dated, since it was only six days ago and by then for weeks the shrill, unhinged far right anchor had been missing from the airwaves for weeks – but before she had officially been fired for leaking to the White House that her employer had been keen to avoid another $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. That very mild staleness also represents sand that fell through the hourglass since House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, within a span of about 29 seconds, sobbed that disinformation from “the left wing media” is causing Americans to feel like convicted felon President Trump and Congressional Republicans haven’t delivered on their lofty economic promises – and then assure Fox News viewers that voters are “smarter than” that and “recognize” that the midterms are a choice between “common sense” of Trumpism and blah blah blah…
Tom Emmer tends to get a little overly emotional under pressure, so he may not exactly be the most reliable barometer of sentiment within the currently ruling party. Still, for a leading Republican to be whining so plaintively on national television, his frustration so raw and undeniable, all but calling the American people fucking stupid and impressionable is in a way more of an admission of how dire he sees the situation than if he were to openly admit that he sees his party’s situation as dire.
Is it dire?
Cheaper drugs, cheaper beef, cheaper gas. Trump lines up fall affordability before Labor Day https://t.co/kwiQccwIvE
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) September 1, 2026
Probably. One would think there’d be more enthusiasm from John Solomon, a man who REALLY puts the “pro” in “propaganda,” and that, just as Emmer’s crying did, Solomon going through the motions and forcing a smile represents its own sort of honesty from the irredeemably dishonest.
Still, this is all subjective and isolated. None of it translates to those most vexing of questions in the current moment: Will Democrats flip the Senate and if yes will they win more than 51 seats, by how many seats will they flip the House, should we even litigate whether that’s a fait accompli given the current single-digit GOP majority, how many governor’s mansions and state legislatures will flip and thus position Ds to counter another expected wave of GOP gerrymanders ahead of 2028?
Now one could say the easiest answer is simply holding a mirror up to Democrats during the Biden Administration, that their leaders and aligned media – this site included – was constantly furious with Republicans, with Axios, with Politico, with the New York Times, and so on for overemphasizing feels about the economy and immigration, knowing full well that returning a degenerate tyrant to power would not meaningfully solve the first major issue (though Trump making inflation measurably worse was not on the bingo card) and would bring about a bloody, fascistic overcorrection on the second.
But Democrats aren’t Republicans. They aren’t held to the same standards by the media, by voters, by politics itself and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Life’s not fair and life’s full of the 47th President calling the deaths of 18 US military enlistees “small potatoes” in a video clip under text saying “imagine if Joe Biden had…” and the political impact is “1.8k” next to a heart under the video.
Better yet might be 2024 Republicans vs 2026 Republicans. Not that the blurry one with the normal-colored skin is now the US Attorney General, the blonde one quit because she was worn out from a year and a half of having to constantly lie, the ugly bald one is now a federal appellate judge for life, the one in the white is somehow even more insane than she was back then, and so on.
It’s the one with big forehead resigned and took an OAN job rather than face an ethics disclosure on his statutory rape/sex trafficking and then the disclosure dropped anyway and the one to his left that recently lost his primary after getting a pass from a federal criminal investigation. Remember when this was a thing, flying to New York City, taking an Uber to the courthouse on Centre Street and putting on a big floppy red tie to show solidarity with their party’s presidential nominee as he faced a jury for having covered up 95 seconds of sexual intercourse with a pornstar who later described in detail how she was unimpressed by the size of his genitalia?
Kind of hard not to contrast that with all the reporting on the crowd expected at the Republican “Midterm Convention” in Dallas this week. Texas Lt Gov Dannie Goeb, aka Dan Patrick – who also traveled to New York City and worse a giant floppy red tie to the courthouse two years ago – said this week on his “Lt Dan” podcast that it was his idea and he he pitched it to the Orange God Emperor because the two major parties have “this big convention for the presidential election, but the midterms — people talk about it. It’s very important, but there’s no convention.”
The whole point of a presidential convention is to formalize the nomination of the ticket but what do any of us regular schmucks know about the difference between performative and procedural politics. As one GOP operative told Axios they “have no choice. We’re stuck on the boat with him whether we like it or not,” which sure sounds like this guy actually has to show up.
A lot of Congressional Republicans see it differently however and are doing what they did in the spring of 2024: Exercising the choice they have on if they want to fly to another state and perform acts of subservience to their Orange Overlord. The difference is simply the end result and the “vibes” on the ground: Trump was their gleefully-slammed Four Loko in 2024, their forcibly chugged gallon of 2 percent milk in 2026. “It’s a critical time right before early voting begins nationwide. So people have made individual decisions based upon what’s best for their district and all that. But we’ll have at least an appearance by—most of our members I think will be there,” was all the excitement Jesus Dork Mike Johnson could muster when speaking to reporters this week.
Soooooo not a great sign with less than two months to go. The turnout for Trump’s trial in 2024 vs the convention in 2026 is probably the best “vibe” one we’ve got now. The best data geek take comes from veteran data geek Charlie Cook, who this week printed in his eponymous “political report” outfit that “With 64 days before Election Day (although the first mail-in ballots will go out in a matter of days), Republicans should brace themselves: The three most plausible outcomes are that it will be bad, really bad, or truly horrible. Conversely, a Democrat should at least briefly consider that the good fortune they may have in November will come compliments of the president, not as a result of much that they have done.” Tough but fair and accurate knock on Dems there.
Continued:
Let’s start with the most likely scenario: that this is a “really bad” election for Republicans, losing between 26 and 35 seats in the House, and either four or five seats in the Senate. That’s the average outcome for post-World War II midterm elections in both cases. Either one would end the Republicans’ governing trifecta.
The second scenario, merely a “bad outcome” for Republicans, would be a loss of between 15 and 25 House seats. This would still lose them their majority in that chamber, but it would be short of the average, mostly because each side holds so few seats in competitive districts; the floors for each party now are higher and the ceilings lower. After each of the last three elections, the majority party had 222 or fewer seats, the minority at least 211. Going back a bit further, in the seven elections held after President Obama’s first midterm election, the only time either party has lost more than 13 seats was the other Trump midterm election in 2018, when Republicans lost 40 House seats.
Huh. Maybe best leave it with a take of Cook’s take by Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall, who wrote “Longtime election analyst Charlie Cook has a piece up on his Substack looking at the fast-approaching midterms. It’s an interesting piece, an artifact of the moment, not simply because of what it predicts but because of the nature of the writing in which Cook seems to be grasping for metaphors about just how bad a situation Republicans face – a bit more stream of consciousness and performance art than one is used to in election analysis.” Meaning Marshall himself had to rub his eyes a few times to double check if it was real, whether Charlie Cook actually believes it.
After a dozen paragraphs of caveating, Marshall imparted the wisdom one in his line of work does with a lefty audience so badly spiritually scarred by the last ten years, writing “I’m sure there are more than a few of you saying: Josh, aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? Don’t jinx it! Don’t be overconfident. I hear you. I definitely recommend that everyone act like Democrats are behind. And for what it’s worth, in my own private and inward calculations, a big disappointment is still well within the realm of possibilities. But we’re also not witchdoctors. We can discuss things as they presently look, try to make sense of what they mean and the gods won’t strike us down. The tide of history will wash over us as it chooses to regardless of what we were expecting, what we think… just not necessarily what we do. Our actions matter,” which was as conclusive as he could get.
But National Zero can’t leave it there. The thirst on this side for more desperation demands one last shot of watered-down hopium in the form of an also kind of stale moment from Fox News’s shitty Barstool Sports knockoff Outkick: This is THIRST. Thirst like you’ve never seen before.
Read that headline. Really read it. Then skim the stupid article. Suffer through as much as you can of Outkick founder and Fox News contributor Clay Travis urging the WNBA to sign a 34 year-old who plays in high school gyms in the Mediterranean city-state of Monaco:
Then ask yourself why, beyond their own content mill purposes, they want a transgender woman in the WNBA. What might that do for one specific component of a media machine that backs a party whose previous midterm campaigns centered on caravans, rainbow fentanyl in Halloween candy, kids dressing up as furries and using litter boxes at schools, and so on. If maybe that might “put the WNBA on the ballot” and spare Tom Emmer from having to address why consumer sentiment data is tanking. If altogether this misery forms the mass of an ominous comet streaking across a black sky.