Poetic Justice
Buck Banks | Oct. 19, 2026
The United States and Ukraine no longer seem to be in synch,
After Trump lifted Russia sanctions with a grin and a wink.
Trump coordinated it with Putin,
Who ramped up the drone shooting,
After Trump and Elon Musk throttled Ukraine’s Starlink.
Verbatim
“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), at the January 6 hearings.
“You not only have to question the judgement of a man who would take a woman — an elderly woman, out of the car she was living in out of the parking lot in a church in Pennsylvania with her cats and put her in front of a video camera, and make that a TV ad in the gubernatorial race. We know what Vivek Ramaswamy is, and voters have judged him as such. But here is the real problem going forward. J.D. Vance stood 100 percent with Vivek Ramaswamy. Not only as a person and a candidate, but he stood behind that advertisement. And Vivek Ramaswamy will be forgotten. He is going to be sent to the dustbin of history. But J.D. Vance is going to be remembered, I think, for this campaign, for more than anything else, he stood by that ad, a man who wrote a book on Catholicism, stood behind that ad. It’s a disgrace.”
— Former Gov. Chris Christie (R), on ABC News.
“One woman at a rally in New Jersey told me last week that she was ‘nauseously optimistic.’ That may capture a lot of people’s last-minute jitters.”
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), quoted by Axios, on what Democrats feel ahead of the midterm elections.
Numerati
3,824
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats, reports Florida Phoenix. Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle. Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity.
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$1.4 billion
“Prediction markets about the 2026 midterm elections have surpassed $1.4 billion in trading volume as Election Day fast approaches,” CNN reports. “This year has seen massive growth in the prediction industry, where people can bet on real-world events like sports, entertainment and the weather. While small-scale election markets have been around for a while, they gained traction before the 2024 presidential election and have seen huge numbers for the 2026 midterms.”
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-35 points
G. Elliot Morris: “Low-knowledge 2024 voters say they backed Trump by 8 points, according to our poll. Today they give him a net job approval of ?27, a 35-point shift. Compare that to Trump’s approval rating among voters who got both questions right: These voters backed Harris by 1 point and now give Trump a net ?24 approval, a 23-point shift. … Low-information voters have moved against Trump at a higher rate than high-information voters, by 12 points.”
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31%
President Donald ?Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s ?performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in ?either of his presidential terms, the four-day poll showed.
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63% to 38%
KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”
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