"If you can keep your head..."

When all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you

A Dementor.

There are just 15 days until Election Day, so I understand if you think it seems frivolous to begin today’s newsletter with a Harry Potter reference.

Nevertheless, I want to talk about the Dementors, the demonic creatures (used as guards at Azkaban prison) who “glory in decay and despair, drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them... Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you.”¹

I am of course talking about the Twitter/X/within-the-margin-of-error-polls/needles/ Nates/election models/betting markets/punditocracy/and endless media cycles that are making you feel like you are losing your mind these days. You know what I mean: a single swing state poll can suck your soul out; your joy and happiness can be drained by a single headline from a single pundit who is desperately trying to fill space by scavenging for a new hot take.

My advice: turn down the “noise.” Stay sane.²

Happy Sunday.

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The Noise

Deep breath everyone. The prime directive for survival over the next several weeks is to slow down and try to separate what’s real from what’s either wish-casting or doomsaying. It is as unhealthy to get high chuffing hopium as it is injecting panic and despair straight into your veins.

Keep several things in mind: This race is very close. But nobody really knows what’s going to happen, and those who might have an idea won’t tell you. Much of the punditry you see consists of (1) pundits talking to other pundits about what other pundits are telling them, (2) spin from partisans whose mission is to push out their talking points, rather than providing you with actual information.

And then there is the avalanche of bullshit out there, including the zone-flooding with polls and predictions of doubtful provenance. Take, for example, the crypto-based prediction market, Polymarket, which has been touting a Trumpian surge. But, as the WSJ reported last week, “The surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win.”

The accounts betting big on Trump—Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro and Michie—were all funded by deposits from Kraken, a U.S.-based crypto exchange, according to Arkham. They behave in a similar fashion, systematically placing frequent bets on Trump and stepping up the size of their bets at the same time, Arkham found. The oldest of the accounts was created in June, while the newest was created this month.

So, folks, they are messing with your head. And there’s a reason for that. Dan Pfeiffer explains:

This happens every election cycle, and the degrees of Republican confidence and Democratic panic are never connected to the polling averages or the facts on the ground. This is the natural state of being for the activists and operatives who occupy both parties. Every Fall, it’s the “Braggarts” vs. the “Bedwetters.” Perhaps there is a larger sociological experiment needed to determine why the irrationally confident gravitate to Republican politics and the naturally nervous lean Democratic.

Believe it or not, there are strategic reasons why Republicans publicly assert they are winning no matter what the polls say, and Democrats always hypothesize that a stunning defeat is right around the corner.

**

David Corn, for one, is sick of the unhealthy fixation on the polls.

Polls, to be hyperbolic about it, have ruined American politics. Okay, a lot has ruined American politics. But polls have certainly made American politics less enjoyable. Many of those who follow politics—and not enough citizens do—have become slaves of polling, overly obsessed with these surveys and palpitating over the slightest changes. I’m not unsympathetic. This election is prompting more anxiety than most….Still, the hyperfixation on polls is unwarranted and distracts us from other important aspects of this most important election….

The candidates are within a few points of each other in the national polls and the swing state polls. But the difference is usually within the reported margin of error. That means the poll that has just caused you heartburn may not have any value in terms of telling us what will happen on Election Day.

But stay focused on the stakes

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting dropping out or downplaying the consequences of this election. As my friend Tom Nichols wrote last week in The Atlantic:

Trump is unfit to enter the White House. He is unstable, disordered, and morally repulsive. Yet today, the election could be a coin toss. If Trump wins, in January, he will sit behind the Resolute desk, and military aides will once again walk him through the process to order the use of nuclear weapons.

No phrase or expletive is enough to capture that terrifying possibility.

My point is that you should be alarmed (very alarmed) — but not distracted by the flotsam and jetsam of the daily shit storms.

**

Ah, speaking of distractions. Yesterday, an increasingly decompensating Trump went on a bizarre rant about the size of Arnold Palmer’s junk. And with two weeks to go, the NYT is laser-focused on the big stuff.

I’ll spare you the click by sharing the raw text messages from NYT reporter Reid Epstein:

In a rather brilliant illustration of the horseshow theory of politics, both Trump World and the far-left are delighted with Epstein’s gotcha reporting, which seems to be more about embarrassing the Harris campaign than it is about me, since none of this stuff is new.

Over the last nine years, I’ve acknowledged and apologized for a lot of what happened in the Before Times.

I was indeed younger (although not actually young) and definitely stupider, and therefore said and did some rather remarkably cringeworthy and stupid things. And, for the last nine years, I’ve owned up to them — in thousands of hours of broadcasts, podcasts, and television hits.

In the years since I said stupid things, I’ve also written thousands of words in places like The Atlantic, The Weekly Standard, Time, The Guardian, the Wapo — and, as it turns out for this local paper, whose archives I believe are still accessible to a reporter of Epstein’s journalistic chops.

• Opinion | Charlie Sykes on Where the Right Went Wrong - The New York Times

• Opinion | If Liberals Hate Him, Then Trump Must Be Doing Something Right. By Charles J. Sykes - The New York Times

• Opinion | Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying, By Charles J. Sykes - The New York Times

• Opinion | A G.O.P. Tragedy in Four Acts. By Charles J. Sykes - The New York Times

• Opinion | N.R.A. and G.O.P., Together Forever. By Charles J. Sykes - The New York Times

• Opinion | Can the G.O.P. Recover From the ‘Big Lie’? We Asked 2 Conservatives - The New York Times

• Charlie Sykes Is Unsure About the Future of the G.O.P. - The New York Times

• Opinion | Retirement Tips for the Age of Trump. By Charles J. Sykes - The New York Times

And then there’s the story from which Epstein and his editors took the picture of me at my old radio station. It’s this one from April 4, 2016: “6 Talk Radio Hosts, on a Mission to Stop Donald Trump in Wisconsin - The New York Times”

MILWAUKEE — Charlie Sykes, a popular talk radio host here and leader of the “Stop Trump” movement, had spent months hammering Donald J. Trump on his show, calling him a “whiny, thin-skinned bully” and dismissing his supporters as “Trumpkins.”

So Mr. Sykes was surprised when the Trump campaign reached out to ask if the billionaire reality star turned presidential front-runner could come on his show.

The 17-minute interview last week was contentious and combative, with Mr. Sykes pressing Mr. Trump to apologize for comments he has made denigrating women, calling him a 12-year-old playground tormentor and lamenting that he had failed to introduce him to Wisconsin’s “tradition of civility and decency.”

So….

Breaking News: the Times has been consorting with a right-wing provocateur… for years now.

BONUS: Epstein quotes a left-wing troll who thinks that the Democrats should have nothing to do with former Republicans but seems to have missed (or decided to ignore) this piece by the former editor of Wisconsin’s largest Black newspaper (which was excerpted here yesterday).

• Former radio/TV talk show host Charlie Sykes and the not so radical transformation of a conservative! - Milwaukee Community Journal

Once again, thank God for the dogs.

“If you want a friend in this life, get a dog”. Fortunately, I have Eli and Auggie.

**

And, via my wife’s Substack: Five month old Auggie contemplates his new world.

1. "They don't need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they're trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most go mad within weeks."

— Description of Azkaban prison^[src]

2. The headline is, of course, from Rudyard Kipling, who had a very different view than DJT of what it means to be a man.

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!