The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

CATOCTIN MOUNTAINS, Md. — It’s drizzling rain in the mountain woods, hovering around 72 degrees on this last day of summer. We will transit the autumn equinox about 8 p.m. tonight, and fall will officially begin — with only six weeks to go until the critical midterm elections on Nov. 8.

In many warmer states in my native South and out West, many people will cheer the coming of fall, when the hottest of the hot weather finally subsides. I love the fall too, and can’t wait to start taking more pictures when the autumn color gets here in the trees.

But I must say it’s a bit sad to see this summer go, since it has been one of the best summers for me in my life in a very long time.

When I began this media camper van semi-retirement life eight years ago, I knew there would be times when life would be a scramble and even a struggle. Nothing quite prepared me or anyone else for the struggle of dealing with a global pandemic and running from the coronavirus, on top of having to deal with Trump in the White House and Facebook fake news.

In looking back on it now, however, there’s no doubt that the physical, financial and mental preparation for the nomad life paid off in dealing with Covid. I’ve still never gotten sick or tested positive. That in itself is a feat.

But what made this summer really special was camping in a mountain forest campground with hookups without having to pay for a campsite. And of course the fact that all my calculations about how and where to escape climate change and global warming proved accurate. The Catoctin Mountains in Maryland really are on the Mason-Dixon Line of global warming. Making it here in summer really is a breeze, compared to just about anywhere you could be south or west of here.

All this time immersed in nature with the ability to be outside much of the time for the past five months has been unbelievably thearaputic, and not just to recover from all the stress and anxiety of getting past the Covid crisis. Coupled with the remote location and my self imposed avoidance of all the crazy talk on radio and television, I’ve been able to think more clearly here than anywhere in years.

So my business plan for helping this country keep democracy alive and to help the human species survive is now in near final form. It is being worked on in Portland, Oregon and will be ready to shop around in California — provided I can make it past my 65th birthday on Oct. 15, through the election and the winter in Greenbelt, Maryland, and have the funds and a running camper van to travel west in come March.

Big ifs. I will need a lot of help getting by from my friends, as The Beatles sang so long ago.

Fall Midterms

This final day of summer and the autumn equinox also come with a strong sense of foreboding.

Since I spotted trouble with the public opinion polls back in mid-July, some pollsters and pundits have come around more to my point of view.

Democrats’ prospects for the midterms have improved since the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and since President Biden signed Historic Climate Legislation. With falling gas prices and an improvement in Biden’s public approval rating, key pollsters now have the odds at a 71 percent chance that the Democratic Party may hold onto majority power in the Senate. But they still only give the Democrats a 29 percent chance of retaining control in the House, according to the 2022 FiveThirtyEight midterm election forecast.

There is much debate nationally about whether we can trust the polls, and everyone is scrambling to keep up with the data and how to analyze the trends.

The upshot is that many elections will be too close to call again on election night, so it will be days again before we know the final results. Some races will inevitably end up being challenged in court, causing further doubt and delays.

One of the most horrifying thoughts of all in studying this data is that control of the United States Senate could literally come down to one Senate race in Georgia, where Senator Raphael Warnock, who won that critical seat in 2020, could very well lose to the dumbest and most idiotic candidate to ever run for the U.S. Senate or any public office ever, former football fullback Herschel Walker.

As New York Times columnist Charles Blow said in his column on Wednesday, Herschel Walker Says He’s ‘Not That Smart.’ I Believe Him.

“I’m this country boy, you know. I’m not that smart,” Walker recently said about himself, trying to lower expectations about his debate performance in advance. “And he’s a preacher. He’s a smart man, wears these nice suits. So he is going to show up and embarrass me at the debate Oct. 14, and I’m just waiting to show up and I’m going to do my best.”

“When Herschel Walker tells you he’s not that smart, believe him,” Blow says.

In all my 40 years of covering politics, Walker is the worst candidate for any public office ever, and clearly has no more business sitting in the United State Senate than Roy Moore or Tommy Tuberville from Alabama.

Yet the latest polls have him in the lead by 2 points, 46-44 percent, still well within the margin of error, and a massive turnout from women could still turn the tide.

Real Clear Politics Latest Senate Polls

We should have no doubt that Democrats are going to turn out in record numbers again in and around Atlanta to vote against him, and that Black women will vote him down, White women in the suburbs will vote against him, and college educated Republicans will either vote against him or not vote in that race at all. What is most concerning is that Black men may very well show up to vote for him, just like they voted for Trump and against Hillary in urban and suburban areas in key battleground states in 2016.

Maybe their wives can convince them to sit this one out — for the good of the country and democracy?

That last thing we need is for Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell to take his place back as the obstructionist Majority Leader in the Senate, and for South Carolina’s Trump toady Lindsey Graham to lead the Senate Judiciary Committee.

If that happens, we might as well say goodbye to democracy, and the future of human life on planet Earth. I’m not kidding. Some of these so called “conservative” Christians can’t wait for the world to end, so they can be swept up into a mythical heaven. Little do they know that they will be left right here in this Hell on Earth they helped create.

House Races

The House is much harder to figure out, and a massive wave of voter turnout on the part of women could turn the tide here too. It’s just that many of these rural House districts have been gerrymandered to favor white Republicans, which makes it harder for Democrats to prevail.

Even if the Democrats hold the Senate, and they have the White House for two more years, if the next Congress is led by Keven McCarthy of California as House Speaker with Jim Jordon of Ohio leading the Judiciary Committee, much of the work of Congress in the past four years will be dismantled, including the Select House Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

While they won’t be able to pass much in the way of legislation that could make it through the Senate, and Biden would still have the veto power anyway, it will still make for a chaotic political story to try to cover. It will not be any fun, in other words. I may have to flee across the country to California to take a break from it all.

Please vote like your life depends on it. It probably does. I’m not kidding.

Are you retired living on a fixed income, and count on Social Security and Medicare?

If you vote Republican, you are voting to kill yourself. They’ve already admitted publicly they want to dismantle the entire Social Safety Net established by wise people in the 20th century who knew how to run a democracy.

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