When I was still quite young my then-lover and I worked at all times like twelve bastards on the newspaper and one of the elections we so wore ourselves down reporting, writing, and editing on the voting that when the day of the actual voting arrived we had not gone to bed until near onto dawn and so when some hours later we awoke we were both too drained to get up and go to the place of the polls and there make our own votes.

What, we figured, anyway, difference, could it, possibly, make?

Very late that night, we listened, in horror, clasping one another, in fear and trembling, as a radio man soberly intoned that our county supervisor, a woman out of a time tunnel, a Confederate war widow of some type, who believed everything not White, Old, and Mean, should be beaten senseless with a branding iron, and then be tossed down a well, had escaped having to appear in a runoff, by a single vote.

We swore each other to eternal secrecy, she and I, that never, would we breathe, a single word, of the harrowing Fact, that because we had lolled around in bed, in sex and drugs and rocknroll, Mary Suratt, she had survived, to serve another term.

But then, even later that night, thinking about it, coming on another dawn, I thought: what in the sam hill alice in wonderland kind of voting could it be, that it would make a difference, that a couple of kids, didn’t flail out of their libertine wallow, to trail on down to a poll?

A voting that’s a nonsense, that’s what.

[video:https://youtube.com/watch?v=OdNNjCHGixE]

Gee, poor telecom. They don’t get to outright fleece us altogether so I guess they’ll have to be sneakier. They’ll just have to add more ‘service charges’ on top of the one(s) they already have.

Supreme Court declines to take on net neutrality challenges, in blow to telecom industry

When I went looking for Hedges's weekly column today I rather expected him to be onto the next Bigger Picture item that he is always adroit at tackling.

So it was a little surprising that he chose instead to lead with an example of the midterm races in his state of NJ, the one between disgraced Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and Republican Bob Hugin.

He never disappoints.

Talk is cheap. Thus the following essay is offered with no expectation of financial reward. I will publish my MidTerm prognostications and invite other swampers to do the same. In view of the fact that none of us has absolutely ANY facts to back up your predictions--yet--please submit your guesses in the comment section. Then--and only then--if you are correct, YOU will get an opportunity to baffle us all with brilliance while explaining your methodology.

Old-fashioned traditional election day is tomorrow. Meanwhile, here in Arizona, many of us have already taken advantage of early voting. My wife and I mailed in our ballots last Friday. We fervently look forward to Wednesday, when the incessant blare of non-stop election commercials will mostly end.

By "win" I mean "Democrats take over the house".

Here's my humble opinion:

1) For the Democratic establishment it won't mean much. If the drubbings in 2010, 2014, and 2016 can't cause a leadership change, or even an autopsy, then nothing will.
If anything they will blame progressives and embrace a neoliberal center-right agenda even more.

The Democrats abandoned the working class decades ago. Of that there is no doubt.
But it's only since 2016 when the divide between the party leadership and the base gotten so large and obvious that it can be measured.

For starters, let's look at what has changed with the voters.