WEDNESDAY: What happens when empires fall apart?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2025

The center, failing to hold: Can the Democratic Party survive—regain some measure of control? 

Everything is possible, of course, but our doubts continue to grow. We'll start with CNN's eccentric figure filbert, Harry Enten, floating a gloomy assessment:

CNN Data Chief Reveals Dems’ Chances of Taking the House in 2026 ‘Have Gone Plummeting Down’

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten on Wednesday explained how the Democratic Party’s chances of retaking the House of Representatives have sharply declined in recent months.

During a Wednesday morning segment, Enten took a closer look at the highly-anticipated midterm elections in 2026...

As Enten noted, the prediction market Kalshi had the Democrats’ chances of retaking the House at a staggering 83% in April 2025. Since then, however, the GOP has taken a big out of that lead.

According to Enten's source, Democratic chances of retaking the House have slid to 63%, which of course is still more than half. We have no idea if there's any value to such assessments. But when we go looking for the juice, we don't have much luck seeing it.

How do large, sprawling empires come undone? In this case, along came the democratization of media, and there went the republic. People can't tell the wheat from the chaff, just as it ever was.

We'll start with this limited, dumb example:

Baier Claps Back at MAGA Fans Over [Fox News Channel's Rejection] of Trump Pentagon Policy

Fox News anchor Bret Baier clapped back at MAGA fans upset about the network joining a protest of the Trump Pentagon’s proposed press policies, even politely responding to a viewer who called him a “moron.”

The network is among those protesting the new policy that was announced by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and which sparked immediate outrage from the Pentagon Press Association as an “unprecedented message of intimidation.”

The Fox News Chanel has joined the various enemies of the people in rejecting Pete Hegseth's proposed restriction on coverage of the Defense Department. That leaves Bret Baier dealing with incoming from clueless MAGA supporters out in Red America—from people who don't understand that they're being conned again, through certain factual representations, by the disordered Hegseth.

On balance, we the people were never up to the challenge, on our own, of knowing where the fraudsters were. To cite one example, the forerunner to the FDA was created to guard us against our tendency to fall for the various music men., with their various "elixir remedies" and their famous "diphtheria antitoxin derived from tetanus-contaminated serum," which was "originally collected from a horse named Jim who had contracted tetanus."

Our gullibility didn't mean that we were bad people. It meant that we were people people. 

Today, though, as an empire comes undone, Robert Kennedy Jr. has come along with his endless versions of that serum originally collected from Jim. 

All these years later, with many voices ringing in many ears through the wonders of various media, many of us still can't see that something is totally wrong with the guy. We can't see that something is wrong with him, and the press corps doesn't like to discuss the personal histories of people named Kennedy, even when the life stories in question are as disordered as his. 

Meanwhile, a segment has emerged in Red America which is willing to say and do anything. This is a new example:

Mike Johnson Doesn’t Hold Back as He Slams No Kings Rally: ‘We Call It the Hate America Rally’

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) mockingly dubbed the upcoming “No Kings” protests against President Donald Trump a “Hate America Rally,” with Johnson saying the crowd will be littered with a bunch of communists and terrorist supporters who loathe their own country.

The speaker shared his prediction while talking to reporters about the government shutdown on Wednesday morning.

“I encourage you to watch—we call it the ‘Hate America Rally’—that’ll happen Saturday,” Johnson said. “Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet ya see pro-Hamas supporters, I bet you you see Antifa-types, I bet ya see the Marxists in full display. The people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.”

We'd call that a silent secession, delivered in a measured tone of voice. The sitting president tends to be louder. When he called the Democratic Party "the party of Satan," the finer people at the New York Times knew that mustn't report that remarkable fact, not even on page one.

For whatever reason or reasons, a certain portion of Red America has decided we're no longer a single people. Borrowing from a sensational Hollywood script, they're mad as Hell about various matters and they aren't going to take it any more. 

Nor are they willing to say that they've stepped over the side of the ship.

Over here in Blue America, our journalistic, academic and political elites thoroughly lack the juice. In all honesty, Kamala Harris was never presidential timber—she proved that in 2019; also, almost no one ever is—but she won't stop stampeding around and begging for ridicule by saying things like this:

Kamala Harris Bizarrely Boasts She May Have Been ‘Most Qualified’ Presidential Candidate ‘Ever’

Former Vice President Kamala Harris submitted that [some] people have said she is the “most qualified” presidential candidate in the history of the United States during a recent interview with reporter and Pivot podcast co-host Kara Swisher on Oct. 9.

That's a foolish thing to say, but she says such things on the regular. That doesn't make her a bad person. It means she isn't presidential timber, like almost everyone else, including almost every known United States senator.

Almost no one ever is! Joe Biden wasn't presidential timber—he proved that in 1987, then again in 2007—but a succession of accidents put him in the White House in 2021, and after some unexplained, rather strange policy decisions and an insistence on running again, we now have the reigning tsar of the Middle East back in the Oval again and seizing control of the nation's reins of power.

He has filled his playroom with broken toys, with histories of extremely strange childhoods. His niece says he's likely a sociopath. Our press corps has no established language with which to discuss such facts, and it has no desire to do so. 

Over here in Blue America, our elected officials don't know how to "talk pork to the people," to quote Al Gore's father back in 1970. You saw the recent meltdown by Katie Porter—or given the way information flow currently works, it's possible that you didn't. 

We're hoping that Candidate Spanberger can holds on in Virginia in the wake of what the AG candidate once said and did. Is New Jersey still looking good? We feel the encroachment of doubts.

Let's switch allusions at this point, moving from The Second Coming (Yeats) to Sunday Morning (Stevens). 

Sunday Morning

[....]

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe

[...]

The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

We threw in the Palestine line simply to provide currency. But as you watch people like Porter crashing and burning, we Blues are flailing in the wake of "that old catastrophe" known as the subjugation of an entire people on the basis of that old monster, "race."

(Also, and good God: extensive backlash RE sexual / gender politics, with us Blues pretending that we can't understand what some of the objections are.)

The old catastrophe can still control the ebb and flow of American feeling. Now that the media have been democratized—now that every D-list comedian is selling some serum derived from Jim on some podcast somewhere—we find that we the voters, Red and Blue, can't tell wheat from chaff.

That's true among us Blue voters too. Over on the Fox News Channel, new clown cars roll up to the set every hour. This is the way things call apart when large empires can no longer hold.

Over there, inside Silo Red, there are plenty of valid complaints about what has come from our own Silo Blue. In Silo Red, the tools simply don't know how to regulate their anger and their sense of entitlement / privilege 

Over here, in Silo Blue, we don't know how to see the various things we've done over the long sweep of the past sixty years. We aren't the people we've claimed to be. Despite our occasional college degrees, it turns out that we're people people too!

When he called the Dems "the party of Satan," the New York Times ran and hid. So too when Tucker said he'd been attacked by demons right there in his bed with his dogs. When Noem said, two separate times, that ICE caught one "illegal" who was so bad—who was such a cannibal—that he tried to eat his own arm so he could escape his restraints.

She told the story two separate times, on TV! Also, the president's magic bed! But as our organs avert their gaze, we Blues are still living with the 1988 Jon Lovitz line—I can't believe we're losing to this guy!

For the record, Enten still has it at 63%. One final question regarding the slightly eccentric Enten:

Goodness gracious! Where did CNN get that guy?

Full disclosure: Harry Enten seems like s good, decent person. Full and complete info here.