SELF GOVERNMENT: "The Texas Senate race is cooked!"

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2026

Morning Joe, sanguine assessments: We Americans no longer vote on Election Day. We've made it easier (and better) than that.

Back in 1960, Americans did all vote on Election Day, if they chose to vote at all. (Or if they were allowed to do so.)

In the opening pages of his iconic book, The Making of the President, 1960, Teddy White described the way the electorate rolled on that famous Election Day—in the famous presidential election pitting Senator Kennedy against Vice President Nixon.   

We don't vote this way today. With a focus on the candidate destined to win, White's famous book starts like this:

CHAPTER ONE
WAITING

It was invisible, as always.

They had begun to vote in the villages of New Hampshire at midnight, as they always do, seven and a half hours before the candidate rose. His men had canvassed Hart’s Location in New Hampshire days before, sending his autographed picture to each of the twelve registered voters in the village. They knew that they had five votes certain there, that Nixon had five votes certain—and that two were still undecided. Yet it was worth the effort, for Hart’s Location’s results would be the first flash of news on the wires to greet millions of voters as they opened their morning papers over coffee. But from there on it was unpredictable—invisible.    

By the time the candidate left his Boston hotel at 8:30, several million had already voted across the country—in schools, libraries, churches, stores, post offices. These, too, were invisible, but it was certain that at this hour the vote was overwhelmingly Republican. On election day America is Republican until five or six in the evening. It is in the last few hours of the day that working people and their families vote, on their way home from work or after supper; it is then, at evening, that America goes Democratic if it goes Democratic at all. All of this is invisible, for it is the essence of the act that as it happens it is a mystery in which millions of people each fit one fragment of a total secret together, none of them knowing the shape of the whole.   

What results from the fitting together of these secrets is, of course, the most awesome transfer of power in the world...  

Given the way we do it today, many millions of people have already voted in weeks. No president will be elected today, but at least as a matter of theory, Democrats are trying to create that "awesome transfer of power" within the legislative branch of the federal government.

They're doing so in an attempt to rein in the sitting president, whose conduct now seems to become stranger with each passing day.   

In Sunday morning's New York Times, an attempt was made to describe that behavior. In print editions, that "News Analysis" piece sat right there, at the top of page one. 

Of course, given the way we do things today, most subscribers to the New York Times now read the paper online. 

Tomorrow, we'll start to discuss the problems which existed with this latest front-page report. For today, we thought we'd show you what was said on today's Morning Joe program—what was said about the likelihood that the Democratic Party—known as the "Democrat Party on our largest "cable news" channel—might take control of the Senate.   

On MS NOW's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough routinely presents the most intelligent conversations in American broadcast news. Today, a gang of analysts went way out on several limbs concerning the likely outcome of some key Senate races.   

Example:

Who's going to win the Senate race in Texas? At 6:58 a.m. Eastern, Politico's Jonathan Martin offered this striking assessment about the race between the Democrat, James Talarico, and the Republican, Ken Paxton:

MARTIN (11/3/26): I can't find any Republican in Texas who thinks Ken Paxton is going to win. I think the surprise could be if Ken Paxton does win at this point.   

I mean, Talarico, in the early voting—

It's pretty clear where this is going in Texas. I think Greg Abbott will hang on for governor. But I think the Texas Senate race is pretty clearly cooked at this point.   

Say what? According to Martin, he can't find a single Republican insider who thinks Talarico is going to lose. And when Scarborough threw to John Heilemann in Austin, this is part of what Heilemann said about what he has found in Texas:

HEILEMANN: I couldn't find any Democrat or Republican who doesn't think James Talarico is going to win that Senate race.

Those were rather bodacious assessments. Meanwhile, Scarborough himself was soon saying this:

"Kansas is gone!" 

According to Scarbrough, Kansas is gone for Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent. Scarborough said it's been gone for a week—and that Kansas insiders all know it.

Those predictions are subject to error—but they're remarkably definitive. And when Scarborough sked his panelists for their overall view of today's Senate races, this is what they said:   

Entire Morning Joe Panel Predicts Democrats Win AT LEAST 53 Senate Seats...

Morning Joe is calling its shot. An entire panel on the MS NOW morning said Democrats will not only win on Tuesday night, they will romp.

At the end of a segment kicking off the program’s 7 a.m. ET hour, host Joe Scarborough went around the horn to solicit predictions from a quartet of his regulars: Politico’s Jonathan Martin, John Heilemann, Mark McKinnon and Claire McCaskill.

All four predicted that Democrats will not only take control of the Senate, but they will do so by a healthy margin.  

“I think 53-47 is probably the safe place [to land],” Martin said.   

And so on from there, with Mediaite providing tape of the predIctions. 

Once again, the pundits were spotted on limbs. Their predictions ran like this:

Senate seats to be held by Democrats
Jonathan Martin: 53 seats
John Heilemann: 54 seats
Mark McKinnon: 55 seats
Claire McCaskill: 53 seats

To our ear, those were surprisingly sanguine predictions. Starting tonight, we'll see if those stars knew their stuff.

In the larger sense, no one knows the way this national challenge is going to turn out. Yesterday, down at the Reflecting Pool, the president's behavior was very strange—and whatever becomes of his party tonight, he'll be in charge of many government functions for the next two years and two months.

 That strikes us as a dangerous state of affairs. Ho is it being reported?

Tomorrow: Highly visible on page one (unless you're reading online)