Save Us: Former President Donald Trump is out on the campaign trail predicting America’s destruction if Republicans don’t deliver a massive electoral win tomorrow.  Describing America as “a country in decline,”  Trump said to thousands of cheering supporters in western Pennsylvania,  “If you want to stop the destruction of our country and save the American dream, then on Tuesday you must vote Republican in a giant red wave.” 

  Democrats, led by President Joe Biden as well as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are warning that abortion rights, Social Security and even Democracy itself are at stake. 

  In Philadelphia Saturday, Obama said, “I understand that democracy might not seem like a top priority right now, especially when you’re worried about paying the bills.” He went on, “But when true democracy goes away, we’ve seen throughout history, we’ve seen around the world, when true democracy goes away, people get hurt. It has real consequences.”

  In Arizona’s Maricopa County, for instance, election workers have received as many as 100 recent threats including menacing emails, social media posts, and photographing employees arriving at work. Going back to the summer, threats included “You will all be executed,” and, “Wire around their limbs and tied & dragged by a car.”

 The NY Times reports that on the internet, Russia has reactivated the trolls and bots that it used in 2016 and 2020 to influence the election and turn voter opinion against military support for Ukraine. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a warning about  disinformation spread by “dark web media channels, online journals, messaging applications, spoofed websites, emails, text messages and fake online personas.” 

The Situation: RealClear Politics Projects that Republicans will pick up four seats in the Senate. In the House RCP projects between 14 and 48 Republican pickups. 

  We should note that in Georgia an all-time record of 2,288,889 voters cast early ballots. Early voters tend to skew Democrat.

  Nate Cohn says in the NY Times, “Everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a fairly close race for the House to something like a Republican rout is well within the range of realistic possibilities on Tuesday.”

  Here are the latest average of polls in some critical races.

Senate:

-Arizona, Kelly (D) +1.0 (Tossup)

-Georgia, Walker (R) +0.4 (Tossup)

-Pennsylvania, Oz (R) +0.1 (Tossup)

-Nevada, Laxalt (R) +1.9 (Tossup)

-New Hampshire, Hassan (D) +0.8 (Tossup)

– North Carolina, Ted Budd (R), +

-Ohio, Vance (R) +5.0

Governor:

– Arizona, Lake (R) +1.8

– Michigan, Whitmer (D) +4.2

– Wisconsin, Michels (R) +0.4

– Nevada, Lombardo (R) +2.6

– New Mexico, Lujan Grisham (D) +4.0

– Oregon, Drazan (R) / Kotek (D) Tie

– Minnesota, Walz (D) +4.3

– Texas, Abbott (R) +9.2

– New York, Hochul (D) +6.2

– Pennsylvania, Shapiro (D) +10.7

– Georgia, Kemp (R) +8.1

– Florida, DeSantis (R) +11.5

The War Room:  The Ukraine government plans power blackouts for the Kyiv region and at least six other parts of Ukraine to ease the strain on the war-damaged power grid. President Volodomyr Zelensky warned of further Russian attacks on the power infrastructure.

  Russia carries out most of its attacks on the Ukraine interior with drones and missiles. But the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny, says Russia has lost more than twice as many aircraft in Ukraine as it lost in the 1979-89 Soviet war in Afghanistan. He says the Russian pilots are poorly trained and the losses are likely to continue. 

 The Ball Game: The Houston Astros won the World Series in Game 6 at home Saturday night, beating the Philadelphia Phillies 4-1. They last won the Series in 2017 under a cloud of suspicion that they had cheated with sign stealing. The Astros played with a vengeance, in part to prove that they could win it clean.

The Running Game: On an unusually warm fall day, Brazilian runner Do Nascimento was so far ahead of the pack in the New York Marathon they couldn’t see him. But then he collapsed in the heat.  

  Evans Chebet, a Kenyan, later told a reporter, “I felt bad for him, “but I had to continue the race.” Chebet maintained a steady pace to win. He also won the Boston Marathon last spring.

  Three Kenyan women also were the top three finishers in their event. It was the first marathon for the winner, Sharon Lokedi, a Kenyan who raced at the University of Kansas.

The Obit Page: No cause of death has been given yet for the death of the former teenage acting and singing sensation Aaron Carter, known for the hit song “I Want Candy.” He was found dead Saturday at his home in Southern California. He was 34.

  Carter was the younger brother of Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys who said, “Addiction and mental illness is the real villain here. I will miss my brother more than anyone will ever know.”

The Spin Rack: The Powerball jackpot has grown to $1.9 billion. The next drawing is tonight. Get out there and waste your money. — Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady surpassed 100,000 career passing yards in yesterday’s 16-13 win over the Los Angeles Rams. He has played 374 games. 

Below the Fold: As many as 55 high school students in El Paso, Texas will have to re-take the college admissions test known as the SAT or the ACT. It’s not because they did badly, or forgot to fill out the name block. It’s because the tests they took flew out the back of a UPS truck.

  School officials are figuring out what to do, but some of the kids who had planned to apply for early admissions won’t be able to do it.

  The College Board responded with a statement saying, “Which choice best describes what happens in the passage?” 

-30-