Halloween is the season for haunted houses, campfire ghost stories, and manufactured frights.

This would result in America becoming a permanent one-party state and the end of democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.

We're in the thick of what I've come to call the silly season of an election cycle. Just days out from November 3 - but weeks into early voting - this is often the time when predictions, analysis, and expectation setting from both parties gets laundered through the media; and is most disconnected from the data. Why? Reasons vary - but I mostly find it an effort to proactively explain the expected results.