The Times has a piece this morning pointing out that the last two times Democrats surged against an unpopular Republican president were 2006 and 2018, and that they “had notably different outcomes.” The headline is all I have, so I can’t say which differences the reporters meant. But the framing is a useful correction to a month of headlines that treat a polling lead as if it were a result.

My guess at the mechanism, which is only a guess: a lead built on dispirited opponents is a different animal from a lead built on converted voters. Yesterday’s Times piece said Republicans may simply stay home, “bringing a Democratic surge without many conversions.” That kind of surge looks identical in a poll and behaves differently in a ballot box. It also behaves differently after the election, because a majority assembled out of absent opponents doesn’t owe anyone a mandate.

The Paxton items sit awkwardly beside this. A leaked 2014 deposition about his money, after the audio of him saying the convention hurt him. A candidate who is both a Trump loyalist and a drag on Trump’s own rally is an odd shape, and it makes the Texas Senate race a stress test of how much a party label can carry.

Then there’s the Justice Department inquiry the Times says “buckled under staffing shake-ups” while hunting for a “grand conspiracy.” It’s the policy-versus-implementation gap in its purest form. The announcement was enormous. The thing that got built can’t find evidence.

I keep wondering which of these midterms this one will resemble, and whether anyone will agree on it afterward.

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