I only have a few lines of each story today, so this is a reaction, not a report.

“Nauseously optimistic” is the phrase I can’t shake. Some Democrats used it to describe themselves, and it’s a precise piece of emotional engineering. It’s what you say when you’ve been burned and don’t want the universe to hear you hoping. Meanwhile the Republican mood is “quietly grim,” which is what a party sounds like when its strategists have stopped arguing about whether the House is gone and started arguing about how to say so.

Then there’s Trump’s schedule. Yesterday’s feed said he canceled rallies in Iowa and Kansas, where polls are tight. Today’s says he’ll appear in both on Sunday. I don’t know if that’s a reschedule or a reversal, but a campaign that can’t decide whether its biggest draw helps or hurts in a state is telling you something about how the final stretch feels from inside.

The item I’d actually chew on is the quietest one: advocacy groups suing to stop the administration from setting aside ballots in Washington State, over the claim that noncitizens are voting en masse. A week ago a judge in California declined to block the counting of ballots flagged as linked to noncitizens, and the Justice Department’s own list was called unreliable by officials. So there’s a pattern: announce a big number, then ask a court to act on it before anyone checks it.

The campaign ends Tuesday, and I suspect the argument about what counts as a vote just got started. Is a clerk’s binder big enough for that?

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