#caravans

Paul Waldman at Public Notice:

As the 2018 elections approached, President Trump found the perfect issue to reverse the usual pattern in which the president’s party suffers a midterm blowout at the polls. Acting on the advice of his pollsters and his own infallible political instincts, he warned voters that a “caravan” of murderous immigrants was headed through Central America to the United States, ready to lay waste to our country. “Every time you see a Caravan,” he tweeted two weeks before the election, “think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms!” It didn’t work. The election was a rout: Democrats won back control of the House (gaining 41 seats), flipped seven governorships, and netted hundreds of seats in state legislatures. With midterm campaigning now in full swing, it’s worth remembering what happened eight years ago.

Despite the general chaos emanating from the administration in Trump’s first term, relatively speaking, things in the country at the time were going okay. Inflation was low, the economy was creating jobs, he hadn’t started any new wars, abortion was still legal in much of the country, and almost no one had ever heard the word “coronavirus.” Yet voters still went to the polls in extraordinary numbers — turnout was higher than in any midterm election in over a century — to give Donald Trump a hearty smack in the face. The difference between 2018 and 2026 is that not only has Trump become an even more repellent personality, his actions have made everything worse. In fact, it’s hard to imagine what more Trump could do to enrage the electorate and ensure his party’s defeat in November. It’s enough to make a vulnerable Republican member of Congress ask if Trump wants them to lose. As one GOP operative told Politico, “Everything is made more difficult by the nonsense coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” But if it were just “nonsense,” it wouldn’t be so bad. What Trump has done is much worse.

[...] Tip O’Neill’s old dictum that “all politics is local” has been turned on its head, and now all politics is national. Constituent service, differences between candidates, and matters of ideology have receded in voters’ calculations; while it doesn’t hurt an incumbent to be good at her job, there’s little she’ll be able to do to stop a wave election. That’s exactly why Republicans are getting so nervous. Any president has only so many tools he can use to help his party do well in a midterm, beyond just having a successful presidency that makes people pleased with the status quo. He can dole out some federal goodies and campaign for candidates in tight races — but that only helps if he’s popular. And Donald Trump is not.

[...] Nevertheless, control of the House — which Democrats are now almost certain to take — is vital, and the Senate is in play as well (though to win it, Democrats will have to take every contested race). In addition, there are 36 governor races, as well as hundreds for offices including attorney general, secretary of state, and others, plus thousands of state legislative contests. All of them will be affected by what happens at the national level, not only because people increasingly see even local races through a national lens, but because a voter who goes to the polls to give the finger to Donald Trump is more likely to vote Democratic all the way down the ballot. Every Republican vote, on the other hand, represents a voter saying “I’m pretty happy with how things are going.” That anyone at all could say that right now is depressing, but Trump almost seems determined to make sure as few people as possible will say it in November. And there are still six and a half months of foreign misadventures, ill-conceived economic policies, and juvenile social media beefs between now and the election.

The more D&D stuff I read, the more I feel relief and maybe a little enthusiasm when I see Rick Swan’s name in the credits. He’s a reliable writer who almost always delivers solid material that lands squarely on the premise. Such is the case with Caravans (1994), the final box in the Al-Qadim line. The last handful of products strayed from the central theme of Arabian Nights-inspired adventure, but Caravans returns there for the curtain call.

There are multiple djinn, for instance — I might be forgetting some, but I think the last three boxes has one djinn appearance between them. One TOTAL. That’s not enough djinn! Further evidence that Caravans returns to the unusual source material: the first scenario is called “The Talking Tent” and another scenario involves a giant skeleton flying on the back of a giant skeletal roc. There is a fortune-telling carpet. It’s pretty great, even if it is still fairly events-based. It doesn’t really have an adventure frame, either, other than these all take place in caravan-friendly regions of the high desert. Which is a relief! Most of the latter box frames felt perfunctory anyway.