It's a crowded field this week. Let's run the tape.
- Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-5). Where is she? Federal agents searched her D.C.-area home on October 12 as part of a criminal investigation reportedly tied to her immigration paperwork, and by most accounts, nobody has actually seen the congresswoman in public since. Her husband got caught walking the dog and snapped at reporters who asked if she'd left the country. A since-debunked rumor claimed she'd fled to Morocco. I don't believe that one for a second — but I do find it fascinating that a woman who is "generally very visible," in the words of people who cover her daily, apparently decided this was the week to go quiet. Taylor Swift used to ride around NFL stadiums hidden inside catering carts to dodge the cameras. Is Ilhan hiding somewhere in the halal cart capital of Times Square, two states over from the controversy, waiting for the news cycle to move on? When she finally did resurface Thursday, her statement called the president "the pedophile protector" and declared she "will not be silenced." Nobody was trying to silence her. She just wasn't talking. There's a difference, and I think she knows it.
- Shane Gillis. Evidently the most reviled man in America this week, having committed the unforgivable sin of looking at what some women wear to the gym and having an opinion about it on Saturday Night Live. He said he hadn't been to the gym in so long he "didn't know women just dress like whores now." Crude word choice, sure — I wouldn't have reached for it either. But strip away the word everyone's fixated on and ask the actual question: if you walk out in public in something so form-fitting it looks like you left half your wardrobe at home, did you think nobody would notice, or stare, or have an opinion? You wanted to be seen. That's the whole point of the outfit. We all have clothes we don't wear outside the bedroom for exactly this reason. And sweetie, if you're furious at a comedian for judging your gym shorts, go ask the women standing next to you on the treadmill what they think of your outfit sometime. They've got opinions too — they're just not being handed a microphone and a national audience for it. Nobody's telling you what you can or can't wear. It's your life, your closet, your call. But the rest of us watching you walk by get to have thoughts about it too. That's not misogyny. That's just how eyes work.
- Abdul El-Sayed's voters. An Instagram creator who goes by @SavannahACraven reportedly spent an afternoon in line at early voting interviewing El-Sayed supporters — mostly older white progressive women, by her account — and asked them to name a single one of his policy positions. The best most of them could muster was "healthcare for all." Asked how they'd pay for a program running into the trillions, the answer came back instantly: "Make the rich pay their fair share." Friends, there isn't a tax rate on earth, applied to anyone, rich or otherwise, that gets you there. No economist has found a number under 100 percent that closes that gap, and a 100 percent rate applied broadly enough to fund it would have to reach well past "the rich" and straight down into the middle class. None of the voters interviewed seemed to know that. None of them seemed to know much about his past Muslim Brotherhood family associations either, or seemed to care if they did. That's not a policy disagreement. That's a candidate's support built on a slogan instead of a spreadsheet, and voters who never bothered to check the math before showing up to vote on it.
- Harry Enten. CNN's own data guy, delivering what might be the least Democrat-friendly data point of the entire midterm cycle, dropped inside a network that has spent months selling a blue wave. Enten's math says if public polling misses Republicans by just a few points — well within the historical range of past polling errors — the GOP holds the Senate 53-47 and keeps the House too. He's said some version of this multiple times now, and each time it lands like a bucket of cold water on his own network's narrative. Bad week to be the house data analyst delivering inconvenient arithmetic to a newsroom that would rather not hear it.
So that's the field. A congresswoman who went missing right when the cameras showed up. A comedian getting dragged for stating the obvious. A candidate's own voters unable to explain the math behind his signature promise. And a CNN analyst whose honesty keeps undercutting his own network's storyline.
Tell me who had the worst week — ThatKEVINShow@gmail.com. I read every one.
And whatever you decide, don't just complain about any of it. Go vote.