WASHINGTON • Brace yourself, average Missouri voter. You’re being dragged into margin of error territory.
Polls, predictions, prognostications, percentages, probabilities, pronouncements.
This is the political world for the next 19 days.
You’re being force-fed from that six-pack created by the political class. It’s a diet where poll after poll has described the pivotal Show-Me Senate race as so close only the proverbial margin of error will decide it.
Not enlightening, but it feeds the horse race narrative that overtakes everything these days. It does keep the pollsters and predictors in business, though.
Too bad for the country, because there are greater things to discuss in the closing days before the election.
People are also reading…
Like how to bring more economic growth to the middle class, what to do about a runaway federal deficit or the threats to our democratic processes by hostile states. Health care, the direction of the Supreme Court and the long-term viability of Social Security and Medicare are all worth discussing.
So is the paucity of civility in our political discourse, a condition fostered by a president for whom no thought appears to be untweetable.
But now we’ve entered the realm of attack-ad and quip out-of-context. The negatives are gushing messages into your ears and eyes. And profits, big profits, into the scriptwriters and ad buyers.
Brace for it. It’s here, and there’s not much you can do about it from now through Nov. 6.
Except vote.
And to understand this:
Missouri’s nationally watched U.S. Senate race between Claire McCaskill and Josh Hawley will close as the perfect storm of 2018.
It is, today, more of a microcosm of what is going on nationally than it was when it began so many months, and so many millions of dollars, ago.
Show-Us, Missouri.
The race features a veteran Democrat in McCaskill ostensibly clinging to a centrist, “New Democrat†model more befitting of the mid-1990s and Bill Clinton’s deal making, while a whole left wing of her party is rushing left toward socialism, Trump resistance and Elizabeth Warren’s identity politics.
McCaskill faces Hawley, an upstart Republican who rarely questions Trump’s swinging of a wrecking ball through the political status quo of 2018. Hawley is a new-generation aspirant, a young man in a hurry, in a state that has been trending red.
And speaking of margin of error: A misstep or misstatement could swing it. McCaskill has been searching in vain for months for a Todd Akin moment from Hawley.
Republicans are touting surreptitiously recorded conversations with mid-level staffers by a Project Veritas employee who lied his way into McCaskill’s campaign infrastructure as evidence McCaskill is not the centrist she says she is.
Neither scenario has sparked much beyond inside-baseball arguments.
Through McCaskill and Hawley, we see the national struggle in both of our national political parties:
• Are Republicans the party of Trump for the time being, or for the longer haul after he leaves office? If Hawley wins, will he be a rubber stamp for Trump’s agenda, as McCaskill asserts, or will he push back on things he has mentioned on the campaign trail, such as federal spending and the deficit?
• Are Democrats about to purge what’s left of their centrists? With Heidi Heitkamp imploding in North Dakota, and with other Democratic senators, like McCaskill, besieged in states Trump won, will Democrats see this election as a cue to move even more decisively left after Nov. 6 as their already-simmering presidential nomination process goes to full burner?
A word of advice over the last 19 days: Pay no attention to the national polls, and the TV talking heads pronouncing over them. They’ve learned little from 2016; they’re fixating on macro when this nonpresidential election, more than most, will be determined on a state and congressional district level.
Politics is not all numbers. As in baseball, metrics don’t explain everything. If Trump has taught a lesson that even his bitterest opponents agree on, it is that politics is, in its core, about people — their passions, biases, beliefs, struggles, indecisions.
All imperfect and human, all inherently with a margin of error.
That’s why it’s always best to stop paying attention to the predictors, best to focus on the issues and records of the candidates, and in the context and history in which they run.
Election Day is coming soon enough, and then we’ll all know.
Hawley vs. McCaskill: Coverage of the 2018 Senate race
Post-Dispatch coverage of the 2018 race for Missouri's U.S. Senate seat.
If Missouri voters elect Attorney General Josh Hawley to the U.S. Senate, the state's governor will be charged with filling the vacant attorne…
Polls in advance of Election Day show a tight contest between McCaskill and Hawley. The race could determine which party controls the Senate i…
Less than two years into his first term as an elected official, Hawley, a Stanford- and Yale-educated attorney, is trying to ride a wave launc…
This very much feels like her last campaign, win or lose, and if you listen hard and often enough, it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion.
Super PACs aligned with the Senate Republican leader and minority leader have spent a combined $43 million so far in the Missouri Senate race,…
The results of the midterm elections are likely to have a major impact on a broad array of other health issues that touch every single American.Â
Top Missouri Republicans are calling for a federal probe into anonymous direct mail pieces seeking to influence voters.
Trump appeared at a rollicking campaign rally in Columbia, home of the state's largest university, in an airline hangar draped in American flags.Â
“Hate will continue to grow if we do not speak up, and speak out,†Biden said, to shouts of “tell it Joe.â€
"That was a big red flag to me," one attorney who still works in the office, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliati…
Hawley, during a campaign stop on Wednesday, dismissed suggestions in a Kansas City Star report that consultants paid by his state campaign fu…
Trump will have 11 campaign rallies in eight states over the last week of the campaign, and two will be in Missouri.
While Greitens' tenure has faded as a campaign issue in recent months, McCaskill's campaign manager David Kirby said Tuesday he wanted to "ref…
Republican strategists believe anything they can do to tie McCaskill to images of activists interrupting the hearing, confronting Republican s…
Invitations show that the event is expected to take place at Hangar 350 at the Columbia Regional Airport, and that it is open to the public to…
McCaskill did not relent in her criticism of President Donald Trump, who she said knowingly spreads false information to gain political points…
Issues from immigration to health care aside, so much of what is driving debate and voter passions this fall circulates around this question: …
In this episode of Inside the Post-Dispatch, state government reporter Kurt Erickson breaks down some of the top issues on the ballot in Novem…
A day after a Cole County judge tossed out a key piece of the law, McCaskill said Hawley, the state's attorney general, should “stop making it…
Missouri’s megamillions U.S. Senate race is attracting financial support from the big names of Hollywood and Silicon Valley for Sen. Claire Mc…
The initiative would bump the minimum rate to $8.60 an hour starting Jan. 1, and increase it every year by 85 cents until reaching $12 in 2023.
Now that Hawley is running for U.S. Senate against Democrat Claire McCaskill, his two years as attorney general — the only public office he’s …
Critics say Hawley’s administration bled staffers and dedicated limited resources to firing salvos toward the federal government. They say he …
In the ad, two black women discuss the bitter confirmation process of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was alleged to have sexu…
The candidates clashed on questions about the growing deficit, gun restrictions and the Affordable Care Act among other issues.
It’s a tried-and-true Democratic message: That Republicans are coming after your Social Security and Medicare.
Missouri’s nationally watched U.S. Senate race between Claire McCaskill and Josh Hawley will close as the perfect storm of 2018.
Project Veritas, a conservative group that produces "sting" videos intended to embarrass liberal organizations and media outfits, took the videos.
The Clean Missouri initiative, known as Amendment 1, would limit lobbyists from giving public officials anything valued at more than $5 in an …
Hawley began October with more than $3.5 million in the bank to McCaskill’s slightly less than $3.2 million.
That independent spending, separate from what Hawley and McCaskill are spending on their own campaigns, has already surpassed $41 million, mor…
The poll by Reuters, Ipsos and the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics shows Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley supported by 45 …
In Missouri, Montana, Indiana, North Dakota and West Virginia, the success or failure of nuanced arguments about Trump could determine control…
Within a half hour of the vote, Hawley sent out a fundraising email praising Kavanaugh and asking for donations. Â
Commercial banks have so far donated a total of $2.5 million to U.S. Senate Democrats in the 2018 election cycle, the largest sum since 2008, …
Hawley was one of five Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate invited to the event hosted by financier and GOP donor John Childs, Politico …
But in the state’s U.S. Senate race, neither candidate has emphasized combating climate change.
Obama twice lost Missouri, the last time in 2012 by almost 10 points to Mitt Romney. President Trump won the state by almost 19 points in 2016…
In the ad, a widely circulated Sen. Pat Roberts quote describes McCaskill as a senator he seeks to get bipartisan things done. The Republican …
Hawley, as the state’s lawyer, has added Missouri to a Texas lawsuit that would end the federal Affordable Care Act, which requires insurers t…
McCaskill lauded the “good news†of an outside group partially funded by undisclosed donors aiming to register 100,000 black voters in Missouri.
Following the line other Republicans, Hawley accused Democrats of “deliberate maneuvers†to delay and obstruct Kavanaugh’s nomination, and sai…
Their disagreement — expressed by Hawley on Twitter and by McCaskill in an interview with the Post-Dispatch’s editorial board — was a microcos…
Political committees aligned with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and former President Barack Obama are aiming digital messages to blac…
There’s “no county more important in this entire state than the one we are sitting in right now,†Republican Senate candidate Josh Hawley told…
Trump made the future of Kavanaugh and the federal judiciary a centerpiece of his rally in Springfield, which was designed to support the stat…
McCaskill, said her call was based primarily on what she said was Kavanaugh’s position that seemed to favor the survival of “dark money†in politics.
The process “is exactly the kind of thing that voters in my state, at least, say is wrong with Washington, D.C. and needs to change,†he said.
McCaskill is the second-biggest recipient of insurance company money across the board in this election cycle so far, according to the nonparti…
Trump will be stumping for Republican Senate candidate Josh Hawley, Missouri's attorney general.
The 10 votes below are markers in determining the validity of her claims of independence — and of Hawley’s assertions that she is usually a re…
In a forum sponsored by the Missouri Press Association at a ºüÀêÊÓƵ County hotel, the two contenders along with an independent candidate and…
McCaskill reported an adjusted gross income of $266,096 in 2017. Hawley, who filed jointly with his wife reported an adjusted gross income of …
With less than two months to go in the 2018 race for a pivotal U.S. Senate seat, the two major party candidates refuse to say whether they wil…
Like a handful of other Senate Democrats up for re-election in states President Donald Trump easily won in 2016, McCaskill is facing a Kavanau…
Likely voters come down in a 47-47 percent tie when asked just about Hawley and McCaskill in the NBC News-Marist poll.Â
Rather than join calls for Trump’s impeachment, McCaskill said special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into obstruction of justice and potentia…
Data compiled by the group from Federal Election Commission reports indicate that about $23 million has been spent so far, slightly over half …
Hawley says he has not decided whether he will vote to raise the minimum wage in November.
The ad, however, leaves out context. Advocates, law enforcement and survivors of sexual violence have for years sounded the alarm on sexual as…
The insidious nature of dark money is everywhere these days in Missouri politics.
In a speech to pastors and church members in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, the Republican nominee said he favored getting rid of the Johnson Amendment, which bar…
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching a television commercial highlighting McCaskill's “no†vote on President Trump’s tax reform plan.
McCaskill met with President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, but offered no hint on whether she supports or opposes his confirmation.
“The negotiation over tariffs should not be an excuse for you to kill American jobs and consolidate Deacero’s nail manufacturing to Mexico,†H…
“I think it’s going to be tricky for both of them, but from day to day I change my mind on who’s going to have the tougher time,†said Jeremy …
If some politicians didn’t mistake “knowing what the average person goes through†with “I’m one of you,†they wouldn’t fall into the perpetual…
In response to Post-Dispatch questions last week, McCaskill made her positions on six high-profile questions taht will be on the November ball…
"What I see clearly is that where we get things done is in the middle, when we work together, when people compromise. And we don’t have, frank…
From his early days as a law clerk to his life in private practice, the Republican has focused on legal cases where religion and the law inter…
The pick was not a surprise after the group passed over McCaskill in her two previous elections, but McCaskill had hoped the organization woul…
“The media say a lot of things that people disagree with, but I don’t think they’re the enemy of the people, no,†Hawley told a Post-Dispatch …
The two U.S. Senate candidates tweeted post-primary insults back and forth in fights over McCaskill’s wealth, Hawley’s Yale law degree and the…
The Senate race is at least partially a referendum on Trump.
Hawley and McCaskill challenged each other to a series of one-on-one debates.
President Donald Trump waded back into Missouri’s pivotal U.S. Senate race Tuesday, speaking at the national convention of the Veterans of For…
Even before Hawley won the Republican nomination, ads pit him as the likely winner to face off against McCaskill in November.
So, who is the most authentic Missourian this week?
Her re-election chances this fall could depend heavily on how she votes on the nomination, how she explains that vote, and how her Republican …
The fundraising was more than twice the amount raised in that time by Hawley — with 85 percent of McCaskill's money coming in donations of les…
Hawley’s ad tries to connect the fight over Trump’s choice to Missouri’s pivotal status in U.S. Senate races this year.Â
But Hawley himself was in Beverly Hills over the weekend, meeting with the Republican National Committee about campaign finance issues, the sa…
“I certainly expressed concerns for the ag community on this looming trade war,†McCaskill said, “and what a devastating impact that could hav…
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., whom Hawley is trying to unseat, "is the face of Washington's failure," Hawley said then.
“Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) said her campaign was ‘hitting the road’ in an RV to tour the state,†reads the first sentence, “but public f…
The mix of issues this time around also is familiar: health care, tax cuts, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court, trade.
Democrats argue that the governor’s decision doesn’t wipe away their claim that Hawley is part of a corrupt and distant Republican leadership …
The poll by Missouri Scout, a nonpartisan political news service, found McCaskill leading Hawley with 48 percent of the vote, to his 44 percent.
A new Morning Consult poll also shows McCaskill with the worst job-approval ratings of any incumbent Democrat running in states won by Preside…
Hawley’s campaign pointed out he is raising money at a faster pace than Democratic challenger Jason Kander did in 2016.
As the prospect of Democrats taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November elections looks increasingly possible, Greitens’ …
The Mason-Dixon poll has McCaskill at 45 percent, Hawley 44, with 11 percent undecided.
With seven months to go in the campaign, McCaskill has now raised roughly $17 million for her re-election campaign.
Missouri Democrats and Republicans have essentially switched sides on the “one of us†debate.
Republicans jumped on the news, trying to frame it as McCaskill raising money with an ex-president who never won Missouri, while taking money …
Hawley will have to work pretty hard to out-country McCaskill. Every time she runs for office, she turns into Country Claire, harkening back t…
Surrogate targets Hillary Clinton and Gov. Eric Greitens are in the spotlight of the latest negative blasts.
Trump, in Missouri to raise money for Hawley, called McCaskill "bad for Missouri, and bad for the country." But he barely spoke about Hawley. …
"Washington, D.C., disrespects us. It disregards us. The political class doesn’t even pretend to listen to us. The liberal elites who call the…
In the latest indication of the volatility of the race, McCaskill's 2 percentage point lead (42-40) over Hawley in the new poll by Gravis Mark…
The poll result put her in a more precarious position than all but two Democratic incumbents in the Senate.
On major votes, ranging from taxes to health care to abortion rights, McCaskill is often tethered to her party’s line, although she says that’…
One of Hawley’s top supporters, former U.S. Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, hinted Tuesday that he believes those rumors might stem from incum…
“You know what I’m talking about, the 1960s, 1970s, it became commonplace in our culture among our cultural elites, Hollywood, and the media, …
Hawley raised less than $1 million in the fourth quarter of 2017.
McCaskill, D-Mo., had about 107,000 donors, of which about 90,000 had not given before, McCaskill’s campaign reported.
McCaskill had robust fundraising in 2017, pulling in roughly a million dollars a month. Even though she tries to disown them, outside spending…
President Donald Trump traveled to Missouri to whip up support for the Republican tax plan — and in the process put himself squarely into the …
“You cannot be all things to all people,†McCaskill added. “That is the one piece of advice I’d give Josh Hawley. Take a stand.â€
McCaskill portrayed voters as not necessarily attuned with all the back and forth of Washington, D.C., but still worried about their futures, …
McCaskill, a Democrat, has criticized Republican tax ideas she says will coddle the rich at the expense of the middle class. But she has said …
McCaskill's fundraising set a Missouri record for the July to September period.Â
Trump thumped Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 in Missouri, and the sheen of Washington, D.C., remains toxic for the state’s politicians.
In the video, he talks in general terms about issues on which he believes the status quo has failed, including jobs, taxes and health care costs.Â