Whistling Past the Midterm Graveyard

Why people should value less-than-bullish political forecasting over stabbing at the dark and relying on media polling.

Announcement: Patriot Susan from Colorado sponsored 35 copies of The American War on Election Corruption (my new book), one for each member of the Colorado Senate, to be distributed by local patriots. If you’d like to do likewise for your state leadership, please contact me at skeshel@protonmail.com.

---

The word “graveyard” has special meaning in my analytical journey. In 2010, I landed in “the Graveyard of Empires,” otherwise known as Afghanistan, and spent a year building the most widely disseminated intelligence summary in Western Afghanistan. This was important, because for the decade prior, almost no coalition forces occupied RC-West. The Obama surge changed all of that, and required everyone to learn fast so the enemy could not gain an advantage.

The Graveyard of Empires was dubbed such because the rugged land of Afghanistan is practically unconquerable. The British had failed to tame it over centuries. The Soviets failed in the 1980s, withdrawing with tails between legs, and despite all the examples given by history as to why military operations in Afghanistan are a waste of time unless you’re willing to extinguish all human life, the United States plunged in for two wasted decades. It turns out a bearish assessment, focusing on reality and properly evaluating the difficulty of operating a counterinsurgency in a mountainous nation the size of Texas, may have saved us a lot of heartache and lost lives, treasure, and national dignity.

My book, The American War on Election Corruption, details my experience in Afghanistan and the lessons learned that help me develop the skillset I use today to solve entirely new problems of national significance. Sometimes that translates to optimistic forecasts that impede the media narrative, such as when I trumped The New York Times and called all 56 races for electoral votes correct in the 2024 election they tried so desperately to hand to Kamala Harris.

It is also important for all readers to know that I value accuracy more than I value the following:

• Being first to comment

• Spreading false hope

• Incorrectly assigning priorities

When I need to give a bearish, or pessimistic, assessment - then that is what I give. In the military, that is a matter of life and death and the difference between mission success and catastrophic failure. President Trump’s generals and admirals are wargaming all scenarios with regard to Iran as I type this piece, and they owe the Commander-in-Chief a realistic assessment so he can make the decisions that will bring us closer to achieving our military objectives (and getting the hell out).

Some of you know I waded back into the muddy waters of X recently. I decided it would be foolish of me to market a new book (which you need to buy) without fully using all of my online resources available to me. For those of you wishing to keep your sanity on that platform, the “mute” and “block” buttons are of great value and go a long way into keeping you from becoming a radicalized complainer capable of seeing no good in the world.

“Graveyard” also has its place in the phrase, “whistling past the graveyard,” which describes a person or group ignoring imminent danger (demise) and focusing on irrelevant nonsense. This was obvious if you spent any time on X this weekend after Senator John Thune dropped the ball on the “leadership” portion of his duties, approved DHS funding with nothing for immigration, and got kicked in the gut by people like Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell, who represent ruby red states yet get away with not supporting common-sense election security measures.

It was nothing but doom and gloom, and now a barrage of fake polling showing Trump with approval in the low-to-mid 30s threatens to make things worse this week. If we could get the constant complainers and doomers online to actually get involved and do something where they live, things might be different; regardless, the current circumstances of the world do not override what history tells us. And history tells me that the President’s party usually gets smoked during midterms. Ask Ronald Reagan, who had 63% approval in 1986 yet still watched the GOP lose the national popular vote for the House by almost 10 points:

Do you know who has been steady for 12 consecutive months on the true inclination of the midterms? I’d hope you do, because a lot of you have been reading this newsletter for four years - I’m referring to yours truly. Receipts attached: