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“If you want to know what a politician is up to, watch his feet, not his mouth,” historian Marvin Meyers wrote in his magisterial “The Jacksonian Persuasion” in 1957.

It’s still good advice. In private conversations, Republicans are talking a big game about how they’re not worried about November’s midterms, according to several informed sources I’ve talked to. But it’s not just in private. “Today, I don’t think there will be a blue wave at all,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair told the Free Press earlier this month. Blair is the man tasked with overseeing the midterms for President Trump’s MAGA Inc. super-PAC.

At the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s recent retreat at Sea Island, Ga., NRSC pollster Erik Iverson insisted that every incumbent GOP senator will be reelected and that Republicans are even on track to pick up a Senate seat.

There is no public polling that agrees with this rosy GOP scenario.

Ah yes, but the polls are “fake” as Trump likes to say, even though, at the end of August he claimed in an interview that if the election were held today, he would win by “25 points.” Meanwhile, Trump’s disapproval ratings in the polls are at record or near record lows. If they were an EKG, doctors would tell the patient to get his affairs in order.

But let’s ignore the polls. Given the difficulties with polling and its occasionally spotty record in recent years, skepticism is defensible. Which brings me back to Meyer’s advice.

At the Republicans’ faux midterm convention in Dallas a few weeks ago, Trump promised to campaign aggressively for GOP candidates in competitive states and districts around the country, asking voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

Trump said........

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