Ninety days from the midterms, both parties have landed on the same slogan. It is the price of things. Everything else is footnotes.
The loudest footnote came from Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed — a progressive backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the UAW — won the Democratic Senate primary. He beat Rep. Haley Stevens by about 15,000 votes. Less than one point.
He did it with more than $32 million spent against him. In politics, that is like winning a swim meet in a raincoat.
El-Sayed now faces Republican Mike Rogers in November. The handicappers call the race a tossup, in a state President Trump carried by 1.4 points.
Before anyone declares a progressive wave, the same primary season offered the opposite result: Cori Bush lost her rematch with Wesley Bell, 59 to 37. The voters are not sending one message. They are sending several, loudly, at once.
That is the useful lesson of primary season: it refuses to be summarized. A portfolio positioned for one clean story is positioned for a story that does not exist.
Follow the money
Now the money, because the money is where it gets strange.
Karl Rove’s tally of the Senate races reads like a Democratic landslide. Democratic Senate candidates have raised $290 million to the Republicans’ $196.8 million, and hold $117.3 million in cash against $85.3 million.
The state-by-state gaps are almost comic. Georgia: $68.6 million for the Democrats, $9.2 million for the Republicans. Pennsylvania: $98 million to $7.4 million.
Read only that page and you would call the election over.
Turn the page. Two Republican super PACs — outside groups that can raise unlimited money but cannot coordinate with the campaign — are sitting on $461.5 million. The pair, MAGA Inc. and Never Surrender, are both controlled by the President. That is one pile of outside money bigger than everything the Democratic Senate candidates raised, combined.
So the candidates’ money says one thing, and the outside money says another. This is why we do not trade on fundraising headlines.
North Carolina completes the picture. Roy Cooper leads Michael Whatley by roughly seven to nine points, and the reporting is blunt about what decides it: whichever side gets blamed for prices.
Prices. Again. The Michigan upset ran on affordability. The North Carolina race hinges on it. Ninety days out, the entire midterm has organized itself around the receipt at the grocery store.
What we do about it
Which brings us to the only question that belongs on this page: what should a portfolio do about any of this?
Our answer has not changed since we built the Midterm Dividend positions: we price scenarios, not parties.
We do not know who wins the Senate. Neither, on this week’s evidence, does the money. What we can say is which roads to November got more likely — and this week strengthened the bumpy ones.
A tossup Michigan, a progressive nominee outrunning $32 million, a half-billion-dollar super-PAC counterweight, and both parties campaigning on prices: that is a recipe for whipsaw headlines, not a quiet autumn.
The Midterm Dividend positions were built for exactly that shape. Dividend payers with covered payouts — meaning the company’s cash comfortably funds the dividend — spread across five different November outcomes, plus the energy holdings we added this week. The positions are paid to wait through whatever the campaign does to the market.
Ninety days of noise are coming. The plan is to be the one account in the room that does not flinch at any of it.