In no particular order of historic accuracy:

“First things first: Hillary Clinton has a 70 percent chance of winning the election, according to both the FiveThirtyEight polls-only and polls-plus models. That’s up from a 65 percent chance on Sunday night, so Clinton has had a good run in the polls in the final days of the campaign. Clinton’s projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 percentfrom 2.9 percent.” — Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com.

President – Clinton 322 EVs, Trump 216 EVs; Senate – 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans; House – 201 Democrats, 234 Republcians (Net Dem pick-up of 13 seats; Governors – 18 Democratic, 31 Republicans (no net pick-ups for either party). — Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley, Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Ed Kilgore: Clinton by 3 in popular vote, 307-231 in electoral votes.

“Our Senate forecasts — both polls-only and poll-plus — tipped toward Republicans late Monday, giving them about a 51 percent chance of maintaining their majority. While that technically makes the GOP a slight favorite, the fight for Senate control remains basically a coin flip. Still, our Senate forecasts have been inching in the GOP’s favor over the past several days, largely driven by a shift in the generic congressional ballot.” —Harry Enten at Five ThirtyEight.com.

Jonathan Chait: Clinton by five, 318 electoral votes.

“The presidential race may be inducing whiplash, but the House battleground remains relatively stable in the final week. We rate only 40 House races in Lean or Toss Up, and Democrats would need to sweep 35 of them to win control, so Republicans remain overwhelming favorites to hold onto their majority. But there is still plenty of uncertainty about the size of that majority: Democrats could gain anywhere from 5 to 20 seats.” — David Wasserman, Cook Political Report.

Eric Levitz: I like Clinton by five nationally.

“Most probable single outcome (shown on map below): Clinton 323 EV, Trump 215 EV…Median: Clinton 312 EV, Trump 215 EV. Meta-Margin: 2.7%…Mode (see histogram at right): Clinton 309 EV, Trump 229 EV…National popular vote: Clinton +4.0 ± 0.6%.” — Sam Wang, Princeton Election Consortium.

“Hillary Clinton has an 84% chance to win.” —  Josh Katz at The Upshot

“While we are moving two states in Donald Trump’s direction on this second-to-last day of the campaign, the overall map still clearly favors Hillary Clinton: She has 275 electoral votes solidly or leaning her way — five more than she needs to win the White House on Tuesday night. In fact, even if Trump holds all of the states either solidly or leaning his way and wins all three states currently rated as “toss-ups,” he is still seven electoral votes short of 270.” — “Hillary Clinton has enough electoral votes to win the White House in final Fix map” by Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake at The Fix.

“The Democrats have a 52% chance of winning the Senate” — Josh Katz at The Upshot

Charlie Cook: “There is a food fight un­der way among many of those do­ing pres­id­en­tial-elec­tion mod­el­ing… It’s not my style or ex­pert­ise to put a spe­cif­ic per­cent­age on Clin­ton’s chances of win­ning, but, suf­fice it to say, it’s a really big num­ber…The Sen­ate is tough­er to call. The strong like­li­hood of a Clin­ton vic­tory means that the Demo­crat­ic tar­get is 50 seats, a gain of four, with Vice Pres­id­ent Tim Kaine cast­ing a tiebreak­ing vote if ne­ces­sary. Right now, I think the odds are highest for a four-seat gain, next likely would be five seats.” — Taegan Goddard’s “Cook Sees a Clinton Win and Democratic Senate.”

“Trump will win Ohio and Iowa and outperform Romney in the course of losing Michigan and Pennsylvania. Elsewhere he’ll slightly underperform Romney en route to losing North Carolina, Florida and Nevada. The only major twist will be a Trump electoral vote from northern Maine. The popular vote will be Hillary 50, Trump 44. The Electoral College splitwill be 322-216. The Senate will be 50-50, with Tim Kaine as the decider.” — NYT columnist Russ Douthat

Next President Democratic – 89%, Republican 11 % — Prediction Markets at 3:12 a.m., Nov. 8.

“The HuffPost presidential forecast model gives Democrat Hillary Clinton a 98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency. Republican Donald Trump has essentially no path to an Electoral College victory…The Senate is likely to shift to a Democratic majority, with 51 seats, or 50 seats and Tim Kaine as the vice presidential tie-breaker. The HuffPost model says there’s a 66 percent chance Democrats will get 51 or more seats, and a 25 percent chance the chamber ends up with each party at 50 seats.” – “HuffPost Forecasts Hillary Clinton Will Win With 323 Electoral Votes:Democrats stand a strong chance of taking control of the Senate as well.” by Natalie Jackson

“It would be a mistake to call Trump’s current path to an electoral-college victory narrow. It is nonexistent.” — Stuart Rothenberg.

At CNN Politics Marshall Cohen reports that “Democrats take the lead in Florida early voting,” and notes that “More than 5.7 million Floridians have already hit the polls after about two weeks of in-person early voting. So far, 2,268,663 Democrats have cast their ballots and 2,261,383 Republicans have already voted…The numbers provide clues on who is voting and which party is turning out to vote. And while the numbers track voters’ party affiliations, not all Democrats are voting for Clinton, and not all Republicans are supporting Trump….The milestone is a boon to Hillary Clinton’s chances of carrying the Sunshine State and its 29 electoral votes — a prize so large that it would help her close off most of Donald Trump’s paths to victory…But it’s not all good news for Democrats: Their current lead is significantly smaller than the turnout advantage they had over registered Republicans at this point in 2008.” S.V. Date adds at HuffPo, “Of the early votes cast by Friday, close to one-third of the Hispanic voters had never voted in an election before. And polling makes clear that they are overwhelmingly voting for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.”

From “An early sign Trump is being out-organized: A big Democratic advantage in Nevada voting” by WaPo’s Philip Bump: “In 2012, Clark County made up more than two-thirds of all of the votes cast, and the county backed President Obama over Mitt Romney by 15 points — and by a margin of 101,000 votes. Clark County’s early vote and absentee turnout so far is 76 percent of the total votes cast in that county in 2012…More votes doesn’t necessarily mean more votes for the Democrat, of course. And in Clark County, the percent of early and absentee ballots cast by Democrats during the first two weeks dropped from 47.6 to 45.8 percent. The percentage of Republicans returning ballots, though, also fell, from 33.1 to 32.1 percent of the electorate. Over that period, the density of the parties in registered voter pools fell about the same amount — with the difference being an increase in nonpartisan voters. In 2012, that group made up 19 percent of the early/absentee vote; this year, it’s over 22 percent. As Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman notes, that’s a group that leans heavily young and nonwhite.”

At The Charlotte Observer Jim Morrill and Tim Funk report, “Democrats cast more early votes than any other group, but have not caught up to their 2012 numbers. Republicans, on the other hand, were running 11 percent above their 2012 performance, with nearly 100,000 more votes. Republicans credited the increase to efforts aimed at boosting GOP registration since 2012…But it is unaffiliated voters – who nearly match Republicans in registration – who have seen their early voting numbers jump the most: up 38 percent from four years ago…Who are they?…An analysis by Carolina Demography at UNC-Chapel Hill found that they tend to be younger. The median age of unaffiliated voters is 43. It’s 52 for voters registered with a party. And more than half first registered in North Carolina in 2010 or later.” However, adds Funk and Morrill, “African-American early turnout was also down 11 percent compared with 2012 as of Saturday afternoon. That’s a concern for Democrats.”

From the Dayton Daily News comes this nugget from “Ohio Democrats need to rethink strategy” by Thomas Suddes: “Two certain things about Tuesday: All 16 Ohioans with seats in the U.S. House will be re-elected thanks to rigged congressional districts. And U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a suburban Cincinnati Republican, will win a second term by routing his Democratic challenger, former Gov. Ted Strickland…As for the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump slugfest, it appears, at this writing, that Trump may join the Richard M. Nixon Club: As noted before, the Nixon Club is composed of GOP nominees, like Nixon in 1960 and Thomas Dewey in 1944, who carry Ohio but don’t win the presidency…Given how safe Ohio’s congressional seats are, you have to wonder why anyone donates to 16 foolproof Ohio congressional campaigns. Maybe it’s because nothing says, “take my calls – please,” like a big check sent to the campaign fund of a safe-seat legislator…In some parts of the world, agreed, that might be considered little better than paying-for-access. That’s why Ohioans are so fortunate that their members of Congress, like General Assembly members, display such lofty ethical standards and unfailing rectitude.”

In his post, “What to watch in Virginia on election night,” Graham Moomaw of the Richmond Times-Dispatch writes “Most polls indicate Clinton will follow in the footsteps of President Barack Obama by putting Virginia in the Democratic column for the third straight presidential election…But the race appears to be tightening in the campaign’s final stage, giving Republicans hope for a more interesting night with Trump potentially in position to grab the state’s 13 electoral votes…Recent Virginia polls showed Clinton with a 6- to 7-point lead. In 2012, Obama won the state over Republican Mitt Romney by roughly 4 points…With growing, increasingly diverse populations, Loudoun and Henrico counties are perhaps the best barometers of Virginia’s political winds…As microcosms of a purple state trending blue, both counties were once reliable GOP territory but went to Obama in 2008 and 2012. Four years ago, Obama won Henrico by nearly 12 points, and Loudoun by around 4.5 points. Democrats will want those margins to grow, while Republicans will want to see them fall back into more competitive territory…The numbers coming out of Chesterfield County, a key GOP stronghold, will serve as an indicator of Republicans’ enthusiasm for their nominee…A big Trump vote in Chesterfield, typically among the earliest to report results on election night, could signal strong Republican turnout and help offset Clinton’s gains in large Democratic localities. Weakness in Chesterfield would suggest Republicans are in for a disappointing night.”

In Colorado The Denver Post’s John Frank observes, “The University of Denver poll released Wednesday found Clinton and Trump deadlocked at 39 percent in a four-way race, in a survey of registered likely voters conducted Saturday through Monday…The third-party candidates combined for 15 percent with another 8 percent undecided. The poll’s margin of error is plus-or-minus 4.2 percent…The DU poll used live interviews on landlines and cellphones. It featured fewer Latino voters than expected to cast ballots and also less unaffiliated voters…Two other polls in recent days show the race closing in Colorado with Clinton holding a three-point lead within the margins…Among voters who already cast ballots, Clinton sits in a much better position at 45 percent to 38 percent for Trump — a number that appears to support early voting figures showing Democrats with a 23,000 ballot advantage.”

“The most dramatic shift has been in Pennsylvania. Polls long showed a tossup between incumbent Republican Pat Toomey and Democratic challenger Katie McGinty, but the race is clearly tilting in McGinty’s direction now. Our polls-plus forecast gives her a 74 percent chance of winning, and McGinty hasn’t trailed in a poll in over two weeks and has opened up her largest lead in the FiveThirtyEight polls-plus forecast for the entire year…Voters in Pennsylvania appear to be treating the presidential and Senate races as one, as Hillary Clinton and McGinty have about equal chances of winning the Keystone State. That’s bad news for Toomey, who was always an odd fit in Pennsylvania: He’s very conservative; the state leans blue. Toomey was elected in a midterm year; such elections have had more Republican-friendly electorates of late, and that was true in 2010, when Toomey won amidst a national GOP wave nationally. He was always going to have more trouble in a presidential election cycle.” — from Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight.

In Wisconsin:

I’m a little skeptical about the notion that GA is a swing state this year. For one thing, two Democratic dynasty candidates named Nunn and Carter both lost state-wide races by 8 points in 2014. Granted, mid-term elections have a built-in Republican edge, but still, 8 points is a lot. On the other hand, Sean Colarossi’s post, “Clinton’s Superior Ground Game Could Put Her Over The Top In Neck-and-Neck Georgia” at PoliticusUSA.com makes an interesting point: Not only are Clinton and Trump in a stat tie in the latest NBC News/WSJ/Marist poll; By all reports, Democrats have mobilized an impressive GOTV effort, and Trump has an exceptionally-weak ground game in the peach state. As Colarossi puts it, “With Trump’s operation far worse than Romney’s was four years ago and certainly inferior to Clinton’s, it’s conceivable that the Democratic nominee could outperform the polling by even more.”

Hillary Clinton does not need my advice to get from here to Election Night and more than likely a victory celebration. But if only to counter some of the bad advice she has been offered, I went ahead with some analysis of her situation at New York:

All signs point to the tightening of a presidential race dominated by Hillary Clinton for most of the general election campaign. National trends aside, there are polls showing Donald Trump surging in such Clinton “firewall” states as Colorado and New Hampshire, creating a clear path to victory for him if he gets a few late breaks. Any thought of coasting to victory, much less winning by a landslide, has probably disappeared from the minds of Team Clinton members. And although what happens down ballot could crucially affect the ability of a Clinton administration to accomplish much of its agenda, it is also time for the presidential campaign to forget about helping Democratic Senate and House candidates. Job One is to get Clinton into the White House, and that job has not yet been accomplished.

So what can and should Hillary for America do at this late stage to secure victory?

The first thing to understand is that most of the decisions a presidential campaign can make have already been made, sometimes months ago. Paid ad time in the battleground states has all been bought up. And although the residents of such states may feel like they are under attack from both sides when they turn on the tube or the radio these last few days, the truth is that the time for Clinton to make gains based on what was once an overwhelming advantage in paid media is over. In most places, Trump is now entirely competitive on the airwaves; indeed, in some “Clinton firewall” states she’s rushing to play catch-up after letting Trump “waste” his money in states once thought to be beyond his reach. Few voters in a competitive presidential general election are going to be persuaded at this point, though carefully targeted ads could send some micro-messages to certain constituencies to boost turnout. If there is any ad time left in the battleground states on Spanish-language or African-American-interest radio or cable stations, her campaign should buy it instantly.

Although in-person early voting will reach a crescendo in some states this weekend, that, too, is a die that has largely already been cast. Plans for get-out-the-vote drives next Tuesday must now take priority over everything else. Obama campaign veterans like to say that turnout operations are like a field-goal unit in football; they only become crucial to victory in close “games.” Well, it’s late in the fourth quarter and it is no longer clear Clinton has the touchdown advantage she had as recently as last week. So the field-goal unit needs to be ready.

That means above all that the Clinton campaign and its allies should deploy whatever discretionary resources they have — and there should be plenty of money left, even after all the ads available have been bought — with a very clear sense of the path to 270 electoral votes. Yes, it would be wonderful for a Democrat to win Arizona or Georgia, but at the moment the bigger concern should be about states Clinton cannot afford to lose, alongside a final big effort in Florida, the must-win state for Trump with a rich prize of 29 electoral votes that could offset the loss of several “Clinton firewall” states.

Everything the Clinton campaign does should be be driven by turnout considerations. This is where surrogates can be crucial. One of Clinton’s big headaches right now involves reports from early-voting states of relatively low turnout among African-Americans. Since she leads Trump about 20-to-1 (or more) in African-American communities, the problem is precisely the kind that can be addressed by an intensive “knock and drag” get-out-the-vote effort. Every dollar and hour spent among black voters, giving them the motive and the means to vote, are priceless. The Obamas should be deployed with that project in mind. And both they and Clinton herself need to pound home the message that everything Barack Obama was able to accomplish, and everything he hoped to accomplish but could not thanks to Republican opposition, is on the line on Tuesday. This is valuable not just in terms of the black vote, but also in motivating millennials to abandon their flirtation with Gary Johnson and Jill Stein and vote for a candidate who can win.

Some political observers, like most sportscasters, irrationally value “momentum,” and thus would caution Team Clinton against admitting that Trump is closing the gap. I do not agree. Fear of a Donald Trump presidency is so palpable in broad swaths of the electorate — especially among minority voters and college-educated women — that it has become a precious strategic asset for Hillary Clinton, which she should exploit aggressively. Every left-leaning marginal voter should, in every form of campaign communications available, be made to feel a personal responsibility for a Trump presidency if she or he does not vote. And minority voters in particular should be encouraged to view potential Republican vote-suppression measures on November 8 as creating an imperative to vote rather than an excuse to stay home.

It is too late, by the way, for Clinton to deal with emails or the perfidy of the FBI or perceptions of her relative level of honesty and trustworthiness. There will be plenty of time for that after Election Day, if it matters anymore. I wrote this very morning that Clinton will probably face impeachment proceedings if she wins alongside a congressional Republican majority. That should not matter either, and it probably won’t to the very tough-minded Democratic nominee. Anything would be preferable to going down in history as the major-party candidate who lost to Donald Trump, imperiling the republic in ways that we are just now beginning to fully envision. Awareness of the burden of history should permeate every moment spent by Clinton and her vast army of paid and unpaid campaign operatives for the next 100 hours.

Sophia Tesfaye notes at salon.com “Nearly 30 percent of the Republicans who have already voted in Florida cast their ballots for the former secretary of state, according to a new poll released late on Tuesday. Of all Florida early voters in the TargetSmart/William & Mary poll, Clinton led Republican rival Donald Trump 55 percent to 37 percent, while 28 percent of Republicans voted for Clinton.”

However, adds Tesfaye, “Democrats are faring worse in early voting in Florida than they did four years ago even as Clinton gains support from unlikely allies…In 2012 while Democrats outpaced Republicans in total Florida ballots cast before Election Day by more than 10,000…The discrepancy between Clinton’s early-vote performance in 2016 and President Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012 can be attributed to African-American turnout in the state. As the Tampa Bay Times noted, black voters accounted for 22 percent of the votes cast before Election Day in 2012, but only 15 percent so far this year.”

At The Upshot Nate Cohn explains that “Already, about 2,338,000 people have voted in North Carolina, out of about 4,527,000 we think will eventually vote. Based on the voting history and demographic characteristics of those people, we think Hillary Clinton leads in North Carolina by about 6 percentage points. We think she has an even larger lead – 10 percentage points – among people who have already voted.”

Bloomberg’s Mark Niquette and John McCormick report that in Ohio, “Early-vote requests by Democrats in Cuyahoga County, however, are down 35 percent compared with the same point in 2012, and ballots returned are off by 31 percent, according to data from the county board of elections. Republicans are running slightly ahead.”

However, “Numbers for Democrats are more encouraging in Columbus and surrounding Franklin County, where ballot returns from Democrats are up 74 percent compared with 36 percent for Republicans from the same point in 2012, the local data shows.”

“Five days before Election Day, the margin between the candidates is narrow, with 45 percent of likely voters supporting Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidate, to 42 percent for Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee. The difference is within the poll’s margin of sampling error…Fewer than one in 10 likely voters say they may still change their minds about whom they will support on Tuesday, and both candidates have about equal support among their party’s voters. Political independents, who backed President Obama in 2008 and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, in 2012, are currently split…At this point in the 2012 campaign, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney were deadlocked in polling averages, and Mr. Obama went on to win the election by a four-point margin.” — from “Hillary Clinton Still Leads a Tighter Race, Times/CBS News Poll Shows” by Megan Thee-Brenan.

At The Upshot Nate Cohn explains why “Early Vote in North Carolina Seems Consistent With a Clinton Lead.” Cohn observes, “So far, nearly 600 of our respondents have voted early — basically a full poll’s worth of early voters. For this analysis, we’ve weighted this subsample of validated early voters to match the demographic characteristics of early voters by age, race, party, sex and 2014 vote history…Over all, Mrs. Clinton leads among these early votes by 51 percent to 39 percent in the three-way race, and by 53-39 in the two-way race.”

More evidence that Clinton’s batleground states ground game gives her an edge: “Mrs. Clinton has a considerable lead over Mr. Trump among newly registered voters in Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina combined, 47 percent to 31 percent,” writes Cohn in another Upshot post exploring why “Donald Trump Can’t Count on Those ‘Missing White Voters” Cohn adds “Democrats have a modest advantage among voters who registered since 2012, 34 percent to 28 percent…But the newly registered voters nonetheless solidly lean toward Mrs. Clinton, based on our polling data and voter records. They’re disproportionately young and nonwhite…Newly registered voters who aren’t affiliated with a major party lean to Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump by 42 percent to 21 percent; Gary Johnson runs a close third, with 20 percent.”

Watch the Nevada Senate race, where one of the most impressive Democratic candidates Catherine Cortez Masto, is running against Rep. Joe Heck, who outgoing Sen. Harry Reid calls “an absolute stooge for these right-wing nut cases.” The Koch brothers are heavily bankrolling Heck’s campaign, and a win by Cortez Masto would signal a strong pro-Democratic trend in the west and launch the first Latina U.S. senator. The New York Times editorial board has a good update on this key race.

James Hohman argues that “College-educated white women are Hillary Clinton’s firewall” at The Daily 202: “One in five voters in 2012 were college-educated white women. Mitt Romney won them by 6 points, according to exit polls…Our fresh Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll, which has Hillary Clinton ahead by just 2 points among all likely voters nationally, finds that Donald Trump is losing college-educated white women by 27 points…If the Republican nominee was anywhere close to Romney’s 52 percent support level among this traditionally Republican-leaning constituency, he would likely win the election. But drilling into the crosstabs of our polling and reviewing credible, state-level data demonstrates how highly unlikely it is that this constituency will waver in the final days. It is one of the reasons that, even though the race has tightened pretty dramatically, Clinton retains a significant structural advantage.”

Regarding the so-called ‘enthusiasm gap’ cited in recent polling, Hohman also notes, “In The Post/ABC tracking poll, enthusiasm for Clinton is back on par with enthusiasm for Trump after a drop off. Over the weekend, after the FBI announcement, 43 percent of Clinton supporters in our tracking poll said they were “very enthusiastic,” below Trump’s 53 percent. Trump’s advantage in enthusiasm has shrunk to only two points in the last two days of interviewing. Now 48 percent of Clinton supporters call themselves “very enthusiastic,” compared to 50 percent for Trump.”

Philip Bump writes in his polling update at The Fix: “Polls, as we say again and again, are snapshots — and belated ones at that. Like a Polaroid of a horse race taken in the home stretch that we would have to wait to see develop. The race has moved on, but we can make guesses about where it’s going from where it was. The short version is that Clinton is still poised to win. The medium-length version is that the race seems as of it will be a lot closer than it looked two weeks ago. The long version, implied above, is that continued movement away from Clinton and toward Trump nationally could solidify those 265 electoral votes for Trump — and maybe open up some options for those other five he needs.” In other words, Trump has some closing momentum, but time may be on Clinton’s side. And, of course, no polling can gauge GOTV prep, and by all accounts, Clinton’s team has bigger groud game.

It pains me to admit that Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s ad is very well-done, even though he is more likely to cost Ohio jobs with his economic policies, than protect them. Here Portman projects his understanding of Trump’s strongest messaging issue “protect American jobs,” tweaks it for Ohio, shows concern for working people at their workplace and wraps the whole damn thing in the flag. Dems could do worse:

The Democratic ad that is getting the most positive buzz has to be Missouri senate candidate Jason Kander’s “blindfold” spot. In the ad, Kander confidently assembles an AR-15 assaul rifle blindfolded, while touting his military experience, patriotic service and his support of background checks, all the while demonstrating his energetic persona. The ad has been credited with giving Kander a solid boost in the race and may bring another potential Democratic rising star:

Donald Trump and Mike Pence made back to back speeches in Pennsylvania this week touting their determination to repeal and replace Obamacare. It was all smoke and mirrors, as I discussed at New York.

[D]uring a rally with Mike Pence in Pennsylvania, he offered a real head-scratcher: “I will ask Congress to convene a special session so we can repeal and replace, and it will be such an honor for me, for you and for everybody in this country because Obamacare has to be replaced,” Trump said. “It’s a catastrophe.”

Sounds dramatic, eh? But a moment’s scrutiny should tell you the “special session” stuff makes no sense at all.

The next Congress will convene on January 3, 2017, 17 days before the next president is inaugurated. If it is inclined to repeal and replace Obamacare, it won’t need any special session for that. Indeed, the most likely scenario for that to happen, if and only if Republicans control both houses of Congress, is in a budget reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered in the Senate and benefits from streamlined procedures generally. It won’t happen overnight, but it certainly can be accommodated by the normal congressional schedule.

Perhaps Trump is talking about not waiting until next January, so urgent is the task of repealing and replacing Obamacare. But there’s no need for a special session after the election; Congress is already scheduled to reconvene in November for a continuation of the current session in order to deal with the appropriations can that has been kicked down the road, and perhaps some other items.

But even if a special session was needed, Trump would have no power to call one for the obvious reason that he would not be president until January 20, 2017. Is he talking about asking Obama to call a “special session” (which isn’t needed) to repeal the 44th president’s signature achievement and enact a yet-to-be-specified GOP replacement plan? (In case you hadn’t guessed it, Trump and Pence did not offer a specific replacement plan in their Pennsylvania speeches today.) That’s probably not going to work.

I’ve since heard some commentators suggest Trump was just trying to signify to conservative doubters that he would kill Obamacare no matter what. Once you get to a fact-free Oz, of course, anything’s possible. But facts have a way of spoiling the best imaginary plans.

The final week of campaign 2016 will undoubtedly set new records for broadcasting political ads, which may or may not have much influence. Late-breaking news, however, may actually have more influence on voter turnout.

Comey’s October nothingburger dominated the first days of the closing week. But now the scandal-hungry media is looking elsewhere for stories to capture the attention of growing numbers of Americans who are bored by the mere mention of the word “emails,” and new revelations about Trump’s lies, sleazy  business ethics and corruption give them plenty of fodder. As Michael Tomasky writes at The Daily Beast, “what happened Monday was that Trump was hit with three big stories”:

1. CNBC reported—based on one source, it must be said—that earlier in October, Comey had argued privately that it was too close to the election for the U.S. government to name Russia as the hacker of Democratic emails. That disclosure was made by the government, just without the FBI’s name on it. Obviously, it was a disclosure that caused some discomfort for the Trump campaign, tied as the candidate is to Russia. The obvious question, if this story is accurate: Why was Oct. 7 too close to the election for the FBI to help create a news story that might have been bad for Trump, while Oct.28 was not too close to the election for the FBI to single-handedly create a news story that was bad for Clinton? Inquiring minds want to know.

2. NBC News reported the FBI has launched a preliminary investigation into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s ties to Russia. Manafort, of course, is not the candidate and is no longer affiliated with the campaign. So this isn’t necessarily an A-1 bombshell. But the existence of NBC News’s “law-enforcement and intelligence sources” who wanted to put this out screams to us that there’s a civil war brewing in federal law-enforcement circles and that for every pro-Trump leak, we can expect some countervailing pushback.

3. And finally, breaking just after 9 p.m. Monday night, the big one: The New York Times detailing how Trump used a questionable tax-dodge technique to “avoid reporting hundreds of millions of dollars” in what was supposed to be taxable income. This is a complicated one, but, according to the Times, as far as the IRS is concerned, a dollar of canceled debt is the same as a dollar of taxable income; tax must be paid on the canceled debt. But Trump used a maneuver that allowed him to avoid paying federal tax on the canceled debt—he avoided paying as much as $50 million a year for 18 years, the paper said. And it was a maneuver that his own attorneys said was dodgy. The article quotes numerous tax experts as saying that what Trump did here was outrageous.

As Tomasky concludes, summing up Trump’s legacy, “his entire adult life has been spent cheating everyone who had the misfortune to cross his path.”

Add to these three stories new revelations, such as Trump being caught on tape lying about his votes for President Bush. From Andrew Kaczynski’s CNN post, “Trump said in 2005 that he voted for George W. Bush. In 2009, he claimed he never did“:

As recently as January of this year, Trump said he voted for Bush in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections…Speaking with Imus in February 2009, Trump said, “You know how I feel about Bush, and I think you got to feel that way, also.”

“I never voted for him,” responded Imus. “I never voted for him, Donald.”…”You’re good, then. I didn’t either, by the way,” Trump said, “You’re good. I just thought that guy was a dimwit. You looked at it, and he just didn’t look like he was all there…You look at his eyes, I mean he’d make a speech and you’d look at him and you’d say, ‘Does he even know what he’s reading?’ This guy, he was a horrible president,” said Trump.

Trump’s answer on Imus is a direct contradiction to what he told Bill O’Reilly in January 2005, the day before then-president Bush was to be inaugurated for his second term…”All right. You didn’t vote for Bush, did you?,” O’Reilly asked Trump.

“Actually, I did,” said Trump…I voted for Bush because I think he’s got certain things that are excellent, including a tax policy that’s excellent and going to prove to be excellent,” Trump said. “But I am not a big fan of the war in Iraq, and I’ve let a lot of people know about it, and perhaps that’s being proven to be correct.”

For a well-reasoned take on the latest Clinton email distraction, read Ed Kilgore’s New York Magazine post, “The Latest Phase of the Clinton Email Brouhaha Won’t Save Trump,” in which he writes” “the underlying “story” of the emails isn’t some sort of bombshell, and the odds are that the negative attention and any lingering substantive concerns among voters will be too little, too late to make much of a difference.”

I’m wondering if Comey’s election meddling could backfire by re-energizing Clinton supporters, some of whom may have been lulled into not voting by her strong polling and also by causing some of the few remaining undecideds to be disgusted by Comey’s October nothingburger. As Vice President Walter Mondale once put it, “Where’s the beef?”

Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Abby Phillip note, “According to the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, a majority of all likely voters is unmoved by Comey’s decision, which has spurred a fierce backlash from Clinton backers.” As for clues about what the candidates’ best internal polling is indicating, Phillip and Costa note that Trump is heading for Wsiconsin and Michigan today, while Clinton is focusing on Ohio, Florida and North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority leader Harry Reid has written to F.B.I. Director James Comey warning “Your actions in recent months have demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be clear intent to aid one political party over another,” the letter says. “I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act,” which bars government officials from trying to influence elections. As Pete Williams and Tom Stelloh write at nbcnews.com, “Reid also accused Comey of shielding Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from scrutiny over his connections to Russia, saying “it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination” between Trump and his advisers and the Russian government.” It sure looks like Reid is right, but it would be very hard to prove. The F.B.I. director can, however, be fired by the President or impeached by congress.

“Early Turnout Tilts Toward Democrats in Swing States,” report Jeremy W. Peters and Matt Flegenheimer at The New York Times. “At least 21 million people have voted so far across the country. In the states that are most likely to decide the election — among them Florida, Colorado and Nevada — close to a quarter of the electorate has already cast ballots. While their votes will not be counted until Election Day, registered Democrats are outperforming Republicans in key demographics and urban areas there and in North Carolina, where extensive in-person voting began late last week and which has emerged as one of the most closely contested battlegrounds for the White House and control of the Senate.”

Will some progressive sugar-daddy/mama concerned about young voter turnout please fund projects like this in every state: USC “Students Develop New App to Increase Voter Turnout,” reports Sofia Bosch at the Daily Trojan. “Andrew Jiang, Michael Lim, Lucas Johnson, Alex Teboul and Arush Shankar won Spark SC’s Futurethon, a 48-hour hacking competition, with BallotView. The free and nonpartisan app allows voters to preview their state’s local ballot, learn details about each measure and candidate and save a receipt of their choices to take to the polls.”

At Campaigns & Elections, Laura Packard has “5 Cost-Effecive GOTV Plays,” a good read for Democratic campaigns with a little extra cash on hand.

You want a bipartisan consensus? Try Ariel Edwards-Levy’s “Most Americans Think Voting Should Be Easy” at HuffPo, which notes “Democrats say by a 68-point margin, 80 percent to 12 percent, that the government should work to make voting easy; Republicans agree by a much slimmer 11-point margin, 51 percent to 40 percent. Independents fall in the middle, saying by a 28-point margin, 53 percent to 25 percent, that painless voting should be a goal, with the remainder unsure.”

Democrats, here’s your Halloween scare for the day: “Perhaps the most egregious [NC] county is Guilford, a county of 517,600 people, of which 57.9 percent is White, and gave Obama 58 percent of the vote in 2012. The county opened 16 in-person early voting locations in 2012, but has only their central election office open in 2016. The number of in-person voters on the first Thursday and Friday was 21,560 in 2012, but was only 3,305 in 2016, a decrease of 18,255 or 85 percent.” — from Nico Pitney’s HuffPo article, “This Is What Actual Voter Suppression Looks Like, And It’s Appalling: In one county, a reduction in polling places has helped cut early voting by 85 percent.”