The Unpredictable Surprises of November 3rd

"If you’re a Republican in Congress, even if you’re running in a district Trump won by eighteen points, even if your polls have you ahead, brace yourself – you may find yourself staring a hard reality in the eye on election night."

--Carter Wrenn on Substack, Sept. 4, 2026 

 

I love it when a respected conservative operative, who was Jesse Helms's political guru for years, plays Cassandra for his side. You know who Cassandra was -- Priam's daughter who always knew when disaster was coming. No one ever believed her. That was her curse. Carter Wrenn's playing that part for Republicans. More than prophet, Wrenn knows politics and can see history straight. Among many other political achievements, Wrenn managed Ronald Reagan's winning campaign in the North Carolina primary of 1980, upsetting Gerald Ford. 

Wrenn predicts in a roundabout way that turnout -- lack of turnout -- will be the Achilles heel for Republicans this November. Lack of turnout can erase an 18-point paper advantage very quickly.

Which is why the surprises of November 3rd are pretty much unpredictable. Less than two months to go to find out. 

The Berger Perplex

 

Last Thursday, Phil Berger Jr. announced on X that he would not be running for reelection in 2028. What? First Phil Berger Sr. bites the dust in the March primary. Now Number One Son Phil Junior announces he's going to be off of the state Supreme Court when his current term expires in '28.

Before we can begin to clap his exit, the dern Carolina Journal, the organ of the John Locke Foundation, immediately understands that Junior has his eye on the Chief Justice seat currently occupied by Rumpelstiltskin Paul Newby, the most highly partisan chief justice in our lifetime. In other words, last Thursday what Phil Junior was trying to say on X was "I'm not going to run for this seat on the Supreme Court, but for a wholly different seat -- the most important seat."

Symmetry. Berger first ran ten years ago in 2016 for the Supreme Court seat that Paul Newby was vacating so that he could run for Chief Justice. Berger has a practice of following in his master's footsteps. (Newby is required by law to retire at age 76. He'll be 73 in 2028, which means he would have to retire in the middle of that 6-year term. So tell me they haven't worked this all out in advance.)

Berger's reputation as a Republican partisan comes from his refusing repeatedly to recuse himself from deciding cases in which his own father, Phil Berger Senior (the about-to-be-former President Pro Tem of the NC Senate), was a defendant (who stood to benefit at least politically from the decision). The crucial Harper v. Hall redistricting decision, which had thrown out the Republicans' 2021 General Assembly districts as unconstitutional gerrymandering; the Voter I.D. case; the Leandro school funding case. Occasionally, when he's been challenged for his family relation he's referred the question of recusal to the other justices, and they always vote 4-2, "Hell, no! Junior doesn't need to recuse himself, because Daddy as a defendant is only a defendant because he was acting in his official capacity as leader of the Senate." 

It was a regular Berger family duopoly of power.

A reminder of how Phil Jr. got hatched:

First, he ran in 2014 for the seat vacated by Congressman Howard Coble. He was backed by wads of money and the full-bore influence of his father, but Phil Junior lost to Mark Walker (of noted memory). Lost the Republican primary when a lot of pundits thought he'd win.

Following quickly that humiliating defeat, Phil Junior got himself appointed to an administrative law judgeship. In 2016, he took the next step and challenged Judge Linda Stephens for a seat on the Court of Appeals and won. That was the same year Trump arrived. Plus Junior benefited from a last minute legislative stunt that Phil Senior pulled off in the short session of the General Assembly the summer of 2016. He got the law changed as regards random "ballot order," insuring that candidates that belong to the same party as the sitting governor (Pat McCrory) get listed first on the ballot. Berger beat Stephens by a slim margin, 22,099 votes. He quit the seat in 2020, to run for the Newby seat on the Supreme Court. You could say the boy exhibits ambition, and he's in a hurry.

Reasons Not To Be a College Professor Right Now

 

Peter Hans, President of the UNC System

 

A.I.  

I retired as a college professor in the nick of time (well, 26 years ago, but still). I taught a lot of advanced composition, coaching students in three basic writing challenges: the personal essay, in which a student tells his own story; research, usually tracing and characterizing the pop culture reaction to major national stories of importance; interview, telling someone else's story. I think I was good at it.

But what the hell would I do now with A.I. unleashed on the world? My teaching method -- having every student in my office once or twice a week to review their drafts and make suggestions -- made plagiarism almost impossible. I don't think any of them would have dared hand me something someone else wrote. But A.I. not only makes easy plagiarism possible. It makes it almost inevitable.

Say a student has chosen to research press accounts of the Lindberg baby kidnapping in 1932. My students used to go to the library and pore through old magazines and read the New York Times on microfilm. But now? I dare you to impersonate a student and ask Chatgpt how mass media characterized Lindberg before and after the kidnapping and whether there was any nay-saying about the national hero and his tragic loss. You'd get a publishable essay, with all the links to sources. Research paper done!

A.I. is going to change all of education.

 

Peter Hans  

It's one thing for Silicon Valley to mess with individual achievements based on long and good work; it's wholly another thing when the president of the UNC system -- which includes AppState -- acquiesces to witch-hunters on the Right and mandates a new university-wide policy that all faculty class syllabuses are now public records and will be posted up online for the convenience of politically motivated groups looking for anything that doesn’t match their viewpoint.

One man mandated the new policy -- not the General Assembly, but the UNC System President himself, Peter Hans. Single-handedly. All by himself. He didn't even get the agreement of the UNC Board of Governors. Hans is so clearly in his position because the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly wants him there, and he intends to please them in the continuing harassment of higher education. Hans was himself a one-time Republican political operative who worked as a senior policy advisor to senators Laugh Faircloth and Richard Burr and became a campaign consultant for Elizabeth Dole. 

In October 2025, the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project tried to use their fishing license— public-records requests -- to target some 70 UNC-Chapel Hill courses, "particularly courses dealing with race, gender, sexuality and related subjects." Some administrators pushed back, averring that instructors' syllabi were not public records. So in December 2025 -- three months after the Heritage Foundation went fishing -- President Hans announces the new policy that all course syllabi are public records and must be posted online for the convenience of stalkers and revenge-addicts. 

Here's what the new policy requires of teachers -- in addition to the usual week-by-week outline of reading assignments. I consider it onerous as well as ominous:

1. Course name and description. 

2. Goals, objectives, student learning outcomes and expectations. 

3. An explanation of how the professor will approach grading, including a scale, a percentage breakdown of major assignments, and attendance and participation expectations. 

4. All course materials that students will have to purchase. 

5. A statement indicating that the inclusion of diverse scholarly perspectives does not imply endorsement of those perspectives, but rather is an attempt to develop critical thinking.

I'm glad to be out of the system. 

 

Comeuppance Bait

 

I heard that Bill Clinton turned 80 today. DJT is also 80, but older than Bill by two months. George W. Bush, whom I used to mock as "El Presidente," is also 80. I'm older than all of them. Only Biden was older than me, by two years. That's my cohort.

So it pisses me off for lefties like me to make fun of the way any of my cohort totters around, or limps, or goddamned gets confused about what's not interesting, or stumbles, or needs a hand. I walk worse than any of them, but I'm still here in my upstairs (both senses, the literal and the metaphorical) with all the lights on. I can't get in the street any more, no door-knocking, plus I've become increasingly deaf, so no phonebanking. The stuff I used to do as an organizer -- no one remembers or cares. That's just a fact.

My first campaign was for Eugene McCarthy, 1968. I was part of the volunteers who were organizing precincts to vote for McCarthy delegates to the state Democratic convention. I had to drop a graduate school course -- a Faulkner class. I was never going to finish The Sound and the Fury anyway. I bit in to the job of trying to organize 20 precincts in south Salt Lake City. Our methods were primitive by today's standards. We had no computer lists, no targeting, so we'd knock every door, essentially polling for any anti-war Democrats who might be willing to attend their precinct meeting as a McCarthy supporter. Unfortunately, I learned that Hubert Humphrey, the current vice president, had most of the Democratic vote sewed up. McCarthy was too too academic, a writer of poetry, an egghead who was not being patriotic about the Vietnam War. There was no way that any Democrat was going to win Utah anyway, so our little internal tussle for convention votes was especially futile.

But for me it was my first taste of activism. Activism, once ignited in a personality, can sometimes smolder after a defeat but can leap back into bright flames for a right cause, even in the face of loss. Holding to ethical and moral principles that suddenly appear in the single person of a particular political candidate -- you can be inspired with good old hope that things can change. It takes belief to be an activist. The danger comes when belief turns to dogma, with police powers behind it. The willingness to do the work for the election chances of any candidate, to always be where you promised to be, to keep up with your assigned chores and to do your worst chores first, and always remember to laugh -- not everyone could keep up the pace. Actually doing things and accomplishing things can birth the arrogant thought that you -- little you -- can make a big difference with your recruitment methods and fundraising and get-out-the-vote, because the future depends on you. That's when comeuppance arrives. I've been through earthquake wins and comeuppance losses, but up until I turned 80, crawling out of the wreckage of an electoral disaster, dusting ourselves off, and immediately figgering next steps was just second nature.

Comeuppance seems to be stalking DJT. He looks a little haunted. They say he's gained 20 pounds. He's been so blatant about dipping his beak into all sorts of big money-making ventures that increasingly more of those MAGA guys are recognizing greed and corruption for what it is -- comeuppance bait.

 

Stacy "Four" Eggers Eliminates Sunday Voting in 10 More NC Counties

 

Photo Jesse Barber

 

Yes, we see you, NCGOP. We see you as through a glass, darkly.

Lynn Bonner for NCNewsline:

Ten North Carolina counties that had Sunday voting in the last midterm election won’t have any this year as a result of state Board of Elections votes this week. [Four Eggers of Boone is part of the Republican majority on the board.]

The state board met Thursday [Aug. 20] to consider early voting plans for 20 counties where local boards of election could not agree on locations, dates, or times.

The Republican majority on the state Board of Elections agreed with decisions of GOP majorities in Anson, Chatham, Columbus, Greene, Harnett, Nash, Pasquotank, Pitt, Union, and Wayne – counties that opened polls on Sundays for voting four years ago – to drop those hours this year.

Thursday’s decisions continued the contraction of Sunday voting since Republicans took majorities on the state Board of Elections and county boards last year.

May the Comeuppance Be Cosmic

 

Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood

 

DJT. I'm not using the name any more. Just the initials. Like he's achieved some plus-sized historical significance equal to other sets belonging to celebrated Americans -- LBJ, FDR, JFK, MLK -- all known immediately. Yeah, he's probably already that plus-sized, and he still has a couple years to go. Maybe he'll inflate like a parade balloon and float away.

Did you ever see There Will Be Blood? Daniel Day Lewis starred as the obsessively acquisitive silver miner-turned oil man Daniel Plainview. For Plainview, money becomes a means of winning, controlling, humiliating, and separating himself from people. By the end, he's enormously wealthy but almost completely isolated. His son H.W. has left him; his business empire has become largely irrelevant to his emotional life; and he spends his final scenes in his mansion, drinking, alone.

Let's start a parlor game! Pick the fictional (or historical) character who most resembles DJT for greed and cruelty, and enjoy imagining that every famous ending might also be DJT's.  

Okay, here's another, purely historical destructive ego: King John, who was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. He died in 2016 while fleeing his enemies. John, the youngest surviving son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was a particularly ugly historical personality. His appetites, suspicion, financial exploitation, and abuse of power stand out in the historical record, along with boneheadedness. He repeatedly undermined his own political position -- hence, that signature at Runnymede. He's a good example of a man who is so determined to gratify himself that he destroys the system that sustains him. 

Just a little computer assistance turns up quite a roster of other historical and fictional characters who understood acquisition as a means of making themselves invulnerable, because they were profoundly incapable of genuine human reciprocity: Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Richard III, Thomas Wolsey -- the list is almost endless. Which teaches its own lesson. Given power and opportunity, every man can become a selfish jerk.

Then there's France's Louis XIV, the ultimate royal ego: L'État, c'est moi, he famously said -- "The State, it is me." Not a good candidate for our parlor game because he died of old age, still sitting the throne. Sometimes comeuppance doesn't arrive on time.

Signs of the Times (Are Disappearing for Lack of Interest)

 

 

A large Donald Trump/MAGA merchandise store located along I-40 just outside Knoxville, Tennessee, is selling off its remaining inventory at a 50 percent discount. The store's exterior features a massive Trump billboard, other MAGA banners, and a brick outhouse labelled the "Democrat Superstore," yet people have stopped pulling off the Interstate to scratch their itch to own some decorations sure to piss off Democrats. Slate reports its owner's admitting the closure is due to a lack of customers. 

My frequent treks into Boone always takes me past a well known right turn with yield -- where a busy shortcut joins a major county artery. Facing any driver who has to stop or pause there is a house on the opposite corner that has sported a billboard-sized TRUMP COUNTRY sign. I just noticed recently that the sign if gone. In its place is something positive about Jesus Christ. I kind of get a message from that.

An Opening for Lynn Russo in HD 117

 

Lynne Russo

 

Last night, the Republican executive committee for the 11th Congressional District picked NC House member Jennifer Balkcom to replace Chuck Edwards on the November ballot. Which means that suddenly, the HD 117 seat is open, giving a hard-to-quantify boost to the prospects for Democrat Lynne Russo who's been running for it all year. According to her 2nd Quarter fundraising report, she's raised a respectable $47k so far, and I suspect the spotlight on her now will also boost her fundraising.

House District 117 includes the northern half of Henderson County. Civitas rates it R+6 "Likely Republican," but in the current atmosphere of dissatisfaction over slow-to-non-existent relief for Hurricane Helene victims, that Republican advantage could evaporate.

There is not yet a Republican replacement for Balkcom in HD 117, but we hear it might likely be a sitting Republican county commissioner. An executive committee of Henderson County Republicans will choose Balkcom's replacement.

Russo says she was living in a mountain condo when Helene hit and became involved immediately in helping neighbors, including clearing roads so an elderly person who needed oxygen could get out. She subsequently began making informational videos about FEMA and recovery resources. Her campaign has built almost its entire rationale around the argument that Western North Carolina's recovery has been too slow and that Raleigh and Washington have failed to respond with sufficient urgency. She's published op-eds arguing that Western North Carolina has been shortchanged in federal disaster assistance, and she has been doing television interviews, including appearances on NewsNation. Her campaign site has collected interviews and articles from NewsNation, The Hill, WLOS, the Citizen-Times, and other outlets. She had already established herself as a public advocate for Helene-recovery before becoming a candidate.

Russo's Act Blue donation page.

Moffitt Out of the Running; Balkcom, In?

 

Jennifer Balkcom

 

Tim Moffitt has announced that he's no longer a candidate to replace Chuck Edwards on the November ballot for the 11th District congressional seat. Andrew Dunn sez on his Longleaf Politics substack that now, with Moffitt out of it, Rep. Jennifer Balkcom (HD 117) is probably the frontrunner. The 61-member Republican executive committee for the 11th CD will meet tonight and vote on Edwards's replacement.

Balkcom is a culture warrior, particularly hot on the topic of transgender and abortion and restrictions on ballot access. She has strong roots in Henderson County. She's been a banker for much of her adult life and currently earns her living as a mortgage loan officer.

With Moffitt out of contention, probably the strongest politician to replace him would be Ralph Hise, one of the most powerful Republicans in the state senate who happens to represent Watauga and several other Western counties in the most recent gerrymandering of the maps. Hise pretty much drew those maps. And wouldn't it be wonderful to lose him as Watauga's senator! He'd do us far less damage in Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac, but he'd be a fool to give up his seniority in the NC Senate to become a back-bencher in the US House.

Maybe Balkcom will do it. She has the look of a true believer and may think the appointment is a compliment.