Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
The midterm elections, which of course are not over, confirmed once again that polls used to predict who will most likely win an election, though they have value, do not have that much value.
Social scientists and journalists who try to use data and focus groups to predict the outcome, of one election or hundreds, must be given less attention going into an election. There was no "red wave." The Senate has stayed in Democratic hands. The House will probably go to the Republicans, but this is not a certainty. What seems clear is that the Republicans will have a slim majority if they do seize control.
The political class needs to stop paying so much attention to what social scientists, journalists and party leaders predict. The public apparently was not paying attention. The voters get bombarded with wrongheaded predictions and in some cases overcome it.
There is a better way.
In the future, the public would benefit from more normative (value-based) arguments for why one candidate rather than another, or one party rather than the other, should be followed. Arguments for why you should vote for one candidate or why you should not vote for another are both normative as opposed to factual arguments.
The key is for these normative arguments, rather than preconceived notions, to dominate the attention of voters. For example, there’s a preconceived idea that in a midterm election the party which is not represented in the White House should gain seats in Congress.
Moreover, it is not just a question of the amount of polling and the amount of normative arguments that we have. It is a question of what role these considerations play in campaigns and in party posturing overall.
In the current political environment, polls and the party predictions frame the elections, and the arguments for and against candidates take place within that framework. The framework, in other words, provides a narrative that shapes the way voters perceive the arguments for and against candidates.
What we need, instead, is a normative framework that is animated by values associated with either the party perspective or the candidate perspective.
Within those normative frameworks we do need facts to be used by parties and candidates to provide support for their arguments. Facts about crime, poverty, climate control, child care needs, inflation, taxes, infrastructure deterioration, scandals and so on.
So we have things completely backward now. Factual arguments, especially predictions (which make the case for what will in fact be the case), frame our elections. And value arguments for what voters should choose arise within these frameworks.
But we need the opposite: Normative arguments for the party perspective and/or candidate perspective need to frame elections, and within that framework factual arguments are needed to support the value positions. The overarching narratives should be about values and what parties stand for and what candidates stand for, not predictions based on polling data or lessons journalists have learned over the years.
Values supported by facts must drive our elections. Then voters will decide for themselves who to vote for and they can weigh the arguments for the candidates and consider the factual evidence they bring forth to support their policy positions and visions.
This is not to say that value positions are based solely on facts. They are not. And facts are always in dispute, which is reality. But predictions from social scientists, journalists and party leaders should be given less emphasis and not be used to frame our elections.
There are 435 Congressional elections and more than 30 Senate elections every two years, not to mention all of the state and local elections. Each race is different.
But there should be no overarching framework animated by very unreliable predictions about how things probably will be. Instead, there should be frameworks animated by forceful arguments about how things should be.
If we reverse the role played by values and facts in our elections, this would make a world of difference. How to achieve this is a different question, but it is important to set a goal worth fighting for.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.