It’s a very effective costume.

Cory Doctorow's

On Fiat Experts: How the Priesthood of Failure cost America $38 Trillion of Administrative Bloat

Thursday on the RealClearPolitics Podcast: Carl Cannon talks with Larry Sanger - Co-Founder of Wikipedia and Director of the Knowledge Standards Foundation -...

The Obamacare subsidies that Democrats are demanding are truly a problem of their own creation - they were never meant to be permanent.

There was a curious moment in New York City politics recently, but you might have missed it because of all the attention being paid to the mayor's race.

In Wisconsin, Democrats are launching nearly 400 canvassing events this weekend focused on health care. A major liberal advocacy group, Protect Our Care, will push a six-figure digital campaign. Top Democratic governors, including Kentucky’s Andy Beshear and Laura Kelly of Kansas, are holding press calls to “to slam D.C. Republicans for causing Americans’ health care premiums to skyrocket.”

It adds up to a campaign of doomsday messaging aimed at voters’ concerns about health care as premium spikes are due to arrive.

“November 1st is a health care cliff for the American people, and I think it's also a political cliff for Republicans,” said Brad Woodhouse, executive director of Protect Our Care, a liberal nonprofit that has hosted a dozen town halls with House Democrats throughout the country on the impending premium increases. “More and more people are paying attention to it.”

In the coming days, Democrats will launch ad buys, hold town halls and convene media appearances to highlight the Nov. 1 date when Americans must choose to purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace with higher premiums or forgo it altogether, an attempt to ensure Republicans shoulder the blame for rising health care costs.

Some of the tactics, like the DNC holding a call with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are routine. But others are more national in scope, including Protect Our Care is deploying a digital search advertising campaign that targets people who are researching their ACA health care plans online with ads blaming Republicans. Those ads will run in House districts held by vulnerable Republicans in Arizona, Iowa, New York and Pennsylvania, among other places.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also has an upcoming ad scheduled to run in 35 competitive House districts starting this weekend. The four-figure digital buy shows Speaker Mike Johnson on vacation — a reference to the House being in recess for six weeks amid the looming insurance hikes.

In the days leading up to Nov. 1, Democratic governors have described how the hikes could devastate Americans. On Monday, outgoing Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers released the 2026 plan outlining rates for the state’s individual marketplace, which showed that many premiums for individuals and families will double. Some seniors will face an increase of more than $30,000 per year. Nationally, on average, out-of-pocket premium payments for subsidized ACA enrollees will be 114 percent higher without the tax credits, according to KFF, a health care research group.

“Republicans’ reckless decisions are causing prices on everything to go up,” Evers said in a statement. “Republicans need to end this chaos and stop working to make healthcare more expensive. It’s that simple.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill have refused to engage in health care negotiations with Democrats until the government reopens, and many within the GOP are resistant to extending the tax credits at all. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would meet “soon” with Democrats to discuss an appropriations agreement, which would amount to the most high-level meeting to end the shutdown that will soon enter its second month.

In Virginia and New Jersey, where voters will cast ballots next week in off-year bellwether elections, the Democratic candidates for governor have made combating rising costs central to their campaigns — tying that message to the looming ACA hikes. It's an early road test of a message the party will hammer leading up to the midterms: President Donald Trump and Republicans in Washington have made life more expensive.

Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor, has highlighted how out-of-pocket costs could be two to more than five times higher for families who purchase insurance through the ACA exchange, and those hikes could force thousands of people to go uninsured. Spanberger this week toured a rural hospital in southwest Virginia that stands to feel the effects of the Trump administration’s tax law that slashes Medicaid.

In Wisconsin, a battleground state that backed Trump by under 1 point last year, Democrats are launching hundreds of canvassing operations focused on subsidy cuts, and are planning messaging billboards as well. This weekend, as Wisconsinites see tangible increases in their premiums, Democratic Party Chair Devin Remiker said, “the objective reality is going to hit people in a way that you can't talking point your way out of, if you're the Republican Party.”

Wisconsin Republicans aren’t planning to spend money in response, however. State GOP Chair Brian Schimming says Democrats are going to hang themselves by tying the subsidy cuts to the shutdown.

“I think they're putting a massive, massive bet on not just the shutdown, but on getting people to think that the shutdown is … Republicans’ fault,” he said.

Natalie Fertig contributed to this report.

One Republican candidate in South Carolina’s open gubernatorial primary said Donald Trump would “decide my fate.” Another pledged to send the state’s National Guard troops wherever Trump wants. A third accompanied the then-presidential candidate to his 2024 criminal trial in Manhattan.

In recent interviews with POLITICO, three contenders for the seat being vacated by Gov. Henry McMaster gushed over Trump’s coveted endorsement and described some of their early efforts to secure it as the president plans to attend a fundraiser in the state for the reelection of his longtime ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham.

The winner of next June’s Republican primary is all but guaranteed to become deep-red South Carolina’s next executive. The candidates include the state’s lieutenant governor, attorney general and two members of its congressional delegation — all of whom are thirsting for the president’s support.

A new Winthrop University poll — the first major independent survey of the primary — found Rep. Nancy Mace and Lt. Gov. Pam Evette led the field in a statistical tie at 17 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Rep. Ralph Norman and Attorney General Alan Wilson followed with 8 percent each.

Though early favorites have started to emerge, the race remains wide open without Trump’s nod.

“He’ll get to decide my fate. He is a kingmaker, and I hope in this case he will be a queenmaker,” said Mace, the third-term member of Congress known for being outspoken on conservative cable news and social media.

South Carolina has a long history of fierce loyalty to Trump. McMaster became the first statewide elected official to endorse the president’s nascent 2016 campaign, and Graham is one of his closest advisers on Capitol Hill and friends on the putting green. Democrats haven’t won the state in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in 1976.

But so far, Trump has stayed out of the race, forcing the contenders to try to define themselves and their candidacies without input from someone who has dominated the party for a decade and remade it in his image. In that way, the race — taking place during a pivotal midterm cycle — mirrors the challenge awaiting the Republican Party, which must begin to grapple with a future without Trump, who is in his final term.

For now, the candidates aren’t willing to explore that future.

“Donald Trump is the gold standard. He casts a very long shadow over state politics here in South Carolina, especially in the Republican primary,” said Wilson. “Anyone who says they don’t want the president’s endorsement is crazy.”

From his perch in Columbia, Wilson has filed nearly 20 briefs across the federal judiciary in support of Trump administration initiatives like federalizing the National Guard or enforcing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, according to a POLITICO analysis. His campaign website features a “Trump Tough” section, which includes a slideshow of selfies and step-and-repeat pictures with the president.

Trump’s only attention to the race so far was a captionless post on Truth Social in mid-August showing the results of a survey that put Mace atop of the crowded field — a poll that the congresswoman shared with the president, according to campaign spokesperson Piper Gifford.

“I absolutely communicate with the White House on this race and provide data and information to them and to those who will be ultimately making the decision,” Mace said in the recent interview.

Wilson has also been in touch with “high level members” of the White House about his candidacy, but has yet to broach the race directly with Trump. “They are aware of my campaign. They are aware of what I have done as attorney general. They are aware that I have defended the president's agenda, that I have defended the president,” he said.

Evette entered the race in mid-July. Though she served two terms alongside McMaster, her foray into gubernatorial contention will be her first time running for elected office on her own ticket. Asked about any behind-the-scenes conversations with the White House seeking support, the state’s second-in-command demurred, while reiterating her loyalty to Trump at his political nadir.

“In January of ‘23, President Trump came to South Carolina, and he was looking for friends,” Evette said, recalling Trump’s brief time in the political wilderness following his 2020 loss and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. “Out of all the people that are in this race, I was the only one that showed up for him, stood shoulder to shoulder with him when there were no polls to say that he was going to win.”

She recalled national consultants warning her, “‘You have a bright future, you're killing yourself. Like, why are you doing this? He's going to get indicted.’ And I was like, well, loyalty matters.”

Loyalty to Trump might determine his endorsement, and the candidates are willing to leverage that litmus test against one another.

Unlike Evette, Mace publicly rebuked the president following the attack on the Capitol but has since returned to his side as a faithful ally on Capitol Hill.

Norman might have the hardest case to make in seeking Trump’s endorsement.

As a member of Congress’ hard-right Freedom Caucus, Norman’s deficit-hawk style has at times positioned him against some White House-backed legislation that the group criticised for expanding the national debt. Perhaps worse for his fate: endorsing South Carolina’s Nikki Haley during the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

“Ralph Norman has the best record of voting with Trump of any candidate and is proud to work with him in Congress. He'd welcome the President's endorsement but knows that the President has other friends in this race and he respects that,” Norman spokesperson Evan Newman said in a statement.

Speaking with reporters after a party fundraising event in Columbia earlier this summer, Graham said he told the president to “wait and see” before issuing an endorsement in the governor’s race. South Carolina is at least somewhat on the president’s mind, though. The president will take his first in-person dip into the 2026 midterms when he attends a fundraiser that in part is billed to Graham’s own reelection campaign, POLITICO first reported.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s conversations around a possible endorsement or whether he is communicating with any of the candidates. The lack of endorsement in South Carolina isn’t indicative of a larger trend, though. The president has already thrown his support behind Rep. Byron Donalds to succeed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis next year, and his former rival-turned-ally Vivek Ramaswamy got the coveted endorsement not long after his campaign launch in February.

Lacking a race-changing boost from the president, the candidates have touted their own fundraising as evidence of grassroots support and the campaign strength. By those metrics, no runaway favorite has yet to emerge.

The four contenders each reported raising over a million dollars since starting their campaigns, according to financial reports filed with the South Carolina Elections Commission. Evette and Norman led the pack with $1.4 and $1.3 million respectively, though both also gave their own campaigns six-figure sums.

Wilson, who launched his campaign first, has just under $1.3 million. According to a memo released by his campaign, about one-fifth of that haul includes a six-figure transfer from his state attorney general campaign account, with “still more transfers on the way.”

“They believed in him to be Attorney General and now want him to be Governor,” campaign finance chair Barry Wynn wrote.

Mace’s fundraising shows her slightly trailing her competitors, with $1.06 million raised, but other indicators bode well for her campaign. In addition to the new Winthrop poll showing her with a slight lead, she pulled in over 18,500 individual donations, exponentially more than her rivals.

In addition to the candidates’ agreement on the eminence of a presidential endorsement, the emerging issues separating them are decidedly local.

They’re aligned on the perennial sticking points that are likely to define the race: lowering taxes, and specifically eliminating the state’s income tax, and fixing the state’s aging infrastructure as it buckles under population growth.

Judicial reform has also emerged as a salient issue, with South Carolina and Virginia being the only states in the country where judges are selected by a commission and approved solely by a legislative vote. Neither the governor nor voters have a say in who serves on the local bench.

“Many of these folks have cases before these judges and then many of these attorneys fund the attorney generals and the solicitors when they're running for office. Everybody gets paid, and nobody goes to jail,” Mace said.

The candidates don’t seem to agree on how to implement this one: as the state’s top prosecutor, Wilson helped push some recent changes through the state legislature that allowed the governor to appoint one-third of the seats on a selection committee that took effect this year.

“I believe that the governor should have all of the appointments on the [Judicial Merit Selection Committee],” Wilson said, while expressing openness to pushing a constitutional amendment that would embrace the federal advise-and-consent model.

Evette, banking on the relationship she forged with the state legislature alongside McMaster, hopes to move directly to amending the state constitution to have the state mirror federal judicial appointments.

Norman is the only candidate to call for direct election of judges in the state.

McMaster, who has focused on business development in the relatively small state, is preparing to leave his two terms in Columbia with a 46-percent approval rating, matching Trump at the top of the public figures included in the Winthrop University survey.

McMaster has so far demurred on whether he’ll endorse any of his potential successors.

Speaking to reporters recently, he said, “Elections will come and go, and endorsements will be made whenever they’re made.”

President Trump traveled to Asia to be a statesman, a showman and a traveling salesman, depending on the audience.

The Texas attorney general has escalated the pace of high-profile legal actions, raising concern that his Senate campaign is influencing his law enforcement work.