As the Fed chair recently put it, the American economy is now "driving in a fog." Because the federal government remains shut down, no new official monthly economic statistics are being calculated and released to the public. This lack of data will continue until roughly a month after the government gets reopened, since the people who compile the statistics have to collect the data each month before they can calculate what it all means. The gap in collecting data could continue through November, which would mean there would be no official figures released at the start of next month. The most important of these statistics are the unemployment figures and the inflation rate.

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Democrats had a very good night last night. That's even an understatement -- in actual fact, Democrats had a blowout night last night, as they romped home in just about every election everywhere. One year from Donald Trump's electoral victory, the Democratic Party came back strong. What it all means for the future is anyone's guess, but for the first time in an entire year, it's better to be a Democrat than a Republican, looking towards that future.

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Tonight, political wonks will all be waiting to see the results of the off-off-year election come rolling in. There will be big races and small to keep track of, and much will be made of any demographic shifts in voting patterns. But there is also another thing Democrats will be waiting to hear, which is the political future of (as she is called now) Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. The rumor mill is expecting an announcement from Pelosi on whether she will be running for re-election next year to her House seat, or whether she will be retiring from politics and passing the torch to someone younger to take over.

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New York City is in the midst of holding a sort of hybrid election to choose its new mayor. The Democratic primary used "ranked-choice voting" (R.C.V.), while the general election tomorrow will be the traditional "whichever candidate gets the most votes wins" sort of contest. I saw an article today in Salon which contrasted how these two contests played out, which pointed out how the Democratic primary was a less-vicious affair, with candidates not only vying to be the first selection on people's ballots but also the "number two" choice for voters backing other candidates. It posited that the general election would have been a much more civil affair if R.C.V. had been in place, since the same sort of effect might have changed the way the candidates campaigned. The article was probably right to some degree or another, but it missed a rather large point -- one that might be pertinent for Republican voters: if the N.Y.C. mayoral general election had indeed been held under R.C.V. rules, then frontrunner Zohran Mamdani might have wound up losing.

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