Even though it is a Monday, I find myself in an optimistic mood. Maybe it's just the end of the political Silly Season, but I found myself wondering what would happen if the Democrats truly ran the tables in the midterms and wound up still in control of the House of Representatives and with at least 52 senators in the Senate (so Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin could be politely told to go fly a kite by Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democrats). What could they get done? What would their agenda look like, with a Democrat in the White House ready to sign whatever passed? I know, I know, it is still the longest of longshots -- Democrats will likely still lose the House even if they manage to expand their majority in the Senate -- but like I said, I'm feeling optimistic, so let's just assume it does somehow come to pass.

Of course, it goes without mention that the first thing they would absolutely have to accomplish would be putting a stake through the heart of the legislative filibuster. If Republicans ever gain control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, they're going to get rid of it so fast it'll make your head spin, so why not get proactive and get the Democratic agenda passed before that happens?

There's no guarantee that a broad change in the rules to jettison the filibuster would happen, of course. It might not just be Sinema and Manchin who would balk at going that far, to put it another way. The only test votes on it I recall from the current Senate were on very specific constitutional rights -- like renewing the Voting Rights Act or codifying the protections of Roe v. Wade. Some Democratic senators might acquiesce to making a new carveout in the filibuster rules when basic constitutional rights are in danger, but still be wary of removing it for all legislation. But for the sake of argument here, let's assume that they could get 51 votes to abolish the filibuster forever. What would they do next?

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President Joe Biden keeps coming out with summer hit after summer hit. This week, he forgave up to $20,000 in student loan debt for 43 million Americans. That's a big win, even if some are desperately trying to convince parents across the country that it's somehow a bad thing that their son or daughter just had their student debt wiped out. Good luck with that, guys. Most Americans see this as a huge relief, even if they don't personally benefit. And most Americans see Republicans complaining about it as being seriously out of touch.

The media is going along for this ride, cheerfully pointing out the very few Democrats who spoke out against Biden's move, and repeating all of the Republican talking points about how it'll absolutely doom the economy to allow students to be free of debt earlier in life. But for once, not only Democrats but the White House itself is pushing back hard.

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This year's traditional "Silly Season" in politics has been, for the most part, decidedly unsilly. First there was a burst of legislative action, followed by a few bursts of executive action, and the midterm election primaries have been a lot more interesting than usual this August. Plus, there's the Trump Circus, which always seems to be in town. All of this has added up to me not being able to write any fun Silly Season articles. Until now, that is. You have been warned.

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The wind is now at the Democrats' backs. The "red wave" everyone's been predicting for November may turn out to be no more than a pinkish ripple... or perhaps it won't even occur at all. Of course, we're still more than two months away from the election, and unexpected events could intervene, but right now everything seems to be moving in the Democrats' direction.

President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress have been chalking up a lot more wins than expected, which certainly helps. From finally getting serious about climate change to lowering prescription drug prices to boosting competitiveness with China to helping veterans sickened by burn pits, Congress has been on a roll of late. Gas prices have dropped $1.20 over the course of the summer, and are continuing to fall. Inflation may have peaked. And today, Joe Biden announced that up to $20,000 in student loan debt (for students who qualified for Pell grants) will be forgiven. Biden promised a lot during his campaign, and he's now delivering on major portions of his agenda. Democrats aren't seen as powerless to get much of anything done anymore, which is a big shift in attitude from where we were at the beginning of the summer.

Democratic voters are motivated, too. Turnout has been up in key races. Rather than being lackluster, Democrats are voting in droves. The trend is the exact opposite of what was expected -- that Republicans, being the "out" party, would be far more motivated to vote. So far, that just isn't happening. The opposite is.

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President Joe Biden has always been a rather reluctant reformer of higher education, which is somewhat odd considering his wife works as a community college teacher. For example, during the 2020 Democratic primary race progressives such as Bernie Sanders were arguing for tuition-free college at all state-run colleges and universities. Biden was far more restrained, and said he favored only tuition-free college for two years of community college, which would have left out state university students entirely. The tuition-free community college idea was later included in Biden's Build Back Better plan, but that was before it hit the brick wall named "Joe Manchin." The concept didn't survive in the limited Inflation Reduction Act at all. Also during the primary campaign, the progressives were pushing for either outright cancellation of all student debt or forgiving at least $50,000 of debt per student. Biden was never on board with such sweeping proposals, and countered with his own idea of perhaps forgiving $10,000 in student debt. Which is what might just get announced tomorrow.

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There's a special House election happening tomorrow in upstate New York that many are closely watching as a possible indicator of the strength of the abortion issue in the 2022 campaign season. The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has shifted the political landscape for the midterms, but nobody really knows to what extent this shift will manifest itself. The New York special election is going to be a test of this.

It won't be a definitive answer, though, much like the surprise vote in Kansas to preserve abortion rights wasn't definitive either. In most places, abortion won't be directly on the ballot in such a fashion; the voters will instead be voting for candidates for Congress and statewide office, and abortion will only be part of the puzzle.

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President Joe Biden had a very good week the previous week, and he followed that up with another good week this week as well. A bill which is going to become one of the signature pieces of his presidential legacy passed the House last Friday, and on Tuesday Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Perhaps we should call it "Biden's Obamacare," because it really is just as impressive a piece of legislation.

We'll get to touting the individual reforms and new projects this bill will usher in later, though (down in the talking points), so we're only going to briefly mention it here at the top of the column. Biden -- wisely -- has scheduled a much bigger celebration of the new law for early September, after Labor Day and when more people are paying attention to the midterm campaign, so he'll have one more victory lap to take soon.

The news from Trumpland continued to spew forth this week, both fast and furious (in both senses of that word) -- so much news that we're going to just quickly run down this week's developments in shorthand fashion here:

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I've resisted writing about it until now (mostly because everyone else was doing such a swell job of it) but it now seems almost obligatory to chime in on Liz Cheney's next move. What everyone's been talking about, of course, was her concession speech after spectacularly losing the Wyoming Republican primary to keep her House seat. In it, Cheney promised she wasn't done on the national stage yet, which most people interpreted as at least dipping a toe in the waters of a presidential run. Which brings us to the question of what purpose she would hope to accomplish by such a run.

She's not going to get elected president. That much is just about absolutely certain. She could run as a Republican against Trump (and the rest of the field), and she would lose in the primaries -- again, probably pretty spectacularly. She could run as an independent, and she would again lose (in the general election), although she may prove to be a "spoiler" who throws the race in one direction or another (such as H. Ross Perot or Ralph Nader). That would be the most she could even hope to achieve. Perot got 19 percent of the popular vote, which won him exactly zero electors, after all.

But maybe that's the point. Because Cheney's campaign would be nothing short of an all-out crusade. She would be running not to win but for the specific purpose of denying Donald Trump the presidency. That would really be the only plank in her campaign platform. Oh sure, she'd stand foursquare for all the things Republicans used to deeply care about (or at least say they did) and she'd give lots of optimistic statements about her chances of winning, but all this would be largely immaterial. Her campaign slogan would still essentially be: "Stop Trump!"

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I try not to write about the same subject two days in a row as a general rule, but sometimes circumstances demand it. Yesterday, I wrote a speculative article about the Alaskan primaries and special election for their sole House seat, and in it I made a pretty obvious assumption that turned out not to be true. So I thought the subject needed revisiting.

I wrote about three of the races in Alaska yesterday -- Lisa Murkowski's Senate race, and the two elections (one special election for the remainder of the term, and also the primary election for the full term beginning next January) for the state's sole House seat. Senator Murkowski not only easily made it onto the general election ballot (the top four vote-getters will advance) but actually is in first place, beating the Trump acolyte by over five points (note: all results here are "as of this writing," with only an estimated 70 percent of the vote counted). This bodes well for her in November, obviously.

But the truly stunning results came out of the two House races (for the same seat). In the "top 4" primary, Democrat Mary Peltola currently stands four points ahead of Republican Sarah Palin, and over eight points up on Republican Nick Begich. Tara Sweeney is currently in fourth place, but she has such a small percentage of the vote (3.7 percent) that it's conceivable (although admittedly unlikely, as the fifth-place candidate only has 0.6 percent) that she might not make it onto the November ballot. The upshot of all this? Yes, you heard that correctly -- a Democrat is leading the race for Don Young's House seat in Alaska.

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Alaska is trying out two new ballot innovations today, which is further complicated by the fact that voters will be using each new innovation once -- for the same office. Representative Don Young died suddenly earlier this year, which means a special election to fill the remainder of his term is happening today as well as a primary election for the term which begins next January. There was an earlier primary for the special election, which was the first time Alaskans used their new "top 4" open-primary system (sometimes called a "jungle primary"). And today's special election will be the first time they'll vote using a "ranked-choice" ballot, where voters don't just get one static vote, instead they get to list the candidates in whatever ranking they wish: first choice, second choice, etc....

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