Right warns socialist surge threatens NH primary, establishment Democrat wins it, warning redeployed same day at GOP convention

…(cont) Here's what I've got, dated August twenty-seventh. I'll read it slow, because I had to read it twice myself: "Socialist surge threatens Democrats in New Hampshire Senate race." That's the headline. Underneath, it says a candidate named Karishma Manzur had closed — and here's where my clipping gets me — it just says "a 50-point" and then it cuts off. Fifty points of what, I don't have. The page tore, or the fold ate it, or somebody at my kitchen table used it to level a chair leg — happens more than you'd think. I'm not going to tell you it's a lead, because I don't have the noun. I've got the number. Fifty. I'll leave it right there and move on, because that's the honest thing to do with half a sentence.

Here's what I keep thinking about instead, and it isn't the number — it's the toll plaza on the way into town. You get a sign about a mile back, TRAFFIC AHEAD, DELAYS LIKELY, and by the time you're actually at the booth it's moving fine, ten seconds and you're through. Nobody drives back up the road to take the sign down. It stays up. It's not wrong exactly — somebody put it up in good faith, there probably was a slowdown an hour before you got there — it's just still up, warning the next guy about a jam that already cleared.

So September ninth rolls around. I've got a second clipping, different masthead, and this one says: "Establishment Dem defeats socialist challenger in crucial battleground Senate primary." Chris Pappas. A comfortable win, is how it reads to me, though I'll be careful — the actual vote count isn't in what I've got, just that he beat her and there's a general election waiting. So I won't hand you a margin I don't have. I'll hand you the word the headline chose for him: "establishment." Same word the August piece used for the man the surge was supposedly coming to swallow. Thirteen days later, and "surge" isn't anywhere in the second piece. Neither is the fifty. Gone, the way the sign should've come down and didn't.

That's most of what I wanted to walk through, and I appreciate you sticking with me this far — I know the glovebox digression didn't help anybody. Oh — one more thing, before you go, and I promise this is the last of it. Same day. September ninth. A different paper this time, not the one with Pappas — a third outlet, and the headline there says the party's about to spend two days in Dallas telling everybody Democrats are socialists, ahead of November. Same day the first piece is telling you the socialist already lost in September. I checked the dates twice, figuring I'd misread one of them. I hadn't. Both say the ninth.

So here's what I keep coming back to, and I think you're smart enough to sit with it a second: if the socialist surge cleared before the toll booth, who left the sign up for November?