Trump carried South Carolina by 18 points; Fox News rated the seat a toss-up with a week left.

…(cont) The decline shows up in the paperwork on September 23, when the Cook Political Report shifted South Carolina toward the Democrats — the same notice that moved Kansas from "likely Republican" to "lean Republican." On October 6, Sabato's Crystal Ball shifted South Carolina toward the Democrats too, in the bulletin that moved Alaska from "toss-up" to "leans Democrat." On October 20, Cook moved South Carolina left a second time. That was the same notice in which Cook moved Minnesota toward the Republicans, which disposes of the comfortable idea that the forecasters had simply gotten sweet on one party.

Then the living came forward. On October 26, two former governors of the state, David Beasley, a Republican, and Jim Hodges, a Democrat, appeared in a video for Annie Andrews, the Democrat and a pediatrician running for the seat. In it they allow that the two of them "haven't always agreed on everything." They agreed on one thing this week, and it was not the Republican on the ballot.

On Tuesday, Fox News moved its own rating from "leans Republican" to "toss-up," seven days before the ballots are counted, citing polling that had Graham at 48 percent. By Thursday a New York Times/Siena poll had the two candidates tied there, 48 to 48, in one of the most Republican states in the country. And on Thursday afternoon the president lands in Rock Hill to make his final pitch of the midterms, in a state he won by eighteen, six days before the vote.

The handicappers do not know shit about next Tuesday. They know what they counted in September and October, and they counted it four times, each time in the same direction, and one of those counts was taken by the house organ.

The seat is preceded in death by its "leans Republican" rating and by the eighteen-point margin. It is survived by an endorsement video, four downgrades, a dead-even poll, and an airplane.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you vote on Tuesday, November 3, in the state where you are registered, whether or not anyone has flown in to ask you.