They are at it again. It is election time in the US, so tomorrow - barely a year since Donald Trump won the presidency and Congress (just about), it is back to the voting booths for millions of Americans.
Most will be voting in local elections, but there are four electoral contests that have national significance - two statewide polls that test to some extent the popularity of the president's agenda and performance, one referendum that could alter the arithmetic in Congress in next year's midterm elections, and one local election contest that tells us something about the current state of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party has been stumbling, shellshocked and aimless, through the charred rubble of its own post-electoral hellscape and all four elections will tell us about the current state of the party.
The Democrats badly need some winners, and are spending big in search of morale boosting victories.
They are helped by history, with electoral records showing that the party of the president tends to lose these odd-year elections more than win them and in Donald Trump they have a president who is, shall we say, motivating?
The governor's races are being held in New Jersey and Virginia with the state legislatures - House and Senate - also up for election.
So it is a full on general election at state level in two prosperous north eastern states, where the Trump factor is playing a role in what is quite tight electoral arithmetic.
So what it tells us about Americans' real feelings about the first year of the Trump administration is significant - because it is an actual poll not an opinion poll. But then again it is only two states, so lots of caveats apply in trying to stretch interpretations to fit a national picture.
Still, they are important national political barometers, falling as they do half-way between the presidential election and the midterms - they are sort of the "midterms of the midterms".
The polling information suggests the Democrats will win both governorships, and should retain control of the State House in Trenton, New Jersey's unloved capital. (On a visit to the state house some years ago I asked a staffer where was a good place to get lunch. "Pennsylvania", he replied, nodding in the direction of the river that marked the state lines).
Though the Democrats' lead in the polls is not as solid as it should be in such a blue state, so the political nerds will be watching this one closest of all tomorrow’s electoral contests.
The 100-seat Virginia House is also a tight affair, with the Republicans needing just three gains to take back control.
However, the current government shutdown may tip sentiment against them as northern Virginia is home to the greatest concentration of federal government employees, who are either furloughed, fired or working without pay.
Either way, that is a lot of unhappy voters (and a possible reason for the federal budget standoff not to be resolved before the votes are in the boxes).
In both states, the Democrats have plumped for the centre ground as their battleground, the party primaries picking candidates with broad appeal to middle America.
In both states, the Democrat candidates are women, both with military or intelligence service backgrounds, who got elected to the US Congress in 2018 and made a name for themselves as part of the new centrists in a party that is often defined by the rhetoric of its leftist extremities (especially by its Republican rival).
Both Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy officer and helicopter pilot, and Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, stood out as militantly moderate in the last several congresses.
Along with another ex-CIA staffer Elissa Slotkin, they were known to some as the "mod squad", in contrast to the better known 'Squad" of left wingers, led by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), the New York representative.
Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib back up AOC in forming the furthest left bit of the Democrats in Congress.
Neither of the candidates are out to change the world - at least not in the governor’s mansions.
They believe that the first rule of politics is winning elections, so both are campaigning on the things that bother ordinary Americans most - the cost of housing, food and medical care as well as the cost of everything else for that matter.
The affordability crisis is their best political tailwind.
For Ms Spanberger, the president’s tariffs are giving her some traction with some of Virginia’s farmers - soybean farmers in particular stretched on the rack by China in retaliation: last week's apparent deal in Korea could not have come soon enough for them.
In the northern - and richest - end of the state, the Federal layoffs help motivate Democratic voters (the Pentagon, CIA headquarters at Langley and the FBI academy at Quantico just three of the vast array of government agencies in the state).
The prospect of AI driven layoffs in the state's very large high tech workforce (Google and Amazon both have huge operations, nestled among the prairie-sized data centres that extend south from the Potomac River) may also help.
As does the general term "chaos", used by Ms Spanberger and several other speakers at a campaign event we went to last week in Alexandria (not far from George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon).
Virginia is the only state of the old Confederacy that Donald Trump did not win in the presidential election last year (the state capital, Richmond, was also the capital of the Confederacy).
The outgoing Governor, Glenn Youngkin, a successful financier with the Carlyle Group, benefitted from Joe Biden being the incumbent when his election was held.
His Lieutenant Governor, Winsome Earle-Sears is running as the Republican candidate, but is not doing well with attack ads claiming she is too right wing for MAGA.
Ms Earle-Sears, an immigrant from Jamaica who served in the US Marines, looks and sounds much less establishment than Ms Spanberger.
That might be part of her undoing in Virginia, at least this time around.
And although the Democrats attack her as MAGA, she has a Trump problem: he thinks she is a "phoney".
That is because she said in 2022 that he should not run for president again. He has not backed her in this election as a result.
Whatever the result, Virginia will get its first female Governor since 1776.
President Trump has backed the New Jersey Republican candidate all the way from the primary that cleared the way for Jack Ciattarelli to go again, having narrowly lost in 2021.
The polls indicate another narrow loss is on the cards, as the navy pilot-turned lawyer-turned moderate Democrat politician Mikie Sherrill has a narrow lead.
The race has been tight enough considering New Jersey is historically a blue state, with registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans almost two to one.
However, the president has inadvertently given Ms Sherrill a helping hand in one of his early responses to the government shutdown: promising to hit back against Democrat controlled states he pulled $18 billion in Federal funding from a badly needed new railway tunnel linking New Jersey with New York city.
That's just enraged New Jersey commuters, some 200,000 of whom head into the Big Apple to earn their daily bread.
As a result of railing against the pulled railway funding, Ms Sherrill hardly has to mention the president and his wider policies at all.
The other big campaign issue is, like Ms Spanberger, the cost of living crisis.
In particular, the cost of electricity for New Jerseyans, which has skyrocketed since the summer.
She is promising to take a page from the president's playbook and declare a state of emergency to stop utility companies jacking up the price as rapidly as consumers (there is a deeper financing issue that defies easy soundbite politics, but that is for after the election).
There are also plenty of municipal elections taking place in cities and counties across America.
The big cities are the ones that count, and of the top 100 cities in the US, 27 have mayoral elections this year - eight of those jobs have already been filled.
However, tomorrow sees 19 races in a list of big cities that pretty much reads like the places that have an NFL franchise in them. But only one of them is getting any attention in America. And internationally.
There are many reasons why New York is exceptional, both as a city and as a concentration of media organisations with global reach. However, why should anyone outside of the Tri-State area know who the Mayor of New York city is?
Be honest - do you know who the Mayor of Dublin is?
Yet the name Zohran Mamdani is known everywhere. This is a testimony to the political marketing skills of the 34-year-old member of the New York State House, who shocked the Democratic Party hierarchy earlier this year when he won the party primary to become the Democratic Party Candidate for mayor.
And in this heavily Democrat voting city, winning the primary is as good as winning the election itself. Not that Mr Mamdani is taking anything for granted, running a high energy campaign that has stunned many observers of what is generally regarded as conventional wisdom.
The New York mayoral contest is the latest installment in the picaresque political opera that is city hall politics in Gotham.
The incumbent Mayor, Eric Adams, was a Democrat until he was charged with taking a bribe from the Turkish government to facilitate planning permission for a new Turkish consulate building.
He had to resign from the Democrats, but was pardoned by President Trump. He then stood for re-election as an independent.
The Democrats sought a new candidate, which opened the door for the former Governor of New York State, to contest the primary.
His father was also the governor, and the perception was he would cruise to the nomination.
But time had passed him by - he had to resign as governor back in 2021 because of a string of allegations of inappropriate behaviour from female workers in the governors mansion.
He had denied all impropriety and fought back, although acknowledging that standards of behaviour have changed over the decades.
Enter Mr Mamdani from stage left.
Peddling an unlikely US politics combination of pro-Palestine, far left (by US standards) ideas like free public transport, rent control, a massive public housebuilding drive and low cost childcare - all paid for by taxing the rich, he outflanked Andrew Cuomo and secured the nomination.
Mr Cuomo had stood as an independent as well.
Mr Trump pressed Eric Adams to drop out of the race (reportedly with offers of a job in the administration - in the meantime the former cop is onside with the Trump law and order agenda).
The actual Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, is a no hoper - the red beret wearing founder of the Guardian Angels subway patrol group has been accused by some of using the platform to promote his own talk radio show.
Mr Trump would prefer if Mr Sliwa quit the race too to give Mr Cuomo a chance to become the stop the Democratic candidate.
But despite financial backing from the billionaire class - including a reputed $8.5 million from former Mayor Mike Bloomberg - Mr Cuomo is struggling to cut through: not a Republican, tarnished as a Democrat, totally out of touch with the grinding daily concerns of young New Yorkers.
They want someone - anyone - to do something about the cost of living in the city.
Never a cheap place, prices for housing in particular are stratospheric.
Affordable, available housing is the cry of young people and the modestly paid in cities all over the Western world.
Especially in those successful big cities that suck in young talent from all over the globe.
Their daily struggles contrast with the almost unbelievable wealth of the mega-rich in Manhattan, and their well-heeled servants on Wall Street.
So Mr Mamdani - a proudly proclaimed "democratic socialist", is on track to be the mayor of the world’s most capitalist city.
A Muslim, he is outspoken on Palestine and in his criticism of Israel and is winning in the city with the most Jews in the world other than Tel Aviv.
As French philosopher and public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote of the apparent success of someone who does not give wholehearted support to the state of Israel in the Wall Street Journal at the weekend :
"If New York falls, the entire free world may again totter on its foundations."
Which may explain why there is so much attention on this particular mayor's race.
What does it tell us about the Democratic Party?
Is the Mamdani way the new way for the Democrats to win? Probably not.
What works in New York will not work in New Mexico but it could further bolster the far left as a faction in the party.
Success for Mr Mamdani could encourage AOC to have a go at current Democrat Senate leader Chuck Schumer, who faces a primary vote ahead of next year's midterms, when his seat is up for election again.
If 36-year-old AOC replaced the 74-year-old, it would position her to be the leading left wing voice in the Senate, leaving 83-year-old Senator Bernie Sanders free to contemplate slowing down a bit (Mr Sanders is the only politician apart from the president who can pretty well expect to fill stadium-sized speaking engagements around the country: he has been on a nationwide speaking tour with AOC).
Mr Trump of course is playing his part, calling Mr Mamdani a communist, and threatening to cut off federal money to the city. Mr Cuomo isn’t throwing in the towel just yet either, placing hope in older voters coming out to vote and younger voters doing anything except voting.
So the Democrats could come out of the election looking like they have over the past few years - split.
The likely victories for moderates in the governor elections balance the likely victory of Mr Mamdani in the mayor's race.
Winning, but not setting a decisive course for the party in the years ahead: the Democratic Party brand is still up for grabs.
Of course in real politics, governors are way more important than mayors - they even have their own armies in the form of the National Guard.
Mr Mamdani only has the NYPD - a force he has a tetchy relationship with and being seen as soft on crime is a serious impediment for many Democratic Party politicians around the country.
And while neither Virginia nor New Jersey could be described a national bellwethers - places that mimic the characteristics of the typical American community - their farmland and endless suburbs are a lot more representative than New York City, a place which is quintessentially urban and mentally closer to European style social democracy than anywhere else in America.
It is absolutely atypical. So beware the Mr Mamdani hype when it comes to prognostications about the future of the Democratic party.
The biggest lesson for the party establishment is not a new one either: beware of the primary elections - the ones where only the hard core party activists come out to vote (the same is true on the Republican side, hence the MAGA capture of that party).
As for the fourth electoral test, this is a referendum in California to authorise a Gerrymander to give the Democrats more seats in next year's midterm elections to the US House of Representatives.
The referendum on Proposition 50, to be correct about it, was called by Democratic Party Governor Gavin Newsom.
He wants to do a Gerrymander in this already heavily Democrat voting state to bring about the near obliteration of the Republican Party representation in the lower house of Congress.
Why? Because Texas Governor Greg Abbott is doing a Gerrymander in Texas to slash the number of Democrat seats and boost the number of Republicans the Lone Star state sends to DC.
Other Republican led states are also looking at Gerrymandering the maps ahead of next year's primaries - a normal practice here ever since Governor Elbridge Gerry signed off on the first dodgy redistricting in Massachusetts in 1812 (the local rag, the Boston Gazette, ran a cartoon with Gerry's face drawn onto a Salamander, dubbing the slimy creature a Gerrymander - boy did that one stick!).
The California Gerrymander is controversial - not just because it could see the 39% vote share the Republicans get in America's most populous state translate into just four seats out of the 52 that California gets in the House of Representatives (down from nine at the moment).
The former Republican governor of California and movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger has been back on TV shows in recent weeks arguing voters should terminate Prop 50 on grounds of democracy.
As governor he brought in the law that Prop 50 is supposed to overthrow - having an independent electoral commission draw up the electoral maps, not highly partisan politicians.
But with Republicans going into next year's midterm congressional elections with the narrowest majority in the House in a hundred years, they are scrambling to counteract the normal drop of 20 seats that all incumbent ruling parties seem to face at midterms.
That would see control of the House pass to the Democrats, throwing a big spanner in the legislative works of the Trump administration - hence the rush to get as much done before November of next year.
So yes, these are local elections. It is not about Trump. It is all about Trump.
