Bad Comps, But Good Vibrations - Top 3 Takeaways – May 27th, 2026
Takeaway #1 Bad comps
The year was... Serbia declared its independence. The world’s tallest documented tree (380 feet tall) was discovered at the Redwood National Park in California. The biggest bank theft in England’s history happened in Kent – when the equivalent of $92.5 million was stolen leading to 37 eventual arrests. The Walt Disney Company announced that it would buy Pixar Studios. Twitter went live with the first Tweet coming from founder Jack Dorsey saying, “just setting up my twttr”. Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. Apple’s first MacBook was released. Julian Assange launched WikiLeaks.com. The U.S. population crossed 300 million people. Nintendo’s Wii console was launched and...for Joel...the #1 number song was Bad Day by Daniel Powter. The year was 2006. Now what was it in 2006 that has me featuring this stream of consciousness as my top takeaway today? 2006 was the last time that Democrats had as big of a generic ballot lead over Republicans on Election Day in the mid-terms, as they currently do today. As I cited in my Midterm Election Update yesterday... The RealClear Politics polling average showed Democrats with a 7.7% generic ballot lead. That’s a number that’s larger than the 7.3% advantage Democrats had on Election Day 2018 – in that year’s wave election. As I summarized: Democrats are currently the best positioned for the midterm election the party has been to date. The growing Democrat advantage follows three months of the Iranian war/conflict. Democrats appear to be benefitting from the fallout of higher gas prices. On Election Day 2006 Democrats won nationally by 7.9% - in flipping 31 seats in the U.S. House and five seats in the U.S. Senate in-route to gaining complete control of congress. And if you remember back, there was something else that had been playing out that also weighed in heavily on the midterm election outcome that year. The unpopular war in Iraq. The circumstances, and as of now, certainly the timeline of our involvement in the conflict are much less today than they were twenty years ago – but what we see through this comparison is that a) The American people at large aren’t fond of middle eastern wars and b) If the Iranian conflict isn’t resolved rather quickly, we’re likely to see history repeating (as in Democrats taking complete control of congress). The current comps are especially bad comps for the GOP as they’ve come as President Trump is set to convene...
Takeaway #2 A full Cabinet meeting
Today an all hands on deck meeting is set to take place as President Trump called his cabinet together for a previously unscheduled meeting at Camp David. All members of the president’s cabinet are expected to attend – even outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. While it’s unclear what the specific direction of the meeting will be amid ongoing peace negotiations with Iran...it’s worth noting that they last time the president convened his full cabinet at Camp David was just prior to dropping the MOPs on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June. Maybe today’s meeting is an opportunity for cabinet officials to weigh in on final details of a potential peace deal, or maybe it’s to set the stage for there not being a peace deal and the military actions that would then come next. If you’re looking to take the more optimistic approach – one where a potentially meaningful peace deal is soon done – it could be noteworthy that President Trump called his cabinet meeting upon news of the conclusion of the Iranian government’s potentially key meeting on Tuesday. That meeting took place between three top Iranian officials, including Iran’s president, in Qatar. According to Iranian state media – the details discussed at the meeting included the unfreezing of $24 billion of Iranian funds through sanctions relief. Iran’s media also characterized the meeting as “generally positive”. Now here’s the thing. One must always take Iran’s state media with a grain of salt, however with that said, what would Iran have to gain by broadcasting to its people that the country’s leadership had generally positive negotiations that centered on Iranian government funds potentially becoming unfrozen if there wasn’t potentially something to it? What’s particularly interesting about that dynamic to me is that if Iran’s top leadership left the country to negotiate with one of the countries we’ve enlisted to assist, and the crux of the conversation was about releasing $24 billion in frozen Iranian money...that would seemingly suggest...
Takeaway #3 We’re now down to negotiating fine details
Here’s the next thing – it was just around the time that news of the Iranian meeting came out that something else took place that hasn’t happened since the start of the Iran war. Iran partially resorted internet access within the country. When you back that up with President Trump calling a meeting for today after hearing the results of the Iran-Qatar meeting...it all begins to sound interesting. Like maybe, just maybe, something substantive could be coming together this time. Or, I suppose conversely, what the military plan is if this thing goes sideways quickly (probably both). So, in other words, while those of us on the outside have no way of really knowing what’s happening on the inside – there's room, and more than just tea leaves one could read, to suggest that some movement by Iran in a constructive direction may be happening.