Midterm Elections Triage: Red Oliphants Blame Donwald

Three weeks before the midterm elections, the Party of the Red Oliphant has stopped campaigning and started triage. Officials are racing to save a string of once-safe seats whose loss could cost the party both the Senate Chamber and the Chamber of Commons. The Oliphants call this "triage." The Chamber's own word for it is "retreat," but a retreat requires a motion, and nobody has seconded one.

Observe the procedure. The Chamber Leadership Hoard, the party's war chest for Senate races, has sent more than 100 million gp into the Lone Star Marches to carry Marshal Kenrick Paxtomb. He emerged from a bruising primary only to have the audio of a private fundraiser leak out after him. The Hoard has since cancelled its town-crier bookings in the Carolan Reach and moved at least 10 million gp to Kanzar, a wheat province that has not sent a Blue Donkey to the Senate Chamber since 1932. When a party must defend Kanzar, the gentleman from Kanzar would be wise to count his silver.

A member of the Chamber of Commons, seeking re-election and eager to be quoted, put it plainly: "Donwald is dragging the party down." A courtier who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to be awake told me the High Lord's rallies help "the way a lit torch helps a hayloft." High Lord Donwald of the Golden Towers visited the Lone Star Marches three times in a single month and, aides report, left in better spirits each time. Nobody else did.

The causes are not mysterious. Voters are angry about the war with Calimshan, which, as the Gazette reported when Donwald promised no sieges until the ballots are counted, has run seven months. They are also angry about the price of everything else. On Friday the realm's odds-keepers moved eighteen Chamber of Commons races toward the Blue Donkeys, and five toss-up seats in three provinces are leaning the same way. Speaker Mikel Johnstone is touring more than forty districts across twenty provinces, which in my thirty years of observation means a man is being sent places.

The Blue Donkeys, for their part, are measuring the drapes. Grand Vizier Chuck Schemer has already promised to block any High Court nominee from a Donwald seat if his party takes the Senate Chamber.

Promises Made this session: expand the map, hold the Chamber, win Kanzar's neighbors. Promises Kept: the map has been expanded, in the sense that the party now defends more of it. The Hoard calls this "disciplined resource allocation." The ledger calls it spending.

The motion to blame the High Lord was ruled out of order. Nobody had moved it. Several members wished to.

— O.V., from the gallery