About October Surprises: They All Have Murky Histories

My first question for readers today is, does anything surprise you about what's going on in this country nowadays?

My second question is, do you know what an October Surprise is in relation to politics? 

If not, an October Surprise is about a news event that may influence the outcome of an upcoming November election. Sometimes they are planned and sometimes they're spontaneous. Telling the difference keeps political pundits playing a partisan guessing game up to election day.

The forerunner of the October Surprise happened in mid-October of 1840, shortly before the 1840 presidential election when federal prosecutors announced plans to charge top Whig Party officials with "most stupendous and atrocious fraud" for paying Pennsylvanians to cross state lines and vote for Whig candidates in New York during the 1938 elections.

The Origin of the Term

During the 1980 presidential election, Republican challenger Ronald Reagan feared that a last-minute deal to release American hostages held in Iran might earn incumbent Jimmy Carter enough votes to win re-election.

William Casey, the manager of the Reagan campaign, was the first person to mention the idea of an "October Surprise" to the press by publicly claiming Carter was going to use the hostages to his advantage.

The only problem with that accusation was President Carter told the press that the hostages would not be released until after the election prior to the claim by Casey.

The truth didn't matter, however. Casey's ominous warnings of an October Surprise to the press was done for strategic reasons. It was intended to prepare the voters, so that if some good October news happened, the voters would look at the event as a political ploy by the Carter campaign.

Historians point out that Reagan's campaign more than likely made a deal with Iran whereby the Iranians would hold the hostages until after Reagan was elected and inaugurated.

Congress, like it often does elected not to take any action despite damning evidence presented in news stories by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and independent journalists.

The following decades experienced more October Surprises, and they all had one thing in common - they were murky in origin. 

So back to this October.

I have to wonder what could possibly qualify as a surprise in today's political climate?

Partisan bombshells explode daily with each side seeking an advantage going into November. You could safely argue that every day this month had a surprise - which in another age - would have simply been called chaos.

As it stands, despite stretching my brain to its outer limits, I cannot conceive of what would be big enough to be considered an October Surprise in 2022!