There are lots of reasons to believe the November elections should be great for the Republican Party: Midterms are generally kind to the out-of-power party, the president's party almost always loses seats in year six of an administration, the 2014 map is favorable to Republicans, and President Obama's approval ratings are pretty low. Republicans even have reasonable hopes for a really big "wave" election, like every election since 2006, minus 2012.

But if the Republicans are going to ride an anti-Democratic wave to big pickups in the House and Senate, there are scant signs of it now, says Nate Cohn at The New York Times.

The race for the Senate, at least right now, is stable. There aren't many polls asking whether voters would prefer Democrats or Republicans to control Congress, but the Democrats appear to maintain a slight edge among registered voters. Democratic incumbents in red Republican states, who would be all but doomed in a Republican wave, appear doggedly competitive in places where Mitt Romney won by as much as 24 points in 2012.... The light-blue Democratic states and purple presidential battleground states, like Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, all seem to be heading toward tight races or Democratic wins, as one would expect in a fairly neutral year. [New York Times]

None of that means Republicans will have a bad year, or even that they won't win control of the Senate in a non-wave election. In fact, there weren't clear signs of a wave election in 2006, 2008, or 2010 until after this point in the election cycle, Cohn writes. "But as July turns to August, the GOP is now on the clock.... Every day that goes by without a shift toward the GOP increases the odds that there will not be a wave at all." Peter Weber

Over the weekend, Czech voters gave a resounding victory to billionaire Andrej Babis and his ANO party, handing the nationalist party 78 seats in the 200-seat parliament. Babis, the Czech Republic's second-wealthiest man, will now try to form a government coalition with some of the other eight parties that won seats. The surprise second-place finisher, the Civic Democrats (25 seats), similarly don't want the country to adopt the euro currency, but have ruled out governing in coalition with ANO. In third place, with 22 seats each, are the Pirate party and the anti-Muslim far-right SPD party. The former ruling Social Democrats and the Communist are in sixth place, with 15 votes each.

The results are seen as another blow to the European Union, after recent gains by far-right parties in Austria and Germany, and nationalist toeholds elsewhere in Europe. "This has become a general trend — we've seen it in the Dutch elections, in France, in Germany," Vit Dostal, director of the AMO think tank AMO in Prague, tells Bloomberg. "This phenomenon, the rise of anti-establishment parties, shows that there's a widening gap between the winners and losers of globalization. And that in turn generates negative sentiment toward the EU, which is seen as the embodiment of globalization."

Babis, who was charged with criminal fraud before the vote (and now has parliamentary immunity), isn't expected to be as virulently anti-EU as some other of the new nationalist leaders. "He knows how important the EU is for the Czech economy," says Judy Dempsey at Carnegie Europe. "It wouldn't serve his interests." Peter Weber

All five living former U.S. presidents gathered in College Station, Texas, on Saturday evening to pay tribute to America's tradition of volunteerism and raise money for the victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. At one point, all five ex-presidents — Jimmy Carter, George. H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama — were on stage, and Carter spoke, then Clinton. While Clinton was talking about the enduring disaster in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the younger Bush leaned over to Obama, making him laugh.

You can watch the moment at the 3:35 mark:

Or you can wonder what was so dang funny in this silent clip of the moment Obama cracked up and Bush looked on mischievously:

This was the first time all five former presidents have been together since 2013. Peter Weber

On Sunday night, an impressive cast of comedians and actors poked fun at and celebrated retired late-night TV legend David Letterman as he accepted the Kennedy Center's 20th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Letterman's post-Late Show beard was a popular topic. "Dave has always had spot-on comedic instincts," Steve Martin said. "What better time than right now to insist on looking like a Confederate war general?" Amy Schumer joked later that Letterman "has successfully transitioned from a standup comic to a late-night host to a Civil War re-enactor," adding, "I'm glad you didn't look like that when you were the last thing we saw when we were going to bed at night."

Bill Murray, last year's Mark Twain Prize recipient, cracked Letterman up with a rundown of what his new honor means. "You're not exactly a god, but you're way up there," he said. "You will be able to walk up to any man or woman on the street, take a lit cigar out of their mouth, and finish it. You'll be able to board any riverboat in this country." And Letterman's psychiatrist, Clarice Kestenbaum, made a surprise appearance, paraphrasing a typical session: "'I'm dumb. People hate me. I have E.D.' Oh, Jesus, what a f---ing pity party. Don't get me wrong: He's crazy. Not Trump crazy. But who knows?"

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder played a Warren Zevon song on a guitar with Tom Petty's initials. There was a Top Ten List, Paul Shaffer led the band, and Late Show regulars made appearances. Letterman himself ended the show on a serious note, urging people to be nice to one another ("If you help someone, in any way, big or small, automatically you will feel good about yourself") and quoting Mark Twain's definition of patriotism: "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." PBS will broadcast the entire ceremony on Nov. 20. Peter Weber

President Trump may prefer war heroes who were not captured, as he infamously said of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2015, but McCain apparently prefers presidents who did not avoid serving in Vietnam because of bone spurs — a condition Trump says kept him out of the war after his college deferments ran out. In a C-SPAN interview about the Vietnam War broadcast Sunday night, McCain talked about the strategic failings of Vietnam and the social upheaval it unleashed in the U.S., then pointedly criticized economic disparities in the draft:

One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest-income level of America, and the highest-income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur. That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve. [McCain, on C-SPAN]

McCain did not mention Trump by name. And "plenty of wealthy Americans avoided being drafted into Vietnam," with bone spurs "a somewhat common reason for such deferments," Aaron Blake notes at The Washington Post. "But it would be a pretty big coincidence for McCain to bring up that particular ailment — especially in light of his regular criticisms of Trump and his clear allusion to Trump's 'half-baked spurious nationalism' in a speech two days before taping this interview."

That speech, delivered Monday night, was actually aimed more at Stephen Bannon than Trump, McCain's coauthor Mark Salter tells The New York Times. But Trump took it personally, responding in a radio interview: "People have to be careful, because at some point, I fight back. ... I'm being very, very nice. But at some point, I fight back, and it won't be pretty." McCain laughed that off, telling reporters, "I have faced tougher adversaries." Peter Weber

Fidelity Investments dismissed two high-level executives in the past few weeks amid sexual harassment complaints, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reported Sunday, and the Los Angeles Times and New Orleans Times-Picayune published reports of serial sexual harassment against a Hollywood writer/director and a New Orleans celebrity restaurateur, respectively. The investigations of sexual misconduct in some cases predated the revelations of alleged sexual assault by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, but they were published after a Weinstein-prompted #MeToo campaign in which women shared their harassment stories over social media.

At Fidelity, portfolio manager C. Robert Chow resigned earlier in October after colleagues accused him of making inappropriate sexual comments, and tech fund manager Gavin Baker was fired for allegedly harassing a 26-year-old female employee, the Post reports. Both men worked in Fidelity's stock-picking unit, and after an emergency meeting last week, Fidelity reportedly hired an outside consultant to audit behavior in the powerful division.

At least 38 women, meanwhile, told the Los Angeles Times that director James Toback had sexually harassed them, usually involving some form of aggressive masturbation. Toback has been making movies since 1974 and got an Oscar nomination for his Bugsy screenplay, but since he wasn't a household name, "Toback always kept his credentials handy when he introduced himself to women" around Manhattan, typically saying he could advance their careers, writes Glenn Whipp at the L.A. Times.

Twenty-four women told The Times-Picayune, meanwhile, that they were victims of sexual harassment at restaurants tied to celebrity chef and restaurateur John Besh. One women filed a federal employment discrimination complaint saying Besh himself coerced her into a sexual relations — he said it was consensual. The women collectively "described a company where several male coworkers and bosses touched female employees without consent, made suggestive comments about their appearance, and — in a few cases — tried to leverage positions of authority for sex," The Times-Picayune says. Peter Weber

The first half of President Trump's two-part interview with Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo aired Sunday and saw the president suggesting the difficulty he has had in repealing and replacing ObamaCare will somehow make major tax law revisions happen more smoothly.

"I do believe we have the votes for health care at the appropriate time," Trump said, "and I think we're going to have the votes for taxes, and I will say the fact that health care is so difficult, I think, makes the taxes easier." He did not explain why delays on health-care reform would make taxes easier other than to add that "Republicans want to get it done, and it's a tremendous tax cut." There is, at present, no completed tax reform bill.

Later in the conversation, in an exchange that came under scrutiny as soon as an advance transcript of the interview was available, Trump described himself as "representing rich people" in the tax reform process:

The second half of the interview will air Monday. In the meantime, you can read a full transcript here, check out The Week's selection of Trump's seven most noteworthy comments about his own social media habits, or watch today's segment below. Bonnie Kristian

Actor Tom Hanks weighed in Saturday night on President Trump's allegedly insensitive condolence call to the widow of U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger earlier this month.

"I'm only knowing what I read in the newspapers and what have you, and it just seems like it's one of the biggest cock-ups on the planet Earth, if you ask me," Hanks said to CNN. "This is a tragedy of the utmost consequence, and it goes much longer beyond who's going to come out on top of the news story. I think it's very sad."

Hanks was in Washington, D.C., to be honored at the National Archives Foundation gala with the annual "Records of Achievement Award." In a speech at the event, he struck a more positive note. "As we continually move towards a more perfect union, [the U.S. Constitution] might be the only self-correcting, open-ended document anywhere on the planet Earth [that] keeps us going," Hanks said, "that keeps saying that we're going to learn how to do that one thing we've already sort of done. We're going to become better and better and better." Bonnie Kristian