A senator from Michigan stood up at the University of Chicago on October 13 and explained what she wants to do with power.

Elissa Slotkin said she wants young people to think twice before taking a job in this administration. Not because the work is hard. Because of what might be done to them afterward.

Her words: “I want that deterrence message.”

Sit with that one for a second, because it is not a gaffe and she has not walked it back. She repeated it after an ethics complaint was filed, and told the president to arrest her if he did not like it.

Now understand who she is actually talking about.

Not cabinet secretaries. Not the famous names. She is talking about a 24-year-old out of college who takes a staff job at the Department of Labor, and a 26-year-old who goes to work on trade policy, and the kid who answers the phone in a congressional office. The young ones. The replaceable ones. The ones who cannot afford a lawyer.

That is the whole point of a deterrence message. It does not work on the powerful. It works on the kid with student loans who is deciding what to do with his life.

And it is working, which is why the White House is reportedly sitting around a table right now talking about pardoning people who have not been accused of anything.

Think about what that means. A young American’s government service has become a thing his lawyer has to plan around in advance. Not because he did something. Because of who he worked for.

I have spent this run telling you that nobody can predict an election and that you should not let a number on television decide whether you get in the car. I stand on that.

But this is a different category of thing, and I want you to see the difference clearly.

A poll is a guess somebody made about the future. This is a statement somebody made about her own intentions, in public, on a recording, and then defended for two weeks straight when she had every chance to say she misspoke.

One of those you can argue with. The other one is just information.

She told you. That is not a smear from me, it is a transcript.

And here is what I would say to the man who thinks politics is two teams yelling and none of it reaches his house.

You might have a son who is good at something. Maybe he is the one in your family who reads, who argues at the dinner table, who you quietly think could end up doing something that matters. There is now a United States senator who has said out loud that she wants him afraid to try.

Not afraid of failing. Afraid of being prosecuted for the job.

That is what is actually on the ballot where you live, underneath all the noise about the maps and the models and who is up three points in a state you will never visit.

Seven days.

If your state has early voting, go today and take the whole ballot with you, down to the offices nobody on television has ever mentioned. Then find three people who agree with you and ask them flat out whether they have voted. Not whether they mean to.

They are not hiding what they would do with it. The least we can do is believe them.