You can’t keep it down. Naive hopes for a return to democratic normalcy and starry-eyed, blue-voter faith in the enduring resilience of America’s crumbling institutions.

(I’m layin’ it on pretty thick today, folks. If you’re takin’ the bait, that’s on you. “Children and animals hate you Ron Burgundy!” “I would eat Democrats if it was legal!“)

Another thing you can’t keep down is the US economy, which is still hummin’ along, according not just to Wednesday’s upbeat read on private sector hiring, but also to a decent enough showing on the ISM services readout for October.

The headline print, 54.5, was actually a three-month low, but it’s still easily in expansion territory. The same’s true of the New Orders gauge, which printed a solid 55.9 despite slipping to the lowest in four months.

As the figure reminds you, both ISM headlines have spent every month this year north of 50, indicative of a broad-based expansion bolstered by AI-related capex and the wealth effect from a succession of new record highs for stocks.

Encouragingly, the Prices Paid index fell for the first time in months, but at 73 it still betrays pervasive cost pressures. Consensus was looking for another MoM increase.

Another good news datapoint: The Employment index surprised to the upside, rising to 51.4, the highest since the onset of the Iran war.

There’s the chart for the Prices and Employment juxtaposition. It’s improving, but there’s a long, long way to go before the input price metric can be described as anything other than uncomfortable.

All in all, this was a pretty good release, with the obligatory, rolling caveat that every PMI survey’s blighted by the impact of trade uncertainty and the Iran war.

“Tariffs and fuel cost impacts continued to be the most-cited issues impacting respondents’ supply chains,” the color accompanying the release noted. “Many [panelists] indicated they are not yet seeing the full impact of these cost escalations or have not passed them through to customers [suggesting] more pricing pressure is on the way if oil and tariff cost impacts are not mitigated.”

In other words: Consumer prices could rise further going forward. But that’s ok. As the midterm outcome makes clear, Americans are generally on board with the idea that the cost of the tariffs is a sacrifice worth making, and higher pump prices well worth paying if it means Bernie Lomax doesn’t get a nuclear weapon in Tehran.