The Experts Were Right

 As efforts to suppress the first outbreak of Covid were implemented in the spring, we heard a lot about "bending the curve." The idea was to stop the rapid transmission of the disease - lower the R0 - so that hospitals could cope with the caseload, we could work on therapeutics and perhaps develop a vaccine. At the time, health experts all stressed that this was important, because "the fall and next winter will be worse."

Guess what.

Rose Twitter kept making the argument that our poor Covid response because we didn't have Medicare For All. But that was only a slight problem. The problem was a public health infrastructure that had been weakened by GOP neglect and then dismissed by Trump's ignorance. Even countries with universal health care had bad results in the spring if they adopted faulty public health measures.

We are now seeing cases explode in place like the Czech Republic and Switzerland that had good responses in the spring. While the US is seeing cases explode again, it's not necessarily doing worse than similar countries. Cases per million is only slightly worse than Germany.

Here is where it gets interesting. Everyone has a degree of "Covid Fatigue." We are certainly seeing it with our students. Covid Fatigue married to a huge spike in cases that will require various forms of lockdowns, mask mandates, selected closings, travel restrictions and the like will run headlong into people tired of altering their lives for a disease that frankly isn't likely to kill them. Covid is just so damned random: strong enough to kill you or permanently damage your health, yet also unlikely to do so. 

It's a nightmare virus from a public health standpoint.

Dr. Fauci is now saying "normal" won't return until NEXT fall. I'm prepared to believe him, as he's generally been a lot more accurate in his predictions than Donald Trump and Fox News.

Eating Their Own

 There's been an interesting trend of Republicans turning on each other in the lead up to the election. First, you had Lou Dobbs go after Lindsey Graham. Yesterday, you had Donald Trump humiliate Martha McSally at a rally. As Josh Marshall notes, with Trump it comes down to his obsession with "dominance." He sees everything in stark terms of "winning" and "losing" defining both terms in rather childish ways. When you're a "loser" - and McSally is one of three Senate seats the Democrats seem almost certain to win - it's not simply your status after the final whistle or after the votes (all of them) have been counted. Losing is a moral stain in Trumpistan.

In 2016, the late movement in the polls was to Trump and he got just close enough to eek our wins in the Blue Wall. Outside of partisan pollsters like Rasmussen and Trafalgar, the movement I'm seeing is towards Biden. There are some bonkers outliers out there. Citizen's Data has a Texas poll with Biden up 9! The Post had him up 17 in Wisconsin. JL Partners and Global Market Research have him up 14 nationally. (To be fair, those are not well-established pollsters.) But Ipsos has him up 12, as does CNN. 

There is a scenario here where Trump loses bigly. I don't think Biden is up 9 in Texas, but what if he's up 2? That counts the same. What if Biden not only holds the Blue Wall, but carries North Carolina, Florida and Georgia. What if he adds Texas and Arizona? What if he regains Iowa and Ohio?

Trump has already started turning on "losers" like McSally. What happens when his narcissistic shell is shattered and he stares being Herbert Hoover (or at least Jimmy Carter) in the face?

Decompressing narcissists can be incredibly self-destructive. I think Biden carries a second Blue Wave in as many elections and Trump loses his shit. Hopefully that won't take the entire country down with us.

Polling Update

 A lot of high quality polls go dark the week before the election, because they feel it can warp perceptions. But the election has been going on for weeks now, so I'm not sure what the scruples are.

Today saw a massive dump of new polls, from good outfits to mystery outfits. Four years ago, we were beginning to see the erosion in Clinton's support and a surge in support for Trump that narrowed the margin from 6% to 3%, close to the final margin.

That is not happening this year.

Top rated pollster Monmouth has Biden up between 2-5%...in Georgia. YouGov and Ipsos have Biden up around 11 points nationally. Ipsos has Biden holding narrow leads in Florida and Arizona. Some group called Redfield and Wilton have Biden up 10 nationally.

Public Religion Research Institute (an A/B pollster in 538's rankings) has Biden up 19 points! The ABC/WaPo poll (A+) has him up 17 in Wisconsin!

These are outliers, but outliers count, too. What's more, they could signal that late movers are going to break towards Biden.

All the usual caveats apply. This thing is not over. But if Trump had these leads, we would be packing our bags to move to Ireland. 

If Trump Were Trying To Kill His Supporters

 Would he do anything differently?

Court Reform

 The untimely death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the rushed, nakedly political power grab of confirming Amy Coney Barrett in the week before the election has people considering how to unpack a conservative court. If there has been one thing that Trump has truly provided for the GOP, it's the Courts.

This scholar makes an interesting pitch for true reform. What you could do is leave the current "Supreme Court" as the last court of appeals for normal judicial procedures. Maybe you add a couple of judges just to make sure. But you take judicial review - the process by which the Court determines whether an executive or legislative act is constitutional away from the current Supreme Court. Instead, you create an entirely separate body - a Constitutional Court - that does abstract review. 

Currently, the Supreme Court hears cases on appeal - concrete review. That means a plaintiff sues and the case makes its way slowly to the Supreme Court. This is why we are still hearing cases about the Affordable Care Act a decade after the law was passed. Instead, the Constitutional Court would determine the constitutionality of a law as soon as it is passed. Quite a few countries that use code law (as opposed to common law) use abstract review, because it adds certainty to the legislating process. Why should we wait for several years to find out whether a law is constitutional or not?

Judicial review is not actually IN the Constitution. While Article III calls for a single Supreme Court, it does not forbid the creation of a second court that could hear abstract review. 

Two tricky things remain. First, you would have to find a way to reconcile cases that make their way through the Circuit courts via appeal to the Supreme Court that do have some constitutional grounding. What happens with equal protection cases that start in the states? At what point does the case switch from the normal appellate process into judicial review? Obviously, the Constitutional Court would be superior to the "Supreme" Court when it came to reviewing the constitutionality of laws. But Congress would have to lay out a process for determining when and how the Constitutional Court could preempt the Supremes on certain cases. 

The second hurdle would be finding a way to depoliticize the appointment of judges to the Constitutional Court. Maybe it's a 9 judge panel, with three GOP appointed judges, three Democratic appointed judges and three chosen from academia as the middle arbiters of constitutional precedent. 

Judicial review was mostly assumed by the Framers, but it was never explicitly written into the Constitution. Congress has - to a degree - ceded many important functions to the Executive AND the Judiciary. (Rather than legislate marriage equality, they punted it to the Courts, for instance.) We need to reinvigorate Congress as an equal branch of government. Some of that would be helped by a Constitutional Court whose entire job is helping the Congress and Executive know immediately where the guiderails are. Trump, for instance, has largely shielded his finances because of endless appeals and re-hearings. A Constitutional Court empowered to deal with separation of powers issues could've cut through this years ago. 

"Court Reform" has become code for adding justices. Instead, we should think bigger and create some order in the current ad hoc madness of our judicial system.

Potential Own-Goal In The Making

 Trump and his minions on the Supreme Court are making efforts to restrict the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after election day. The hitch is that we don't know whose ballots are going to arrive then. All signs point to a large Democratic advantage in early voting. Republicans are now worried about that advantage and are trying to get their voters to vote early. The problem is that those efforts could not run into the obstacles that Republicans put up to stop Democrats from voting. 

If - as the data suggests - a lot of young voters and other traditional Democratic voters have already banked their votes, then those votes will be counted on election day, or at the very least be in the hands of election officials on election day. What the GOP will have to do is challenge every single early ballot, which should be overturned as spurious by election officials. 

There is a scenario where we have a pretty good idea that Biden has won this thing - based on the avalanche of early votes already in the hands of election officials, whereas the GOP is scrambling to get some of their late voters counted. 

There is an assumption among the Manic Progressive Very Online crowd that Republicans are some sort of tactical masterminds who are always one step ahead of Democrats. They really aren't. They exist inside their own information ecosystem and are protected by the some of the anti-democratic legacies in our institutions. 

It would be hilarious to see Kavanaugh and Gorsuch scrambling to reverse themselves on late ballots in order to try and undo a Biden victory. And again, all of these actions by Court increase the chance that Democrats - given the opportunity - will make substantive and substantial changes to the courts themselves.

All About The Senate

 Mitch McConnell's behavior on the Barrett nomination is that of someone who expects to lose the White House but retain the Senate. Polls certainly show that Biden SHOULD win next week. (No, it's not 2016.) 

Democrats should flip Senate seats in Maine, Arizona and Colorado. Republicans will likely flip Alabama. That means North Carolina, Iowa and Montana are the likely deciders as to whether the  Biden Presidency is strangled in the cradle. Georgia, Kansas and Texas could be in the mix, too.

That's it. That's the battleground.

Hoovervirus

 Jon Chait makes the case that Trump's failures recall Hoover. Trump, like Hoover, came to office as a businessman (though Hoover was a true self-made man) and when faced with a crisis, both men were paralyzed by ideological rigor mortis.

As Chait notes, when (please polls, be right) Trump loses, it will be chalked up to his personality. What's missing is that Trump was able to mobilize whites without college by abandoning normal Republican economic policies in 2016. The fact that he has governed as a bog standard Republican has escaped the motivated reasoning of his followers. (I swear to God, I saw a Trump sign that said "Promises Kept". WTF?) Still, it will be hard for a non-Trump Republicans to tap into that populist bullshit that Trump tapped into four years ago.

The poll numbers really haven't moved in a year. Trump's only hope was to have a strong response to Covid, but his party's ideology made that impossible.

Anyway, maybe he is the next Hoover. Let's hope so.

Seriously?

 One of the staples of election year coverage is the focus on "undecided voters." Refreshingly, the Post looked at Black voters who did not vote in 2016, but say they will vote in 2020. One of the consistently annoying aspects of political coverage is the laser-like focus on white voters from the Rust Belt. 

Reading the Post piece didn't make me feel THAT much better. The idea of being undecided in this election is...incomprehensible to anyone who follows politics. Reading their responses about why they didn't vote in 2016 drives home how dysfunctional our democracy is, primarily because of the ignorance of the electorate. There is no way that you can look at the platforms and policies of Clinton and Trump or Biden and Trump and shrug your shoulders and say they are both the same. Instead, they rely on a cheap cynicism rooted in ignorance. 

Politicians don't always achieve what they promise, but they almost always try. (One of the ways that Trump is different from politicians is much of what he said he would do, he has barely tried. Mainly because he's just a lazy slob.) Will Biden get everything he wants to do? No. Because Congress exists. The fact that most Americans are still seemingly ignorant of how our government is designed is distressing. 

I think we can expect the following from Biden if he wins and Dems win the Senate: a new Voting Rights Act; some sort of "green infrastructure," minimum wage hike, increased taxes on the rich, a more vigorous and coordinated pandemic response, a public health insurance option of some sort, and likely some sort of court reform.  Some of this will be dependent on margins in the Senate. But if Dems don't win the Senate, basically nothing gets done. That would not be a reflection on Biden.

For years, the media treated Hillary Clinton like she was a borderline war criminal. In 2016, they refused to subject Trump to even basic accountability to the truth. Every act of spin from Clinton was made equivalent to an outright lie by Trump. Cynical coverage led to cynical voters. It's gotten better this time around, but that doesn't excuse what happened four years ago.

Trump Is Not A Fascist

 Donald Trump is not a fascist. He's an oligarch. The Republican Party is increasingly the party of oligarchy.

They have been able to mobilize a certain segment of the population to vote for them based on cultural grievance, but they have been able to win a plurality of the national vote just ONCE since 1988. However, the undemocratic aspects of our Constitution have allowed them extraordinary success despite the unpopularity of their agenda (tax cuts for the rich, suppression of minority rights) with a majority of Americans.

There is the potential for near-record voter turnout this election. It is not entirely clear who that would benefit, but that article strikes me as being overly cautious after being burned in 2016. People are voting in huge numbers in 2020 because they are likely upset. Higher voting by youth voters isn't something we need to overthink. 

It remains most likely that Joe Biden wins handily. District level polling - which was a red flag for Clinton in 2016 - looks much better for Biden. 

Trump isn't a fascist, that's melodrama masquerading as political science. He is an oligarch, which is why he's been so comfortable a fit for the GOP. They don't mind his oligarchy, his criminal corruption, they just mind that he tweets about it.

Covid Crisis

We were always warned that there would a second wave. Many assumed that the surge this summer was the second wave, but that was more the first wave washing over parts of the country on a delay from the spring.

The second wave is upon us.  While some of this is increased testing, it is also simply a case of schools being open and "Covid fatigue" leading to people abandoning best practices. Because it is happening almost everywhere, the numbers are greater than when there were staggered spikes over the past 7 months.

Meanwhile a country that is currently being ravaged (again) by Covid, Belgium, offers a chilling look into where we could be in a few weeks. The point of "bending the curve" was to allow us time to build PPE and therapeutics to combat the illness and its spread. But if the numbers are bad, then we simply won't have enough healthy workers in critical areas.

Our rural county is beginning to see growing cases. Our school's league has elected to cancel its winter sports season (and while it is contingent, the current growth of the virus suggests there won't be any opportunity to reopen athletics). 

Maybe this will register with voters. Maybe it will impede the counting of votes. But can you imagine if we continue down this road of ineptitude? A million Americans will die.

Time To Kill The Debates With Fire

 Trump's egregious behavior at the first debate - combined with the NY Times tax story and his getting Covid led to Trump's collapse from 42% all the way down to...41%. Biden picked up a couple of points and went from 50% to 52% in the national polls.

In other words, the single worst debate performance in modern memory barely moved the needle at all. Conventions and debates usually provide some sort of "bounce" but they are usually ephemeral. They can elevate a challenger by putting them on stage with the incumbent, but they are pretty much the definition of "political theater." They are breathlessly assessed by pundits acting as theater critics, dissecting pauses or slips to the tongue or posture.

Debates serve no purpose to illuminate policies, which is ostensibly the point of an election. You should pick the candidate whose policies you support. What the debates both demonstrate and support is the fact that we don't actually pick candidates based on what their potential governing policies would be, but rather where they hit us in the feels.

Sweet baby Jesus make it stop.

Much more illuminating would be giving the candidate and his or her advisers various problems to solve and positions to explain. But of course, that isn't the bullshit theater we've come to expect. Ugh.

will.i.am

 He did it again.

One Caveat

 I agree with most of what Jennifer Rubin says here. I would add a caveat. We need the wave to not only sweep Trump out convincingly but carry the Senate by large margins with places like MT, SC, KS and GA flipping Blue. The problems are two-fold.

First, there is always some pol who thinks they are more clever than the electorate. There are people like Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley who are going to try Trumpism without the rough edges and indiscipline.

Second, the GOP electorate, fueled by QAnon and the Fox/OANN conspiracy cocaine is unlikely to suddenly embrace reasonable conservatism any time soon. They are deep in the fever swamps. Interviews with Trump supporters register people completely at odds with reality. Trump has built his wall, reformed America's trade relations, brought peace to the Middle East and done a great job with the economy.  His health care plan is ready to go. To be a GOP politician, you have to appeal to these whackaloons just to win the primary.

Until the GOP makes up just 40% of the electorate and that's a hard ceiling, we are headed to a time when the new media will treat some QAnon nutter the same as a mildly left wing politician like Ilhan Omar as effectively as the same extremes.

Geniuses

 If Republicans - both Trump and in the Senate - were trying to lose the election, I'm unsure what they would do differently. 

First of all, we have an economic situation largely unique in the post-New Deal landscape: a pandemic has shuttered and reduced business activity around the country. There has to be more stimulative and relief spending. McConnell won't vote on it. The article credulous calls opposition rooted in "fiscal conservatism." That's...something, and largely a feature of how, in Josh Marshall's words, the media is hard-wired for conservative narratives. This same party slashed taxes for billionaires and punched a trillion dollar hole in the budget BEFORE Covid. They don't give a shit about "fiscal conservatism," they just don't like it when government is shown to benefit people. So people are going to lose their business, watch their dreams crash around them, while McConnell pushes through a Supreme Court justice.

Second, we have President McBabypants storming out of an interview with Leslie Stahl, because he didn't like the tone in her voice. Some of this is his well-documented contempt for women who "don't know their place," which will most likely lead to an absolutely historic gender gap in this fall's election. The other is that this is a man with a skin so thin a breeze irritates it. Who sits down with 60 Minutes and expects some OANN fluff piece? Trump's entire appeal to those deluded men without college degrees is his perceived "toughness." I will admit...I don't get that. He's an absolute crybaby. I'm guessing it's more that Trump can throw about misogynistic slurs and still be president, so they admire that, because some woman from HR told them they had to take down the centerfold in their locker.

Meanwhile, as Trump gets more desperate and the possibility of his defeat looms, he is decompressing. Pennsylvania is the critical state this election. The folks at 538 have Biden leading 50.5% to Trump's 44.2%. That's 6 points and Biden is over 50%. If that holds, that's the ballgame. So, naturally, Trump goes to Erie - the sort of Rust Belt town that propelled his fat ass to the presidency - and says he doesn't want to be there. In most presidencies, this would be a scandal of yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah. 

Oh, and the Trump campaign is out of money.

The news isn't getting much better, as the inevitable fall spike in Covid cases is here, and - oh, yeah - another story about Trump's corruption and hypocrisy has dropped. It's already disappeared into the sinkhole of Trumpistan's news cycle, but every day Trump isn't making up ground, he's losing. Given the petulant child that he is, his rolling tantrums will only intensify. 

It really feels like he's trying to lose, but really, he's just a terrible and not terribly smart person.

Make Congress Great Again

 If the polls hold and Biden wins the Presidency and Democrats win the Senate, then Republicans will be enshrined in the Supreme Court, presumably able to overturn any progressive legislation. However, there is a good argument here that a Congress that is actively able to legislate could enshrine certain Court decisions into law. They could also expressly counteract certain conservative legal principles by writing them into law. For instance, a voting rights act that has language designed to neuter Shelby or a gun control bill designed to overturn Heller.

It's an interesting argument. For a long time, Congress was so dysfunctional that you couldn't rely on them writing good law. Doing this would require overturning the filibuster and likely having a 53-55 seat hold on the Senate. It would also mean likely expansion of the Circuit courts that would likely fail to upset the general public.

Still, it would be pretty cool if Biden is negotiating with Romney and a few others to scuttle Barrett's nomination in return for keeping the Court at 9 justices.

Are The Polls Wrong?

 This is the million dollar question and one that the Washington Post takes a look at here. The glib answer is that of course polls can be wrong. All they are is a snapshot of a moment in time. There are some differences between 2016 and 2020 however.

First, in 2016, pollsters did not weight for college education. This led many pollsters to miss out on Trump's real strength among whites without a four year degree. That group simply didn't answer the phone as much and underweighting them led to missing Trump's strength.

Second, in 2016, Trump was the outsider. The late movers in most races move to the challenger. If people are going to vote for the incumbent - whom they know - they will have decided on that already. In 2016, Clinton was effectively the incumbent. In part that was because Democrats had held the White House for the previous 8 years, in part because Trump was the ultimate outsider. Trump has now been president for four years. People have largely made up their minds about him. It is unlikely but not impossible that late breakers go overwhelmingly for Trump. 

Third, Clinton never broke 50% in the polls, especially in the "Blue Wall" states. In Wisconsin, Clinton's polling average was 46.8% to Trump's 43.6%. Clinton wound up winning 46.5% of the vote. In Michigan, Clinton was polling at 47.6% to Trump's 41.6%. Clinton wound up with 47% of the vote. In Pennsylvania, Clinton was polling at 45.5% and wound up winning 47.5%.  You can see that it wasn't the margin of her lead that mattered, which is why saying that the margins are the same as 2016 is misleading. The polls nailed her levels of support. They missed the late movers, but most importantly, Clinton was never over 50%.

Currently, in Michigan, Biden's polling average is at 50.7%. In Pennsylvania, it's at 50.8%. In Wisconsin, he's at 50.9%. If we presume that the pollsters are doing a better job of polling Democratic supporters than Trump supporters in both years, Biden still is over that magical 50% mark. Now, all of these numbers could change in the last 3 weeks. Watch for the polling average to drop below 50% in those states for Biden. For instance, Biden is below 50% in Arizona (49.3%), Florida (49.1%) and North Carolina (49%). He has polling leads in those states, but they don't feel as secure, because they are under 50%. There is still a possibility of missed WWC and "shy" Trump voters to get him into a plurality.

Fourth and finally, Trump's numbers are impressively stable, but not in a good way. Trump's never had more than a 49% approval rating, and his 40% approval rating average is the lowest in modern polling. The variance between highest approval rating and lowest approval rating gives a sense of how stable opinion is about a president. Both Bushes had swings of over 60% from their lowest to their highest. Reagan and Clinton saw 36 point swings. Obama saw a 27 point swing. Trump has only seen a 14 point swing. Look at this chart:

Here is Trump's weakness and strength in a nutshell. Most presidents see an almost manic variation in their approval ratings, but Trump's are steady. His supporters will not abandon him. His problem is that he has never made an effort to appeal to anyone who doesn't already support him.

Trump can obviously still win this thing. He's the nominee of a major political party. But Democrats are not doomed simply because there was a glitch in the polling in 2016.

Uhhhh, What?

 Jill Lepore, one of America's finest historians, argues that we should not have any sort of prosecution or truth and reconciliation commission to look at the Trump years. Her argument is that prosecuting our political enemies is not how mature, functioning democracies work. That's true, but it completely ignores the extraordinary criminality that seems to rest in the heart of Trumpistan. Sam Tanenhaus offers a counterargument as to why we need to reckon with these years.

The problem with Lepore's argument is that it suggests that Trump's wrongdoings are somehow entirely political actions. Here's what we can credibly suggest from the evidence: 

- He has cheated on his taxes over the course of his entire life.
- He has taken bribes and payoffs via his properties.
- He has pressured foreign and domestic governments with retribution or "favors" to help him politically.
- He and his administration committed criminal acts along the southern border with their child separation policy.
- He committed myriad campaign finance violations.
- He has violated the Hatch Act with stunning frequency.
- He has corrupted the Department of Justice into his own personal law firm.
- He's probably a serial rapist.
- He has used the government to punish enemies like Jeff Bezos.
- He has and currently is inciting violence against Americans.
- He has obstructed justice.
- He probably perjured himself in the Mueller investigation.

That's probably an incomplete list. Lepore thinks that somehow electoral defeat will be some sort of self-correction, and holding Trump accountable for his crimes will somehow criminalize politics. She worries that we when a Republican holds power again, that will lead to similar charges and abuses of power.

Except Trump would very much like to do this right now. He's been leading "lock her up" chants for five years. The only thing that has prevented him has been the fact that there is no credible evidence against Clinton. None. They investigated the shit out of her and found nothing that could withstand the scrutiny of a trial.

If Trump is charged - and you notice I left of his incompetent handling of the coronavirus, because incompetence is not a crime - it will be because there is sufficient evidence to do so. Trump should not be charged for being a racist or being cruel. He should be charged if he has done crimes, and the evidence if overwhelming that he has.

Robert Mueller basically determined that he could not charge the President of the United States with a crime, because...you can't charge the President with a crime. If you can't charge the former President with a crime - or any of his cronies and family members - then you have created a lawless class. You've normalized criminal behavior at the highest reaches of government. Lepore can't possibly think that's OK.

Democracies exist because the rule of law binds the powerful as well as the weak. We know, in our guts, that the powerful can usually escape justice through high powered lawyers. Much of Trump's tax practices skirt the law, because he can hire clever people to exploit loopholes. I don't think we should prosecute Trump for his coronavirus failures (unless he was trying to profit off of it somehow). 

We absolutely must hold Trump and Trumpism legally accountable. We must empower an independent prosecutor to look into every possible crime committed by Trump's administration.  Sure, there is a possibility that the more deranged Trumpists will commit violence on his behalf. We already have tens of thousands of Americans dead from Trump's misgovernance. There are dead children on our southern border because of him. Sadly, this moment requires us to defend our democracy from creeping authoritarianism. The only antidote is law.

Let it come.

Biden's Court Plan

 Biden has said that he will release his thoughts on adding seats to the Supreme Court before the election. I've been trying to figure out why he's taken that approach. Why not just tell us? 

Biden has always expressed a - misplaced, in my opinion - faith in Republicans Senators, who will work with him once Trump is defeated. There is literally no evidence of this.

But...what if Biden has been talking to Mitt Romney and a few other old heads and institutionalists in the Senate GOP? Romney vowed to vote on Trump's nominee, but I don't recall him saying he would vote FOR his nominee. Romney hates Trump - it might be his most/only endearing quality. If Mittens and, say, Lamar Alexander want to save the 9 person Court and the idea of Senate rules and bipartisanship, then advancing Barrett's nomination to the floor and then killing it there, like McCain did with ACA repeal, would be the ultimate and final middle finger to Trump and his sycophants and enablers in the Senate. 

It would be pure High Sorkinism, and is very unlikely to happen, but it would explain why Biden won't announce his position.  He's waiting to see if Romney and maybe Sasse or Alexander or Toomey jump ship and preserve the SCOTUS Nine.

Also, it would be the dagger in the heart of Trump a week before the election.

It's Getting Worse

 As Jacinda Arden's leadership during the pandemic has been rewarded with re-election, it seems timely that America seeing its largest numbers of new cases since July. Where I am, there is little spread, our school is testing like crazy and while we've had a handful of positive tests, we have not seemed to have any full blown cases of Covid. As we know, most people who get it won't show much of any symptoms, so we need to test the hell out of everyone. This is hard work, but it's not impossible by any stretch of the imagination. Since my state is not run by morons, we've done a pretty good job with testing, and while we are seeing a spike in infection rates in some parts of the state (mainly areas with colleges and casinos) it's not running wild.

Let's say the best case scenario unfolds and Dems win the "trifecta" in November. We will then have the long lame duck period where Trump will fume and run his mouth and Republicans in the Senate will try and screw over Biden by making things worse - trying to replay their 2009 playbook. The ability of the Biden team to get the reasonable half of the country on board with certain policies is critical. He's going to be dealing with this through the first 100 days, while trying to pass voting rights legislation, immigration reform, tax code revisions and environmental legislation. Oh, and he might be expanding the Supreme Court.

After four years of Mr. Golf Course/Executive Time, it seems like there's no way any one person could do this, As I've been saying, the next president will also be charged with re-invigorating the public sector. This is the product of a minority of Americans electing a man and a party who don't really want to govern.

Shameless Plug

As we all know, 2020 is an endless stream of getting kicked in the shin. You need something to make you feel good.

I recommend Ted Lasso on AppleTV. It's funny, but more importantly, it's kind of joyful.

We Can't Survive This

 As the polls look worse and worse for Trump, he has taken to expanding the brazenness of his lying.

I don't think Trump will win, because I just think we are exhausted - as a nation - by his antics. I wish that it was all a principled stand for a more compassionate America, and a large part of it is, but I think in the end, undecideds will move solidly against him and Biden's lead grows.

However, it's absolutely true that the opposite could be true. Maybe the polls are just wrong enough and the later movers go to Trump, as they did four years ago. If so, I don't think American democracy can survive a post-factual landscape. Democracy is built on the informed consent of its citizenry and a distressingly large part of that citizenry is bamboozled by Trump's firehose of lies.

Among the many reasons to hate that man is the way he has exposed the terrifying gullibility of a substantial number of our countrymen. I mean, good Lord, even his skin color is a lie.

UPDATE: I mean how bad does it have to be to get even Obama angry?

Stolen From Twitter

 This is funny:

- A Pinkerton shot an America First person who he thought was an anarchist.

- We have a "super-thieving sex pest" for a president.

- We have a pandemic.

- All the bars are closed.

- Racial unrest.

It's all the shittiest parts of the 1920s without the cool jazz music.

Deranged

 The Right Wing Wurlitzer is full of crazy people. My only hope for Trumpistan is that it discredits and disempowers these neo-Birchers forever.

All The Falling Shibboleths

 The GOP once called itself "the Party of Ideas." Today it is best described as a personality cult around Donald Trump. Don't believe me? The Party Platform is nothing more than an affirmation of Hair Furor's leadership. If there is one shibboleth left to the bankrupt Party of Ideas, it is a regressive tax cut and aggressive deregulation. The basic idea is that when the state intervenes in the market it destroys growth. 

There's a lot that's wrong about that as an article of faith. The state largely makes markets possible by enforcing contracts, keeping domestic order, managing the currency and helping to round the jagged edges off the economy. Since World War II, there has been an emerging consensus that the state has a role to play in redistributing some wealth so that there isn't a massive accumulation at the top of the economic ladder. Henry Ford realized that his workers were also his consumers, and if you paid them well, you would reap the benefits in greater sales. That idea disappeared over time as the state took over, creating minimum wages and worker safety measures. 

The GOP has waged a decades long war against this, going back to Herbert Hoover's Liberty League that opposed the New Deal. They made a strange alliance with white evangelical Christians to create just enough of an electoral majority to dominate the political discourse from 1968-1988. While much of that electoral juice came from the same culture issues we see dominating the Republican case for Amy Coney Barrett, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary are focusing on what her appointment will mean for economic equality through measures like the Affordable Care Act.

If Joe Biden wins and Democrats win at least 50 seats in the Senate - both of which are currently likely - then there is one measure that will absolutely happen, whether they eliminate the filibuster or not: a dramatic increase in taxes on the wealthiest Americans. According to GOP theology, this will crater the economy. This was their prediction for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, when they raised taxes. Under both Clinton and Obama, the economy grew consistently. Unfortunately for Obama, GOP control of the House made raises in the minimum wage and other actions impossible after 2010, so the economy still remain too tilted towards the rich. That is unlikely to happen under a Democratic trifecta in January.

Now, we have such radical leftist organizations as the American Enterprise Institute and Goldman Sachs saying that the Biden tax plan will not, in fact, cripple growth. The tax increases on wealthier Americans will not have much, if any, discernible impact on economic growth and that does not account for any stimulative spending on infrastructure, raising the minimum wage or increasing access to health care. 

Raising taxes on the rich is not poisonous to economic growth. It never has been (up to a point) and yet it is largely the reason - along with deregulation - that the GOP has put up with Trump. They have made the bet that enshrining a reactionary judiciary with lifetime terms will protect them from the basic laws of politics, but they may have overreached with Amy Coney Barrett.

In the end, there was one article of faith left to the GOP and that is largely aflame along with the rest of their so-called beliefs.

Political Theater

 People are hanging on the hearings for Amy Comey Barrett as if they make a difference. They really don't. Amy Klobuchar landing a Gotcha doesn't matter at all. Unless a handful of GOP Senators get Covid and die, she's going to be confirmed and sit on the Court for decades.

Hopefully most of the decades will be served in the minority, scribbling out fan-fiction to the ghost of Antonin Scalia.

Court Packing

 I was going to write about "court packing" but I think Josh Marshall says everything I was going to.

We Have A Man Problem

According to groups like the Proud Boys (now Leather Men?) white men built this country and therefore white men should rule over it. Let's start with the fact that white men didn't build the country, but even if we accept this position, the fact is that white men built a country that primarily served a section of white men. This is why conservatives don't want people to know actual history, because those old white guys were not, in fact, perfect.

Simply looking at which country has done well with Covid, there is a strong correlation between female leadership and a strong response. The only branch of the government that is functioning as intended is the House. The Senate can apparently only confirm judges and the Presidency is a lunatic.

Because men have dominated women for so long, they naturally assume that if women get control, they will dominate men. That this tends not to happen isn't really relevant. The important thing for our purposes is that we have a man problem in the US, and Donald Trump is its avatar.

Strength is, perhaps, a male attribute, but how that strength is put to use is important. As I've written before, a man (or really any adult) is someone who puts their strengths at the service of something besides themselves. Childishness is rooted in egocentrism. Removing yourself from the center of your universe is essential to the transition to adulthood. But I do believe that transition comes later for boys than for girls. (I also realize I'm butting up against a fair amount of recent gender studies and politics that argue for a more fluid understanding of gender, so this is for the majority of cisgendered people.)

When we look at some of the many problems unique to the United States, we can see this stunted masculinity at play. Mass shootings, Covid response, climate denialism...all of these are linked to a selfish, shrivelled view of being a man, that - once denied - leads to explosive anger. We are a nation in the thrall of toddleresque tantrums by middle aged men.  

This viewpoint is not exclusive to men. There are women who buy into this model of masculinity as well, otherwise Trump wouldn't be getting 42% of the vote. But watch the gender gap in this election. It will be huge, and while there are anti-Trumpers who will eventually slink back to the GOP, there will be solid core of women who are simply fed up with this model of leadership. 

Right now, Biden has a much more commanding leads than Hillary Clinton did. Some of this is that Trump has proven that everything Clinton said about him in 2016 is true. His disastrous, exhausting governance has reached its breaking point. But I have to think that of the Big Three events - the NY Times tax story, the debate and his Covid diagnosis - the debate looms especially large. His - and Pence's - incessant talking over Biden and Harris is something every woman knows deep in her lived experience. His Covid diagnosis is simply an amplifier of that blustering male co-worker every woman knows who is not only loud and bullying but also consistently wrong.

Another Thing That Won't Matter Enough

 Trump is a financial criminal. It seems that the Times and Post had more from the damning tax story but put a lid on it when the week went bonkers with the debate and presidential superspreader Covid story,

Now they are back and cataloguing all (or at least some) of Trump's egregious tax code violations. 

Yes, we need to vote the creature out of office and prosecute him for his crimes, but we also need systemic reform of our tax laws as much as we simply need to raise the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.

A Ceausescu Moment

 In the fall of 1989, the Warsaw Pact was crumbling to dust. Peaceful protests, backed by the underground Catholic Church and Gorbachev's doctrines of glasnost and perestroika, had undermined decades of authoritarian, even totalitarian, rule in eastern Europe. One holdout was Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania. Unlike the other governments, Ceausescu believed in the "Chinese Solution" to protests, modeled on Tiananmen Square. In the town of Timisoara, security forces opened fire on protesters and killed many. A few days later, when Ceausescu spoke before a large crowd, the crowd started heckling him. Eventually, his face frozen in fear, he retreated inside the building. 

Ceausescu was relying the projection of strength to hold on to power. The moment he looked weak, that projection faltered and collapsed.

Covid has provided Trump with his Ceausescu moment.

We know from his many statements and his behavior that Trump admires authoritarian leaders. He loves the projection of strength and cults of personality that they build around themselves. From wanting a military parade to his volkstrum rallies, Trump has tried to project an aura of hypermasculine strength. For a majority of the country, this has always been a sick joke, but for a segment of men - especially, but not exclusively white men - it has resonated. White supremacy has always been linked to this idea of performative masculinity, and so has Trump's "stories" about "big strong men with tears in their eyes" coming up to him and telling him they love him. If you want to know why Trump has any support among Blacks and Hispanic voters, look to this appeal to strength.

By following Trump, you tap into that boastful, masculine projection of strength. These are the same people who have a small arsenal in their homes because "muh penis."

Trump understands this viscerally, and that is why he had his "Covita Moment," but Covid doesn't care about your stage managed photo op. Trump's visible wheezing and gasping for air belies his projection of strength. Why has he been Tweeting even more maniacally than before? Because he knows he looks weak and weakness gets dictators killed or would-be dictators buried in an electoral landslide of contempt.

Trump is desperate to return to the campaign trail and soothing ego baths of his volkstrum rallies. The best result for us would be that Trump comes out on stage in Florida (his apparent choice) and faints. He collapses in a coughing spasm and has to be helped off stage. His demented ramblings trail off into silence. 

Trump is losing. Biden looks to have a ten point lead, which puts Georgia, Texas, Kansas, Ohio and maybe South Carolina in play. We need an electoral wipe-out to destroy Trumpism. The GOP needs to understand the long term lack of viability of racist, sexist populism. 

Trump needs to get in front of the cameras and look weak, just like Ceausescu. Then we can pull the trigger on election day.

The Republican Party Is Unamerican

 They do not believe the people are sovereign. 

The Firehose

 The revelations that the very top of the Department of Justice helped plan a child separation policy that was designed to abuse children...should be a big deal. When the history of Trumpistan is written, Adam Serwer will be its muse. The Trump Maladministration is fundamentally about hatred and cruelty towards people who are not white and support Trump.

Trump's reckless and incompetent non-response to Covid fits into this pattern. As long as it was primarily poor people of color or people in Democratic controlled states dying of the disease, they didn't care. Now that karma has thrust itself into the cramped hallways and offices of the West Wing...now suddenly they care.

In the past ten days we have the following revelations: Trump is a massive tax cheat and likely in hock to overseas lenders; he owes hundreds of millions of dollars to people unknown to us. Trump's debate performance cemented his reputation as a petulant toddler trying to bully his way past reality. The First Lady hates Christmas. Trump got Covid and created a superspreader event so that he could ram through Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the Supreme Court (against the majority of American's wishes). Trump's doctors lied and obfuscated about his medical condition. Trump jeopardized the health of his Secret Service details so his could stroke his damaged ego by driving by his cultists. He then returned to the White House to potentially infect more people so that he could appear strong on TV and told people to ignore the virus. His DOJ engaged in kidnapping. He walked away from necessary Covid-relief legislation which imperils the economy even further, then tried to walk back, because he's in a steroidal haze. 

I'm sure I'm forgetting something. 

Polling since the tax revelations/debate/Covid have been disastrous for Trump and Republicans. While polls that show Biden winning Florida by 11 points or Pennsylvania by 13 are almost certainly wrong, they are definitely capturing something.  Apparently the gender gap they are seeing is "historic."

It is tough to drink from the firehose of scandal here in Trumpistan. With just a small bit of luck, we won't be here very much longer. As of now, the electoral gap is too big to steal. But there's four weeks to go...keep fighting.

Rats And Damaging Watergoing Craft

 Donald Trump is losing and it sure likes like Mitch McConnell is preparing for that eventuality. We know McConnell will try and "smash and grab" run on the SCOTUS seat, but the idea that he's deliberately killing another round of stimulus in order to hamstring Biden's presidency - the same way he helped hamstring Obama's presidency - is breathtakingly cynical and entirely unsurprising. 

Post-debate/Covid polling has been absolutely brutal for Trump.  Freaking Rasmussen has him down 12 nationally. A 12 point loss carried across the country means Biden wins GA, TX and maybe KS. It's a bloodbath. It means Democrats likely win Senate seats in ME, AZ, CO and NC (while losing AL), but also GA, TX, IA, KS, MT and maybe AK. Hell, I wouldn't put MS out of play.

The GOP has not really had a positive governing agenda since Poppy Bush. They have mostly just wanted to undo Democratic taxation, regulation and social legislation. Those chickens are coming home to roost.

Too Hard To Conceptualize

 One problem we have with American's understanding of Covid is that we are basically an innumerate society, unable to comprehend numbers more complicated that what we can see in front of us. The fact that over 200,000 Americans have died of Covid isn't something we easily wrap our heads around. As Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

That's why we need things like this. David Kennedy, one of the premier historians in the US, would take his students into Stanford Stadium, tell them to imagine it full, then say that every week from 1929-1933, a stadium full of people lost their jobs. It takes an abstract number and makes it real.

The obvious worry is that narratives are stronger than our weak grasp of numbers. If Trump sails through this, it will reinforce a narrative that Covid is no big deal. Pictures of him gasping for air during his Mussolini Moment on the White Bleak House balcony last night suggest that Trump is pushing too hard, too soon to show that he has "beaten" Covid. Public health almost requires that he have a public episode of falling ill again. He needs to get worse, not because of any personal animus I might have towards him, but because too many people are willing to get Covid because the odds are it won't kill them. Leaving aside the long term health concerns, this is a nihilistic view of preventable death. 

Biden is inching towards a 10+ point lead in the national polling averages, and post-debate/Covid polls look to be moving away from Trump. As the possibility of Trump's defeat becomes more real, the likelihood of his reckless behavior increases with it. 

Hot Take Cannon

When Trump announced he was Covid positive and then flew to Walter Reed, there was a certain group of commentators online who assumed this was a hoax or a bid to throw a Hail Mary in the presidential campaign. Trump would fake having Covid, then emerge healthy and say it wasn't a big deal. These piping hot takes are really more about the mindset of the center-left and left since 2016. The election was such a bolt from the blue, such an outlier in our experience, that people are assuming that lightning will strike twice. Trump has some evil mojo that renders all normal politics moot.

The problem is that there is enough evidence to see what's happening here. First, he has no secret mojo. Undecideds broke heavily in his favor after the Comey letter. However, four years later a significant number of people have soured on him. The primary evidence for this is the 2018 Blue Wave that no one seems to want to remember happening.

Mostly though, we need to remember "Trump's Razor." Formulated by Josh Marshall, basically if you have no concrete explanation for Trump's behavior, assume it's the stupidest explanation. Here's what seems to be coming into focus:

Trump got infected some time ago. Before the debate, certainly. It takes a while to become symptomatic. There's an excellent chance he knew he was infected when he went to the debate and yelled at Biden for 90 minutes. He was going to try and cover it up, since many infected people have no symptoms. When the Hope Hicks infection leaked out, and Trump started becoming symptomatic, they made the announcement that he was positive for Covid. 

Trump is a great big manbaby. He's as tough as wet Kleenex. He's also president. So at this point one of two things happened (or maybe a combination of two things). Trump got really sick and they rushed him to Walter Reed or he got panicky and demanded that he be taken to Walter Reed. If his O2 really crashed, then it makes sense that they would rush him to the hospital.

At this point we were treated to a melange of contradictory messages from Trump's medical team. On the one hand, he's doing great, no problem. On the other, he's being prescribed the kitchen sink of medicines, including remdesivir and dexamethasone - both of which have serious side effects. So is Trump on death's door? If so, why take his little Covid Caravan yesterday?

There's is something called the VIP effect, whereby powerful patients are allowed to call the tune of their treatment. So it is possible that Trump - a known germaphobe obsessed with looking "strong" - has demanded that he be treated with every known drug under the sun? Sure. Could he also be at legitimate risk of dying, given his age and obesity? Also, sure.

None of this means that some dark conspiracy is at work. Much more likely is simply that Trump's usual Gang of Farce can't get their act together enough to deliver a consistent message. Trump's little caravan of death and Dr. Conley's contradictory statements are simply the natural results of a White House that can't really do anything right.

There is a possibility that Trump only had a mild case, he's being treated with everything they can throw at him and he emerges looking fine in a few days. This would be bad for the health of the country as his cultists will believe even more strongly that Covid is overrated and they can safely go back to licking doorknobs. Hopefully, Trump returns to the White House and has to lay low for a week or two as he recovers from the very real damage his lungs may have suffered.

This is not likely to help persuade swing voters that Trump is the guy to see them out of this pandemic. Stop with the hot takes about him being a master strategist. He's not. The same moron who looked directly into an eclipse is the same moron who got himself Covid, despite being the most protected person in the world.

Update: This says it better.

Stupidity Is A Pre-Existing Condition

 Reading this profile of Cult 45 members is infuriating and dispiriting. First of all, do we really need another goddamned profile of Trump supporters? How many Cleetus safaris to the Post and Times need to embark on? Do we really need to know that Trump supporters believe? We know.

But what they believe is genuinely troubling. They start with something that is kind of true: the coronavirus is not terribly lethal or in fact THAT contagious. (In the article, one compares it to measles. Measles is much more contagious.) There's a basic innumeracy at play here, though. Yes, only a small percentage of those who get infected will die, but the numbers involved can become staggering if you don't mitigate the spread of the virus. These are the same yahoos who fetishize 9/11 where 3,000 people died, but they shrug their shoulders are that death toll every few days from a virus that can be prevented. Our best guess is that over 214,000 Americans have died. That's roughly how many died of combat wounds in the Civil War on both sides (more died of disease). That's 9 month into the pandemic and we look to be starting another wave of infections.

The worst case scenario is currently this: Trump benefits from around the clock medical care and the general odds and survives, going back to the White House on Monday or Tuesday and everyone of his cultists say, "See, I told you so." A popular take on Twitter was "I hope Trump survives so that he can go to prison." (I kind of agree with that.) But we also need Trump to be sick for a few weeks, we need him to suffer and for the message to get through to his cultists that this is a very serious disease, even if it doesn't kill you.

There is a cavalier attitude about death from his supporters that is truly chilling and definitely gives the lie to "pro-life." It's pretty clear that pro-life really means forced birth to these people. Our school is open and I'm working, but everyone is wearing masks, we are distancing inside and taking all sorts of reasonable measures. It's really hard, though to teach this way, especially with a handful of students learning from home. But it's worth it. It's worth it to keep the school open and students, faculty and staff safe. One dead staff member, one dead faculty member...one dead student...it's too many when it doesn't have to happen. This almost medievally fatalistic view of death is something I never thought I would see.

Reading the opinions of Trump in this article is also chilling. The attitude of many Trump supporters about Trump is so at odds with everything we know of the man. He's not tough, he's not strong, he's not robust; he cheats on his taxes, his wives and his golf game. Yet they have pictures of Trump that make him look like Rambo, while extolling his honesty and hardwork. How in the world can a nation survives as a democracy when a significant number of the electorate see their candidate not as a man but a demigod?

The survival of thousands of Americans depends on Trump getting really sick. There's no other way to say this. However, even that won't be enough. Even if Trump dies, there will be a segment of the population that will elevate him to martyrdom.  

That's a stunning indictment of the Republican electorate.

Keep An Eye On The Math

 As of now, there are three Republican Senators who have tested positive for Covid: Mike Lee (UT), Thom Tillis (NC) and Ron Johnson (WI). Two of them - Lee and Tillis - sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee. They are under quarantine orders. Senate votes must take place in person (efforts to make Congress fully remote never seemed to get traction, mainly from Covid skeptics being resistant).

The GOP currently has a 53-47 majority. Murkowski and Collins refuse to have a vote on Comey Barrett before the election. Also, there must be 51 Senators present for a quorum.

Any prolonged absence by three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Marsha Blackburn flew with Trump to the debate) means that the Committee cannot send Comey Barrett to the full Senate for a vote. We should probably also talk about mortality, grim as that might be. Tillis is currently in a tough race against Cal Cunningham (Cunningham dropped a statement last night that he had engaged in inappropriate flirtatious texts with a woman not his wife. Nice timing Cal, seriously. I imagine that story won't dominate headlines right now.) If Tillis were to die, the NC governor - a Democrat - names his temporary replacement. If Johnson were to die, Wisconsin law (I believe) leaves the seat open until a special election. 

Senator John Kennedy is the only other GOP member of the Senate Judiciary with a Democratic governor. However, every vote counts and if the White House Super Spreader event knocks off or even incapacitates a number of GOP Senators, it means that any movement on Comey Barrett's nomination would come after the election at the earliest.

Tweet of the Day: "It looks like Ruth Bader Ginsburg just won her first oral argument before God."

Limits To Sympathy

 There is no current evidence that Trump is dying of Covid. He walked to Marine One under his own power and while that's not exactly the most rigorous test, it's important to note that he is not in imminent danger of dying. Still, it can be a tricky tonal piece for many of us in this moment. Biden, Harris, Obama and other elected and prominent Democrats have done the right thing and offered prayers and best wishes for Trump and his family. Biden probably even means it. Covid is a horrible, horrible way to die.

In a larger sense, however, Trump is so transparently culpable for this, it is hard to feel too much sympathy for him. Please read the piece by Jon Chait linked above. Trump and the Trump White House have gone out of their way to create conditions that make this worse. My wife has asked incredulously over the past six months of him attending rallies and not wearing a mask, "How does he not have it?" It turns out that it was just a matter of time. 

Moving Trump to Walter Reed has raised so many eyebrows, precisely because the Trump White House is unique in the pervasiveness and extensiveness of its lying. There really is no reason to believe anything they say. Perhaps being at Walter Reed will create a bit more transparency. The reality is both that Trump is likely to survive this, given the medical resources at his disposal and that he is at great risk of dying because of his age and overall poor health. Hell, if he really is an Adderall addict, he will likely go through withdrawals that will be brutal.

One of the snarkier takes on Twitter has been some variation of "I really hope he doesn't die, because then he can't go to jail." Frankly, his death would create yet another layer of chaos in an election rife with possible flashpoints. We already have terminally stupid Senator For The Moment Kelly Insider Trading Loeffler saying that China is trying to kill him. 

I hope he gets sick as shit. I hope he has some long term complications. But I don't hope he dies. I hope that he can somehow, for the first time in his life, feel empathy with the hundreds of thousands of people that his policies have consigned to death and lingering disability.

Karmavirus

 Trump's positive test for coronavirus is perhaps the least surprising thing to constitute an "October Surprise." (Someone said that 2020 is providing an October Surprise Advent Calendar.) His disdain for the basic steps to prevent the spread of this virus is well know and well documented. Hell, it was even on display on Tuesday at the debate where he mocked Joe Biden for his mask-wearing.

Obviously, it's of great concern that Trump and Biden shared a stage for 90 minutes. This goes back to the common refrain that mask-wearing and best practices are not entirely about protecting you but everyone around you. We know that Trump would probably enthusiastically infect Biden if he could, though that was not his intent. Still, it is a lot more likely today that one or both of the major parties presidential nominees will be dead before the election. Being a 70+ year old man is not a great indicator of survivability from Covid.

If it's true that Trump is tested daily and tested negative before the debate, then it is unlikely that he would have been carrying a viral load large enough to infect Biden who was more than 6 feet away from him. The three critical factors are Time, Distance and Masking. If Trump was shedding the virus (and certainly he was spitting and shouting enough to do so), then all Biden has in his favor is distance. Both Mike Pence and Kamala Harris have tested negative. 

It is also apparent that the virus is now circulating through the West Wing. How many critical members of the administration are currently Covid positive? I suppose we will find out, but maybe not.

There's an old joke that a recession if when you lose your job and a depression is when I lose my job. Maybe a hoax is when 220,000 Americans die but a pandemic is when your dumbass gets sick because you wouldn't follow basic steps for public health.

UPDATE: Biden is in the clear for the moment, but he should probably get another test on Monday to be sure. Meanwhile, the president of Notre Dame and Senator Mike Lee have contracted it.

The Ranks Are Ready To Break

 If polling continues to be where it is, and where it has been remarkably steady throughout the race, then Joe Biden will win this election. Polling averages have him at 50.8% and Trump at 43%. That six percent who somehow haven't made up their minds will either not vote or should break somewhat to Biden. As the president becomes more unhinged, those maddeningly baffled undecideds shouldn't tilt towards Trump. They are simply waiting to see if Biden really is non compos mentis. As it becomes clear that he is not, they should drift in his direction slightly.

As the reality of Trump's defeat takes hold, we will start to see GOP leaders inch away from him. He will become more unhinged, imperilling GOP candidates in places like South Carolina and Kansas, that would not otherwise be competitive. As that happens, the GOP will have to think about a post-Trump future and how to navigate it. Currently, they are quivering about the deranged members of Cult 45, but at some point self-preservation will take hold.  Everyone worried about some sort of secret, double backflip plot to steal the election should understand that Trump's magic was all an illusion. He's losing the Midwest and older white voters right now. 

There were three things that elected Donald Trump. First, any major party candidate has a puncher's chance. Second, the Comey Letter tapped into paranoid theories about the Clintons. Finally, rank misogyny put an anchor on Clinton that was not completely clear until later.  Biden only has to compete with one of those and he's winning.

Republicans know it. They are scared. They should be.