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We'll get to explaining that title further (as if it really needs it), down in the talking points section of our program. And happy Hallowe'en-eve to everyone ("Hallowe'en'en," maybe?).
The homestretch of the 2020 election has been rather bizarre to watch, since President Donald Trump has made his closing argument: "Pandemic? What pandemic? I don't see any pandemic anywhere!"
President Donald Trump has gotten away with all kinds of things while in office, blowing apart many traditions, conventions, and presidential precedents. He has gotten away with it, for the most part, because very little of it is actually written into law. They're all just a sort of an unwritten code of conduct that previous presidents have all (mostly) followed. But if Democrats do win the "trifecta" next Tuesday and wind up in control of both houses of Congress and the White House, they will be in a position to do something about this sorry state of affairs, in order to prevent any future presidents from getting away with such egregious behavior.
We are now only one Scaramucci away from Election Day. For those unfamiliar with the reference, a "Scaramucci" is a unit of time measurement equal to the time Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci spent as President Donald Trump's press secretary -- 11 days. And we're now only one Scaramucci away from the election.
The second (and final) presidential debate tonight was as different from the first as it could possibly be. That will likely be the biggest takeaway for both the press and the public. President Donald Trump -- for the most part -- actually behaved himself and didn't try to dominate every single minute. Joe Biden debated the way he really wanted to in the first debate. It was, in a word, normal. Which is why this will be the big headline tomorrow, because whenever Trump does anything even halfway normal, it is big news.
If Joe Biden wins the election, what will President Donald Trump do next? Let's ignore all the expected lame-duckery for the moment (lawsuits against the election results, epic tantrums, Trumpian chaos, self-pardons, refusing to attend the inauguration, etc.) and take the longer view of what Trump will do after Biden is sworn in next January.
The second wave of the pandemic now appears to be upon us. Yesterday, over 60,000 new coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S. That number has been heading upward all week, in fact. And it's higher than it has been since the last wave hit (some call the impending wave the third wave, due to the two previous spikes, we should point out). And we are less than three weeks away from the presidential election.
This, more than any other factor, may become the key reason Donald Trump loses. Sure, we're all tired of hearing about the pandemic (and have been for quite some time). But then Trump caught it, which relaunched it back onto center stage in the political arena. Although he quickly recovered, for once Trump could not manage to change the storyline. And now it looks like the fall/winter wave is here. This will mean COVID-19 will, once again, lead most news coverage. For the next week (at the very least), stories will again appear about overwhelmed doctors and hospitals. It will be on everyone's mind.
Are Republicans getting worried about the outcome of the upcoming election? This is a real possibility at this point, given the polls. After all, if the Democrats have a very big night three weeks from now, Republicans may be cast out into the wilderness for at least the next two years. And just like the robins return in the spring, if there is a Democratic president and the Democrats control both houses of Congress, Republicans are going to try everything in their power to sabotage Joe Biden's first two years in office. They did so before, back in 2009, when Mitch McConnell told his fellow Senate Republicans that their only goal was to "make Barack Obama a one-term president." That didn't really work out for them, but they did manage to claw back majorities in Congress.
It seems that it is now time to ask a very strange question: Is Donald Trump actually trying to lose the election?
As astounding a question that is, there are really only two answers to it: yes or no. Either Trump is intentionally torpedoing his chances of re-election, or he is just trying to re-run his 2016 playbook in the hopes that it'll produce the same miraculous victory for him. But either way, what is becoming more and move evident is that President Donald Trump is currently losing. Bigly.
Today, I'd like to step back from the fray of the current political campaign season. I know, I should be racking my brains for "fly in the ointment" or "waiter, there's a fly in my soupy Vice President" jokes right now, but today I will leave that sort of thing to others. Because instead I'd like to pull back to 30,000 feet and take a much wider and longer view of the shifting political landscape in this country. Because there seems to be some slow-moving tectonic shifts at work which might influence our politics long beyond this November's election.
Late last night, the political world began reeling from what could be the biggest October surprise in a generation (at the very least), as the White House announced that President Donald Trump and his wife First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19.
This was greeted in some quarters as not so much an October surprise as (to coin a term) an October schadenfreudefest. If there is any one individual who richly deserves to contract the coronavirus, after all, it is Donald Trump. Trump has pooh-poohed the virus from the very first, insisting that it will magically go away ("by April, when the weather warms up"), that it isn't that big a deal ("it's like the flu"), that testing is unnecessary, that it affects "almost no one," that most people get a mild case and recover, that many don't even know they've got it, that children "get the sniffles" (no big deal), that we've already defeated it ("we've turned the corner"), that it's all in the past, that getting the economy going again and getting kids back to school is more important than any imagined risk, and -- worst of all -- that wearing masks and social distancing and all that stuff is for sissies and definitely not for real macho men like him. Or to put it another way, the karma wasn't instant, but it caught up to Trump in the end.