On Wednesday, Trump will be announcing sweeping tariffs on the entire rest of the world. As he likes to put it, "tariff" is his new favorite word in the dictionary. But consumers are likely to call it what it will actually be, to them: a tax. A big fat "Trump Tax" on all sorts of things consumers buy. Which will likely drive up inflation, and which will definitely hit consumers hard in the pocketbook.

Nitpickery aside, let's do a quick review of how things went last night, shall we?

Which is why we sincerely hope that Donald Trump is asked about it as often as possible -- say, once a week, at a minimum -- now that he is president again. Because for all his promises, eggflation is going to be a very tough problem for him to solve.

It is perhaps appropriate that the funeral of Jimmy Carter happened in the midst of Biden winding down his final weeks. Because Joe Biden -- another one-term Democratic president like Jimmy -- will likely become more appreciated as time goes by, just as Carter was.

Joe Biden had a pretty spectacular first two years in office, in terms of getting legislation passed. Granted, he had a Democratic Congress to work with and the continuing crisis of a pandemic to spur the politicians to actually act. He used both to get a sweeping agenda passed which will have an impact for years to come. But he had to grapple with two corporate-friendly Democrats in the Senate who held him back from achieving an even-more-historic agenda. If the full "Build Back Better" plan had made it past Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, then Americans would doubtlessly feel a lot differently (and better) about government's role in their economic lives.

While campaigning early in 2020, Biden appeared on a stage with three other prominent Democrats, who were at the time "expected to be considered for the vice presidential nomination" -- Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Gretchen Whitmer. Biden said during this campaign event: "Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country." While Biden never actually did explicitly promise to serve only a single term as president, many read his comments to mean exactly that -- Biden would defeat Donald Trump, run a bridging presidency, and then step aside and make way for a younger generation of Democrats to carry the torch forward.

Instead, let's focus on what the new Congress has on its plate. With two weeks to go before Donald Trump is sworn into office again, Republicans are already eager to get his second term rolling. The Senate will begin hearings on Trump's cabinet appointees, most of which will be pretty dull and perfunctory -- but a handful of them could get quite lively indeed. Especially considering the fact that Democrats will get to question each of them publicly about anything under the sun. They'll do so to score political points, but also in an effort to convince a few worried Republicans of the candidates' unfitness for office. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so it will take four of them rejecting any nominee to tank their chances. But most of them will wind up sailing through the process, even if one or two do get derailed.

As always, it's a marathon. It's really, really long. Don't say you weren't warned! And since it is so long, that's all the introduction we're going to bother with.

Ready?... everyone buckle up... here we go....

Speaking of rotting brains (a wonderful segue if there ever was one), Donald Trump continues to fill out his administration, nominating more and more sexual predators, total incompetents, billionaires, and complete clowns (those categories are not mutually exclusive, we should point out). A "team of ribalds" for the ages, it seems.

Of course, there is indeed a whole universe of negative aspects of having Trump as president again, but even I have to admit that Trump has had a few positive effects on the Republican Party -- mostly by his insistence that they blindly follow him in all things. This has meant the party as a whole has had to largely accept some of Trump's very non-traditional stances on issues (non-traditional for conservatives or Republicans, that is). Trump, unlike many of the ideologues who used to set the party's direction and policy objectives, has the ability to occasionally spot an issue where the GOP's traditional position is so unpopular that it winds up hurting them at the ballot box. Two of these issues in particular stand out. Trump can't truly be said to be "on the right side" of either of these issues, and his objection to the more-extreme positions the Republicans traditionally have taken is rather thin and transactional. But it's better than where the party was headed without Trump, so he at least deserves partial credit for how he's changed the party's orthodoxy. And then finally, Trump has now made one cabinet pick that even plenty of Democrats will likely get behind in the Senate, when it comes time for their confirmation vote.

Sorry, but it's almost impossible not to treat the whole sordid story as a joke. Gaetz was a completely laughable candidate from the start, so it's hard not to have a few final laughs as he exits. After all, the nomination of Gaetz didn't even last a full Scaramucci!

Kidding aside, I do have to wonder whether this was the plan all along. From the start, there was speculation that this was all very conveniently timed to allow Gaetz to escape what is reportedly a very damning report from the House Ethics Committee being made public. If Gaetz hadn't been nominated, this report likely would have been released last Friday. Gaetz reportedly has plans to run for Florida governor in 2026, and it would be easier for him to do so if the report stays buried.

Or, to put things another way: get ready for lots more circus/clown metaphors in the very near future. It's really the only possible way to describe Donald Trump selecting his cabinet. But we'll get to the individual clowns in a moment, because first we've got to take a broader view of what Trump's up to here.

Which is why today we're going to devote this column to pondering how bad things could really get in Donald Trump's second term in office (rather than sticking to our normal Friday format). Some things will probably not be as horrifically bad as Democrats now think, some things will indeed be precisely that bad, and some things will be even more horrific than anyone's imagining right now. And my apologies, because this is not an attempt at making a comprehensive list of predictions but rather just free association, what might be called initial thoughts.

Everything's already been said, we just have to see what our fellow Americans think of it all, at this point.

Because I could think of nothing to write to add to this day, I instead reached back to the best wordsmith of our time and what she had to say after the previous election. What follows is the poem read by Amanda Gorman at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, on January 20th, 2021.

I will add as my only commentary: We're still striving to climb that hill, obviously.

There has been quite a bit of movement in the polling this week, and almost all of it has been good news for Kamala Harris. It's looking like Donald Trump peaked about a week too early, in fact. Harris seems to have created some last-minute momentum, and last-minute momentum can decide close races like this.

But among all the frenzy surrounding who called whom "garbage" this week, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her closing pitch to voters from the same spot Donald Trump incited a mob to go attack the United States Capitol four years ago. From the Ellipse, with the White House in the background, Harris spoke of the differences between her and Trump, and made her closing argument for why Americans should vote for her rather than him.

Today is when I traditionally spin scary (and amusing) stories depicting nightmares from the left and right of the political divide, but this year reality is scarier than anything I could come up with. So I am abdicating my duty. I am punting.

Ah... those were the days, eh?

fasces
a bundle of rods and among them an ax with projecting blade borne before ancient Roman magistrates as a badge of authority

fascism
(1) a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
(2) a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

surprise
(1) an attack made without warning
(2) something that surprises
(3) the feeling caused by something unexpected or unusual

October surprise
[US politics] a significant revelation or event in the month prior to an election that has the potential to shift public opinion about an election candidate and that is often orchestrated to influence the election's outcome

That's what the dictionary says.

Instead of brief talking points at the end, instead we tried to make the case against electing Donald Trump in the most effective ways we could think up. But when we got done, we realized that this extended rant also served as a good round-up of the week's political news. Sure, there were a few other things going on in politics, but at this point we are so focused on the campaign and the election that anything else is really just a distraction, this close to Election Day.

To put it another way: this is as close as things can get, folks. There's not a lot you can say in any sort of definitive way other than "the race looks tied." Which is going to make for a shorter-than-average Electoral Math column today.

Normally, by now I would have started writing one of these columns every week, but I decided not to do so last week because... well... nothing much was really happening in the polls. This week is largely the same, but I'm going to start posting these weekly anyway since we're only four weeks away from Election Day.

Things have barely budged in the past two weeks. In these charts, the lines are almost completely flat. There have been a few (very few) minor wiggles, but for the most part the important trendlines haven't budged in either direction. If the polls turn out to be right, this could wind up being yet another extremely close presidential election, hinging on a few tens of thousands of votes in a few key states.

The first was the one-and-only vice-presidential debate, held on CBS this Tuesday. Republican JD Vance faced off with Democrat Tim Walz, and it was watched by 43 million people as it aired. The second was the public release of a document prosecutor Jack Smith had previously filed with the court in Donald Trump's January 6th case. It laid out Smith's basic case, in great detail (165 pages' worth).

In a normal campaign season, either one of these would have been impactful, perhaps shifting the polling in significant ways. But in our hunkered-down tribalistic politics, the needle barely quivered. Maybe we're all getting a bit jaded?

There were two other rather large events that could affect politics this week: the massive damage Hurricane Helene did -- especially in the Appalachian Mountain region -- and an East Coast dockworkers' strike. The first shouldn't really have been political, and the second was over almost before anyone was aware it was happening.

However, to achieve this goal would mean reasonable politicians on both sides of the aisle sitting down and hammering out a bill, and then both houses passing it with little or no drama. Since the House of Representatives is run by Republicans, this is currently impossible. It may yet happen, but only after the House GOP puts on yet another Kabuki production of: "Here Is Precisely How Incapable We Are Of Governing." And as we've already seen, this sort of thing can end the political careers of anyone currently in the speaker's chair.

Now, normal people can be excused for being surprised that Trump is still Trump. Most people have lives to lead and plenty of other things to do, so they simply don't pay much attention to politics. But tens of millions of them made the time this week to tune in to the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And it was like going to a family Thanksgiving dinner and once again having to put up with your crazy uncle -- because you had somehow forgotten just how bad he truly was. And still is.

Maybe that was true once, but quite obviously we've been in the midst of the general-election campaign season for most of this year already. There was no drama or mystery about who would become the major parties' nominees -- Donald Trump and President Joe Biden had the primaries wrapped up before they even began. And then the most dramatic event of the general election campaign happened midsummer, as Biden decided to end his candidacy (after a disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump). In other words, plenty has already happened this election season, and so we've got to look at the remaining two months as nothing more than the homestretch.

Which directly leads to the question of what Harris and Walz should be asked about on Tuesday. So putting on our late-summer "If It Was Me" thinking cap, here are the questions I would ask Harris and Walz, if they were sitting down with me for an interview.

Instead, I have a few random comments about the news media and how they are currently exhibiting a massive double standard towards Harris and her campaign, in more ways than one.

Donald Trump gave a marathon press conference today, but didn't actually take a single question until more than 45 minutes into it. He then answered questions for roughly 40 minutes before walking off camera to give someone an autograph.

Of course, that all changed three weeks ago.

So welcome back to our Electoral Math column series again! This marks the fifth presidential election we will have provided this service, I should mention. This year, for obvious reasons, we are only going to track the data from late July onwards. Our charts will begin two days after Joe Biden exited the race, or Tuesday, July 23rd. This was the point where Donald Trump hit his maximum in state-level polling and things looked the grimmest for the Democrats. But, of course, that would all soon begin to turn around....

Since it seems like a week for Silly Season columns, today I thought we'd examine an editorial quandary we've been faced with. Because the Republican vice-presidential candidate presents us with a challenge. He would now prefer to be known as simply: "JD Vance" -- sans punctuation, in other words. So do we respect his wishes or continue (as we started doing when we first wrote his name) with our standard style-guide form: "J.D. Vance"?

Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee. Joe Biden is now officially (through his own decision) a lame duck. And Democrats by the millions have been astounded that they are now feeling genuine hope and actual enthusiasm about an election that was shaping up to be pretty grim indeed.

Last Thursday night, America watched Donald Trump accept his party's presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. Republicans had owned the news cycle all week long as they put on their quadrennial extravaganza, topped off with a full hour and a half of Trump rambling on about this, that, and the other. Traditionally, presidential candidates get a "convention bump" from all the free media, so perhaps Team Trump was looking forward to skating for the upcoming week, and just riding out the wave that the convention brought.