The check is not in the mail; the mail is being placed in check. That's an amusing way to put a very serious and rather existential threat to American democracy which is now playing out before our very eyes. President Donald Trump is so scared that he's going to lose the upcoming election that he is exploring any possible way he can cheat, right out in front of the public where everyone can see it. Rarely has Republican voter suppression been this blatant and this shameless, in fact, and that's saying quite a lot.

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Today's column is written in snap response to the introductory speeches just given by Joe Biden and his newly-named running mate Kamala Harris. I just finished watching them, and I wanted to share my initial reactions.

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I have to admit up front that I'm not a real big fan of the "veepstakes" guessing game. It all usually turns out to be pointless in the end, although it does give the pundits something to feverishly write about in the run-up to the conventions, I suppose. I am [checks thermometer] not currently feverish, but I suppose I'll write one article today about the subject that is consuming so many right now. I realize I should really be writing about the breakdown in the pandemic relief bill negotiations (while apologizing for being so optimistic last Wednesday, when I confidently predicted that we'd certainly have a deal by today... whoops!); but hey, it's Monday and I feel lazy, so as our president says: "it is what it is."

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President Donald Trump, when challenged by Axios reporter Jonathan Swan this week on the fact that over a thousand Americans are dying each and every day from the coronavirus pandemic, callously responded: "It is what it is." Not exactly presidential-caliber leadership, to say the very least. After all, who can forget Abraham Lincoln's stirring: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, because, you know, the Civil War -- it is what it is." Or Franklin Delano Roosevelt's soaring: "Fear? What fear? I mean, the Great Depression... it is what it is."

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Let's all keep our eyes on the ball, shall we? The ball, in this case, being the fact that we just suffered the worst economic quarter ever. The gross domestic product dropped by 32.9 percent, or just shy (0.4 points) of one-third. This loss is three times bigger than the worst quarter ever previously measured. New unemployment claims were up again for the second week in a row, perhaps foreshadowing a "double-dip" recession, or even an actual depression.

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has announced that the House will soon be moving forward on a bill to rein in the presidential pardon powers, to avoid any future president being allowed to do what Donald Trump just did -- abuse this power to grant clemency for a person convicted of lying and witness tampering to protect Donald Trump. A clearer abuse of power would indeed be hard to imagine, unless it was Trump attempting to proactively pardon himself for any and all federal crimes he's ever committed. Which, at this point, isn't outside the realm of possibilities, for Trump. But while Pelosi will be making a little political hay out of the issue, she is actually aiming too low. Because what is really needed is a constitutional amendment.

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The campaign to re-elect Donald Trump president has gone all-in on a remarkable strategy: they're going to double down on the stupid. Call it the greatest attempt at gaslighting ever, we suppose. The idea is to just pretend the coronavirus pandemic doesn't exist and continue to ignore any evidence to the contrary. And they actually expect this to be a big winner for them with the voters.

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The Trump campaign is setting itself up for a rather large tactical failure. Whether the campaign fails overall in November is a bigger question, of course, but they seem to already be failing in one crucial aspect of any successful presidential campaign, and that is to define your opponent early. This worked wonders for Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, and it also did the trick for George W. Bush against John Kerry. Throughout the spring and summer, the incumbent president successfully defined their challenger in a very negative way with the public.

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In the best of times, Americans like to call our president by a rather grandiose title: "the leader of the free world." This is a holdover from the 1940s post-war era as well as the dichotomy of the Cold War era which followed it. Back then, we were indeed leading the free world -- in direct opposition to the Soviet Union's leadership of the communist world. Since America had not been directly devastated by the ravages of World War II, our economy bounced right back and we were able to get Europe and Japan back on their feet again with generous policies such as the Marshall Plan. From the 1950s through (arguably) the end of the century, American manufacturing dominated most industries. So our political leader was not just the de jure leader of the United States but, by extension, the de facto leader of the free world as well. But Donald Trump has now left this reputation in tatters. The only superlative left to call ourselves is now "the world's best bad example."

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The more time goes on, the more evidence stacks up that Donald Trump is simply incapable of performing the basic duties of a United States president. What is the president's job, boiled down? To process incoming problems and information, make policy decisions, and then implement those decisions. Trump fails spectacularly on all three legs of this stool on a regular basis. But this week has been really notable, due to Trump's utter failure to defend the Constitution of the United States (and the country at large, of course) against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

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