[ Posted Tuesday, October 27th, 2020 – 16:46 UTC ]
So it has come down to this. Do you want to live in a fantasy world for the next four years, or would you prefer reality? President Donald Trump's White House science office put out a press release today that should really go down in history right next to George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner. It lists Trump's accomplishments while in office, and prominently features the statement that Trump is responsible for "ending the COVID-19 pandemic."
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[ Posted Friday, October 23rd, 2020 – 17:45 UTC ]
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.
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[ Posted Thursday, October 22nd, 2020 – 21:48 UTC ]
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.
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 20th, 2020 – 15:04 UTC ]
This is the phase of the presidential election when all the pundits start talking about what the candidates' "closing message" either is, will be, or should be. For Joe Biden, the closing message really should be one that has been there all along. In fact, it's the underpinning of pretty much everything Biden has campaigned on, whether explicit or merely implied. It's also easy to state and it is already on the minds and lips of voters everywhere. It is such a simple message that I identified it long before Joe Biden even became the Democratic nominee.
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[ Posted Friday, October 16th, 2020 – 16:56 UTC ]
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.
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[ Posted Friday, October 9th, 2020 – 17:55 UTC ]
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.
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[ Posted Wednesday, October 7th, 2020 – 21:14 UTC ]
Two down, two to go.
Continuing my "I watch them so you don't have to" commitment, tonight I watched the vice-presidential debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris in full. Boiled down to one thought, my main takeaway was that I seriously doubt that tonight changed any voter's mind out there.
I thought both candidates did OK -- not great, not bad, just OK. I thought that they both had a gameplan and pretty much stuck to it, and I thought both had weak moments as well as strong. All in all, I'd largely call it a draw, although my personal bias would have to give Kamala Harris the edge, in the end.
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 6th, 2020 – 16:35 UTC ]
Last night, Joe Biden gave the debate performance we all wished we had seen last week. Now, that statement isn't strictly accurate, since the event Biden appeared at last night was a townhall meeting with undecided voters and not an actual presidential debate. Also, the reason we didn't see this performance last week was because the incessant noise and bluster from Donald Trump made it all but impossible to hear what Biden was actually saying. Nevertheless, last night's performance was indeed what most voters should have watched instead of last Tuesday's debate.
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[ Posted Monday, October 5th, 2020 – 17:27 UTC ]
Any given week of the presidency of Donald Trump can feel like an eternity. Last week was no different. We started with the revelation that Trump only paid $750 in federal income taxes for two years running, then we all saw the worst presidential debate in American history, then at the end of the week Trump announced he had tested positive for COVID-19 and entered the hospital. All in one week. This is why we are now moving to a weekly schedule for these "Electoral Math" columns. We'll post a new numbers-crunching column every week until the Monday before Election Day (which is now only four weeks from tomorrow).
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 29th, 2020 – 22:03 UTC ]
Well, that was downright stunning. And definitely not in a good way ("You look simply stunning tonight!"). More in the literal sense of getting brutally smacked upside your head by a blunt object. In fact, when I sat down to think up a title for this article, the only thing that popped into my mind was the line from the classic Monty Python "Argument" sketch: "It's 'being hit on the head' lessons, in here." Because that's exactly what watching the entire 100 minutes was like, at least to me.
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