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All week long, the pressure increased for Joe Biden to "Say it ain't so, Joe!" So this morning, he did. Biden appeared (remotely) on Morning Joe and flatly denied the accusation made against him that he had sexually assaulted Tara Reade in 1993 while he was a sitting senator and she was on his staff: "No. It is not true. I'm saying unequivocally it never, never happened and it didn't."
When it comes to predicting presidential elections before the fact, however, there is one clear leader in the prediction business -- Allan Lichtman, a professor of political history at American University. He's got a system (which he outlines in "The Keys To The White House") which has an unbelievable track record, because by using his 13 "keys," he has successfully predicted the last nine presidential elections (including Trump's win). So his system is certainly worth a look, in presidential election years.
We have shown what we consider to be a massive amount of restraint during Donald Trump's term as president, in that we've only used that headline once previously. The line comes from a Talking Heads song ("Making Flippy Floppy") which was referencing Ronald Reagan, at the time it was written. We did consider two other headlines today: "Our National Nightmare Continues: Trump Suggests Injecting Bleach. Or Sunshine," as well as: "Stable Genius Offers Lethal Suggestions: Injecting Bleach Or Sunshine," but upon reflection we decided that the Talking Heads line was more deserved this week than ever before. Because the president is now giving people advice which, if followed, will kill them. In other words: our president's crazy, did you hear what he said?
So the grand experiment begins... with nail salons and tattoo parlors? The state of Georgia has announced that all of these establishments can reopen on Friday, part of the Republican "Damn the consequences, reopen the economy!" strategy. And you can bet all the other states will be watching to see what happens with great interest.
It all seems somewhat insane, of course. Why in the world would anyone want to put tattoo parlors at the front of the line, when getting a tattoo involves bleeding? That seems inherently risky, even riskier than hair and nail salons, which will also involve close physical contact with customers -- but at least no bloodletting.
I really can't quite believe I'm writing about this, but in the Trump era I've certainly written about a lot of other strange things I never thought would become big political issues, so just add this column to the pile, I suppose. So here we go: President Donald Trump has needlessly interjected domestic politics into a worldwide pandemic crisis, because at this point he thinks it is the only way to save his re-election effort. Republicans as a whole are going along with this cynical plan, although they're mostly doing so very quietly in the background, in the hopes the voters won't notice if it all goes spectacularly wrong. But politicizing disaster response certainly has its risks, the biggest being a huge backlash if things don't work out as hunky-dory as Trump is now predicting. But we are where we are, so let's examine the politics of reopening states too soon versus too late, because it is extremely likely that this will be a major issue come November, no matter where we happen to be as a country by that point.
President Donald Trump, after week upon week of inaction, was finally convinced to make use of the Defense Production Act to coordinate the distribution of medical swabs. This will hopefully alleviate one of the bottlenecks the states have had to deal with as they attempt to ramp up testing in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. However, this step could have been taken a month earlier, which would have solved the problem when it actually developed, but for some reason Trump refused to do so until now.
Testing... testing... One... two... three... Is this thing on?... Hello??
We can think of no better metaphor today than a booming amplified voice addressing a dark and empty space. For reasons that should be obvious, really.
President Donald Trump is an absolute genius -- at wasting time, that is. He just essentially wasted another entire week, which can be added on to all the previous weeks he wasted, since the dawn of the coronavirus. Which definitely includes the entire month of February, by the way.
For the first time since 2004, Democrats are united in the spring of a presidential election year. The primary season is essentially over, with only one candidate left standing. All the other candidates of note have now endorsed presumptive nominee Joe Biden. This is downright remarkable when you consider where we were just a few short months ago.
One week after an entirely unnecessary and dangerous in-person election in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the Wisconsin vote totals were announced. And the result was surprising, because it seems there was a backlash against the heavy-handed Republican tactics which forced the election to go forward against all common sense. I guess voters don't appreciate being put in danger for one party's political advantage.
Wisconsin Republicans wanted the election to go forward for one simple reason: they thought that the lower the turnout, the better the result would be for them. In particular, one of the state's conservative supreme court justices was up for re-election, and they thought he'd win if they could just suppress enough Democratic votes. Well, the results are in, and they were wrong -- the liberal challenger handily won the race. This is only the second time in a half-century that an incumbent didn't win re-election, it's worth pointing out. And Wisconsin is a key state in the presidential election in November.
In times of crisis, America looks for leadership. This means they want to be told the truth, they want to see the president and those around him working as hard as they can to improve things for everyone, and they want to see mistakes quickly rectified and problems that pop up addressed and ultimately solved. Sadly, though, we are getting none of this from President Trump.