New York City is in the midst of holding a sort of hybrid election to choose its new mayor. The Democratic primary used "ranked-choice voting" (R.C.V.), while the general election tomorrow will be the traditional "whichever candidate gets the most votes wins" sort of contest. I saw an article today in Salon which contrasted how these two contests played out, which pointed out how the Democratic primary was a less-vicious affair, with candidates not only vying to be the first selection on people's ballots but also the "number two" choice for voters backing other candidates. It posited that the general election would have been a much more civil affair if R.C.V. had been in place, since the same sort of effect might have changed the way the candidates campaigned. The article was probably right to some degree or another, but it missed a rather large point -- one that might be pertinent for Republican voters: if the N.Y.C. mayoral general election had indeed been held under R.C.V. rules, then frontrunner Zohran Mamdani might have wound up losing.

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Next Tuesday is Election Day. No matter what happens in this off-off-year election, this will produce a flurry of speculation about the current state of the political landscape in America, and what it will all mean for the election that is going to happen next year, when all of the House and one-third of the Senate will be on the ballot. As usual, though, drawing sweeping conclusions this far out is likely to prove laughably mistaken, since a year's time in a normal political atmosphere is still an eternity, and an entire year in the Trump era feels like an even longer time than that.

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So, let's review, shall we? Last weekend, seven million Americans took to the streets to protest Donald Trump, in the biggest political protest this country has ever seen. The theme of the protest was: "No Kings!" So this week, Trump responded by acting in what can only be described as kingly fashion, in as many ways as he could dream up -- including a rushed demolition of one-third of the White House, without consulting anyone or even attempting to get anyone's permission. He sent the demolition crews in, and within a few days the entire East Wing was nothing more than a pile of rubble. All because a royal decree had been issued.

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As the government shutdown enters its second week, Democrats appear to have the upper hand. It's not an overwhelming advantage, but it does seem like the Republicans are losing the battle for public opinion. This strengthens the Democrats' position -- for the time being. Public opinion is a fickle thing and could easily shift as the impacts of the shutdown become more widely felt, but for now Democrats seem to be the ones winning the battle for hearts and minds.

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Normally, on a Friday following the end of a month, we would all be talking about the new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics right about now. We can't do that today, because the report didn't appear on schedule. This was due to the government being shut down, of course.

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The United States of America now seems to have officially become a banana republic. That's really the only conclusion one can draw, after the events of the past week (and the past eight months, for good measure).

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We are now one week away from a government shutdown. At this point, the safe bet would be that one is going to happen. And as always in such situations, the blame game has already begun in earnest. While the center ring of the circus that passes for politics these days was today undoubtedly Donald Trump making a complete fool of himself on the world stage during his address to the United Nations' General Assembly, the shutdown sideshow seems to deserve more attention than parsing Trump's idiocy (which, if I had gone that route, would have prominently featured the phrase "tilting at windmills," just for the record).

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Will they do it? Will congressional Democrats actually force a shutdown of the federal government at the end of this month? While plenty of other political stories are currently swirling around, this is the big question that wonks who still pay attention to Congress are asking right now. So far, it seems like Democrats actually are preparing for a shutdown strategy, mostly because they got so much pushback from their own rank-and-file voters when they refused to do so earlier this year. So let's take a look at what's in play, heading into the next few weeks.

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Donald Trump is driving the American economy straight into a ditch. That's a pretty simple concept, and it's (just barely) short enough to fit on a bumpersticker. Which makes it a dandy political slogan for Democrats to start hammering out relentlessly.

Doing so is pretty easy, since you can connect all sorts of dots to it: A soft jobs market. Inflation rising. Hamburger prices up. Electricity prices way up. Trump's tariff war, which has created a "Trump tax" on a whole bunch of products. Trump took hold of an economy that had achieved a "soft landing," and now he's driving us all right into a ditch. Everything he does seems to make things worse. See how easy that is to do?

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I'm not sure whether that title is the most apt, or if "Conventional Thinking" might have been better. Because it seems that both major American political parties are considering holding national conventions next year before the midterm elections. Which is indeed unconventional -- even thinking about midterm conventions. Semantic games aside, though, I do find myself wondering if it would be a good idea or not.

The idea was first proposed by the Democrats, who are considering holding a convention to showcase their up-and-coming prospective candidates and to whip up their base in an effort to motivate them to turn out to vote. I was actually surprised to read (in Axios, who got the scoop on this story) that it wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened. As they report:

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