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The 2024 presidential campaign has been an unusual one in a number of respects. The candidates from both major political parties got their nominations in rather odd ways, and while the outcome is going to be close, the winner will set some sort of political precedent in modern American politics for the way this campaign has unfolded.
The Washington Post secured its entry into the annals of American political history by taking down a United States president. Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein famously uncovered the entire Watergate scandal, which caused Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace. Award-winning books and movies about the brave reporters followed, portraying them as giants in the world of journalism.
Ah... those were the days, eh?
Kamala Harris was asked in an interview recently whether, if she became president, she would be open to the idea of pardoning Donald Trump. She dodged the question as a "hypothetical," and the interviewer moved on. Today Donald Trump indicated that he'd be open to pardoning Hunter Biden, which isn't exactly the same thing but seemed to be Trump trying to put forward the idea that a pardon would be a good idea, and that the alternative would be "very bad for our country."
Last week, we called the presidential race "as close as things can get." This week we have to up that to "even closer than close," we suppose. As things stand, there are two states perfectly tied in the polls, which leaves neither candidate with enough to win the Electoral College outright without adding at least one of them.
Two weeks from tomorrow is Election Day. To be followed by Election Night, when we all gather 'round our screens and watch the returns come in and wait for the experts to call each of the states for one candidate or the other. But remember last time? This time might turn out the same -- instead of just one night of stress, we may all have to live through "Election Week," as the final votes are counted.
Since we are less than three weeks away from the election, we are going to diverge from our normal Friday Talking Points format today.
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.
Election Day is still over two weeks away, so this might seem a little premature, but I thought I'd write today about the key races I will be watching as the night of November 5th unfolds. Because while the main event will be the presidential election, as we saw last time around these things can drag on for not just hours but days, and in the meantime there are plenty of other races worth paying attention to.
The Republican Party is now allergic to the truth. This is what comes from the entire party following, with slavish devotion, a man who lies as easily as he breathes. When Donald Trump was president, the Washington Post counted up over 30,000 lies he told -- an average of 21 per day. Since then, Trump has successfully purged the party of pretty much everyone who has ever disagreed with him on any of them. All that are left are those that are willing to buy into the mindset that reality is what Donald Trump says it is, period. Democrats have been wishing for a while that the Republicans would all wake up one day and return to sanity, but now it's more of a wish that they return to some sort of objective reality -- rather than the Trumpian fantasyland they all now inhabit.
We are entering the homestretch of the presidential election, and who is going to win is anybody's guess. Polling is no real help since it shows many battleground states either perfectly tied or within a point or two. Both candidates are out there campaigning hard, but neither has a clear edge over the other one. It's going to go right down to the wire, that's about the only thing which seems certain at this point.
Looking at the presidential polling for the past two weeks, I am reminded of a famous line from Western movies (that has now become a total cliché): "It's quiet out there... too quiet."
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.