Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer managed a rather extraordinary feat this week -- he forced a Senate floor vote on a bill designed to become campaign ad fodder for Democratic challengers to vulnerable Republicans. This is notable, because normally the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell controls what gets floor votes, not the minority party. And it was even more notable because five Republicans voted for it out of sheer terror of it being used in an ad against them. Three others didn't take the bait, and can now expect such ads to begin airing soon.

The bill would have (if passed and signed into law by President Trump, which would never actually happen, it must be pointed out) banned the federal government from arguing in court to kill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in court. This is important for three big reasons: (1) the Trump administration has already joined the lawsuit trying to overturn Obamacare in its entirety, (2) the case will be heard before the Supreme Court almost immediately after the election, and (3) Senate Republicans are rushing to get another Supreme Court justice confirmed before the election.

Continue Reading »

You know why I want Joe Biden to win this election? Because I long to once again be bored with politics. I pine for those weeks when nothing at all happens -- where I have to think hard to even come up with a subject to write about. This used to happen with regularity, no matter which party was currently in control. But with Donald Trump as our president, it is impossible.

This more than anything else was the takeaway I got from last night's debate. America doesn't so much need a return to normalcy as it does a return to sanity. A return to a time when the president can be counted on not to be a world-class embarrassment. A return to facts meaning something once again. A return to an America where every decent person openly condemns white nationalist groups, without a second thought. Is this really asking too much?

But I'm going to shove all my own feelings about the debate's aftermath aside, because the entire punditocracy is already doing an admirable job surveying the smoking wreckage, for once. Few commentators are resorting to the easy crutch of "both-sides-ism" today, to put it another way. Joe Biden may have made minor misstatements last night, but Donald Trump spewed a pyroclastic flow of lies across the landscape, so the two really aren't comparable in any rational way. This morning, even Fox News was admitting that Donald Trump had had a bad night, and that it would behoove him to dial it back a bit in the next debates (if they even happen, which at this point is not an iron-clad certainty).

Continue Reading »

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.

After sitting through all of the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I am even more convinced (as I wrote a while back) that there may wind up being only one such debate this year. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Donald Trump refuses to do a second or third debate, because the reviews are going to be absolutely terrible for him to read. I watched the debate on ABC, and when it was finished George Stephanopoulos immediately summed it up as: "the worst presidential debate I have seen in my entire life." I could not agree more.

Continue Reading »

As we get closer to the election, these columns will increase in frequency as well. We haven't decided when to move to a weekly format (every Monday), but it's coming soon, just to let everyone know.

It has been two weeks since the last time we looked at the polls, and not a whole lot has changed. The race tightened a bit in a few states, but overall Biden still has the clear advantage.

Let's begin (as always) by taking a look a the chart of Electoral Votes (EV). Also as always, our polling data comes from the superb site Electoral-Vote.com, which we strongly recommend to people who love numbers and charts. Our first chart shows what percentage each candidate would get if the election were held today and all the polling was perfectly accurate. Joe Biden starts at the bottom in blue, Donald Trump starts at the top in red, and whichever color crosses the 50 percent line will be the winner.

[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]

Continue Reading »

American democracy is on fire. Or on its deathbed, at the very least. Choose any dire metaphor you wish, but the red flags and warning signals are everywhere you look. The president of the United States of America made news this week when he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, should he lose the upcoming election. Later, watching the reaction on the news, President Donald Trump reportedly laughed about all the fuss he had caused:

Continue Reading »

Yesterday, I took a look at several Democratic reform efforts directed at both the legislative and executive branches. In the second part of examining how potent the issue of reforming government has become, we're going to focus on the Supreme Court, which is now at the center of the political world due to the untimely death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Continue Reading »

Democrats were always going to run their 2020 campaign on a platform of "Reform!" They have made no secret of this fact. The very first bill Nancy Pelosi took up in the House of Representatives after regaining control of the chamber -- "H.R. 1" -- was a sweeping reform bill that is almost breathtaking in its scope of ethics and other governmental reforms. So from the very start, Democrats have signalled that this is going to be a key part of their agenda moving forward. Today, they followed up on this by introducing another sweeping reform bill, one that specifically addresses executive branch reforms which are now necessary after President Donald Trump's widespread abuses of power.

This is a winning issue for Democrats, so it is good to see them getting out in front of the issue in such a major way. Major parts of the federal government are now so broken that they are crying out for repair. Reforming all sorts of things about the way Washington works (or doesn't) is absolutely critical if Democrats want to move the country forward in any way next year. Even if Joe Biden wins the presidency and Democrats take back control of the Senate and retain control of the House, things could still grind to a halt with the rules that are in place now. So changing the rules to fix obviously broken things is a pretty easy sell to the voters.

How easy? Well, after H.R. 1 was introduced, polling showed that 82 percent of all voters said the would support reforms to tackle corruption in Washington. That's a pretty strong number, in these divided times.

Continue Reading »

My apologies, because I don't really have enough time for a full column today. The reason for this is that I went down to my county registrar this afternoon to verify my voting registration and signature.

I'm one of those people who enjoys the ceremony of showing up in person to cast my vote, so before this year, my signature wasn't really all that important. However, due to the pandemic, this year California is mailing every registered voter a ballot directly, so signature-matching has become crucial. Whether you mail in your ballot or drop it off at a drop box or show up on Election Day and hand it in in person, the mechanics of voting will be the same -- the ballot goes in an envelope that must be signed. This signature will have to be verified in order for your vote to be counted. I'm assuming this is true, I should add, as I have yet to actually receive my ballot in the mail.

But better safe than sorry. Since for the past twenty years I haven't had to re-register, and since my signature has changed somewhat over time, I wanted to verify that it would match whatever they had on file. So I trucked on down to the county building and was able to verify that the signature on file is pretty much what I use today. Close enough, in other words. This set my mind at ease.

Continue Reading »

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg now rests in peace.

For the rest of us, there will be no rest and very little peace for the next few months -- of that much we can be certain. Because while the phrase is occasionally overused, it is no hyperbole to say that Ginsburg's death has now left America in what can only be called a true constitutional crisis.

There are all sorts of ways this could play out, ranging from the reasonable to the apocalyptic. At this point, the paths to reasonableness seem few and narrow, while the paths to chaos are much more wide and numerous. It's not even overstating the case all that much to say that we have never been closer to a second civil war in this country.

Continue Reading »

Olivia Troye used to be a high-level staffer for Vice President Mike Pence, and she worked closely with him on the coronavirus task force which he led. She recently quit in disgust and went public this week with her support for Joe Biden (in yet another "Republican Voters Against Trump" video). The most damning thing she had to say about the president was the following:

When we were in a task force meeting, the President said "maybe this COVID thing is a good thing, I don't like shaking hands with people, I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people." Those disgusting people are the same people that he claims to care about. These are the people still going to his rallies today, who have complete faith in who he is.

Now, as you'll remember, Hillary Clinton was famously raked over the coals by both the media and Republicans for labelling Republican voters as a "basket of deplorables." But she was talking about opposition voters, not her own. This time, President Donald Trump is calling his own followers -- the ones who stand in line for days, at times, so they can be in the front row and get a chance to shake Trump's own hand -- "disgusting people."

If you're waiting for the same level of outrage from Republicans that they exhibited when Clinton used the "deplorable" term, you've likely got a long wait coming. Because now, apparently, it's OK to call Republican voters "disgusting people."

Continue Reading »