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.

Also of note, we are now exactly as far away from Election Day as we were four years ago when James Comey essentially threw the election by announcing there were more Hillary Clinton emails under investigation. Trump was saved by this revelation back then, but no matter how hard he's tried to equal this October surprise (by pressuring all those who work for him to create one out of thin air), it just hasn't materialized this time around.

Of course, being just one "Mooch" away from finally seeing the result of this year's long-anticipated election isn't a reason to pop the champagne quite yet. Even if Trump loses to Joe Biden, he'll still have a whopping seven Scaramuccis between then and Inauguration Day to cause all kinds of trouble. So our long national nightmare, sadly, still won't be over, for many Mooches to come.

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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.

Heading into the debate, the big story was that the microphones would be muted for the first two-minute answer from each candidate. No interruptions would be possible, in other words. But for the most part, this turned out to be largely unnecessary, due to Trump behaving like an adult (for a change). Now, perhaps it was the threat of being muted that reined him in, or perhaps his advisors sold him on the idea that if Biden were allowed to talk he'd just blither on like an idiot and Trump would win the debate. Either way, Trump did behave himself for at least the first two-thirds of the debate, although he did get a bit interrupt-ey at the end.

This allowed for a free exchange of ideas, or at least a free exchange of prepared talking points. In other words, a fairly normal presidential debate. Tonight was much less exhausting to watch, and much more civilized. So I'd have to say the big winner of the debate was the American voter who had tuned in to watch.

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For the purposes of discussion today, we're going to assume that Joe Biden wins the upcoming election. This is in no way guaranteed, of course, but the rest of the article makes no sense unless this happens. Consider it a thought-experiment.

If Joe Biden wins the election, what will President Donald Trump do next? Let's ignore all the expected lame-duckery for the moment (lawsuits against the election results, epic tantrums, Trumpian chaos, self-pardons, refusing to attend the inauguration, etc.) and take the longer view of what Trump will do after Biden is sworn in next January.

Many are assuming that Trump will somehow magically disappear from the political scene. In this fantasy, the Republican Party will wake up from its four-year delusion, shake its head in bewilderment, and then go back to being a normal opposition party in American politics. Biden himself is somewhat of a proponent of this viewpoint.

In more normal times, this might be the case. Ex-presidents are generally known for largely retreating from the public stage and assuming the role of "elder statesman" within their own party. They do not regularly involve themselves in the day-to-day political struggle, but instead take a more gentlemanly approach and for the most part refuse to second-guess the new Oval Office occupant (at least, in public). But these are not normal times, so why would anyone expect Donald Trump to be a normal ex-president? Instead, Trump will likely become what could be called a "shadow president." Now, this requires a digression to explain what I mean by that term, so please bear with me.

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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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Once again, it is time for our Monday rundown of the state-level polling in the presidential race. Since last week, Donald Trump has returned to the campaign trail in a big way, after his quick recovery from COVID-19. His rallies are (as usual) packed shoulder-to-shoulder with nary a mask in sight, even though we're on the leading edge of the next big wave of infections across the country (indeed, in many of the states Trump is travelling through).

This is Trump's final message -- ignore the disease, and maybe it'll go away. This is reckless and irresponsible, but it is also classic Trumpian behavior. One does wonder how many independents (especially out in the suburbs) this is going to turn off, but Trump really doesn't seem to care at this point.

Last week, instead of the second scheduled presidential debate, we got duelling townhalls on different television channels. Joe Biden appeared calm and collected and downright presidential. Donald Trump got grilled mercilessly by Savannah Guthrie (of all people), and reacted with his usual bombast and falsehoods and gaslighting. This week, we'll have what was supposed to be the third presidential debate (which is now the second), which will be the last real chance Trump will have to turn his campaign around. This chance has already shrunk considerably, since almost 30 million people have already cast their ballots.

Trump is trying to push an "October surprise" based on dubious emails about Hunter Biden, but at this point nobody (outside of Fox News) really cares. It is not going to have the same impact as Hillary Clinton's email revelations late in the game, but that's not going to stop Trump from trying. Trump is also going to crow about confirming another Supreme Court justice, but again this is not likely to resonate outside of his own base voters.

Instead, the real October surprise isn't all that surprising, because the experts have been predicting it for months now. The pandemic is beginning to rage across the country once again, and we're seeing numbers we haven't seen since the last wave hit at the beginning of the summer. If these numbers keep going up for the next week or so, it will almost certainly be the biggest issue on voters' minds in the election. Trump, astonishingly, is out there ridiculing Joe Biden for listening to the doctors and the experts, ridiculing Anthony Fauci (who is much more trusted by the public than Trump), while continuing to hold "superspreader" events at all his rallies. The disconnect between Trump's "we're turning the corner" gaslighting and Joe Biden taking the crisis very seriously is downright jarring.

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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.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is increasingly astonished that everyone else in the country does not actually inhabit the fantasy world he has created inside his own head, where we're "turning the corner" and the pandemic will just magically go away. Trump's been hoping for this magical retreat since the start of the pandemic, but these days it sounds downright delusional. This is far beyond a normal politician sounding "out of touch," in other words. People are dying out there, and Trump doesn't seem to even grasp that. Not exactly a portrait of a strong leader, in other words. Or a sane one, for that matter.

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Are Republicans getting worried about the outcome of the upcoming election? This is a real possibility at this point, given the polls. After all, if the Democrats have a very big night three weeks from now, Republicans may be cast out into the wilderness for at least the next two years. And just like the robins return in the spring, if there is a Democratic president and the Democrats control both houses of Congress, Republicans are going to try everything in their power to sabotage Joe Biden's first two years in office. They did so before, back in 2009, when Mitch McConnell told his fellow Senate Republicans that their only goal was to "make Barack Obama a one-term president." That didn't really work out for them, but they did manage to claw back majorities in Congress.

There are many reasons why the Senate is moving at lightspeed to confirm President Donald Trump's conservative pick for the Supreme Court, but one of them is surely that they know this could be the last one they get for a while. But more telling, perhaps, is Republicans' newly resuscitated concern for fiscal responsibility, even in the face of the ongoing pandemic crisis and even when the economy quite obviously needs some more stimulus.

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Once again, my time was completely eaten up today by external events, so my apologies for not having a column two days running. I think I'm on track to write a new column tomorrow, so that's the good news.

Since we're smack in the middle of a Supreme Court judicial nomination fight, and since her own religion has come up, I thought it would be a good time to re-run the following column. I wrote it back in 2014, so a few things have changed.

The lineup of the court is the most obvious change. Antonin Scalia died and was eventually replaced by Neil Gorsuch. Anthony Kennedy retired, and was replaced by Brett Kavanaugh. And, of course, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is why we're where we are today.

In terms of religion, the eight members of the court currently break down into five Catholics (Alito, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Sotomayor, and Thomas), two Jews (Breyer, Kagan), and one who nobody's really sure what to call, since Gorsuch was raised Catholic but now apparently attends an Episcopal church. If Gorsuch considers himself Episcopalian, then there is one Protestant on the high court now.

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Due to other obligations in the offline world, there will be no column today. I realize it is the high season for the election and I did manage to catch some of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the Senate, but just don't have time to write about either.

Instead, in lieu of a column, I'm going to point everyone to a great feel-good story I read early this morning. In these dire times, this is the sort of story guaranteed to put a smile on your face, which is why I thought I'd add the link and the first few paragraphs. The full article ran in the Washington Post.

-- Chris Weigant

World War II-era ‘Candy Bomber’ turns 100. Those who caught his candy — now in their 80s — say thanks.

It was the summer of 1948 when U.S. Air Force pilot Gail “Hal” Halvorsen noticed children clustered around a barbed-wire fence watching military planes at Tempelhof airfield in Berlin.

World War II had ended, and Halvorsen was part of an air mission to deliver food and fuel to desperate Berliners after the Soviet Union had blocked land and water access to areas of the country, leaving millions without access to basic goods.

Halvorsen, then 27, decided to park his plane and say hello to the kids at the fence.

“I saw right away that they had nothing and they were hungry,” he recalled. “So I reached into my pocket and pulled out all that I had: two sticks of gum.”

Halvorsen tore the Wrigley’s Spearmint gum into small strips — one for each child, he said. Then he made the kids a promise: He would return the next day to drop a load of chocolate bars from the sky.

“I told them that I’d ‘wiggle’ my wings so they’d know which pilot had the goods,” he said. “Then I went back to the base and asked all the guys to pool their candy rations for the drop.”

Following his first sweet mission — hundreds of Hershey chocolate bars were wrapped in parachutes made of handkerchiefs — Halvorsen returned again and again during the 15-month humanitarian airlift.

The children of Berlin soon gave him a nickname: the “Candy Bomber.”

[Read the full article for more...]

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

It's Monday, so it is time once again to take a look at the state-level polling for the presidential race. I have to point out as a reminder, right up front, that no matter what the national-level polling shows, it simply does not matter to how we actually elect our presidents, as both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton can easily attest to. This is why I never even mention these numbers in this column series.

Instead, I pay very close attention to the charts provided by the wonderful Electoral-Vote.com site, which allows me to chart over time exactly how the race is shaping up -- in the Electoral College. In fact, it continues to astonish me how many other poll-watchers don't even bother to look closely at the only real way to view the state of the race we have, but that's a subject for another day.

Last week's polling was the first to reflect an event which happened over a week ago now -- President Donald Trump announcing he had tested positive for COVID-19 and then quickly entering the hospital. He didn't stay long, because he wanted to show strength, but all his attempts to do so might have just shown the voters another quality -- recklessness and indifference to the health of those around him.

This has actually caused Trump's numbers to sink in the polls, especially among seniors. Trump is desperately trying to win them back -- he shot a video addressed to seniors right after he returned to the White House, and he is pressing hard for his administration to start sending out $200 prescription drug cards to all of them before the election (which may not actually be possible, for various reasons).

Joe Biden, meanwhile, looks steady and calm. Wearing masks and actually paying attention to the doctors and experts looks very smart and prudent now, despite all the attempts Team Trump has made to paint Biden as "hiding in his basement" for the past few months.

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