Today is a notable day for a number of disjointed reasons. Fifty years ago today, Ohio National Guardsmen killed four Kent State students who were protesting the Vietnam War. For those more future-minded, it's Star Wars Day ("May the fourth be with you!"). However, I'd be willing to bet that one of today's usual yearly traditions has been especially hard-hit, because Corona beer sales are likely not spiking right now as they normally do (in preparation for Cinco de Mayo). It's a bad time for your brand to be "corona," in other words, in this time of the virus. But for most of us, it is a time of waiting. This waiting period will become notable eventually, because whatever happens next -- over the course of the next month, roughly -- may actually determine the outcome of the November election.

We're in the midst of a grand experiment -- one that Donald Trump has essentially bet his chances of being re-elected upon. When should restrictions on everyday life be lifted in an attempt to return to some semblance of normalcy? Should the medical data be the driving force behind such decisions, or should economics be the main focus instead? Lives hang in the balance to the answers of these two questions, and so does the public's view of Donald Trump.

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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 asked about his previous position when Republicans had been accused of such behavior ("You've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real"), Biden tried to thread the needle:

Look, from the very beginning, I've said believing women means taking women's claims seriously when she steps forward and then vet it. Look into it. That's true in this case as well.... I'll always uphold that principle. But in the end, in every case, the truth is what matters. In this case, the truth is that the claims are false.

. . .

Look, women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt. If they come forward and say something that they said happened to them, they should start off with the presumption they're telling the truth. Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts. And the facts in this case do not exist -- they never happened. And there are so many inconsistencies in what has been said in this case. So yes, look at the facts. And I can assure you it did not happen, period, period.

Biden did make one unforced error, which he'll hopefully reconsider soon. His senatorial papers were donated to the University of Delaware, but have not been made public yet (and won't until after he leaves "public life"). Biden asserts that even if Reade had made a personnel complaint at the time, it simply wouldn't be in his senatorial papers, therefore there's no reason to allow a search of them. Biden claimed this morning that any such complaint would reside within the National Archives, if it even existed. Reade has said she did file such a complaint with a congressional human resources office -- but not about the actual assault, rather just about other things Biden did that made her feel uncomfortable. She also said she didn't keep a copy of the complaint herself. Later today, however, the National Archives weighed in by passing the buck: "any records of Senate personnel complaints from 1993 would have remained under the control of the Senate. Accordingly, inquiries related to these records should be directed to the Senate."

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There will be no column today, sorry. I've been trying to get the website's problems (which resulted in the site going dark on Monday morning) fully fixed, which is more complicated than it originally seemed. Hopefully, this will all be resolved soon. So far, it hasn't meant any further interruption in service on the site itself (all the problems are deep behind the scenes), and I'm fairly positive that we'll get through this weekend without the site going dark again. But it has taken up all my usual writing time today, so I apologize for the lack of a column. If I get things squared away I'll try to answer some comments on previous articles later on, to somewhat make up for things. Until then, thanks for your patience with the site, and sorry once again for the lack of a new column today.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

No matter how you measure it, America has failed to meet the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic even half as well as other countries around the world. Consider the fact that we only have five percent -- one-twentieth -- of the world's population, but we now have a full third of all the coronavirus cases worldwide. That one fact alone shows how badly we've done when compared to just about everybody else on the planet.

We just topped one million cases, and we've now seen more coronavirus deaths in a matter of a few months than all Americans who died in the Vietnam War. We seem well on our way toward 100,000 deaths total, for just the first wave of the pandemic. A good way to see this is to think about all those bell curves in the "flattening the curve" charts. If we're approximately at the peak of the pandemic right now, then we're at the top of the bell curve. But being at the top of the curve means we're only halfway to the end, so doubling the number of deaths we have now is likely going to be close to the final total. The overall infection rate will decline (hopefully) and the number of deaths per day should also begin to decline, but we've still got a long way to go and the totals will reflect this fact.

Meanwhile, according to President Donald Trump and his team of sycophants, we're doing great! Fantastic! Tremendous! In fact, our coronavirus response is the envy of the world! Our testing is phenomenal, better than anyone else's! The whole thing is a great success story!

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I find myself somewhat at a loss, when faced with the emerging scandal over Tara Reade's allegations of a sexual assault made against her in the 1990s by Joe Biden, then a sitting United States senator. The reason I have a problem with addressing the scandal is that my own personal knee-jerk reaction simply does not apply.

Let's get my own personal bias out of the way before addressing the actual situation Biden now finds himself in. What truly annoys me, seemingly every four years or so, is that Democrats manage to nominate someone for president who has skeletons in the closet that somehow are never revealed during the primary process. Right after the nomination is secured, these skeletons are then revealed -- meaning Democratic voters at that point no longer have a choice.

Now, normally, this is a function of the opposition research team of whichever Republican is running, as well as an abject failure of the opposition research teams of all the other Democratic candidates who ran for president and lost. There's a certain timidity during the primaries against going too negative against other Democrats, which means that sometimes ugly subjects just don't get brought up. The candidates, at least, have something to worry about -- a backlash against them by the voters for going so negative. But the media has no such built-in excuse. And yet it seems like the media sits on certain stories for months so they can reveal them at the precise moment when the voters no longer have any say in the nominee.

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The business of predicting the future is always a dicey one, and never more dicey when attempting to predict the outcome of an election. I've always tried to do my honest best when tackling the problem, but (being human) don't always get things right. But I do post my track record for past predictions, to give readers some sense of the accuracy of my gut feelings. Which is why I'm always impressed when others do so, because it is interesting to see who gets it right more often than being wrong.

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.

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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?

Of course, earlier in Donald Trump's peripatetic response to the coronavirus, a man died because he drank chemicals intended to clean fishtanks -- because he thought it was the same thing as the miracle drug Trump was actively touting on a daily basis. So you'd think Trump would already be aware that sometimes people stupidly act on his advice with lethal consequences.

If so, you'd be wrong. Because yesterday, Trump tossed out a few more lethal ideas, including injecting bleach or isopropyl alcohol or somehow defying the laws of physics by getting ultraviolet light inside the body... somehow... to fight off the coronavirus.

Before we get any further, a disclaimer is necessary. DO NOT do these things. They WILL kill you. So don't even try. Just don't. Even if you love Trump and everything he does, DO NOT take his suggestions. Because no matter how loyal you are, no matter how many "Make America Great Again" hats you own, it will still kill you dead. Period.

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What's a good Republican governor to do, these days? It's hard not to feel at least a little sorry for them as they try to navigate the minefield that is Donald Trump's ego. They think they're doing exactly what Trump has told them to do and then -- BOOM! -- they step on a landmine of blowback, because Trump has either changed his mind or decided to hedge his bets by taking every possible side of an issue (in the hopes that he won't be held responsible, no matter what happens). It's gotten to the point where calling Trump "mercurial" is now actually insulting to the element mercury.

In normal times, a state governor of the same political party as the president usually backs the White House up and echoes the party line espoused by the man at the top. In normal crises, such political ramifications are generally set aside until after the crisis has passed, while both the governors and the White House work to mitigate the disaster. In Trumpian times, however, Trump has already set up the governors to be scapegoats if things don't work out right, and he now appears to be tossing them willy-nilly under the bus before the jury's even in. Even if they're doing exactly what Trump is telling them to do. Which is why I have to feel at least a little sorry for the GOP governors who must now have absolutely no idea what Trump wants them to do next.

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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.

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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.

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