This is going to be a meta-column, just to warn everyone in advance. It's going to be a column about columns. If you think this will bore the pants off you, then now is the time to seek other content, in other words.

Behind the scenes here, I've been gearing up to kick off my election-year "Electoral Math" series once again. Throughout the campaign, we'll take a look at the polling and try to predict how each state will vote, and thus what the Electoral College vote will be after the November presidential election. These columns will run right up until the day before the election, when I'll attempt to make my final prediction. This will be the fourth run of this column series. I previously wrote these articles for the 2008, 2012, and 2016 campaigns.

This time around, however, many people (Democrats in particular) are what could only be called "twice shy," after getting so badly bitten in 2016. "Polls cannot be trusted," many now conclude, "so why even bother writing poll-watching columns?"

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As time goes by, it is looking more and more like the television show Trump: The Reality-Show President is just not going to be renewed for a fifth season. After all, Fox News just released a poll showing Donald Trump a whopping 12 points behind Joe Biden. That's tough news from your sponsoring network, obviously. When CNN released an earlier poll showing Trump down 14 points, he had his lawyer try to intimidate the network into retracting the poll. It didn't work, of course. So what will Trump's lawyer now have to say to Fox?

It's no surprise that Trump: The Reality-Show President is on the brink of cancellation. Its fourth season opened with a few plot twists designed to put pressure on Trump, and he hasn't exactly risen to the occasion. First, the writers had Congress impeach him, just to see what he'd do. Then they threw a pandemic at him, which he woefully mishandled for months before realizing the seriousness of the situation. This led to the collapse of the economy, as Trump floundered around. Trump began daily briefings which (if the polls are accurate) is precisely the time when the public began tuning out in a big way. With ratings down, the show's storyline turned to "unrest in the streets," which Trump has handled even worse than the coronavirus pandemic (if such a thing is even possible).

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To President Donald Trump, today's Supreme Court ruling was not actually about the hundreds of thousands of young people whose legal residence in this country hung on this court case. Instead, it was about one thing and one thing alone, which is pretty much the same thing that everything is about for Donald Trump: himself. After learning of the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision denying Trump the ability to strip legal protection from the "dreamers," Trump petulantly took to Twitter to ask: "Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn't like me?" Once again, Trump reduced an issue of monumental importance to the level of schoolyard gossip (about him, of course). Maybe if the Supremes really really liked Trump, things would be different? Because that's obviously what it's all about, not all that legal mumbo-jumbo or hundreds of thousands of young people's lives.

Donald Trump is having a very bad week, obviously. He lost two major Supreme Court cases, which gave joy and delight to millions of affected people. He had to move the date of his first rally in months because of a holiday neither Trump nor anyone around him had ever heard of (which celebrates another monumental issue, the end of slavery in this country). John Bolton, whose politics could accurately be described as "to the right of Attila the Hun," is about to start selling his tell-all book to the public, which (as with every single one of all the other tell-all books about Trump) paints the president as a petulant, ill-informed man-baby who is unaware that Finland isn't part of Russia or that the United Kingdom is a nuclear power. Trump staged an executive order signing, which was supposed to somehow show leadership on police reform, but what he signed was so weak that Congress barely even noticed Trump's effort as they moved towards putting together their own bill. Also, Trump is apparently now obsessed with finding and bringing charges against whatever White House aide leaked the fact that he hid in a bunker during a protest outside his front door, because he knows full well how weak it made him look. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to be on the brink of a second wave of infections, this time centered mostly in the red states. And for the 13th straight week, more than a million Americans filed for unemployment. No wonder Joe Biden is dominating in each and every poll taken, both nationally and in the battleground states.

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In the midst of what can only be called a non-traditional presidential campaign, Joe Biden might want to consider breaking another political tradition, by releasing a very early shortlist of possible nominees to his cabinet. Such a move is not without risks, of course, which is one of the reasons why traditionally it just isn't done. But the benefits may outweigh such risks in this particular campaign.

Let's start with the possible drawbacks of releasing an early shortlist. In the first place, it has always been considered "unseemly" to do so before the election is won. It smacks of overconfidence, of counting unhatched chickens. Or, to use a more apt political metaphor, it would be seen as prematurely "measuring the Oval Office drapes" in anticipation of an upcoming redecoration.

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I have to admit I am seeing the protest movement across America from a rather strange viewpoint. I live in one of the most liberal areas of one of the most liberal states in the country, and here the citizens are deeply grieving... a police officer who lost his life. You can see why this is a rather unique lens through which to view what is currently going on.

The officer in question was a sheriff's deputy who responded to a call about a white van filled with dangerous weapons. He was ambushed and killed by a member of the U.S. Air Force who, after being apprehended, was charged not only with the deputy's murder but also with the earlier murder of the only federal law enforcement officer killed in the recent unrest anywhere in the entire country. This happened during one of the first nights of demonstrations, up in Oakland, California.

Now, my county doesn't see police officers killed very often. The news reported that the last sheriff's deputy to die in the line of fire happened in the 1980s. So this was a big event, and the populace has been memorializing the slain officer ever since -- despite (as mentioned) being an area that could honestly be called "ultra-liberal." We've seen heaps of flowers laid in honor and public mourning by just about everyone, for a brave local police officer.

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Conservative Republicans just chalked up another big defeat in their continuing losing streak in the culture wars. The Supreme Court ruled today that L.G.B.T. rights are indeed included in Title VII, which mandates equal treatment for all "on the basis of sex." Discriminating against someone because they are gay or transgendered (by firing them, for example) is just as unconstitutional as it is to discriminate against all women (or all men, for that matter). To put it another way, what could be called the final battle of the Sexual Revolution just ended, and the counterculture has now absolutely routed the field of conservatives.

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President Donald Trump seems to have settled on a theme for his campaign, as he doubles down on blatant racism. Think that's too strongly put? We don't. Consider the following, from just the past week:

Trump announces his first rally since the start of the pandemic, in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19. Here's why that's a monumentally insensitive place and date: "In 1921, that city was the site of one of the worst race massacres in U.S. history. A white mob descended on an affluent black neighborhood. As many as 300 people died. The June 19 rally also happens to coincide with Juneteenth, a holiday widely celebrated in the black community to mark the day that the last American slaves were freed." As one late-night comic joked, it's like Trump told Stephen Miller to pick the most offensive place and date possible (since Trump wouldn't know beans about either historical reference).

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While the overall news on the coronavirus pandemic has gotten better on a national scale, we could be seeing the very beginnings of a second wave developing in individual states. This is worrisome, but what is even more concerning is that we may be about to repeat the mistakes of the first wave all over again. The process of closing down the economy and sheltering in place was painful, and the reopening and lifting of restrictions got very political, which adds up to an enormous reluctance by governors to go through it all over again. Which, if true, would mean that the second wave may prove to be worse than the first.

Now, none of this is certain at this point. A real second wave may never even develop, at least not on the scale the first wave did. It may be isolated to certain states or regions, while other states and regions don't see a resurgence. Anything is possible.

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Is anyone else out there ready for some cheerful and perhaps even downright rosy-tinted optimism? I for one certainly think it's time to write a column filled with positive vibes, and I've got just the subject. While triple crises rage throughout America (medical, economic, and injustice-based) and while Donald Trump's poll numbers continue to sink like a stone, there have been some interesting developments in another important political arena. The Senate is now not only "in play" for Democrats in November, the possibility now exists that they won't just win back the chamber, but win it back in a big blue wave that puts them firmly in control.

Realistically, or even pessimistically (at this point), the worst-case scenario for Democrats this November seems to now be losing one seat. Currently, the Senate stands at 53-to-47 Republican. If only a single state flipped parties during the election, it would likely be Alabama. Doug Jones was a fluke (remember cowboy-suited Roy Moore?) which will probably not last. So chalk Alabama up for the Republicans no matter what else happens, because even in a wildly-optimistic big-blue-wave situation I still doubt Jones would hold onto this seat (my glasses just aren't sufficiently rosy to see that one, in other words). That starts the Democrats at a net loss of one seat, down 46 seats to the Republicans' 54.

But then let's swing the needle all the way from pessimistic to optimistic, just to see what that scenario would look like. Hold onto your hats folks, because if Democrats won all the states that already seem solid for them and all the states which are currently tied or close to it and all three longshots, then they would flip a whopping eleven Senate seats. Add in a Jones loss in Alabama, and you'd wind up with a 57-to-43 Democratic Senate.

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I wrote the following article nine years ago. It has never been as relevant as now, however, which is why I felt the need to repost it today.

To be blunt, the one consistent truth in all of the horrific scenes of police brutality we've all witnessed recently (and in the past) is that it was caught on video. If it hadn't been, then it effectively would not have happened. We would only have a police report about a protester "tripping and falling" rather than an image of the cops shoving a peaceful 75-year-old man to the ground. There would be nothing to run on the evening news, outside of the small slice of the protests that the professional camera crews caught on film.

To put it another way, if "Little Brother" video didn't exist, you would not now know the name George Floyd. That is the power the following article was written about.

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