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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President Donald Trump, after week upon week of inaction, was finally convinced to make use of the Defense Production Act to coordinate the distribution of medical swabs. This will hopefully alleviate one of the bottlenecks the states have had to deal with as they attempt to ramp up testing in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. However, this step could have been taken a month earlier, which would have solved the problem when it actually developed, but for some reason Trump refused to do so until now.

This follows the pattern that Trump has set during the pandemic crisis. First, he denies that a problem exists -- for as long as he thinks he can get away with such denial. He loudly asserts that everything is fine and nothing's going wrong, all evidence to the contrary. Then he tries to blame the problem on someone else -- anyone else, really: China. The World Health Organization. Democrats in general. Democratic governors. "Nasty" women reporters in the media who keep pointing out that the problem is getting worse. Nancy Pelosi. Chuck Schumer. Barack Obama. Joe Biden. Dr. Anthony Fauci. Bill Gates. Mitt Romney. Trump lashes out in all directions, hoping to distract everyone from the plain truth that he and he alone has always had the power to fix the problem, but refused to act.

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Testing... testing... One... two... three... Is this thing on?... Hello??

We can think of no better metaphor today than a booming amplified voice addressing a dark and empty space. For reasons that should be obvious, really.

President Donald Trump is an absolute genius -- at wasting time, that is. He just essentially wasted another entire week, which can be added on to all the previous weeks he wasted, since the dawn of the coronavirus. Which definitely includes the entire month of February, by the way.

Donald Trump spent the week as a total drama queen. Monday, he was apparently in a snit because on all the Sunday morning political shows, it was becoming more and more obvious that the real fault for why things had gotten so bad was that Trump himself wasted over a month at the very beginning of the crisis. So Trump rolled out a full-on propaganda show, complete with a video that tried to put all the blame on China and the press, instead of at his own feet where it rightfully belonged. The video had a timeline that was supposed to show what bold, decisive actions Trump had taken, but it left out the entire month of February. When an intrepid reporter pointed this out, Trump had a full-on tantrum. Here is Paula Reid from CBS, trying to get Trump to answer for the gap:

The argument is that you bought yourself some time and you didn't use it to prepare hospitals and you didn't use it to ramp up testing. Right now, literally 20 million people are unemployed. Tens of thousands of Americans are dead. How does this reel or this rant supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis? Your video has a complete gap. What did your administration do in February with the time that your travel ban bought you?

In response, Trump called her "disgraceful" and "a fake."

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As many of the self-induced drama queen moments from Donald Trump tend to do, this one just fizzled away into nothing. The president is now calling for the decision to reopen the economy to be made by the individual governors, not the White House. This comes as relief for all those who were worried that Trump would throw the country into a constitutional crisis in the midst of a pandemic. Because what Trump is announcing even as I write this is nothing short of an admission of the status quo ante -- the ante being "before Trump's nonsense began," of course.

It was always going to be the governors' decisions to make, since Trump hadn't shown an iota of leadership when the country shut down. If he had, he might have had a case to make that it would then be up to him to decide to reopen, but he didn't do that, so that point is moot. The governors shut down their respective states' economies, therefore the governors would be the ones in charge of opening them back up again.

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For the first time since 2004, Democrats are united in the spring of a presidential election year. The primary season is essentially over, with only one candidate left standing. All the other candidates of note have now endorsed presumptive nominee Joe Biden. This is downright remarkable when you consider where we were just a few short months ago.

Three months ago, there were still multiple strong candidates in the race, all running hard against each other. Two months ago, people were either predicting an open convention fight or an outright win for Bernie Sanders. One month ago, the race was almost over as the rise of Biden became unstoppable. And now the party's unified behind him. That's a whiplash-inducing change of events in a very short period of time, you've got to admit.

But nobody's really looking back right now -- Democrats are instead looking forward to the general election. And they're doing so with more unity than they've shown in 16 years. In 2008, bitter feelings remained between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- feelings that wouldn't fully go away until Obama named Clinton his secretary of State. Remember the cries of "Party unity my ass!" (or the "PUMAs")? In 2012 we were united because Obama hadn't drawn a major primary challenge, so that cycle doesn't really count when considering open primary seasons. But in 2016, the bad feelings between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were just as fierce as the Obama-Clinton dustup. This time around, Bernie endorsed Biden early, but that's really not what's bringing the party together so effectively.

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