Joe Biden is making the case that his own electability is why he should be nominated, rather early in the Democratic 2020 presidential primary race. This strategy, however, is not without a measure of risk for Biden, because while his numbers have indeed been the most impressive so far, this could always change. Two recent polls may be indicating just such a change is underway, but at this point it is still too early to determine whether this is a real trend or an outlier polling blip for Biden. Even if it is a blip, though, it shows the risks of leaning so hard on being the most electable Democrat this far out.

Biden's argument -- delivered both by his first big campaign ad and in person by his wife recently -- is that he is dominating not only the Democratic polling, but also (and more importantly) the head-to-head polling against President Donald Trump. Biden is the best candidate for Democratic voters to back, this argument goes, because he is the one who can resoundingly beat Trump next November.

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The great fear of those who did not support Donald Trump's election in 2016 was that if America hit a crisis point -- a virtual certainty, over a span of four years -- Trump would prove to be dangerously unstable and not know how to deal with it. The consequences could be alarming, as Ted Cruz joked about on the campaign trail at the time:

I don't know anyone who would be comfortable with someone who behaves this way, having his finger on the button. I mean, we're liable to wake up one morning and Donald, if he were president, would have nuked Denmark.

That was supposed to be a joke, mind you. This week, no actual nukes flew (whew!) but President Donald Trump did call off a trip to Denmark this week because their prime minister called the idea that they would sell Greenland to Trump "absurd." She was being honest, but Trump went into a snit and called her "nasty" (a label he's used more than once to describe female politicians who don't agree with him) By week's end, the Republicans were fundraising off the whole misbegotten fiasco by selling T-shirts that depict the United States, now including Greenland.

You just can't make this stuff up, folks.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears worried. He's concerned that not only may the Democrats take control of the chamber away from him next year, but that they could then move to abolish the legislative filibuster altogether. The idea does seem to be gaining some momentum among Democrats, although not everyone's convinced it would be a good idea as of yet. But should the Democrats, if they get the chance, 'drop the third nuke' and get rid of the filibuster for once and for all, or should they retain this undemocratic Senate tradition, perhaps with some reforms?

Harry Reid may have spurred McConnell to write today's New York Times opinion piece, since Reid argued in the same pages earlier this month that Democrats should indeed just do away with the legislative filibuster in order to get some things done. Reid used to hold the same leadership position that McConnell now does, so this is a real battle of Senate heavyweights, past and present.

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In today's episode of "Irony Is Dead," we have a president who not only just committed the same sin he is accusing another of, but who then went on to flirt openly -- twice! -- with the concept that he should be deified.

Sigh. Just another day in Trumpworld....

Never in a million years would I have thought I'd ever write about a United States president considering the concept of deification. Even as a joke. But here we are. Donald Trump, in a retweet, praised a conspiracy theorist's words, which included the statement that Israeli Jews "love him like he is the second coming of God." Then in answer to a question from the press on China and trade, Donald Trump proclaimed: "I am the chosen one," while turning his gaze skyward. In other words, we're through the looking glass, folks.

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I've got to warn everyone up front, this is going to be another horserace column -- this time, examining the race between Trump and the Democratic frontrunners. If you don't like that sort of thing, then I'd suggest you stop reading now.

For everyone else, I thought it was time to take a first look at how the leading Democratic presidential contenders are measuring up to Donald Trump in head-to-head polling. This was mostly brought on by Trump himself, who lashed out at Fox News for the most recent of these nationwide polls, which showed Trump losing to pretty much any Democrat who wins the nomination -- by a wide margin, in most cases.

In this Fox News poll, Kamala Harris beats Trump by 6 points (45/39), Elizabeth Warren beats Trump by 7 points (46/39), Bernie Sanders beats Trump by 9 points (48/39), and Joe Biden buries Trump by a whopping 12 points (50/38). No wonder Trump's annoyed, as this bad news came from his favorite news source -- not some "lefty media" or "lefty pollster."

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The mainstream media does a good job on some things, I'd be the first to admit. But admitting they were wrong is simply not one of them.

Case in point is Elizabeth Warren's DNA test. Back when she revealed the results of the test, the inside-the-Beltway punditocracy jumped to a rather overblown conclusion: Warren's DNA test had been such a monumental and fundamental error that her campaign for the presidency was over before it began. Warren's chances were completely written off by just about every pundit banging on a keyboard. She was toast, they all told each other at their cocktail parties, and they shared this conventional wisdom with their readers and viewers, confident that it was an accurate read of the situation.

Warren, of course, was not knocked out of the running, even though that was the near-universal prediction at the time. In fact, Elizabeth Warren is now running in either second or third place, depending on which poll you look at. She's running ahead of 20 other Democratic candidates, to put this another way.

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In 1867, right after the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson's State Department explored the possibility of buying Iceland and Greenland. This, of course, did not happen.

In the midst of the first World War, America was more successful at enticing Denmark to sell off some territory it didn't want. The deal was completed in January of 1917, after a few months of negotiations. The U.S. paid $25 million in gold (the equivalent of more than $575 million in today's dollars) and took possession of the Danish West Indies soon after. The islands were renamed the "Virgin Islands of the United States" and remain an American territory to this day.

After World War II, President Harry Truman offered another $100 million to Denmark in a second bid to buy Greenland. Denmark turned him down.

This week, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Donald Trump, for some strange reason, now wants to try to buy Greenland again. The Washington Post later followed up on the story:

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It's time once again to don an ascot, pick up the binoculars, and turn our attention back to the horses running around the 2020 Democratic presidential racetrack. Enough time has passed from the second debate round that the public has had a chance to digest the results and react accordingly. So let's dive right back in to parsing the poll numbers.

Campaign News

The 2020 Democratic presidential field shrunk today, as John Hickenlooper dropped out of the race. He becomes the fourth such candidate to do so (after Richard Ojeda, Eric Swalwell, and Mike Gravel), but even with four gone there are still a whopping 23 candidates left in the running.

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August in the year which predates a major election is a time for both parties to field-test a few tactics and strategies for the upcoming campaign. This year, Democrats have served up "Moscow Mitch," while Republicans have been focusing their attention on "the Squad." Of course, these are secondary themes, as the main race will be Donald Trump versus the winner of the Democratic primaries, but that won't really get underway until after the primaries actually happen. In the meantime, Trump has been trying out some new snotty nicknames for some of the Democratic frontrunners, but he has also been ramping up his attacks on a rather bizarre political target: the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Hey, they don't call it the silly season for nothing, right?

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Donald Trump finally had to admit today that his tariffs are actually paid by American consumers and not China (as he's been saying all along). This is a fairly basic economic concept, but Trump has deluded himself up to this point that up is down and black is white. Finally, cracks are showing in this facade. The Trump administration announced (after a disastrous day on the stock market) that they would be holding off on inflicting another round of tariffs in September, and instead would wait until the middle of December to add this new tax to thousands of products made in China. This way, American consumers won't get hit by the Trump tax when they do all their Christmas shopping. But if Trump's version of reality were correct -- that China was paying all the tariffs -- then Christmas wouldn't even matter and there would be no reason to delay the new tariff. Trump even reluctantly had to admit this out loud to a reporter (although he included caveats like: "just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. consumers").

The delay of the new Trump tax won't be across the board, however. A new 10 percent tax will indeed be slapped on roughly half of the products Trump had threatened, on schedule, beginning next month. The Trump administration tried to cherry-pick those items that would be high on consumers' Christmas shopping lists when they selected which would be allowed to avoid the new Trump tax. This was smart politically, because otherwise Trump was setting himself up to be the Grinch who raised prices on everything, right before the holiday shopping season began. But even with this cherry-picking, consumer prices will indeed rise on some items.

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