As I write that headline, I have to wonder why we all haven't been using the neologistic verb "Donald ducking" by this point in the presidential race. After all, a large part of Donald Trump's campaign has been built on the foundation of him ducking questions and issues that he doesn't want to talk about. He's a master at the art, in fact. Consider just the birther issue -- up until last Friday, Trump's been successfully ducking the issue for the entire campaign. He never answered the basic question of Barack Obama's birthplace, saying quite bluntly that he just didn't want to talk about it. He got away with not talking about it for almost a year and a half. Donald ducked, and it worked.

But since his makeover into Trump 2.0 (now with TelePrompTer!), Donald hasn't just been ducking the questions he doesn't like, he's been ducking answering any tough questions altogether. Earlier in the campaign season, Hillary Clinton was (quite rightly) derided by the press for not giving a press conference for nine solid months. She finally relented (as a part of her own campaign makeover), and now gives press conferences and answers questions from the press corps travelling with her on a regular basis. Trump, however, has moved in the opposite direction, and hasn't given a press conference in almost two months now.

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Lester Holt has his work cut out for him, that's for sure. Holt, news anchor for NBC, will be the moderator for the first presidential debate. It will quite likely be the most-watched television debate in American history. It will also probably generate a few moments that historians will later endlessly replay when trying to explain the 2016 election. In other words, there will be soundbites.

Holt's job is a tough one. Any presidential debate moderator's job is a tough one, but this year things are so different that it's going to be hard for Holt to keep control of the situation. Nobody knows what Donald Trump will do, and there's a real possibility that he'll essentially hijack the debate and run it on his terms alone. Holt's got to be prepared for this. So does Hillary Clinton.

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Hillary Clinton's lead in the race for Electoral College votes is shrinking. In fact, it has been shrinking for a solid month now. Two weeks ago (the last time I wrote one of these columns), this hadn't really benefited Donald Trump much. Now, however, Trump seems to be surging in the polls while Hillary slides even further.

Now, I wouldn't say it's quite time to panic for Democrats -- but that time may be just around the corner, unless Clinton can turn things around fairly quickly. The first presidential debate will happen one week from today, so such a turnaround is indeed possible in the near future.

Let's take a look at the overall picture. Two weeks ago, Clinton had lost two big states (Florida and Ohio) into the "Tied" category (white, on the graph below). This time around, Trump picked them up and a few others as well, putting him at his strongest point in the race so far. Hillary still holds an edge, but it is now razor-thin.

All of these charts, in one way or another, graph Electoral Votes (EV) over time. The overview chart shows who would be ahead if the election were held today and all the polling is correct. Clinton starts from the bottom of the graph and goes up, and Trump starts from the top of the graph and goes down. If blue crosses the 50 percent line, Clinton will win, and if red dips below the 50 percent line, then Trump will win.

[Click on any of theses images to see larger-scale versions.]

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The media got played by Donald Trump this morning, once again. Picture Charlie Brown lying flat on his back, wondering why he keeps falling for the old kick-the-football bit. That was cable television, after they had carried -- live -- a full hour of an empty podium (Trump didn't start on time), then a full-on advertisement for Trump's new D.C. hotel, then some surrogates saying how wonderful Trump was. At the very end, Trump uttered the 30 seconds of soundbite the cable channels had been waiting for, and then even though it was billed as a press conference, Trump walked off and refused to answer any questions.

Here's a hint, for the clueless cable networks: if you don't want to feel cheap and dirty afterwards, then don't get in bed with Trump again. If you don't want to hear: "Oh, and there's some money on the dresser, why don't you buy something nice for yourself..." then don't put yourself into that situation in the first place.

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Up until the past week, there was one aspect of the 2016 presidential race that most had completely overlooked. Barring any third-party surprises, America is about to elect either the oldest or the second-oldest first-term president ever. Furthermore, if Bernie Sanders had edged Hillary Clinton out for the Democratic nomination, we would have been guaranteed to elect the oldest first-term president in our entire history.

To attach some cultural context, this means 2016 might be the last presidential election where the subject of the Vietnam War comes up (as in "what were you doing during..."). Which would mean no more swift-boats, no more Texas National Guard, no more prisoner-of-war stories, and no more questions about draft deferments or protesting in the streets, ever again. The Baby Boomers might not ever again see a candidate from their generation. OK, admittedly, that last one may be a stretch (and depends on what year you cut off the Baby Boom), but it'll definitely be a generational handoff in a lot of ways.

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There was some rather important economic news yesterday, which could be summed up as "things are getting better." Incomes are rising, unemployment has stayed low, the number of uninsured Americans has now dropped by half (thanks to Obamacare), and all of these things are happening at historic rates. The Great Recession is finally over, in other words.

This news didn't get nearly the attention it deserved, because bad economic news is always more enticing to the mainstream media. Think about it -- when unemployment was extremely high, each month's numbers were breathlessly reported on the day they came out, as the lead story on the evening news. These days, the fact that unemployment has now stayed close to five percent (5.1 percent or less) for over a full year is barely ever even mentioned. Even when a newspaper runs a headline like: "Middle Class Incomes Had Their Fastest Growth On Record Last Year," it mostly gets ignored on the airwaves. Hey, it's so much more fun to report on the Trump/Clinton daily molehills instead, right?

Digging into the statistics reveals gains not seen in a half-century. That's not hyperbole, either, as the Census Bureau showed (emphasis added):

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You could call this whole article an open letter to Lester Holt, I suppose. But it's really directed towards anyone at all in the media, because from what I've seen so far they all are missing the chance to ask Donald Trump a painfully obvious followup question, and instead are following Trump down a rabbit hole of his own making.

Here's a quick rundown, which should be fairly self-explanatory. The basic question:

Why haven't you publicly released your tax returns, Mr. Trump?

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Hillary Clinton made a deplorable basket case this weekend. That is, she made the case that "half" of the supporters of Donald Trump belong in a "basket of deplorables." It just sounds funnier to say it the first way, that's all.

Kidding aside, though, while the language Clinton used is being criticized, the point she was making was worth a little political risk. She walked part of her comment back almost immediately, saying she was wrong to use the word "half" -- but not wrong to call some Trump supporters "deplorables." Which means she's definitely trying to accomplish some political goal by saying such a provocative thing. Indeed, she's used the basket metaphor more than once (she only said "half" once).

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Before we begin, we promise we'll get to that rather-provocative subtitle later, as we turn this week's talking points section over to an attempt at providing campaign advice for Team Clinton. We've been long wondering why Hillary hasn't made some sort of effort to put these two large issues behind her on the campaign trail, and our frustration has led us to offering up what she should say in order to achieve this goal.

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One of the risks I regularly take as a blogger is to write and publish my own reactions to major political events (like debates) before I even look at what anyone else is saying. This assures the reader that my opinions and perceptions will be untainted by groupthink, and solely my own. I cannot follow the pack, as it were, if I have no idea where they're headed. But, as with any risk, occasionally it puts me in a position at odds with the political universe.

That's where I largely find myself this morning, after watching an absolute dogpile (is it too early to break out the football metaphors?) of pundits, with the hapless Matt Lauer at the bottom being ground down into the turf. Anyone who read the column I posted last night might now scoff at how easily I let Lauer off, after reading everyone else who is now universally panning his performance. So I thought the subject deserved more attention today, perhaps in a masochistic desire to rub salt in my own wounds, as it were.

I guess my biggest difference of opinion about the non-debate debate that NBC hosted last night was due to my own rather low expectations, after hearing Matt Lauer was going to be the moderator. I mean... Matt Lauer? Really? The guy whose previous big journalistic moment was interviewing Ryan Lochte? Lauer is not exactly known for his depth of knowledge about foreign affairs or politics, so I really didn't expect much. In a world where there was a shred of justice in the political media, whomever made the decision to give Lauer the hosting job would be looking for work this morning. But, of course, that world does not exist, because if it did pundits who regularly get everything they say wrong would also be out of work (Bill Kristol, I am looking in your direction...). Instead, what we get is the trending hashtag "#LauerTheBar" -- which is pretty amusing, I have to admit.

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