I must begin with an apology, because once again I find that I cannot bring myself to write a new Hallowe'en column this year.

Usually, at this time of year, I try to come up with frightful tales of horror for both the left and right sides of the political divide -- which I attempt to make both humorous and also so far-fetched that they're ridiculously unbelievable. The "scare factor" is tempered by the "Oh, that could never actually happen" factor, to put it another way.

These are indeed scary times we live in. And it would be impossible for me to try to construct a nightmarish scenario for those on the left that is any more frightful than what we are living through now.

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Next Tuesday is Election Day. No matter what happens in this off-off-year election, this will produce a flurry of speculation about the current state of the political landscape in America, and what it will all mean for the election that is going to happen next year, when all of the House and one-third of the Senate will be on the ballot. As usual, though, drawing sweeping conclusions this far out is likely to prove laughably mistaken, since a year's time in a normal political atmosphere is still an eternity, and an entire year in the Trump era feels like an even longer time than that.

Nevertheless, pundits gotta pundit, so I thought I would weigh in with a few thoughts on the four key races that will be decided next Tuesday. These are: the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, the mayoral race in New York City, and the Proposition 50 race in California. While various other candidates and propositions will be on ballots next Tuesday, these four will provide most of the grist for the punditocracy's mill.

Only one of these races is likely to even be close. Democrats seem poised to easily romp home in the other three. But this may set up a conflicting narrative, because of the political leanings of the candidates.

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For the second month in a row, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates. This move was expected, but the Fed chair is now warning that there might not be a third drop when they meet again in December. A big part of his hesitancy stems from the fact that the Fed is now essentially flying blind, because the government shutdown has caused the flow of economic data to halt. Jerome Powell used a different transportation-based metaphor to describe this, saying: "If there is a high level of uncertainty, then that could be an argument in favor of caution about moving.... What do you do if you are driving in the fog? You slow down. I'm not committing to that. I'm just saying it's certainly a possibility that you would say, 'We really can't see. So let's slow down.'"

The government shut down at the beginning of October. This meant that the jobs report for September was not published. Worse, it also means that new data has not been collected all month long, which may make it impossible to even calculate the jobs numbers for this month. If the shutdown persists into November, it could be early January before these numbers start flowing once again. That's a big gap, obviously. And it's not just the jobs numbers -- the inflation rate is also put out by the same agency:

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Donald Trump has never cared all that much what the U.S. Constitution actually says. He certainly has never read the whole thing -- he makes this painfully obvious whenever he attempts to talk about it in any detail. And he has been actively trying to dismantle parts of it already. So it's no real surprise that he has trolled everyone again by flirting with the notion of possibly running (or otherwise somehow becoming) president for a third time, using the 2028 election to achieve this goal.

The typical reaction to this, of course, is to think that he can't possibly do so, because after F.D.R. died an amendment was passed which limits presidents to only serving two terms in office. Unfortunately, however, this isn't exactly what the Twenty-Second Amendment actually says. Here is the pertinent text:

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At the end of this week, the federal government will have been shut down for a full month. As things stand currently, few people expect anything to change before then. No viable exit ramp has appeared yet, and none is likely to do so until Donald Trump returns from his foreign trip. This will push the shutdown into November, which will dramatically increase the pressure to come to some sort of agreement, because while some money has been shuffled around to keep certain things funded (like military salaries), it's going to get substantially harder to do so in November. This means many programs are just going to completely grind to a halt, which is going to mean more and more of the public becomes directly affected by the shutdown.

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So, let's review, shall we? Last weekend, seven million Americans took to the streets to protest Donald Trump, in the biggest political protest this country has ever seen. The theme of the protest was: "No Kings!" So this week, Trump responded by acting in what can only be described as kingly fashion, in as many ways as he could dream up -- including a rushed demolition of one-third of the White House, without consulting anyone or even attempting to get anyone's permission. He sent the demolition crews in, and within a few days the entire East Wing was nothing more than a pile of rubble. All because a royal decree had been issued.

Trump also demanded $230 million in personal tribute money, to be paid to him by the Department of Justice, using (of course) taxpayer dollars. The reason the public should hand him almost a quarter-billion dollars? Because his feelings were hurt when the justice system tried to hold him accountable for his many crimes. So now, according to the king, the public must pay fealty to him in a very tangible way.

Meanwhile, a U.S. aircraft carrier is heading to the Caribbean, so that Trump can kill whomever he wishes with more ease. Think that's an overstatement? Think only a king would do something like that? Here is Trump, after being asked whether he was going to ask Congress to approve of such actions: "I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We're going to kill them, you know? They're going to be like, dead."

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Finally -- after way too long spent grovelling on the world stage -- Donald Trump didn't chicken out. For the first time in the nine months he has been in office, Trump actually moved to punish Russia. Hopefully, this represents a shift in his thinking that will be hard for him to easily reverse. Because for the first time, Trump is no longer acting like Vladimir Putin's lapdog.

Trump just announced sanctions on two of Russia's biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. This will prevent them from access to Western banking systems, and the sanctions theoretically will extend to anyone doing business with them anywhere in the world. Such sanctions are not a new thing -- Joe Biden, on his way out of office in January, slapped sanctions on two other large Russian oil companies (Surgutneftegaz and Gazpromneft). So Trump's move is really an expansion of the previous strategy of sanctioning the Russian oil industry.

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We are now entering Week 4 of the government shutdown, with no end in sight. There aren't any compromise solutions on the table, the two sides aren't even talking to each other in any noticeable way, and Donald Trump is getting ready for a weeklong trip outside the country. This has so far been the second-longest shutdown in American history, and it certainly looks like it is on track to top the record and become the longest.

So far, neither side has been willing to budge. Trump has held one fruitless meeting with the Democratic leaders and then turned his attention to other issues. The Republicans continue to insist that they won't even negotiate until the government is reopened, and the Democrats continue to insist on striking a deal on healthcare subsidies before they will allow the government to reopen. This stalemate shows no signs of movement yet.

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Alas, I had too much real-life stuff to deal with today to write a column. My apologies for the interruption in service.

If I had written something today, I would have been tempted to write about Vladimir Putin yanking the rug out from under Donald Trump by now refusing to even consider a summit meeting any time soon. That seems to prove the point I was making yesterday, at any rate.

But in any case, regular columns will resume tomorrow, and mea culpa again, for not writing a new one today.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Donald Trump now seems to now be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia's Vladimir Putin. That's an extraordinary thing to say, but it is the inescapable conclusion to what the world has witnessed over the past week. Trump started off firmly on the side of Ukraine, musing about allowing European countries to provide American-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which could strike deep within Russian territory. But by week's end, he had essentially become the chief negotiator for the Russians, trying to force the Ukrainian leader into the exact terms dictated by Putin.

A summit meeting between Putin and Trump is now being arranged, but one wonders what the point of it really is. After all, Trump has completely rolled over and accepted the Russian point of view and is arguing for all the Russian demands. So the summit meeting will take place so that Putin can personally deliver marching orders to Trump? That seems like the most likely outcome, at this point.

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