I woke up this morning and as I often do, I picked up my iPhone from the bedside table to scroll through the news headlines. The first one was a report on how hospital beds in Wisconsin are in short supply due to a record number of people there coming down with COVID-19. The second news story was a clip of Trump speaking in Wisconsin a day or three ago saying the virus has been beaten, the Pandemic is over and his Administration is to be congratulated for the great job it did.
And my thought after seeing those items in succession was: Wow. There's the election right there.
Those of us who want Trump out can name a hundred reasons having to do with incompetence, dishonesty and just plain being a horrible, horrible human being. Put all those aside and what you have is a guy thinking he doesn't have to actually deal with real problems if he can convince his supporters he has.
I dunno how much of it is cluelessness and how much is just his natural proclivity to fling bullshit and it almost doesn't matter. It's just not leadership and if a Democratic president had done that, every Republican now backing Trump would be saying, "I don't care that he'll be out of office any day now. We need to impeach that monster today!"
Ed Kilgore has a should-read article about how and when the presidential race may be called on Election Day. Or more likely, a few days after Election Day.
Matt Yglesias has the comforting explanation to give to someone who says the polls were wrong in 2016 so who's to say they won't be wrong this time? (Short Explanation: Biden's lead is larger and has been more stable and most pollsters have learned from their mistakes last time.)
And Michelle Goldberg on how much Trump has occupied our minds the last four years. When I get rid of him in mine, I'm going to rent out the empty space for a boat show.