ChrisWeigant

ChrisWeigant's Journal

October 31, 2020

Friday Talking Points -- The Scariest Election Ever

We'll get to explaining that title further (as if it really needs it), down in the talking points section of our program. And happy Hallowe'en-eve to everyone ("Hallowe'en'en," maybe?).

The homestretch of the 2020 election has been rather bizarre to watch, since President Donald Trump has made his closing argument: "Pandemic? What pandemic? I don't see any pandemic anywhere!"

No, really. He's doubling down on the stupid, in essence. And it's not just him, it's all of Team Trump following his lead. This week, Donald Trump Junior said the following:

The reality is this: If you look, I put it up on my Instagram a couple days ago, because I went through the CDC data, because I kept hearing about new infections. But I was like, "Well, why aren't they talking about deaths?" Oh, oh, because the number is almost nothing. Because we've gotten control of this, and we understand how it works.

Got that? The number of deaths is almost nothing. During this week, the daily new case count hit 90,000 -- far higher than it has ever been -- and the number of deaths per day is now above 1,000 again. That's "nothing" to Stupid Junior, though, obviously.

Trump's own chief of staff had a "Washington gaffe" moment last Sunday, when he accidentally admitted the truth: "We're not going to control the pandemic." This contradicted a choice piece of propaganda out of the White House science policy office, though, which baldly gaslighted the subject, by listing: "ending the Covid-19 pandemic" as a major accomplishment of the president.

We've really and truly crossed the line into Orwellian propaganda, folks. The Trump administration is willing to do anything possible to improve Trump's chances of winning, including: proposing sending all seniors a $200 prescription drug card before the election (a project that never materialized, but even so); putting a personally-signed letter from Trump into every food box delivered to food banks and other charities (and then when the letters were being removed -- since non-profits are barred from engaging in politics -- the administration countered by printing the letter onto the box itself); and the Department of Health and Human Services trying to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on an ad campaign that (as the leader of the effort explained) would have the theme: "Helping the President will Help the Country." This last proposal also never materialized, but they did spend a whole lot of time trying to line up 274 celebrities to take part in it. In the end, only 10 agreed to do so, but the ad campaign never happened. Again, the only possible word for this stuff is "Orwellian." We've always been at war with Eastasia, folks!

But back to the stupid. It's not just sons getting in on the act, we also have Stupid-In-Law as well. Jared Kushner tripped up in an interview and actually said the stupid part out loud, in the most ham-fisted attempt at Black voter outreach ever. After listing all the supposedly wonderful things Donald Trump had done for Black people, Kushner finished with this racist jaw-dropper:

And again, one thing we've seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump's policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about. But he can't want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.

In other words: Trump can only do so much for those lazy and shiftless Black folks, because the only thing really holding them back is their own lack of ambition. This is beyond disgraceful, it is downright disgusting that anyone alive in the year 2020 would even attempt using such a dated racist trope. In the middle of reaching out to Black voters, to top it all off.

So how's Team Trump doing with their outreach to suburban women voters? Well, just about as bad. At one rally this week, Trump promised all the "suburban housewives" the following: "Your husbands, they want to get back to work, right? We're getting your husbands back to work and everybody wants it," he told the crowd. Unfortunately for him, the crowd was not made up of June Cleaver and her friends, because this is 2020, not the 1950s.

Trump also displayed his contempt for women at a rally in Arizona by issuing the following warm invitation to Martha McSally, a Republican senator who is quite likely to lose her election: "Martha, come up. Just fast. Fast. Fast. Come on, quick. You got one minute. One minute, Martha, they don't want to hear this, Martha. Come on, let's go. Quick, quick, quick, quick. Come on, let's go." In the same speech, he made fun of how Kamala Harris pronounces her name, just for good measure.

Trump's campaign seems to be crashing and burning. "Going down in flames" seems to be the appropriate metaphor, to us at least. And Republicans are getting so nervous they don't know which way to jump. Senator Lindsey Graham -- also in the political race of his life to hold onto his Senate seat -- just got this broadside from (of all people) Lou Dobbs: "Just to be clear I don't know why anyone in the great state of South Carolina would ever vote for Lindsey Graham." Elsewhere on Fox News, the Hunter Biden story was completely debunked as a giant nothingburger. If even Fox News is turning on Republicans, what can we expect next?

We're going to end with a call to action, this week. Have you voted yet? We have. This year, voting early is definitely the hip thing to do. So if you haven't turned in your ballot yet, get out there and vote -- before Tuesday, where possible. There's only one way to end this national nightmare of a president, and that is to absolutely bury him in a landslide. That requires everyone to get out and vote this time around. No excuses, no regrets. So cast your vote! Do it now!

We have a few candidates for the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week, we're happy to say.

President Barack Obama gave a fiery speech this week out on the campaign trail, ripping mercilessly into Donald Trump's floundering on the pandemic response (among other things):

What's his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID. He said this at one of his rallies: "COVID, COVID, COVID," he's complaining. He's jealous of COVID's media coverage.

. . .

Last week, when Trump was asked if he'd do anything differently, you know what he said? He said: "Not much, not much." Really?! Not much? You can't think of anything that you might be doing differently, like maybe you shouldn't have gone on TV and suggested we might inject bleach to cure COVID? That's not something you said -- you know -- "Maybe I shouldn't have said that?"

Speaking of ripping into Trump, George Conway (husband of Kellyanne) wrote a bit of satire for the Washington Post this week, that quite possibly has the most comprehensive array of links proving Trump's failures that we have ever seen. It's worth a read, and it's certainly worth an Honorable Mention.

Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos also deserves recognition, for a letter he sent to the Supreme Court which pointed out one of the many errors Justice Fratboy made in a recent elections ruling opinion. Justice Fratboy then had to sheepishly amend his opinion to reflect the actual facts.

And then there was the story from Montana where a Democratic gubernatorial campaign pranked Chris Christie. This one is seriously funny:

As we barrel ever closer to one of the most heated elections in modern history, politics can't help but seem dark. Luckily, we have former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the Montana gubernatorial race and an app called Cameo. If this sounds like the setup for a good dad joke, that's because it essentially is.

A few days ago, Christie joined Cameo, where users hire celebrities to create short personalized videos. He joined the ranks of political personalities such as former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandoski [sic] and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Christie -- a Republican -- soon received a message from someone named Brad Ley, and it read: "Governor -- huge fan (and so glad you're doing better)! My buddy Greg (who is also a big fan!) has been working out of state the last few years & me and his family have been trying to get him to come home to N.J. Could you give him some encouragement?"

So, clad in a mustard yellow University of Delaware fleece, Christie made a 50-second video.

"Now, I understand you left New Jersey some time ago for work, and that happens sometimes. But Jersey never quite leaves you, does it? Now, think about everything we've got back here," he begins, listing Taylor ham, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, the Jersey Shore, the boardwalks and "all that stuff back here that is waiting for you."

"More than anything else, Mike and your whole family, they want you back here," he adds. "So listen, we could do this the easy way or the hard way. You could come back voluntarily, or maybe they'll send me out to get you. I don't think that's what you want, Greg."

What Christie didn't know is that Brad Ley was Brad Elkins, the campaign manager for Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney, the Democratic candidate for governor of Montana. Cooney's Republican opponent, Rep. Greg Gianforte, lived in New Jersey for years.

In other words, it was a setup.

Nicely done!

But the real winners of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award are four Democratic candidates for local office in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is one of those states where voting by mail was previously incredibly difficult, but where the laws were loosened up for this year. But because they're just not used to widespread mail-in voting, the process is needlessly cumbersome -- including placing your ballot inside a "security envelope" before you put it in the outer envelope. And the courts ruled that any votes turned in without the security envelope -- known as "naked ballots" -- could be tossed out. So three women candidates decided to get the message out to the voters in spectacular fashion:

With Pennsylvania shaping up to be a decisive battleground state in the presidential race, Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam launched an outreach campaign featuring elected officials in the nude.

Joining Hallam in the first round of the campaign are Allegheny County Council member Olivia "Liv" Bennett and state House of Representatives candidate Emily Kinkead, who's running for the 20th district seat in Allegheny County.

"There's a lot misinformation going around about mail-in voting," Hallam told TribLive. "It's brand new. Most voters, this is the first time they're ever voting by mail. I reached out to my friends who are elected officials, as well, and I was like, 'Hey, I have this wild idea. Let's get naked to try to save our democracy.'"

Etna Councilwoman Jessica Semler, state Rep. Sara Innamorato and Duquesne Mayor Nickole Nesby are expected to join the #dressyourballot campaign on Monday.

Here's Hallam's tweet, which featured the photos (tastefully only PG-13 rated, at worst).

https://twitter.com/bethanyhallam/status/1309997916375875586

Desperate times call for desperate measures! So your favorite elected officials got naked so that you remember to make sure that your mail-in ballot is NOT submitted without its secrecy envelope!! #nonakedballots #dressyourballot

Doesn't the Constitution say something about the right to bare arms, after all? Heh.

Seriously, though, this is a big deal because naked ballots will not be counted, so Democrats getting the word out could be crucial. And as Madison Avenue has long known, there's no better way to get the word out than using a bit of sex appeal.

While all the women listed in the article are Democrats (and thus eligible for the award), we could only find proof that Jessica Semler and Nickole Nesby joined the other three in the fun. So our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week goes to Allegheny County Councilwomen Bethany Hallam and Olivia "Liv" Bennett, Pennsylvania House of Representatives candidate Emily Kinkead, Etna Councilwoman Jessica Semler, and Duquesne Mayor Nickole Nesby, for the best voter outreach effort we've ever seen. Well done!

[The easiest way to let these women know you appreciate their efforts is to use the hashtags #nonakedballots or #dressyourballot, as suggested.]

Once again, we're happy to report we have no Democrats who disappointed us enough to merit the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award this time around. As always, if you beg to differ, please feel free to make your own nomination in the comments section.

Volume 595 (10/30/20)

We're going to dispense with the normal talking point format this week. It's just too late for any Democratic talking point to make much of any difference at all, at this point. With just four days to go to the election, voters' attitudes have already set in concrete, and no amount of persuasion will change that at the last minute.

We're also going to dispense (for the rest of the column) with our traditional use of the editorial "we," because what I've got to say is more personal than that.

Nothing Could Be Scarier Than This Election

Every year since I really got gung-ho with the blogging, I have had some fun with the last column I post before Hallowe'en rolls around. I go out and buy pumpkins, I carve them into funny political images (some are more successful than others, I fully admit), take photos, and then use them as visuals for an article usually subtitled: "Hallowe'en Nightmares For Right And Left."

In these articles, I go off on two opposing flights of fancy, and try to come up with some truly surreal nightmarish stories -- one to scare Democrats, and one to scare Republicans. Sometimes these can be cartoonishly divorced from all reality, and sometimes they are uncomfortably close to what is going on in the political world. Some are funnier that others, I will also fully admit. Writing comedy is a tricky sort of business, and I'm only a dabbler in the artform myself. But in general, everyone has a good time and leaves thinking: "Boy, I'm glad that will never actually happen -- it's just too scary to even seriously contemplate.

This year, I thought about trying to do my usual Hallowe'en take on things. But I found that I just couldn't. I didn't have any great ideas, I was too exhausted to even contemplate carving pumpkins, and Hallowe'en has already mostly been cancelled anyway. But the real reason I decided to throw in the towel was that it is hard to come up with anything more frightening than what we are already living through. Nothing could be scarier, in other words, than this election. Trying to out-scare next Tuesday isn't possible because no caricature or satire would even come close to what is already reality.

Hallowe'en was cancelled because we're all living through what I've been calling "The Lost Year." The coronavirus pandemic has so changed American life this year that we might as well just call it a lost cause and look forward to whenever we do get back to anything approaching normal. The loss of Hallowe'en (and in-person Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well) is just one more disappointing aspect of The Lost Year. We're all scared of the pandemic, and have been all year long. So there's a plateau of fear we've already reached, which all the other fears rest atop.

As for the election itself, fear is running rampant, especially among Democrats. We all grimly remember the night of the 2016 election, when the polls in several key states proved wrong. What if this happens again? What if Donald Trump pulls off the same miraculous comeback he did back then? As I wrote last week, while contemplating a Hallowe'en column for today: "we could fit the whole thing on a tweet, really: 'Dem nightmare: Trump wins. GOP nightmare: Biden wins, Dems take Senate.'"

This year -- more than any since 2000 -- there is also the fear that the votes just won't be properly counted. Politico recently ran an article that is so scary it was posted with a URL which contained: "election-nightmares-guide." They must have changed the posted title later, but it's an accurate description (and one more reason why I couldn't out-nightmare reality this time around). It starts with an overview:

The coronavirus pandemic was always going to make the 2020 election uniquely complicated, and Donald Trump's norm-busting style was always going to make it tense, but headlines in recent days have started to read like political thriller plot lines. We've seen Iranian skullduggery, dummy ballot boxes and mysterious threatening emails. Congressional Democrats are pleading with the military to respect a peaceful transition of power. A poll shows that barely a fifth of Americans believe this year's election will be "free and fair." There's concern about violence, especially by militias and white supremacists. Some Americans are even laying in extra food and water, fearing what comes next.

Americans have little experience navigating disputed elections at this scale, and none at all doing so with a president hinting he might not leave office if he loses.

It then goes into excruciating detail of everything that could either go wrong or be disputed, from: "Minutes After The Polls Close," to: "Months After The Polls Close." The final segment is what would happen if "Trump Refuses To Leave Office." If you need a fright this Hallowe'en, read this entire article from beginning to end (warning: it is a rather long article).

This isn't the only article to deal with nightmarish scenarios, either, just one of the most comprehensive (Politico also had another article examining the same question from a different angle that is also extremely comprehensive). There is also the question of whether Donald Trump is a "flight risk" -- will he flee the country to avoid post-presidential prosecution?

If you think these scenarios are too far-fetched, consider what we've already seen this election cycle. The Trump campaign website was hacked this week. Also hacked was the Wisconsin Republican Party, and in that case the hackers made off with $2.3 million. The United States Postal Service is indeed successfully slowing down the mail, specifically in the battleground states:

The data shows that the USPS delivered less than 70% of first-class mail on time on Wednesday, down from around 91% in the weeks before [Postmaster General Louis] DeJoy's policy changes. In Southern Florida, only 63% of first-class mail was on time on Tuesday. In the Philadelphia areas, the USPS delivered only 42% of first-class mail on time. In the Baltimore area, that number fell to only 39%.

Consider also that this year has seen the most coordinated nationwide voter-suppression effort from the Republican Party ever (and that's saying something). Even some Republicans are astonished at the brazenness:

"What we have seen this year which is completely unprecedented... is a concerted national Republican effort across the country in every one of the states that has had a legal battle to make it harder for citizens to vote," said Trevor Potter, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission who served as general counsel to Republican John McCain's two presidential campaigns. "There just has been this unrelenting Republican attack on making it easier to vote."

Potter, who now heads the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, added, "It puzzles me... I've never worked for a Republican candidate who thought it was a good idea to make it hard for people to vote."

Team Trump has signed up an army (their term) of "poll-watchers" as well, and it's a fair bet that not all of them will be trained in how this is supposed to happen. What happens if Trump "poll-watchers" show up heavily armed to the polling places, and linger just outside the 100-foot "no politics zone" around them? Indeed, this has already happened at some early-voting sites. For the first time in my lifetime, most people are now merely hoping that we can get through Election Day without widespread and rampant violence at the polling places themselves. But the intimidation efforts are almost guaranteed to happen, even if no actual violence breaks out. This is tinpot-dictator stuff that Americans are not supposed to have to worry about. But the fear is real, and it is not unjustified.

When, after all, has anyone had to worry about what the United States military will do if the election becomes contested? Again, this is third-world stuff that just isn't supposed to happen here.

There's even a nightmare to look forward to if Biden wins -- what will Trump do as an ex-president? Few have really thought all that much about it, but assuming that he'll take the traditional route of fading from the political scene is really not even an option, considering Trump's personality.

This isn't even a full list of all the fears people are now feeling about next Tuesday. There are plenty of others out there. Which is why I threw in the towel on trying to satirize where we stand now. The real and justifiable fears are so overwhelming this time around that nothing I could come up with could possibly make anyone laugh. I'm just not that talented a comedian, sorry.

I will leave everyone with a couple of positive notes, though. That much I can do, at least. Because none of this is guaranteed to happen, really. Things could go a lot better than anyone expects. The election itself may be more low-key than anyone now thinks (because so many tens of millions of Americans have already voted). And the results could come a lot faster than is now being predicted. If Florida is called for Joe Biden, then the race will effectively be over at that point -- because it is almost impossible to chart a path for Trump to the 270 Electoral College votes he needs without the 29 from Florida. If the Democratic dream finally happens and Texas turns blue, then Trump will also be toast. If North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, or some combination of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania go for Biden, things could also be over even before the polls close on the West Coast. Trump's only path to victory is incredibly narrow, which means that any fairly large state he loses means his viable pathway to victory will disappear (all of those states except Iowa have more than 10 Electoral College votes).

The Washington Post ran an article which looks at five ways things could go a lot better than is now expected on Election Day. It's worth reading if you read any of those initial articles outlining the nightmare scenarios, just to realign your mental state a bit.

If you really want to feel better about the mail-in voting in particular, Politico ran another deep-dive article that examines the safeguards in place for all the mail-in votes in great detail. It is also a comforting read, right about now.

So in conclusion, nobody now knows which way things will go on Tuesday. It could be a nightmare, or it could be a lot more ordinary than anyone expects. But while Hallowe'en is traditionally about providing some scary-but-harmless fun to everyone, this year I just couldn't do it -- because the scary-but-quite-possibly-very-harmful realities out there were already so overwhelming. The one thing everyone can do to make themselves feel a lot better is to vote early. Drop off your ballot (it's too late to mail it). Go to an early-voting site. Wear your "I Voted!" sticker with pride. Because then you'll know that you've done the most important thing you can to help end our larger national nightmare on January 20th.

[Editor's Note: For those still disappointed at the lack of Hallowe'en column, here are the past five columns we've run, since even back in 2015 Donald Trump was already playing a starring role: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Reading them all, we'd have to say 2015 was the funniest -- probably since (back then) the thought of Trump as president was still highly amusing to all. And have a happy Hallowe'en, everyone!]

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

October 24, 2020

Friday Talking Points -- Only One Scaramucci To Go!

We are now only one Scaramucci away from Election Day. For those unfamiliar with the reference, a "Scaramucci" is a unit of time measurement equal to the time Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci spent as President Donald Trump's press secretary -- 11 days. And we're now only one Scaramucci away from the election.

Also of note, we are now exactly as far away from Election Day as we were four years ago when James Comey essentially threw the election by announcing there were more Hillary Clinton emails under investigation. Trump was saved by this revelation back then, but no matter how hard he's tried to equal this October surprise (by pressuring all those who work for him to create one out of thin air), it just hasn't materialized this time around.

Of course, being just one "Mooch" away from finally seeing the result of this year's long-anticipated election isn't a reason to pop the champagne quite yet. Even if Trump loses to Joe Biden, he'll still have a whopping seven Scaramuccis between then and Inauguration Day to cause all kinds of trouble. So our long national nightmare, sadly, still won't be over, for many Mooches to come.

Of course, time can be measured other ways as well. Yesterday, for instance, saw the fourth-highest number of new coronavirus cases in America since the pandemic began. As measured by Worldometers.info, we had 74,301 reported new cases yesterday, which was only topped by three days this past July (the highest number of new cases was 78,976 on July 24). But unlike back then, the slope of the curve is still heading upwards, not peaking. And today is on track (as of this writing) to top both of those numbers. Or we could have our worst day ever within the next couple of days, or next week. Welcome to the third wave, folks.

It was also announced this week that the budget deficit tripled from the previous year, and now stands at $3.1 trillion -- the highest number ever seen. So there are all kinds of ways to mark where we as a country now are.

Last night, the second and final presidential debate was held. Donald Trump's doctors have apparently adjusted his medication better than they managed for the first debate, or as John Heilemann put it on Morning Joe: "I think Quaalude Trump is better than Crystal Meth Trump, you know, from the last debate. That was, like, an improvement, I think." Although the dosage still isn't perfect, as Heilemann pointed out: "He needed one extra 'Lude to get him through the whole thing, and he wasn't quite there. Quaalude Trump was still not that great."

Trump was indeed calmer, perhaps chastened by the fact that the debate commission had been forced to announce a new rule: microphones would be muted while the other candidate gave their first two-minute answer. This rule has never been necessary before, because nobody's ever needed it. Trump, from the first debate, obviously did. So Trump -- for the most part -- didn't interrupt and make such a horse's ass of himself in front of the country (as he did last time). However, as Salon pointed out, this meant Trump was still what might be called a calmer, more-restrained psychopath.

Trump had a strategy for the night, and amazingly enough, he kept returning to it. He tried to paint Joe Biden as a typical politician who had been around forever and never gotten anything actually done. But his efforts to do so came off pretty ham-fisted at times, as in the following exchange, when Biden shrugged off a Trump smear about his son Hunter to speak directly into the camera:

My response is, look, there's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey. There's a reason for it. He doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues. It's not about his family and my family. It's about your family, and your family's hurting badly. If you're a middle-class family, you're getting hurt badly right now. You're sitting at the kitchen table this morning deciding: "Well, we can't get new tires. They're bald, because we have to wait another month or so." Or: "Are we going to be able to pay the mortgage?" Or: "Who's going to tell her she can't go back to community college?" They're the decisions you're making, and the middle-class families like I grew up in Scranton and Claymont, they're in trouble. We should be talking about your families, but that's the last thing he wants to talk about.

Trump then -- astonishingly -- belittled Biden's empathy for American families. Sneered at it, in fact:

That's a typical political statement. "Let's get off this China thing" and then he looks, "The family around the table, everything." Just a typical politician when I see that. I'm not a typical politician. That's why I got elected. "Let's get off the subject of China." "Let's talk about sitting around the table." Come on, Joe. You could do better.

On the biggest subject of the night, the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump once again tried to gaslight America into believing that the crisis simply does not exist and that "we're rounding the turn, rounding the corner -- it's going to go away." This, on the same day we hit the fourth-highest number of new cases in a single day, is nothing short of a delusional statement. Trump tried to wish away the initial wave of infection. That didn't work. Then he tried to wish away the second wave of infection, over the summer, telling all the governors to throw their states wide open again. That didn't work out too well either. Now he's trying to wish away the third wave, which (as Biden warned) could lead us all to "a dark winter" indeed.

The pandemic is the biggest issue on the minds of most voters. It is their biggest fear right now, to put it another way. And unlike just about every other subject Trump has gaslit the public on, the reality of the pandemic is undeniable to all sane voters. It is there. It exists. It is not a personal belief or a political position. It does not care about politics, it just is. And once again, it is on the news each and every night as hospitals in some very red states start to run out of beds. Infection rates are soaring. Death rates will follow, in the next week or so. And it's only going to get worse as the election gets closer. Donald Trump's insistence that we're "rounding the corner" is going to sound further and further away from the actual reality everyone can plainly see. And, as Team Biden just snarkily pointed out, Trump does not have a plan to deal with it. Why should he, when he thinks it's already going away?

That is why Joe Biden is leading this race, plain and simple. That, and Trump's utter lack of compassion or empathy for anyone affected and their grieving families.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has tried to gaslight America into thinking that Joe Biden is senile and simply cannot put two sentences together without reading them off a TelePrompTer or being fed the answers by an earpiece. This was always a fantasy, as anyone who had watched Biden in the Democratic primary debates could attest to. Team Trump refuses to let this fantasy go, even suggesting before the debate that Trump was going to brilliantly step back and let Joe talk, allowing Biden to embarrass himself by getting muddled and stumbling over his answers. But of the two men on stage, it was Trump who was the most muddled (or addled, maybe), as usual. In an exchange on race, Trump repeated quite possibly the funniest brag he's ever made -- that Trump had done more for African-Americans that any president of all time, with the only possible exception (although some people are saying -- many people are saying -- that Trump's actually better) of Abraham Lincoln. Whenever Trump makes this outrageous and outlandish claim, I keep expecting Lyndon Baines Johnson's ghost to arise from the stage and heartily kick Trump's ass around, Texas-style -- but (sadly) L.B.J. once again failed to materialize last night.

Instead, a few minutes after Trump bragged about his wonderfulness, Biden ridiculed him by saying: " 'Abraham Lincoln' here is one of the most racist presidents we've had." Trump exploded with umbrage, demanding to know why Biden was bringing up Abraham Lincoln. This was like two or three minutes after Trump had brought up Abraham Lincoln in the first place, mind you. And we're supposed to believe that Biden is the senile one?

Trump also accused Biden -- as he had done in the first debate -- of using a derisive term back in the 1990s ("superpredator" ) that was actually uttered by Hillary Clinton. At one point during the debate, Biden, out of sheer frustration, had to point out to Trump: "You're running against Joe Biden."

Trump seems monumentally unable to understand how he really appears to rational viewers. Earlier in the week he petulantly stormed out of an interview with Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes, and then doubled down on the stupid by releasing his own copy of the tape before the show airs. His copy is unedited, which means there are quite likely even more embarrassing moments visible than will make it into the actual show. And all he's really doing is boosting the ratings for when the show does air. But Trump is now surrounded by yes-men and yes-women, without any sane adults in the room to tell him that maybe this isn't such a good idea.

Trump, at this point, is quite obviously flailing. It seems to have gotten through to him that he might not win this race, and he's just going to get more and more out of control as Election Day approaches.

Which, we can all take heart in, will appear in exactly one Scaramucci.

We have a Honorable Mention to hand to Barack Obama, for hitting the campaign trail for his former running mate this week. Obama has so far not been as visible as he might have been out there on the hustings, but perhaps they just held him back for the final sprint to the finish. He certainly isn't mincing words about the awfulness of Donald Trump, that's for sure.

But the obvious choice for Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week is Joe Biden, who turned in another strong debate performance this week. We only noticed one gaffe throughout the evening (Biden referred to "minimum mandatories" instead of the other way around), and Biden once again did an exemplary job of avoiding rolling around in the mud with Donald Trump. Biden truly does believe that his decency of character is his strongest asset as a politician, and he would have jeopardized that by directly engaging with Trump's bluster. For the most part, Biden brushed off Trump's attacks, while not failing to launch a few counterattacks on his own. The most effective of these was to point out the shocking revelation that Trump has a bank account in China that's never been revealed before, to which Trump flat-out lied by stating that the account was closed back in 2015 (it wasn't, it's still open) and that "everyone knows about it," when before this week the public most certainly did not know about it. As Obama put it, just imagine what the Republicans would have said if it had been revealed right before his own re-election that he had a Chinese bank account.

All around, Biden had a great night last night, and the debate was most definitely the political event of the week. Contrary to Trump's "fantasy Biden" (that he carries around in his head), the real-live Joe Biden didn't stumble in any major way last night, and was far more rational and coherent than Trump can manage even on his best behavior. Even with Trump being more subdued, the contrast between the two was stark and obvious.

Biden is maintaining his lead in the polls, which is the thing to watch over the upcoming Scaramucci's worth of time. Four years ago, the James Comey revelation absolutely tanked Hillary Clinton's numbers, which doomed her on Election Day. This time around, over 50 million people have already voted, and if Biden's numbers hold he could win in a landslide of historic proportions.

The entire campaign has been a long and winding road we've all travelled down for the past two years. It had twists and turns galore. Biden was seen as dead in the water for the nomination until he strongly took South Carolina. The coronavirus didn't even exist until the primaries started being held. Trump could have used the crisis to raise his stature with the public and be seen as a real leader conquering a crisis. If he had done so, he might now be on the brink of being re-elected. Since he was patently unable to do so, he is now on the brink of defeat.

We'll all have plenty of complaints and disappointments if Joe Biden is our next president, to be sure. He's not going to make all Democrats happy with all of his decisions. But we will all be able to relax and know that a sane adult is in charge of the nuclear codes once again. All other differences will pale in comparison to the four years we've just experienced as a nation.

So for this week and hopefully many to come, Joe Biden is easily our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Joe Biden is still technically a private citizen, and as a rule we do not link to campaign websites, so you'll have to seek his contact information out yourself if you'd like to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

Once again we are happy to report that no Democrat disappointed us at all this week. Or not to the level of winning the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, at any rate. Oh, sure, we could quibble with this answer or that from Biden's debate performance, but it's pretty small potatoes at this point.

As usual in such circumstances, feel free to nominate your own Democrat for the MDDOTW award, down in the comments, if you feel I've overlooked somebody obvious.

Volume 594 (10/23/20)

Before we begin, we have a program note. Next week's column may in fact be our annual Hallowe'en column. We have not completely committed to the idea of doing one of these this year, however -- we could fit the whole thing on a tweet, really: "Dem nightmare: Trump wins. GOP nightmare: Biden wins, Dems take Senate." So we're not entirely convinced that it's even worth the effort this year. But if we do, we won't have another FTP column until after the dust has (hopefully) settled on the election, just to warn everyone in advance.

With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, let's move on to the talking points. All of our talking points echo the same theme this week: "Please, make it stop!" Which should be self-explanatory, by this point.

Steele endorses Biden

Point out how shocking this truly is.

"The former head of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, just endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president. Just stop and think about that for a minute. When have you ever heard of a party's former leader endorsing the opposition party's candidate? To the best of my knowledge, it has never happened before. In his endorsement, he quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Junior: 'A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.' Steele also wrote: 'Character matters. Our vote matters. The leader we choose matters. I cannot be silent, and I hope neither can you because we know a vote for Joe Biden is what is best for our country -- because America matters.' Please remember, this is from the former national party chair of the Republican Party. This is absolutely unprecedented, folks."

Another four more years of this?

We've written about this one since last July (a fact we pointed out earlier this week at more length).

"The best argument for voting for Joe Biden is to simply ask yourself if you want another four more years of this. The lies, the narcissism, the pettiness, the tantrums, the slavish devotion to the least common denominator, the rejection of science, the absolute lack of leadership -- do you really want four more years of all that? Because I don't."

Somebody grab a fire extinguisher

A variation on the same theme.

"Please, America, a vote for Joe Biden is a vote to put out the biggest Dumpster fire in American politics, ever. We can never return to normal with this flaming pile of garbage in the White House. Everybody grab a hose -- or a ballot -- and help Joe Biden put this Dumpster fire out for good."

Almost over... counting the Scaramuccis

Or you can go with a historical reference instead.

"Get out there and vote, so our long national nightmare can finally come to an end on January twentieth. After all, if Nixon was a bad dream, then Trump is an apocalyptic raging dream-infesting demon from the depths of Hell."

Please, Joe, bore us all

Look for the word "normalcy" to spike in usage if Biden wins.

"You know what I want? I want to wake up in the morning and not cringe when I read the news. I want precisely zero tweets from the president in the middle of the night. I want to be able to ignore politics for long stretches of time once again. I want to be bored by politics. I don't want a hyperactive Tasmanian devil hopped up on diet soda sitting in the Oval Office anymore. Please, America, can we go back to that idyllic reality once again? Pretty please?"

Beating the buzzer

Of course, the final tally won't be known for years to come, most likely.

"One of Donald Trump's biggest donors -- a man the Republican Party hired as their national deputy finance chair, no less -- just pleaded guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent trying to influence Trump for Malaysia and China. I don't know about you, but I've actually lost count of how many Trump minions and henchmen have now gone to jail, been found guilty of federal crimes, and/or had to be pardoned. Whatever the number is, I bet it'll keep climbing after the election, that's for sure."

Just when you thought things couldn't get any sleazier...

...Along comes Borat.

"If anyone still has any shred of respect for Rudy Giuliani -- or, conversely, if anyone thought that he just couldn't get any sleazier -- they should check out the clip of him lying on a bed sticking his hand down his pants in a hotel room with a young woman, from the new Borat movie. Just like Trump himself, just when you thought Rudy had sunk as low as he could possibly go, he surprises you once again."

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

October 17, 2020

Friday Talking Points -- Battling Townhalls Show A Clear Choice

The second wave of the pandemic now appears to be upon us. Yesterday, over 60,000 new coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S. That number has been heading upward all week, in fact. And it's higher than it has been since the last wave hit (some call the impending wave the third wave, due to the two previous spikes, we should point out). And we are less than three weeks away from the presidential election.

This, more than any other factor, may become the key reason Donald Trump loses. Sure, we're all tired of hearing about the pandemic (and have been for quite some time). But then Trump caught it, which relaunched it back onto center stage in the political arena. Although he quickly recovered, for once Trump could not manage to change the storyline. And now it looks like the fall/winter wave is here. This will mean COVID-19 will, once again, lead most news coverage. For the next week (at the very least), stories will again appear about overwhelmed doctors and hospitals. It will be on everyone's mind.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is increasingly astonished that everyone else in the country does not actually inhabit the fantasy world he has created inside his own head, where we're "turning the corner" and the pandemic will just magically go away. Trump's been hoping for this magical retreat since the start of the pandemic, but these days it sounds downright delusional. This is far beyond a normal politician sounding "out of touch," in other words. People are dying out there, and Trump doesn't seem to even grasp that. Not exactly a portrait of a strong leader, in other words. Or a sane one, for that matter.

This was all more than evident at the NBC townhall last night. A healthcare worker expressed her concerns about the people doing the frontline work, and Trump tried to gaslight her into believing that everything was not just fine, but downright wonderful. Trump should be praised, Trump said, and everyone should just do like Trump does and pretend that the pandemic has gone away.

Voters living in the real world see this, and they're already reacting to it with the most massive early-voting tsunami in American history:

With less than three weeks to go before Nov. 3, roughly 15 million Americans have already voted in the fall election, reflecting an extraordinary level of participation despite barriers erected by the coronavirus pandemic -- and setting a trajectory that could result in the majority of voters casting ballots before Election Day for the first time in U.S. history.

In Georgia this week, voters waited as long as 11 hours to cast their ballots on the first day of early voting. In North Carolina, nearly 1 in 5 of roughly 500,000 who have returned mail ballots so far did not vote in the last presidential election. In Michigan, more than 1 million people -- roughly one-fourth of total turnout in 2016 -- have already voted.

The picture is so stark that election officials around the country are reporting record early turnout, much of it in person, meaning that more results could be available on election night than previously thought.

So far, much of the early voting appears to be driven by heightened enthusiasm among Democrats. Of the roughly 3.5 million voters who have cast ballots in six states that provide partisan breakdowns, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by roughly 2 to 1, according to a Washington Post analysis of data in Florida, Iowa, Maine, Kentucky, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Additionally, those who have voted include disproportionate numbers of Black voters and women, according to state data -- groups that favor former vice president Joe Biden over President Trump in recent polls.

Voters are also opening up their wallets. Democrats once again outraised Republicans last month, by a whopping amount. In fact, Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee just set a new monthly record of raising $383 million -- beating their old record of $365 million from the previous month.

But back to that townhall for a moment. While some heaped scorn on NBC for allowing Trump an hour of primetime at precisely the same time Joe Biden was doing a townhall over on ABC, it actually was a bigger success than many had hoped for. Personally, we didn't really expect much from Savannah Guthrie, but we were pleasantly proven as wrong as can be on that. Guthrie managed to do what very few journalists have managed to do over the past four years -- beat Trump at his own game. Although the townhall was only an hour, Guthrie spent the first third of it -- 20 full minutes -- grilling Trump over what he had said at the first presidential debate. She bored in, she knew her facts, she refused to let Trump lie unchallenged, and she more than held her own against Trump's bombast and bullshittery. She even likened him to a "crazy uncle" at one point. Savannah Guthrie put Chris Wallace to shame, in other words. Whenever Trump tried his standard deflections, Guthrie immediately hit him with the facts and the truth. Trump got angrier and angrier and his non-answers and evasions were left in tatters. Guthrie turned in a Pulitzer Prize-worthy performance last night, and we applaud her for being the first journalist to not just sit back and let Trump bloviate and lie his face off with impunity.

Trump, in response to Guthrie's questions, wouldn't say whether he had been tested on the day of the last debate, even though he was required to be by the rules. Trump wouldn't admit how often he got tested at all, in fact: "I don't know. I don't even remember. I test all the time. I can tell you this." When pressed, he did admit that he wasn't actually tested daily. But please remember, this is a man who is trying to paint his opponent as being senile. And he can't even remember how often he gets tested?

Or his sycophant doctor's name, for that matter. Trump installed a Fox News regular in the White House named Dr. Scott Atlas, who has no expertise in pandemics at all but who agrees with Trump that everyone should just reopen everything and act like we're all back to normal once again. Last night, Trump called him Scott Atkins. And Guthrie pointed out that he has no relevant expertise, much to Trump's annoyance.

Trump refused to denounce QAnon, as well. Once again he appeared astonished that people actually live outside his fantasy-world bubble, because to him and everyone who lives there the biggest threat to America today is Antifa, who are -- even as we speak -- out there burning cities to the ground, murdering people with abandon, and will quite likely soon try to move into the house next to you in the suburbs. Seriously, this is what Trump (and Fox News) firmly believe, so it's easy to understand his astonishment that anyone would believe otherwise.

Trump also refused to deny that he owes over $400 million in loans that will come due in the next four years. In Trump's fantasy world, he is not so shunned by the banking industry (because he's lost them so much money over the years with his multiple bankruptcies) that he has to get shady loans overseas from foreign banks -- instead the bankers all come to Trump and beg him to take their money. Trump apparently felt sorry for some of these bankers and agreed to borrow $400 million, just to make them feel better. Seriously, that's exactly what he said last night. He also promised to reveal -- before the election -- who he owed all that money to. This promise will immediately be tossed down the memory hole, just like all Trump's promises to release his income taxes before it.

All around, it was instructive to have the duelling townhall meetings last night, because people could easily flip between the two while pondering who they will vote for. On one channel, an angry and self-obsessed lunatic ranted away. On the other channel, Joe Biden was giving calm and complete answers to average voters on any subject they tossed his way. Biden admitted the complexities of the issues, and had nuanced responses. The difference really couldn't have been more stark.

Team Trump keeps trying to push the idea that Joe Biden is boring. Yesterday, Trump's campaign tweeted out a snarky bit about how people who suffer from insomnia might want to catch the Biden townhall to help them fall asleep. Trump himself calls Biden "Sleepy Joe" all the time. But they're really shooting themselves in the foot in a big way with this tactic.

Most of the public is just tired of Trump. That's why he's losing so many groups he won previously. People are just sick and tired of the constant anger, the constant fistfights, and the daily (if not hourly) playground insults from the president of the United States. Joe Biden could win because he is more boring than Trump, to put it another way. Because most people want politics to be an occasional (and mostly boring) news story, not an eternal circus of delusion and lies and insults.

In fact, Joe Biden should put this more front and center in his campaigning. He's already said it before, but he needs to repeat at every possible opportunity: "If I am elected president I give you my sworn oath that you will never -- never -- be embarrassed by one of my tweets. No American child will be confused by their president bullying people at random. I will restore decency and manners to the White House once again." It sounds kind of boring -- but that's exactly what people are looking for right now.

Serious times call for serious people. We are quite likely on the leading edge of the next wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Over 60,000 people a day are now catching it. Temporary hospitals are going up, once again. And this is likely just the leading edge of this wave -- meaning things are likely going to get worse before they get better. One presidential candidate is telling voters not to believe their own eyes and instead believe their Dear Leader when he tells them we've "turned the corner." The other candidate acknowledges the seriousness of the problem, leads by example (by wearing masks), and has a multipart plan for America to deal with the crisis. The choice really couldn't be clearer.

Our awards this week both go to senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held a Kabuki-theater hearing on the confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice.

Now, Joe Biden has been getting the "court-packing" question for a while, but he still hasn't figured out how to say a very simple phrase: "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it." Seriously, this is Politics 101, but Biden still hasn't come up with a way to punt the question. He keeps repeating: "If I answered the question, you journalists would all run it as a headline the next day." There are multiple things wrong with this tactic: (1) every time Biden says this, headlines run the next day anyway, saying: 'Biden Dodged Court-Packing Question', (2) as president, every time you answer any important question, there will indeed be headlines written about it (so get used to it, Joe), and (3) attacking the media is a Republican thing, not a Democratic thing.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse showed how this question should really be answered: with vague ominousness. He told the Republicans on the committee that there will be consequences for what they are doing now, and that they are not likely to enjoy these consequences:

"Don't think when you have established the rule of 'because we can,' that should the shoe be on the other foot, you will have any credibility to come to us and say: 'yeah, I know you can do that, but you shouldn't,'" Whitehouse said. "Your credibility to make that argument at any time in the future will die in this room and on that Senate floor if you continue."

The Rhode Island Democrat succinctly stated what's on everyone's mind: Once [Amy Coney] Barrett is confirmed, all bets are off about how the Senate -- and the Supreme Court -- might look a few months from now if Democrats sweep in November.

Whitehouse's remarks were pointed enough to serve as a warning for Republicans but vague enough to avoid creating the "court-packing" headline that the GOP would want coming out of Barrett's hearing. In an interview afterward, Whitehouse called his statement "more or less a preview of coming attractions and work to be done, than it was a threat."

"What the Republicans have done to the reputation and integrity of the court through these last three nominations leaves a tarnish on the court that I don't think the court can bear," Whitehouse said. "That means it's going to be on us to figure out how to clean up that mess and restore a court that is demonstrably not the organ of big special interests."

Now that is how to answer the question! For making this so explicit without previewing the exact nature of the retribution, Sheldon Whitehouse is this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Joe Biden should really start using Whitehouse's verbal construct, instead of the line he's been using up until now.

[Congratulate Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) showered Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) with praise as the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett wrapped on Thursday with little drama, standing in sharp contrast to the contentious and acrimonious hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh that nearly blew up the Senate in 2018.

"I just want to thank you. This has been one of the best set of hearings that I've participated in," Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Graham. "Thank you so much for your leadership."

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who angered Democrats by abandoning his 2016 vow not to confirm a Supreme Court justice in a presidential election year, then embraced Feinstein in a hug. Notably, neither senator wore a mask.

. . .

While Feinstein echoed other Democrats in opposing Barrett, the top Democrat on the committee took a more conciliatory tone throughout the hearing, welcoming her warmly as questioning began on Tuesday.

"It's wonderful to see you here," Feinstein told Barrett.

After an exchange with Barrett about the Affordable Care Act, Feinstein praised the nominee, saying Barrett's answer left her "really impressed."

Democrats reacted to the 87-year-old senator's handling of the hearing and her praise of Graham, a top Trump ally who is on the ballot in November, with anger and dismay.

"It's very hard to watch a colleague in decline. That this is occurring publicly is even harder," said one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"Excuse me while I go punch a hole in the wall," Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko added on Twitter.

That's about how we feel about it too -- even more so considering she is our senator.

I mean, being nice and polite is one thing, but hugging Lindsey Graham without masks is entirely beyond the pale. Seriously, DiFi, what were you thinking?

For such a spectacular failure to lead by example in the midst of a deadly pandemic (especially when you are 87 years old yourself), Senator Dianne Feinstein is out Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. See, this is why we really didn't want her to run for re-election last time around.

[Contact Senator Dianne Feinstein on her Senate contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]

Volume 593 (10/16/20)

The focus of politics is all on the upcoming election now. So we've constructed our talking points with that in mind. Everyone has to do everything they can to guarantee that Donald Trump becomes what he's always feared the most -- a giant loser. So here are our closing arguments that Democrats should be making (although two of them come from a Republican senator, we should mention). We're in the homestretch now, folks.

Biden beats Trump

This one hurts, so be sure to twist the knife.

"I see that Joe Biden got a million more viewers for his townhall last night than Trump did. Man, that's gotta hurt -- you know Trump always lives and dies by his ratings. But Biden beat Trump last night. So which show should be renewed for a new season, do you think?"

Boring is good

Show Trump how he's shooting himself in the foot.

"Donald Trump calls Joe Biden 'Sleepy Joe' as if that were a bad thing. But I for one have been exhausted living through the last four years of an all-drama-all-the-time president, and I heartily welcome the change."

Delusion or action?

The choice is stark.

"Who do you want for a president -- someone who refuses to admit that a crisis is still happening, or someone who not only sees the problem but has a well-thought-out plan for how to fight the pandemic, which relies on science and not politics -- who would you pick? Because 65,000 people tested positive just yesterday, so it's kind of an important question."

$400 million

Another easy point to make:

"I want a president who doesn't owe 400 million dollars and won't even say who he owes it to. What kind of loser has to go overseas to get a loan because every U.S. bank refuses to lend him money after he's declared bankruptcy more times than you can count? Joe Biden doesn't owe anybody 400 million dollars -- not to Germany, not to shadowy crime bosses, not to Russia. That's the kind of president I want, personally."

Calling all rats to now leave the ship...

The exodus has begun, apparently. Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, was recorded in a phone townhall this week absolutely denouncing Donald Trump in remarkable language. In fact, Sasse hit Trump on two separate issues, so we're going to give him two separate talking points:

But the reality is that [President Donald Trump] careened from curb to curb. First, he ignored COVID. And then he went into full economic shutdown mode. He was the one who said 10 to 14 days of shutdown would fix this. And that was always wrong, I mean, and so I don't think the way he's led through COVID has been reasonable or responsible or right.

Seriously, guys, the ship is sinking, better leave now...

Sasse also hit Trump on foreign policy and a whole raft of other issues, to boot:

The way he kisses dictators' butts. I mean, the way he ignores the Uighurs, our literal concentration camps in Xinjiang. Right now, he hasn't lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong-Kongers. The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending; I've criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He's flirted with white supremacists.

If we can do it, we will

It's about time Democrats played some political hardball. This is essentially the same point Sheldon Whitehouse made, we should mention (to give credit where it is due). Let's just hope Democrats keep it up after the election.

"The new Republican rule for exercising power in the Senate -- let's call it the McConnell Rule -- seems to be: 'If we think we can get away with a power grab, then we will do it.' It's not just Donald Trump that has thrown out the rulebook, McConnell has in some ways been worse. So if Democrats take back control, you can be damn sure we'll be playing by the rules Mitch McConnell taught us. And I don't want to hear any whining from the Republicans when we do so -- they made this bed, and now they are going to have to lie in it."

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

October 10, 2020

Friday Talking Points -- Is Trump Trying To Lose?

It seems that it is now time to ask a very strange question: Is Donald Trump actually trying to lose the election?

As astounding a question that is, there are really only two answers to it: yes or no. Either Trump is intentionally torpedoing his chances of re-election, or he is just trying to re-run his 2016 playbook in the hopes that it'll produce the same miraculous victory for him. But either way, what is becoming more and move evident is that President Donald Trump is currently losing. Bigly.

The reason the question is a valid one at this point is that Trump seems to be bending over backward to do everything possible to lose. He emerged from the hospital and could have easily said a few empathetic things about the dangers of getting COVID-19, which likely would have won him back some votes. He didn't. Instead, he told America that the virus was no big deal, and nobody should let it "dominate their lives." He even released a video where he expressed his view that getting COVID-19 was "a blessing from God." Trump uttered not a single sympathetic word about the 210,000 deaths from people who instead got dominated by the virus.

Then Trump announced he was pulling out of the dealmaking with Nancy Pelosi over an increasingly-necessary pandemic relief bill, which could have put another $1,200 in most voters' pockets, right before the election. Confirming a Supreme Court justice was far more important than helping Americans out, Trump explained. And when the debate commission announced next week's debate will be conducted virtually and remotely, Trump immediately pulled out.

At every fork in the road, Trump has consistently been taking the stupidest and least-popular route. This was even blatantly admitted by Republican operative Ed Rollins (co-chair of the pro-Trump super PAC Great America), who was not happy about Trump's various responses to getting sick: "There was a panic before this started, but now we're sort of the stupid party." Which is what prompts our title question, really.

Meanwhile, Trump is desperately cranking out what can really only be called "Soviet-era propaganda" films, first by going on a little carriage ride that put two Secret Service officers at risk of infection, just so he could wave at his supporters on the sidewalk (which provoked this anonymous quote from an active Secret Service agent afterwards: "He's not even pretending to care now" ). But the propaganda highlight of the week was Trump climbing some White House stairs to a balcony and dramatically whipping off his mask, to signal his return from the hospital. Some are comparing this to Mussolini, while others prefer the Evita theme (the Lincoln Group put out a hilarious "Covita" ad in response, naturally). Either way, it's not exactly a good look for an American president. And, strangest of all, Trump seems to now have the delusion that he's still running against Hillary Clinton, because he is absolutely obsessed with exposing her emails and possibly having his attorney general lock up Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and (of course) Hillary before the election happens.

Again, he could be just having a steroid-induced flashback to 2016, when the subject of Hillary's emails became the October surprise (thank you, James Comey). Hey, Trump figures, it put him over the top before, so maybe it'll work this time too?

Republicans, of course, are aiding and abetting this delusion. A Senate committee has devoted itself to amplifying Russian dirty-tricks propaganda, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just announced he was getting right on releasing all of Hillary's emails the State Department might have lying around (after Trump personally castigated Pompeo for not doing so fast enough), and the attorney general is apparently mad at his hand-picked prosecutor whose "Russia-Clinton" probe will apparently not be released before the election. Bill Barr's mad because Trump is mad at him for not delivering the goods on time.

Lost in all of this down-the-rabbit-hole nonsense is the hard cold fact that Hillary Clinton is no longer running for president. And that nobody really cares about her emails anymore, either. But to Trump, if it won him an election once, it surely will do the trick this time around too.

So Trump's decided to make his closing argument against Hillary Clinton, he refuses to negotiate with Nancy Pelosi over a bill that could indeed win him a lot of votes if it passed, he's running 10 points behind Joe Biden in the polls but he has backed out of the next debate (which could be a game-changer for him), and he's telling Americans to just tough it out and learn to live with the coronavirus. Oh, Trump also tried to blame his own sickness on (at various times): cops and/or military people who got too close to him, or Gold Star families who met with him and wanted to "kiss and hug" him. Not exactly "supporting the troops," is it?

You can see why: "Is he trying to lose?" is becoming a valid subject for conversation. As is Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque Of The Red Death," which has some rather amusing parallels to Trump's White House right now. But maybe the best cultural reference of the week was to wonder if Jeff Goldblum is going to do a cameo on Saturday Night Live this week to reprise his role in the remake of The Fly (after a fly stole the show at the vice-presidential debate by landing on Mike Pence's hair and not moving for a solid two minutes). That's the buzz, at any rate.

OK, we apologize for that last pun, but hey, it's been that kind of week, once again.

Let's see, what other campaign news was there this week? The veep debate took place, and Pence "mansplained" all over both the female moderator and Senator Kamala Harris, in less bombastic fashion than Trump had in his debate -- but just as annoyingly. Not exactly reaching out to suburban women by forcing your opponent to keep reminding you: "I'm speaking. I'm speaking." Trump reacted to the debate by calling Harris "a monster" several times, the next morning. Again, how's that outreach to women voters going?

The White House is now a viral cesspool of infection, with (as of this writing) 35 people who associated with Trump having tested positive. Oh, and there's no plan in place for how to react, either:

The Washington Post reports that even though the White House is clearly the site of a major COVID cluster, officials there didn't bother to issue instructions to the staff until Sunday night -- and even then, all they said was that staffers should stay home and call their health care provider if they feel sick. By all accounts, people are still working at the White House without masks and the CDC hasn't started any official contact tracing. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump told people who had tested positive to keep it quiet and even his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, was kept in the dark as the virus ran unchecked through the White House. Stepien has since tested positive and is quarantining at home.

And:

Several White House staffers and administration officials expressed anger and bewilderment that the White House had not undertaken a more robust contact-tracing effort sooner. They said many people -- including White House residence staff who do not have the stature of a lawmaker or a top political aide -- had not been contacted despite possible exposures, putting them and others at risk in a still-growing outbreak.

[Interlude:]

Today's column is brought to you by the legal term "reckless endangerment." Can you say "reckless endangerment," kids? Here's one legal definition:

Reckless endangerment is a crime consisting of acts that create a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person. The accused person isn't required to intend the resulting or potential harm, but must have acted in a way that showed a disregard for the foreseeable consequences of the actions.

Ahem. Where were we?

The prestigious New England Journal Of Medicine joined Scientific American in publishing its first-ever presidential endorsement editorial, against Donald Trump:

On Wednesday, alongside its usual peer-reviewed scientific studies and analysis, the journal published a blistering editorial taking President Trump and his administration to task over their handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The respected journal broke the nonpartisan position it has held since 1812 with an editorial titled, "Dying in a Leadership Vacuum," which urged voters to oust Trump over his administration's failures.

Even Mitch McConnell had to express his displeasure, in a rare rebuke to Trump's White House:

I haven't actually been to the White House since August the sixth, because my impression was their approach to how to handle this was different from mine and what I insisted that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing.... Now, you've heard of other places that have had a different view, and they are, you know, paying the price for it.

McConnell's not the only one backing away from Trump, either:

The president's unpredictable behavior has long been a feature of the Trump presidency, but eight GOP sources -- from Capitol Hill to the Trump campaign to the White House -- tell Power Up this week has spooked them and they are now bracing for the electoral worst. A handful of them say they are already scrambling to line up new jobs; some say they know their peers are starting the search. While several acknowledge there's still another 25 days for the race to tighten, they're worried about this being the final message as polls after Trump's debate performance and diagnosis show Biden's lead widening and the Democrat's team shatters fundraising records.

Far-right domestic terrorism was back in the news, with the arrest of a group of "militia" members in Michigan for plotting to kidnap their state's governor. So they could put her on "trial" for "treason." In related news:

The Justice Department won't fully explain why it's opposed to a bill that would enhance its ability to combat white supremacist violence, adding to concerns that the agency under President Donald Trump is continuing to downplay or ignore the threat of far-right terror.

Senate Republicans prevented a vote on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act late last week. The bill, which passed the House unanimously, would establish offices in the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI dedicated to combating the rising threat of far-right extremist violence.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) on Friday blocked an attempt by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the bill's sponsor, to advance the measure by unanimous consent. Speaking on the Senate floor, Johnson claimed the DOJ told him the bill would "seriously impede their ability to work in the domestic terrorism space."

A spokesman for Johnson -- a close Trump ally who, like the president, recently tested positive for COVID-19 -- would not elaborate on how specifically the bill would impede the Justice Department's work.

"We have technical concerns with the legislation and are reviewing it closely after its passage in the House," Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi told HuffPost. "We appreciate Senator Johnson's willingness to step in and object and relay those concerns. That being said, we always welcome Congress's interest in our fight against domestic terrorism."

Raimondi would not elaborate on what "technical concerns" the Justice Department had about the legislation.

To put it another way, Trump's Justice Department told Congress to "stand back and stand by" on any legislation to combat right-wing domestic terrorism. Just when a plot to kidnap a governor was uncovered.

But let's get back to the presidential race, shall we? First, how about a look at the recent polling:

Public polling in recent days has painted a long uphill climb for reelection, including a CNN/SSRS poll released Tuesday showing [President Donald] Trump falling to 16 points behind [Joe] Biden, who leads 57 to 41 percent.

A GOP group working to elect Senate Republicans conducted polling over the weekend in four states -- Colorado, Georgia, Montana and North Carolina -- as Trump was hospitalized. The president's numbers dropped "significantly" in every state, falling by about five points in all four.

"The president is in real trouble," said one of the group's operatives, who is also close to the White House.

Many of Trump's allies and advisers see his response to his own illness as a missed opportunity. Some had hoped that he would emerge from his hospital stay slightly humbled, with a newfound display of seriousness and empathy, and would receive a boost of public sympathy.

But so far, that has not happened. Internal Republican polling has consistently shown that the coronavirus -- and not taking it seriously enough -- remains the president's electoral albatross. They believe it has caused the president to lose support among senior citizens and suburban women, both key voting blocs.

Polling on Trump's handling of his own sickness shows anywhere from 60 percent to over 70 percent of the public thinks Trump didn't do enough to protect himself, and that he handled his sickness badly.

The experts were horrified, too:

"Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential 'drive-by' just now has to be quarantined for 14 days," tweeted James P. Phillips, who is also a professor at George Washington University. "They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity."

And:

"The White House really isn't doing anything you're supposed to be doing in these situations," said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist on the faculty of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.

Rasmussen added that while she agreed with Trump's call not succumb to fear, "we also shouldn't not take the virus seriously just because President Trump says he feels better and is flying around on Marine One and standing on the balcony like Evita."

But getting back to the most astonishing poll yet, that CNN poll is indeed the largest lead anyone's reported (16 points!), but Biden's polling average right now is almost ten full points ahead of Trump, which is nothing to sneeze at. Team Biden is feeling so confident right now that they're expanding their advertising efforts into some unusual places, while Trump is forced to cut back on his:

In a move that would have been far-fetched even a few months ago, Joe Biden is set to spend $6.2 million on ads in [Texas] over the next month -- attempting to put the state in play for the first time in decades. The latest polling averages show President Donald Trump leading by only 2 to 3 points in Texas, and Biden's push there illustrates both how much the state has changed and how much the political environment is tilting against Trump less than a month from the Election Day.

Perhaps even more astounding: Trump doesn't have the money to counter the cash-flush Biden on TV.

Over the past two weeks, Biden had the airwaves to himself in Iowa, Ohio, Texas and New Hampshire, while Trump went dark, according to Advertising Analytics, a TV tracking firm. This week, Trump isn't airing any ads in Nebraska, where both campaigns are competing for the lone Electoral College vote out of the Omaha-based congressional district, while Biden is dropping just under $500,000.

The spending disparity isn't limited to Democratic "reach" states. Biden and his allies are also racking up ad advantages in the core battlegrounds that put Trump in the White House in 2016. Biden is out-advertising Trump in 72 out of 83 media markets where the campaigns are spending this week, including dozens of places that played a critical role in deciding the last election, like Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania and Milwaukee and Green Bay in Wisconsin.

All of which leads us to wonder, once again: "Is Trump actively trying to lose?" If that truly is his objective, he's certainly doing a bang-up job of it, from where we sit.

Joe Biden had a pretty good week all around. He appeared at an NBC townhall event in Miami (which we also reviewed earlier in the week) that was downright heartening.

Kamala Harris also had a pretty good week, more than holding her own against Mike Pence in their only debate. We didn't get the full text of her best answer in this debate performance when we wrote about it that night, so we're going to paste it in here. Harris was addressing the fact that the Trump administration is suing in court to totally overturn Obamacare, which -- despite false denials from Trump and Pence -- would mean insurance companies could once again deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Harris stared straight into the camera and explained exactly what this would mean:

If you have a pre-existing condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they're coming for you. If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition, they're coming for you. If you are under the age of 26 on your parents' coverage, they're coming for you.

Nevertheless, we're only going to give both candidates an Honorable Mention this week, because we were so amused by what can only be seen as an effort to taunt Donald Trump after his disastrous antics after contracting the coronavirus. Here's the story:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has thrown her support behind legislation that would establish a panel of experts and former executive branch officials to determine whether a president lacks the mental or physical capacity to carry out the job.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), would shore up a process established under the 25th Amendment by which the vice president can assume control of the presidency if the president becomes incapacitated or is unable to perform the duties of the office. It's highly unlikely the measure will become law.

. . .

Under the 25th Amendment, the process of supplanting an ill or incapacitated president currently falls to the vice president, in consultation with the president's Cabinet. If they determine that the president is unable to fulfill the duties of the office, they can determine collectively to elevate the vice president. The amendment itself, passed in 1967, is a vestige of the nuclear era, when Washington and the world were gripped by concerns about potential war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

A lesser-known aspect of the 25th Amendment permits Congress to establish an alternative body, rather than the Cabinet, to consult with the vice president. But such a body has never been created. Raskin's bill would change that.

Under his proposal, the newly created "Commission on Presidential Capacity" would consist of doctors, psychiatrists and former Executive Branch officials like secretaries of State or Defense, attorneys general, and even former presidents and vice presidents.

Now there's a cat among the pigeons! As the article noted, it's never going to become law (because Mitch McConnell will ignore it), but it sure is fun to contemplate, isn't it?

Earlier in the week, when Trump left the hospital, it was revealed that the steroids he was taking could have side effects like hallucination, delusions of grandeur, and manic and irrational behavior. Which, of course, begs the question: "With Trump, how could anyone tell?"

Nothing says we're worried about the president in the depths of 'roid rage quite like contemplating the 25th Amendment. Which is why this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week goes to Representative Jamie Raskin. Well done! Trump trolling at its finest!

[Congratulate Representative Jamie Raskin on his House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

Sadly, there is no question about who deserves the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. Cal Cunningham, who is running for a Senate seat in North Carolina, had a pretty good shot at winning his race in a very purple state. The sitting Republican senator isn't all that popular, and he just came down with COVID-19, courtesy of Donald Trump.

But that may all have changed this week, because it was revealed that Cunningham was "exchanging intimate texts with a woman who is not his wife."

In the texts, first reported by NationalFile.com and confirmed as authentic by Cunningham's campaign, the married father of two discusses setting up a rendezvous with Arlene Guzman Todd, a public relations strategist who is also married.

"Would make my day to roll over and kiss you about now," Cunningham writes in one. In another, Todd texts Cunningham, "Pick a day, city, make up an excuse for the fam, ditch a staffer, starch your white shirt, and be ready to kiss a lot."

He also reportedly texted her that he wanted to spend a night with her. Later, the news got even worse as what everyone suspected was confirmed:

In a new report from The Associated Press, Arlene Guzman Todd, a woman from California, confirmed that she and Cunningham had been "intimate" in July, and additional text messages between Guzman Todd and a third, unidentified individual, further describe the details of their relationship. The AP report is the first corroboration of a physical, consensual relationship between Cunningham and Guzman Todd, though it was previously reported that they had exchanged sexually suggestive text messages.

Cunningham at first tried to move past the scandal, releasing a statement that didn't say much:

I have hurt my family, disappointed my friends, and am deeply sorry. The first step in repairing those relationships is taking complete responsibility, which I do. I ask that my family's privacy be respected in this personal matter.

I remain grateful and humbled by the ongoing support that North Carolinians have extended in this campaign, and in the remaining weeks before this election I will continue to work to earn the opportunity to fight for the people of our state.

He's going to remain in the race and hope for the best, in other words. Since he's really the only chance Democrats have at picking up this seat, there haven't been many calls for him to step down.

Still, this wasn't a relationship buried in the dim and distant past -- this happened as recently as July. During the current campaign, in other words. That's pretty bad.

If Democrats blow this pickup opportunity because of Cunningham's wandering eye, it could mean they fail to gain control of the Senate. That's how important this race may turn out to be.

So as we said it's a pretty easy choice this week for Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Cal Cunningham is a private citizen and we do not provide links to campaign websites as a rule, so you'll have to seek his contact information out yourself if you'd like to let him know what you think of his actions.]

Volume 592 (10/9/20)

Once again we have a rather mixed bag this week. There are two quotes from open letters to the public, but most of it deals with Trump's ever-increasing incompetence, in one form or another.

Oh, here's an extra-funny talking point we didn't have room for, as well. Trump was so drugged-out delusional this week that apparently he thinks he's got a shot at winning California (spoiler alert: he doesn't). He tweeted his drug-addled optimism out to the world:

Vote TRUMP California. No more blackouts, shutdowns, ridiculous forrest [sic] fires, or water "rationing" (coming soon). We can win in California NOW!

Pretty much the entire internet reacted by pointing out the hilarious parallel Trump's latest misspelling brought to mind: "Forrest Trump -- stupid is as stupid does."

Snarkiness aside, though, let's get to the real talking points.

Another one bites the dust

Does GOP now stand for "Grifters' Own Party"? We're just sayin'....

"Republican Party stalwart Elliott Broidy became just the most recent in Trump's orbit to cop a plea deal for committing federal crimes. It seems he made millions acting as an unregistered agent for Malaysia and China as he sucked up to Donald Trump. You may remember this guy because he was named deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee -- or, better still, from why he had to step down from this post. Two years ago it was revealed that he had paid $1.6 million in hush money to a Playboy model after having an affair with her. Oh, and the money was paid out with the help of none other than Michael Cohen. No wonder Trump liked him so much!"

Hey, that's our money!

The Washington Post just ran an excellent article toting up all the taxpayer money being spent to get Trump re-elected.

"Donald Trump is burning through an obscene amount of taxpayer funds which is all being spent to get him re-elected. There is the $7.9 billion Trump wants to spend to send every senior in the country a $200 prescription drug card. This money -- since Congress hasn't approved it -- would come straight out of the Medicare trust fund. Then there's the $11.6 billion Trump is finally sending to Puerto Rico -- three years after the hurricane hit -- because someone apparently told Trump there are a lot of voters from Puerto Rico who now live in Florida. Then there are the food boxes being distributed -- but only if they have a letter signed by Trump in them. Trump also wanted to suspend payroll taxes and then forgive these taxes after the election, which would have cost about $400 billion that the Social Security trust fund would have lost. Then there are the tens of billions he's had to send to farmers each year since he destroyed their agricultural markets with his tariff war with China. When you stop and add up how much taxpayer money Trump is trying to use to directly buy people's votes, it really is rather astonishing."

Maybe add "nor politics" to the motto?

But, of course, it doesn't end there.

"Trump is also trying to co-opt the entire federal government into his re-election campaign. Bill Barr has all but weaponized the Justice Department, and the Post Office is still up to its dirty tricks as well. They're actively fighting against federal court orders to knock off all the delays, which has resulted (once again) in significantly slowing down the delivery of mail -- right before the election. Even more pathetic, the Post Office announced this week that they were barring all members of Congress from touring their facilities because (are you sitting down?) they don't want to violate the Hatch Act. Man, that's funny! I mean, nobody in the Trump administration is in the slightest bit worried about the Hatch Act, as evidenced by their political convention at the White House and Fort McHenry. They simply do not care one iota about the Hatch Act and now we're supposed to believe they are overly concerned with mail sorters and carriers somehow doing so during a congressional oversight tour? Tell me another funny one, please...."

Someone should have objected

Joseph Petro, a former Secret Service special agent and senior executive, wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post this week expressing his disgust at Trump putting agents' lives at risk with his "royal carriage ride" in front of Walter Reed hospital. His whole piece is worth reading, but here was the key complaint:

Given the president's covid-19 infection, this was a gratuitous and dangerous political exercise that needlessly exposed his Secret Service agents -- as well as their families -- to the potentially deadly novel coronavirus. Where was the Secret Service senior management? Did anyone resist this potential danger to these agents and perhaps their families? It was an avoidable risk, and someone should have objected.

Whistleblower has had enough

Of course, when someone does object, they are punished by Trump. Whistleblower Rick Bright, who exposed some of the political interference with government scientists and health departments, finally had enough. After being shunted to a do-nothing job for blowing the whistle on the Trump White House, he finally resigned this week in disgust. He published his resignation letter to explain why:

Of all the tools required for an effective U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, one that is sorely missing is the truth. Public health guidance on the pandemic response, drafted by career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been repeatedly overruled by political staff appointed by the Trump administration. Career scientists throughout the Department of Health and Human Services hesitate to push back when science runs counter to the administration's unrealistically optimistic pronouncements.

Public health and safety have been jeopardized by the administration's hostility to the truth and by its politicization of the pandemic response, undoubtedly leading to tens of thousands of preventable deaths. For that reason, and because the administration has in effect barred me from working to fight the pandemic, I resigned on Tuesday from the National Institutes of Health.

Surgeon general breaks the rules

In a normal administration, in more normal times, this would have been bigger news.

"The surgeon general of the United States -- during a trip to Hawai'i to urge everyone to follow all the rules to prevent the spread of coronavirus, mind you -- was cited by a cop for breaking emergency pandemic orders by visiting a park that was closed for the duration of the emergency. I suppose no one should be surprised that even the top medical officer of the country is just as hypocritical as his boss is about keeping the public safe. After all, just look at how his boss acts on a daily basis, even after becoming infected."

Trump's real reason

Trump can't seem to figure out whether he'll participate in any more debates or not, but let's focus on the real reason for this.

"Trump pulled out of the second presidential debate when the debate commission announced it would have to be held virtually. There's a very simple reason for this: Trump is afraid to debate Joe Biden if Biden gets to actually speak without Trump constantly yelling at him. Trump even openly admitted this in an interview on Fox:"

It's not acceptable. I'm not going to waste my time in a virtual debate. That's not what debating is all about -- you sit behind the computer and do a debate -- it's ridiculous. And then they cut you off whenever they want.

"That's right -- they cut you off when you are blatantly breaking the rules and not letting the other candidate speak. Trump can't handle this at all, obviously. He is terrified at the thought of America truly seeing (and hearing) the difference between the two candidates. All Trump wants is a scream-fest where the loudest and most obnoxious guy in the room gets to commandeer all the time available. Which is not a debate at all -- it is instead just a yelling match on a schoolyard playground."

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

October 2, 2020

Friday Talking Points -- October Schadenfreudefest

It's October... surprise!

The thing about October surprises is that they're always, well, surprising. No one expects them, and no one can predict their coming. That's the nature of any true surprise.

Late last night, the political world began reeling from what could be the biggest October surprise in a generation (at the very least), as the White House announced that President Donald Trump and his wife First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19.

This was greeted in some quarters as not so much an October surprise as (to coin a term) an October schadenfreudefest. If there is any one individual who richly deserves to contract the coronavirus, after all, it is Donald Trump. Trump has pooh-poohed the virus from the very first, insisting that it will magically go away ("by April, when the weather warms up" ), that it isn't that big a deal ("it's like the flu" ), that testing is unnecessary, that it affects "almost no one," that most people get a mild case and recover, that many don't even know they've got it, that children "get the sniffles" (no big deal), that we've already defeated it ("we've turned the corner" ), that it's all in the past, that getting the economy going again and getting kids back to school is more important than any imagined risk, and -- worst of all -- that wearing masks and social distancing and all that stuff is for sissies and definitely not for real macho men like him. Or to put it another way, the karma wasn't instant, but it caught up to Trump in the end.

We are now one day and one month away from the election. And now, for half of that time, the president will be quarantined in the White House. He will not be able to hold his beloved rallies, he will not be able to meet with fatcat donors, he will not be able to schmooze with his buddies in the Oval Office. He will be confined to his quarters, where he will likely watch even more cable news that he normally does. He can rant and rave about the unfairness of the universe all he wants, but most people will see it as an entirely deserved fate. When you mock all attempts to slow the spread of a pandemic and scoff at anyone who follows the pointy-headed experts' advice, then you deserve little-to-no sympathy yourself when the virus proves stronger than your attempts to pretend it doesn't exist.

If these were normal times, in fact, a president getting sick in the midst of a pandemic would actually be a huge political boost for his chances of getting re-elected. The sympathy vote would be enormous. But these are not normal times, nor is Donald Trump a normal president. For the entire course of the pandemic, President Trump has express virtually no sympathy for the millions of Americans who have come down with the virus, and hasn't even expressed any real condolences for the 210,000 American families (and counting) who have lost a beloved member. His own lack of sympathy for this entire time will now come home to roost in a big way, as few voters are likely to feel too sorry for Trump right now.

There is one good thing that could come of this, if Trump makes a giant U-turn and starts promoting wearing face masks and social distancing and preventative hygiene. If wearing a mask (a "MAGA mask" maybe?) becomes a test of his followers devotion to him, then this could wind up saving tens of thousands of lives in the upcoming months. That would indeed be a positive outcome.

Of course, from Democrats' perspective, another real positive outcome would be Trump losing in a landslide in November. It's hard not to see that the chances of this just went way up. For the past couple of months, Trump has tried to distract the country from the pandemic by bringing up anything he could that would fill up a news cycle. Any outrageous thing he said or did that pushed the pandemic out of the headlines was like political gold to him. And in a number of instances, this worked quite well for him. Americans are weary of the pandemic, but at the same time they've gotten somewhat used to the danger. Until a vaccine appears on the horizon, life isn't going to change much from where we all are now. There will be no normalcy for months to come -- everyone has pretty much accepted this by now. This helped Trump distract from the seriousness of the pandemic, but this isn't going to be possible anymore.

Trump's sickness has now become the big story. It reminds everyone that we have not turned any sort of corner, that the virus is still raging out there, and that we may indeed be on the brink of a new wave of infections caused by cooler weather (when everyone moves more indoors). Cases were already spiking across much of the country, mostly in states that largely avoided the first waves. Or, to put it another way, there simply is no safe place left anymore. Not even the Oval Office, obviously.

How will Trump weather quarantine? That's certainly an interesting question. The White House today admitted that he is actually exhibiting symptoms (they called them "mild" ), so he's already not one of those asymptomatic cases. Will it continue to be mild for him or will it become more debilitating? Trump famously hates showing any kind of weakness at all, but if he is visibly weakened by the virus will this affect how his own voters see him? There are all kinds of unanswered questions, at this point. Serious symptoms, if they do occur, will likely appear over the course of the next five days or so.

This raises a new and serious question, as well. At what point does Trump become so feverish that he cannot be trusted to perform his duties? Of course, the word "feverish" could accurately be applied (metaphorically) to just about any day out of any week of Trump's entire time in office, but in this instance it would be literal. At what point does Trump become so disoriented and irrational that his cabinet starts re-reading the text of the 25th Amendment? All they have to do is have a majority of them sign a piece of paper, and Mike Pence will instantly become Acting President Pence for the duration. This may seem like a slim possibility, but we'll see how things go for the next week or so. It may become a necessity. So far, Pence has tested negative.

An even more far-fetched outcome would be if Pence falls sick too, and gets just as feverish as Trump. In that case, if the cabinet agreed (not very likely), then Nancy Pelosi would become Acting President Pelosi. That's about as schadenfreude-y as it gets.

No matter what happens, though, one of Trump's biggest campaign themes has now been obliterated. He was trying to gaslight the voters into believing that his response to the pandemic has been nothing short of amazing, and that he had done such a good job that everything was now back to normal once again -- except in states and cities run by Democrats, who were holding up reopening the economy just to stick it to Trump. We had turned the corner already, there was nothing left to worry about, and by the end of October Trump had planned to make some sort of announcement about the approval of a vaccine. Trump to the rescue! And we'd all live happily ever after (and, of course, vote to re-elect our Dear Savior).

That, as they say in Washington, is "no longer operative." It always was a fantasy story, but it was one that Trump was selling to a whole lot of voters. But how can he possibly even attempt to do so now, when he can't even hold his beloved rallies anymore? Trump could decide to go virtual and start addressing supporters and donors via computer, but once again this undermines one of his campaign themes -- that Joe Biden was a weenie for doing exactly the same thing. This time it will be Trump "hiding in the attic" (the president's personal residence isn't "in the basement" but rather on the top floor of the White House). So how will Trump square that with all the taunts he's been throwing at Biden?

Trump will be running a risk over the course of his sickness, even if he does embrace Biden's virtual campaign tactics. What happens if he appears on video and is visibly not well at all? He could look weak, he could look disoriented, he could even collapse in the middle of a presentation. This would, no doubt, change the way voters see him. It's hard to be a strongman when you're sniffling and having a hard time breathing, to state the obvious. Or can't even hold a rational thought in your head. These are all clear possibilities if Trump's symptoms become more serious.

But there's a further risk, because if Trump doesn't make public appearances, then people are going to be wondering just how sick he is. Nobody's going to believe any of the White House doctors or medical experts, because Trump has so politicized their ranks that all anyone expects from them at this point is sheer propaganda. Dr. Anthony Fauci examining Trump and reporting the results is about the only thing that most people would trust even a little bit. So if Trump disappears from public view for more than a period of a few days, the rumors will start flying that his sickness is a lot more serious than anyone is letting on. Which is a different kind of political risk for Trump.

Of course, no one with an ounce of compassion is wishing for it, but there's an even grimmer possibility to consider as well. What happens if Trump doesn't recover? What happens if he dies of the coronavirus? This close to an election, it would be impossible to remove his name from the ballots (although, admittedly, we have not checked the election laws in all 50 states -- which vary, state by state). Ballots have already been sent out to tens of millions of voters, after all. So the Republican Party would not even be able to replace Trump's name on the ballot with Mike Pence (or whomever else they chose). So what would a vote for a dead man mean, when it comes to the presidency? This is a situation that has never happened in American politics before (it has happened in governors' races and Senate races, but never the presidency). Which means nobody would really know what the correct procedure would be.

Assuming Trump does recover, though, the first political question will be what happens to the next two debates? The first is on the edge of Trump's 14-day quarantine, but would Joe Biden really agree to stand in the same room as a possibly-still-infectious Trump? Perhaps the debates will have to be held via Zoom -- which would certainly make muting Trump a whole lot easier for the moderator. About the only certainty if the next debates happen is that Trump won't be taking cheap shots at Joe Biden for wearing a mask. That clip (from this week's trainwreck of a debate) is already playing on a loop on cable news today.

Nothing exemplifies the failure of Trump to take the coronavirus seriously as perfectly as him catching it, one month from the election. His way failed, obviously. Pretending it was going to go away, was going away, or had already gone away was nothing more than folly. It was dangerous foolishness from the get-go. And now the proof is there for all to see.

President Donald Trump faced his worst crisis, and he simply was not up to the task. That is the clear message his positive test just sent to all voters in the country. He never took it seriously enough, and he is now going to pay the price for that callousness and obliviousness. He cannot gaslight this away as some sort of "hoax" anymore. Not when he's fighting it himself.

This is such a momentous turnaround in politics that we have chosen to just throw out all the early drafts of this column, where we reviewed the past week in politics. The worst presidential debate in American history happened this week, but we already addressed it in our earlier reviews. Plenty of other things were happening in Washington as well, but it all pales in comparison to the October surprise most of us woke up to this morning. So we'll have to wait until next week to return to our normal format.

The October schadenfreudefest most Democrats are experiencing right now is based on one simple fact -- Joe Biden's chances for victory just went up. A visibly-sick Trump is going to look weak, both physically and politically. Trump made an enormous bet on trying to wish the coronavirus pandemic away, and he just lost that bet in the most personal way imaginable. Trump's response to the pandemic is now, unquestionably, a huge failure. Those are the three things Trump never wants to be seen as -- weak, a loser, and a failure. It undermines his personal brand in the most devastating way possible. Whether at the margins or in droves, it will quite likely undermine his support with voters as well. Joe Biden already had a pretty comfortable lead in all the polls, and Trump's illness is only going to expand it. October surprises have a way of completely upending political races, and this one is going to be no different. It's hard to even see anything Team Trump tries to do (to generate their own anti-Biden October surprise) as even being able to change this new dynamic. With one month and one day to go before the election, we've already had the biggest October surprise of them all.

Joe Biden certainly was impressively calm in the face of Hurricane Donald this week, in the first presidential debate. Biden showed he could not be rattled by Trump, no matter how rude Trump got. But we're only going to give him an Honorable Mention for his effort.

Because in our opinion Chuck Schumer had a better week. We wrote about this at length yesterday, so we're just going to cut and paste a bit, to explain:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer managed a rather extraordinary feat this week -- he forced a Senate floor vote on a bill designed to become campaign ad fodder for Democratic challengers to vulnerable Republicans. This is notable, because normally the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell controls what gets floor votes, not the minority party. And it was even more notable because five Republicans voted for it out of sheer terror of it being used in an ad against them. Three others didn't take the bait, and can now expect such ads to begin airing soon.

The bill would have (if passed and signed into law by President Trump, which would never actually happen, it must be pointed out) banned the federal government from arguing in court to kill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in court. This is important for three big reasons: (1) the Trump administration has already joined the lawsuit trying to overturn Obamacare in its entirety, (2) the case will be heard before the Supreme Court almost immediately after the election, and (3) Senate Republicans are rushing to get another Supreme Court justice confirmed before the election.

The bill got 51 votes for it while only 43 voted against it. These five Republican senators voted with the Democrats to bar the government from weighing in on the case: Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Cory Gardner, Dan Sullivan, and Martha McSally. If you recognize some (or all) of those names, it is because they are in a fight for their political lives in the upcoming election. Maine's Susan Collins, Colorado's Cory Gardner, and Arizona's Martha McSally may all already be toast, if the polling proves to be correct. Joni Ernst in Iowa and Alaska's Dan Sullivan are in slightly better shape, but are both seriously threatened as well. So threatened that all five Republicans essentially just cast a vote in favor of Obamacare. Think about that for just a moment.

Three others, however, decided to risk the wrath of their voters and voted to allow the federal government argue that Obamacare should be totally and completely eliminated -- which, of course, means that people with pre-existing conditions (including the millions who have contracted COVID-19, assumably) would no longer be protected in any way. Insurance companies could just refuse to insure them, once again. The Obamacare marketplaces would disappear, leaving them all in the lurch. The three who gambled on this political position were Steve Daines of Montana, David Perdue of Georgia, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Of the three, Tillis is in the most danger of losing his seat, but the other two are also possible pickups for Democrats as well.

The ads, of course, will almost write themselves: "Senator Tillis voted to support overturning all protections for people with pre-existing conditions. I have [life-threatening illness], and my care costs [an obscene amount of money] per month, so this would be an absolute death sentence for me. Sometimes you hear the phrase: 'vote like your life depends on it.' Well, for me, it does. I hope you'll join me in voting for life -- my life and the lives of countless other North Carolinians -- by voting for Cal Cunningham." Democrats already played this card, during their national convention, so it's pretty easy to see that they're going to play it again everywhere they think it'll be effective.

This is rather extraordinary for two reasons: (1) Schumer got the vote in the first place, through a parliamentary maneuver that hasn't been successful in a decade, and (2) Schumer successfully split the Republican ranks on Obamacare one month before an election that may hand him control of the Senate. That is impressive. Which is why Schumer is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

Republicans have tried for two election cycles to have things both ways. They still hate Obamacare and want to destroy it, but they have come to realize that they have to at least give lip service to "protecting people with pre-existing conditions," as well. However, merely saying it does not make it so. Donald Trump even went to the extreme with this gambit, by signing an executive order to "protect people with pre-existing conditions." It is meaningless, for two big reasons: (1) Obamacare -- which protects people with pre-existing conditions -- is federal law already, and (2) if Obamacare is overturned, the executive order won't do doodley-squat to protect anyone. That would require a replacement for Obamacare to pass Congress. And Obamacare was a careful balance of a complex juggling act of issues, only one of which was the protection for pre-existing conditions. You cannot just legislate that one part of it and ignore everything else, because (according to them) this would bankrupt the insurance companies. The whole solution is needed to solve this one part.

In the 2018 midterms, Republicans tried to pull the wool over the voters' eyes on pre-existing conditions. They failed miserably, since no one believed they cared one iota for anyone's healthcare. Democrats own this field, and they made enormous gains politically because of it. Democrats are looking for a repeat of this in 2020, using pretty much the same playbook. But this time around, Republicans are even more aware how much this issue is hurting them with the voters. Several close Senate races could hinge on it, in fact.

Which is why Chuck Schumer deserves the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. By using his parliamentary trick to force Mitch McConnell to hold a vote, he widened a split in the GOP. He also provided an issue ready for harsh political ads to several Democratic candidates. Schumer may not be able to stop Trump's Supreme Court pick from getting confirmed, but this week he showed that he's still got plenty of ways to advance his own party's prospects.

[Congratulate Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

We had one nomination for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week, but in the end we decided it wasn't worth it.

In normal times, Joe Biden would have ruffled some feathers on the leftward side of the Democratic Party this week, by refusing to say anything nice about the Green New Deal and boasting of how badly he beat Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

But you know what? We don't care. In fact, we think it was probably a pretty good move for Biden to have made, politically. One of Trump's biggest lines of attack was going to be that Biden was some sort of puppet of the lefties, whose strings would doubtlessly be pulled by the likes of Bernie and A.O.C. once he got into office. Trump's been teeing up this attack for months, in fact. Biden distancing himself from such views, though, meant the attack simply could not land a blow on him. Trump flailed around to argue the exact opposite during the debate -- that by doing so, Biden had just "lost" the support of all the lefties.

The lefties I know, however, don't give a rat's patootie what Biden has to say about them now. They are going to vote for Biden come Hell or high water (both of which are distinct possibilities, the way this year's been going). There is literally nothing Trump could say or do to convince them otherwise.

Lefties have largely gotten beyond Bernie's loss. They have made their peace with the idea of a Biden presidency. They know full well that Biden will disappoint them on certain things over the course of the next four years, and they fully accept this, eyes wide open.

Because anything Biden does is going to be miles better than having Trump as president. Lefties were blamed (fairly or not) the last time around for "staying home" and not sufficiently supporting the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. This time around, they are determined not to have this happen again.

Sure, they'll be voting against Trump more than they'll be voting for Biden, but you know what? That vote counts just the same as one from a enthusiastic Biden supporter.

This all adds up to the fact that the lefties (at least the ones we know) know there's going to be some disappointment later from Biden, but they just don't care. Anything is better than Trump, after all. And if Biden can pick up some more support in the Midwest and other purple states by distancing himself from the Green New Deal, then that's just fine with them.

Which is why we're going to have to put the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week back on the shelf for another week.

Volume 591 (10/2/20)

For once, we have restrained ourselves here. These may be the shortest talking points we've ever offered up, in fact (we'd have to check, but since there are 590 other columns to check, we're just going to go ahead and assume).

Just as with our introductory segment, all of these deal with the October surprise of Trump testing positive. Sure, other things happened this week and Joe Biden's got lots of good talking points to use out on the campaign trail, but instead we've decided to focus solely on snappy one-liners to deploy to talk about Trump's current situation.

Trump's positive test is a game-changer. It is going to force him to totally rewrite large parts of his campaign script. He will no longer be able to get away with distracting everyone from the pandemic, now that it has hit home for him.

So these are the things Democrats should be saying in order to drive this point home. Every one of these is short and sweet, and pretty easy to remember. For once, instead of a whole paragraph's worth of set-up, none of these require any explanation or details whatsoever. So here is the most-succinct list of talking points we think we've ever written, to address Trump testing positive for the coronavirus.

Protect and defend

This is the ultimate rhetorical question to ask, because nothing else boils it down quite so neatly:

"How can Trump protect other Americans when he can't even protect himself?"

Don't hold your breath

Remember Tuesday? It wasn't that long ago. That's when Trump taunted Joe Biden for wearing a mask in public -- something Trump has done repeatedly throughout the campaign. Perhaps he'll change his tune now? It's worth asking.

"Maybe now Trump will stop making fun of people who wear masks."

A message for all his supporters

Mr. Macho just got it -- so can you. So be careful.

"See? If Donald Trump can get the coronavirus, then anyone can get it."

I'm just going to click on this icon, here...

This could force a change in a big way, and for the better.

"A presidential debate over Zoom would certainly help, since the moderator will have a 'Mute' button."

Q.E.D.

He didn't just fail on a personal level, it's much bigger than that.

"Trump's pandemic response has been an utter failure from the start right up to him contracting the virus himself. In fact, it's hard to even imagine a bigger failure."

What goes around comes around

Time for this chicken to come home to roost. This should be the response to any criticism of a lack of sympathy for Donald Trump.

"I feel just as sorry for Trump as he has felt all along for the other seven million Americans who got COVID-19, or for the 210,000 families who lost one of their own to the virus."

The ultimate Trump insult

Saved the best for last. This can be used generically, or specifically if a video of him visibly affected leaks out in the next couple of weeks.

"Boy, Trump sure does look weak, doesn't he?"

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

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