In “A Crusade for Something Noble: Americans are coming together to save our Republic, right now. And it means something” at The Bulwark, James Carville writes, “I know it’s difficult for so many of us to feel hope in this moment, which seems so incomprehensibly dark. We are a nation deeply wounded from a liberated virus. We’re struggling with systemic racism. And we’ve endured lashing mental abuse, time and again, from the president of the United States. But it is not a darker moment than what Ike saw when he looked across the English Channel on June 6, 1944 at the continent of Europe, dominated by the Nazis…So I see a light ahead. Just days away, a unified and electrified coalition of Americans, coming together like our country did in World War II, standing united to send a message that will be heard around the world to all those who look with expectant hope to the America that led the crusade more than half a century ago: That America has not succumbed to a demagogue and would-be autocrat. That we have overcome. And that Donald J. Trump is not who we are…In just a short time, America will go from its darkest hour to its finest hour.”

From Harry Enten’s “9 days to go: Biden’s lead over Trump is holding, while Clinton’s was collapsing at this point” at CNN Politics: “The clock is running out on President Donald Trump’s chances for a comeback. He continues to trail former Vice President Joe Biden nationally and in the key swing states with just nine days to go…But perhaps most worrisome for the President: Trump’s clearly behind his 2016 pace. By this point four years ago, he was rapidly closing the gap with Hillary Clinton. No such advancements can be seen in the 2020 polling against Biden…Right now, Biden is up by about 9 to 10 pointsnationally, depending on the average you examine. He is, importantly, over 50%. Biden’s edge may be down a point or so from early October, though it is well within the historical average from the beginning of the year.”

Thomas B. Edsall writes in “What if Beating Trump Is the Easy Part? If Biden holds on, keeping the Democratic coalition intact will take an unusual level of political skill” at The New York Times: “Winning control of the Senate is critically important, of course, and will shape what happens as much as anything else an election can decide…FiveThirtyEight estimates the odds of a Democratic takeover of the Senate at 74-26, or three to one…David Card, an economist at Berkeley, posed the question, “How crucial for the success of a Biden presidency is a Democratic Senate?” and answered the question himself: 100 percent. Obama came in after 2009 with a lot of troubles but Biden is taking over with nearly impossible deficit, pandemic and completely gutted federal government…Not only does Biden need a Senate majority, the size of the majority will also be crucial…If he only has a cushion of one or two votes, Gary Burtless, an economist at Brookings, argues,

it would greatly reduce the chances Democrats could enact sweeping political and regulatory reforms, including major climate change legislation and rationalization of the Affordable Care Act.

But, Burtless continued,

Even a bare majority would allow Democrats to enact sensible fiscal policies, provide adequate relief to the unemployed, confirm centrist and liberal federal judges, and give the Democratic President greater leeway to reverse Trump-era regulations/deregulations.”

“Enlarging the Supreme Court is the only answer to the right’s judicial radicalism,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes in The Washington Post: “The truly scandalous lack of institutional patriotism on the right has finally led many of the most sober liberals and moderates to ponder what they opposed even a month ago: The only genuinely practical and proper remedy to conservative court-packing is to undo its impact by enlarging the court…Note the language I just used. Court-packing is now a fact. It was carried out by a Republican Senate that was cynically inconsistent when it came to the question of filling a court seat during an election year…And conservatives are as hypocritical about court enlargement as they are about Garland and Barrett: In 2016, Republicans expanded the state supreme courts of Georgia and Arizona to enhance their party’s philosophical sway…Court enlargement will be a long battle, but those of us who support it should be encouraged, not discouraged, by Joe Biden’s call for a bipartisan commission to study a court system that is, as Biden put it, “getting out of whack.”…Biden is a long-standing opponent of enlargement, so his statement is an acknowledgment that this crisis can’t be avoided. His commission would help the public, which usually doesn’t want to worry about judges, understand the danger of a judiciary dominated by reactionaries.”