The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

I was intrigued to run across this piece by Michael Sean Winters “It’s time to bury the idea that demography is destiny, once and for all” in the National Catholic Reporter. He builds on my essay on this topic that appeared in Persuasion in July.

Surveys of Latino voters indicate something else that is worth noting: Demography is not destiny. Turns out this fact is worth noting again and again and again because the theory stalked much of the commentariat throughout the Democratic primaries and the selection of a vice presidential choice. In 2016, it was the theory that dominated the strategy of the Clinton campaign and left them scratching their heads as the election results poured in.

Ruy Teixeira and John Judis’ 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, is often credited with birthing this theory, but that excellent book was devoid of simplistic slogans. They noted that minority groups that tended to support Democrats were increasing their share of the electorate by 2% every four years. They never said the Democrats could ignore white, working-class voters.

In an essay at Persuasion, Teixeira argued that people misread the thesis of the book and, just as importantly, continued to misread the facts:

“Instead of focusing on the fact that this emerging majority only gave Democrats tremendous potential if they played their cards right, many progressives started to interpret it as a description of an inevitable future. The new Democratic majority, they believed, had already arrived. All they had to do to win election after election was to mobilize the growing segments of the electorate, and the demographic changes that favored them would take care of the rest. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, our thesis turned into the simplistic argument that “demographics are destiny.”

The Obama coalition, remember, included enough white, working class-voters to comfortably win states like Pennsylvania and Iowa. Yet, in 2012, although Obama won reelection, his deficit among white, working-class voters doubled. The bailout of Wall Street never did trickle down to Wilkes-Barre. Teixeira explains:

“The bowdlerization of the emerging Democratic majority thesis neatly complemented the political predilections of a rising set of people who placed questions of group identity and disadvantage at the heart of their political activism. This approach, which soon came to be known as “identity politics,” privileges mobilization around multiple, intersecting levels of oppression based on group identification over mobilization around universal rights and principles that bind people together across groups. Since most white non-college voters were rightly perceived to be uninterested in — if not outright hostile to — the core tenets of intersectional politics, those who favored this approach had a reason to embrace an electoral strategy that dispensed with them.”

Soon enough, the candidate called them “deplorables,” and her schedulers never saw a reason to go to Wisconsin. The wishful demographic theory was combined with the meritocratic prejudices that Michael Sandel has so brilliantly diagnosed among America’s cultural leaders. The Democrats were — and are — unprepared for the populist backlash that Donald Trump rode into the White House, and that might carry him in a second time….

If you look at the research to which I linked in my article about polling Latinos, you will find that they articulate the same essential working-class concerns as white voters in Youngstown, Ohio: health care, job security, opportunities for their children, better schools. The New York Times article by Ian Haney López and Tory Gavito was especially on point, demonstrating the fact that core tropes of identity politics do not resonate with Latinos. They wrote that most Latinos declined to see themselves as “people of color,” that “the majority [of Latinos] rejected this designation. They preferred to see Hispanics as a group integrating into the American mainstream, one not overly bound by racial constraints but instead able to get ahead through hard work.” If Trump emphasizes the “white” in “white, working-class voters,” Democrats need to emphasize the “working-class.”

What does any of this have to do with our Catholic faith? It turns out, a lot. I wish I could tell you that the contempt for fellow citizens and for fellow Catholics epitomized by Hillary Clinton’s word “deplorables” was unique to her, but it isn’t. There is a cancer in the heart of the political left that has infected the Catholic left, too, and it is the cancer identified by Teixeira. The cancer is the “approach, which soon came to be known as ‘identity politics,’ [which] privileges mobilization around multiple, intersecting levels of oppression based on group identification over mobilization around universal rights and principles that bind people together across groups.”

It is a cancer because it does not unite — and culture always unites. The Catholic social teaching that formed Biden does not reduce people to their group because it starts with the universalist belief that we are all created in the image and likeness of God, and possessed of an inherent dignity. Biden would never call white, working-class voters, or anyone else, “deplorable.” Catholic social teaching balances the Gospel mandate to identify with the marginalized with this universalism that is at the heart of the Gospels, too.

Trump’s evil genius consists in his ability to accept the terms of identity politics and turn them to his own advantage. But let us be clear: His path has been cleared by those who traffic in identity politics, those who seek to denigrate any American ideal that strives for universality. Trump harvests grievances. He did not plant them. In his narcissism, he may not really give a damn about white, working-class voters. His economic policies — apart from trade — will not really help them. But he is never more sincere than when he shares their disgust with cultural and political elites who look down on working-class voters if they look at them at all. If one of the only things Democrats have to say to white working-class voters is that they suffer from white privilege, no one should be surprised if Pennsylvania and Wisconsin stay in the red column this year.

There is a reason that so much of the country stayed Democratic long after the New Deal: Franklin Roosevelt had created policies that helped them; he addressed their needs, and he never condescended to them. He gave them hope. In the absence of such hope, men like Trump, who offer only hateful and false answers to the problems many working-class cities and towns endure, will continue to win elections.”

Interesting. I am more optimistic than the author that Biden is making real progress among these voters in this election, perhaps especially white working class Catholics in Rustbelt states. But he is quite right that Democrats still have a long-term challenge convincing these voters that the party is committed to universal uplift that very much includes them.

There are lots of perceptive insights in George Packer’s article, “Republicans Are Suddenly Afraid of Democracy” in The Atlantic. Here’s an excerpt: “Biden and his vice-presidential nominee, Senator Kamala Harris, should remind voters that Republicans, not Democrats, have turned the Senate into a body that produces no legislation but simply functions as a conveyor belt to cram every level of the judiciary with partisan conservative judges, filling seats that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell forced President Obama to leave empty. The goal of this strategy is to seize control of the third, unelected branch of government and use it to prevent the elected branches, if they ever return to majority rule, from governing. What we’re hearing now from these latter-day Calhouns is fear of representative democracy.”

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are answering questions about “court-packing” by pointing out that the Republicans are doing it right now. As Harris has noted, “of the 50 people who President Trump appointed to the Court of Appeals for lifetime appointments, not one is Black.” Biden has said, ““We should be focused on what’s happening right now,” he said. “And the fact is that the only packing going on is this court is being packed now by the Republicans after the vote has already begun. I’m going to stay focused on it so we don’t take our eyes off the ball here.”… The size of the high court has been changed a half-dozen times in U.S. history, and the Constitution’s framers deliberately allowed for changing the size without requiring a constitutional amendment. Besides, what alternative to Democrats have, other than meekly accepting McConnell’s abuse of long-standing, bipartisan hearing procedures? Allowing 6-3 Republican majority to stand would mean, not only a reversal of Roe v. Wade, marriage equality and ending the Affordable Care Act, but even more tolerance for voter suppression, crushing unions, undermining employee rights, weakening environmental, criminal justice and consumer protections, to name a few endangered Democratic reforms. Democrats have a job to do in educating the public about the need to expand the Supreme Court. But not using the rules to to their advantage, as McConnell does all the time, would be political suicide. The radicalism of McConnell, more than anyone else, has made expanding the court nearly inevitable.

In “Pack” the Supreme Court? Absolutely 100% yes — it’s the only way to save democracy” at salon.com, Paul Rosenberg quotes University of Washington political scientist Scott Lemieux, who has pointed out that violations of bipartisan norms have “all led to constitutional crises that ended only when the court itself backed down,” including Franklin D. Roosevelt’s oft-misremembered confrontation, which put an end to the court striking down New Deal legislation, most notably the Social Security Act. Nor is there any “normal” way out through political victory, Lemieux warns: A 6-3 conservative majority “would be essentially impossible for Democrats to displace through ordinary means, irrespective of the results of future elections.”…So what might seem in isolation like an extreme or unwarranted norm-breaking move by Democrats is actually the exact opposite: an act of restoration to the guiding shared norms that have predominated across better than two centuries. Continued violation of these shared norms will only intensify the erosion of trust that brought us Donald Trump in the first place, and which he has greatly intensified with the enthusiastic cooperation of Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell…So expanding the Supreme Court is the only option. As I said earlier, the real question is by how much.”

Notre Dame history professor Bill Svelmoe has a suggestion for Democratic senators questioning Judge Amy Barrett at the Supreme Court hearings, which begin Monday. An excerpt from his Facebook page: “If Democrats do attend the hearings, they should not focus on Barrett’s views on any future cases. She’ll just dodge those questions anyway…Instead Democrats should focus on the past four years of the Trump administration…“Judge Barrett, would you please explain the emoluments clause in the Constitution. [She does.] Judge Barrett, if a president were to refuse to divest himself of his properties and, in fact, continue to steer millions of dollars of tax payer money to his properties, would this violate the emoluments clause?”…Then turn to the Hatch Act. “Judge Barrett, would you please explain the Hatch Act to the American people….Then turn to all the other violations of the Hatch Act during the Republican Convention. Get Barrett’s opinion on those. Then turn to Congressional Oversight.“…Then go through all of the contacts between the Trump administration and Russians during the election and get her opinion on whether these amount to collusion. Doesn’t matter how she answers. It gets Trump’s perfidy back in front of Americans right before the election…Ask her about the separation of children from their parents at the border. And on and on and on through the worst and most corrupt administration in our history…Even if Barrett bobs and weaves and dodges all of this, it reminds Americans right before the election of just how awful this administration has been…”

At Politico, Holly Otterbein explains why “‘Forgotten’ Pennsylvania region holds key to Trump’s fate” – and why watching election returns from PA’s Luzerne County may provide an early election eve ‘tell’ about the 2020 presidential election outcome: “Trump won working-class Luzerne by 26,000 votes in 2016 — nearly 60 percent of his margin of victory in a state that he narrowly carried. As part of his strategy to win Pennsylvania again, his campaign is betting on increased turnout in the small cities and rural reaches of the northeast…If Biden somehow managed to take back Luzerne County, it would make it virtually impossible for Trump to win Pennsylvania — and likely the presidency. It would also signal that Democrats had loosened the GOP’s grip on blue-collar white voters, something that could have ramifications for years to come. In fact, even if Biden simply cut back the size of Trump’s victory in the region, it would make Trump’s path to victory in the state very difficult.”

In “Republicans express fears Donald Trump will lose presidential election” at The Guardian, Richard Luscombe writes, “Ted Cruz fears an election “bloodbath”. His fellow top Republican senator Thom Tillis is talking in terms of a Joe Biden presidency. And even Mitch McConnell, the fiercely loyal Senate majority leader, won’t go near the White House over Donald Trump’s handling of coronavirus protocols…Individually, they could arguably be seen as off-the-cuff comments from Trump’s allies attempting to rally support for the US president just days ahead of a general election that opinion polls increasingly show him losing…But collectively, along with pronouncements from several other Republicans appearing to distance themselves from Trump, his administration and its policies, it reflects growing concern inside the Republican party’s top tier that 3 November could be a blowout win for Joe Biden and the Democrats…“I think it could be a terrible election. I think we could lose the White House and both houses of Congress, that it could be a bloodbath of Watergate proportions,” Cruz, the junior senator for Texas and former vocal critic of Trump, said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Friday.”

In another article in The Atlantic, “Trump’s Very Ordinary Indifference to the Common Good,” Brooke Harrington, author of Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent, amplifiess a theme that might make for a potent Democratic ad. As Harrington writes, “what The New York Times revealed in its recent reporting on Trump’s tax returns was not just one man’s refusal of his fiscal obligations. Those returns, along with Trump’s whole approach to governing, are a concrete manifestation of a broader and more troubling phenomenon: an elite insurgency in which wealthy, well-connected people around the world stiff the societies that gave them success. Observing Trump’s open defiance of the law and rejection of accountability, many critics have attributed the pattern to the quirks of Trump’s individual psychology. But they have missed the larger picture: This president is an entirely ordinary member of a global elite whose members believe that rules are for chumps…His offhand remark while filming Access Hollywood 15 years ago could serve as the unofficial motto for the whole offshore world: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Put another way, it’s the arrogance, stupid.

At Vox, Ella Nilsen, Dylan Scott, and Li Zhou probe “What a Democratic Senate wants,” and explain: “If they flip the Senate, Democrats are clear-eyed that their first priority must be more Covid-19 relief — especially now that a preelection deal looks increasingly unlikely. Up next is trying to supercharge a lagging economy with a green jobs bill, likely including a massive infrastructure package on which Democrats hope to find common ground with Republicans. Democrats also want to pass sweeping anti-corruption reforms, enhance and expand the Affordable Care Act, consider a public option, and take up a criminal justice bill to combat police brutality against Black Americans. And that doesn’t even get to other priorities like immigration reform or passing universal background checks…Broadly, some senior Democrats are imagining what they have called a “never again” agenda if they control the White House and Congress, a response to Covid-19 that addresses many of America’s economic and health disparities exposed by the pandemic. Covering the 30 million or so Americans who are still uninsured would be a natural fit for such a legislative agenda. “First, you have to stop the bleeding,” one senior Democratic official said recently. “But if we don’t take full advantage of this moment, we’ll be making a huge mistake.”

Some good points about the difference between legitimate “Poll watching” and intimidation in this video:

The sort of ho-hum reaction to Mike Pence’s evasions during the veep debate really annoyed me when it came to one subject, so I wrote about it at New York:

In public appearances, politicians often avoid discussion of their more unpopular positions. When they are at or near the top of a party ticket, moreover, they tend to downplay policy stances that divide their own team or that are under internal discussion. That’s why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris didn’t directly answer questions about hypothetical “court-packing” schemes that Democrats might or might not pursue if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed as Trump’s third Supreme Court justice. And it’s why Donald Trump and Mike Pence evade blunt questions about the administration’s Cheshire cat of a health-care plan.

But lumping all the evasions together as functionally equivalent isn’t right. One particular Pence side step in Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate is astonishing if you know anything about the man’s long history as a crusader against legalized abortion. Asked by moderator Susan Page what he’d want his own state of Indiana to do if Roe v. Wade is reversed and states could outlaw abortion, Pence would not answer other than a vague reference to himself as “pro-life,” a term that means different things to different people. That Pence has any doubt whatsoever on exactly what he’d want Indiana to do in this suddenly very plausible hypothetical situation is preposterous, unless he’s been lying to us for his entire public career.

You don’t have to go very far to find out what Pence’s attitude toward the abortion laws of Indiana might be: As governor of the state from 2013 to 2016, he signed eight bills aimed at testing the willingness of federal courts to accept an erosion of reproductive rights while harassing abortion providers and the women who rely on them.

Before that, during his six terms in the House, Pence established the crusading identity on this subject that led Marjorie Dannenfelser of the hard-line anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List to praise him as a “pro-life trailblazer” and the best of all possible choices as Trump’s 2016 running mate. He was best known for launching the relentless attacks on public funding for Planned Parenthood that soon became part of the anti-abortion movement’s playbook at every level of government. The “defund Planned Parenthood” campaign he began nearly led to a government shutdown in 2011 and again in 2015, and was a symbolic expression of the grip the ban-abortion cause had on the Republican Party.

And speaking of that grip, Pence’s GOP has for many, many years been united in insisting that Roe v. Wade be replaced not by some sort of live-and-let-live states’ rights position on abortion policy but with a constitutional amendment banning abortion nationwide permanently. (This Human Life Amendment has been in every Republican platform since 1980.) There have been occasional attempts (by presidential nominees in particular) to insist on exceptions for pregnancies that are the product of rape and incest, or that threaten the life of the woman being ordered to carry the pregnancy to term. But the basic principal of making abortion illegal has been sacrosanct, as Michael Kinsley explained in 2012:

“Ever since [1984], with various rhetorical flourishes, the platform has contained the same four elements: 1) the unborn child has a ‘fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed’; 2) endorsement of a ‘human life’ constitutional amendment; 3) a call for judges who ‘respect human life’; and 4) new laws to ‘make clear’ that the fetus is a ‘person’ under the 14th Amendment. Paul Ryan has co-sponsored such legislation, declaring that the fetus is a ‘person.'”

An even more visible proponent of “personhood” legislation has been — you guessed it — Mike Pence. Brian Tashman explained the significance of this position when Pence joined Trump’s ticket in 2016:

“Advocates of federal personhood bills believe that if Congress passes legislation defining ‘personhood’ as beginning at conception, they can bypass and nullify Roe v. Wade, criminalizing abortion nationwide with no exceptions. While the personhood movement has traditionally sat on the far-right fringes of the anti-abortion movement, in recent years Republican politicians like Pence have brought the extremist cause into the GOP mainstream. Unlike more established abortion rights opponents that seek to cut off access to abortion and gradually outlaw the procedure, personhood activists want the government to immediately end abortion in all cases.”

Dubious as it is as a legal theory for circumventing the Constitution, the “personhood” movement is also too radical for the taste of many abortion opponents, suggesting as it does that certain forms of contraception might be banned as interfering with the development of a fertilized ovum. Personhood ballot initiatives have lost badly in Colorado, North Dakota, and (most recently) Mississippi. That Pence is inclined to go that far is another indication, should you need one, that he has not an ounce of doubt about the righteousness of taking control of reproductive systems from sea to shining sea.

On top of his single-issue devotion to the anti-abortion cause, pursuing that cause to its logical end of outlawing all abortions is Job One for a Christian right religiopolitical movement that regards Pence as its indispensable champion in the court of our erratic president. Here’s how I described Pence’s importance to Trump’s “faithful believers” in a review of a recent book about Trump’s relationship with conservative evangelicals:

“You can sense the authors’ nagging doubts, though, perhaps nourished by the new president’s nasty Twitter language and other forms of thuggish behavior toward critics. Near the very end of the book they bring in their star witness for Trump’s inner transformation: Vice-President Mike Pence, the Christian-right warhorse who constantly attests to the president’s reliance on both prayer and the prayer warriors (like Trump’s all-Evangelical Faith Advisory Committee) for whom Pence runs interference.”

All in all, it’s as likely that Pence would stop short of a total abortion ban in a world where the Supreme Court didn’t stand in his way as it is that Bernie Sanders will become a hedge-fund manager or Donald Trump a soup-kitchen cook. It’s the one thing about him that is most certain. And it’s precisely why he and his allies are so excited about Barrett’s potential advent to the Supreme Court.

So Pence’s evasions say a lot about the dishonesty of the anti-abortion movement and its doubts that its cause is winning the hearts and minds of the American people. All the efforts to distract attention from their fundamental radicalism with hand-wringing over a tiny number of late-term abortions can’t disguise that basic fact.

There is an ongoing argument about how much newspaper endorsements of political candidates actually matter in the digital age. But any presidential candidate would rather have, than not have, the endorsement of the major daily newspaper of Florida’s second largest metropolitan area. So, here are some excerpts from the well-reasoned Tampa Bay Times endorsement of Joe Biden for President of the United States:

Joe Biden should be our next president. A battered and divided country must hit the reset button. The nation needs a leader who can pull us back together, who wants to pull us back together. Sure, disagree on policies and debate the issues. But a president should not routinely sow discord. Self-promotion should not be his best skill. Our allies should not wince when the president speaks. The less fortunate should feel they are a part of us, not castoffs on a cruel game show. Biden promises needed change. The alternative could be perilous for our democracy.

Biden knows tragedy, and he’s at his best when talking about moving beyond it. He lost a wife and infant daughter to a car accident and an adult son to a brain tumor. He speaks of pain and healing and recovery — with authority and empathy. He comforts military families, knowing how it feels to send a son into a combat zone. He still believes in the legislative process, even when it’s divisive and bogged down. He hasn’t lost his faith in the system and looks for ways to bring sides together. Biden is not afraid of the hard work involved in finding common ground. To him, compromise isn’t a dirty word, but he’s also known to fight hard for what he believes, like when he championed the Violence Against Women Act in the 1990s…Trump is angry, divisive, entitled. Biden is open, empathetic, caring. He would return decency and decorum to the presidency, a welcome example at home and abroad.

Credit the TBT editorial board with understanding that Americans are sick of Trump’s polarizing rhetoric and his daily deluge of rancid insults and threats. It’s no accident that Biden, the Democrat who articulates a vision of healing and unity, won his party’s nomination. The endorsement continues,

Biden’s adversaries try to paint him as beholden to liberal extremists, but the record exposes that tired political tactic. He has worked with Republicans on foreign policy and criminal justice. He has backed protesters’ right to protest, but condemned looting and violence. He’s a centrist, willing to push big ideas, but also capable of keeping his own party’s left wing in check.

Biden’s sensible, pragmatic approach to leadership will help the country combat the coronavirus. He has vowed to be transparent about who’s contracting the disease and how often. He’ll trust the experts and the scientists as we push for a vaccine. He won’t rush the recovery to score political points. To protect himself and those around him, he’ll wear a mask, setting an example of good judgment.

In stark contrast, the TBT editorial board notes, “At the outset, Trump publicly pooh-poohed the virus, even as he was privately telling journalist Bob Woodward it was a grave danger. There is no better example of Trump’s central character flaw: He will always put self-interest above national interest.” Further, “Where Trump and his allies want to take away access to health care, Biden will work to improve and expand it, including lowering the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60. He would keep the Affordable Care Act and try to reinstate the parts eroded during Trump’s tenure. He proposes capping health insurance premiums at 8.5 percent of family income.” Trump, on the other hand has failed to come up with anything resembling a health care plan, and he gutted the CDC’s capacity to address the pandemic.

The endorsement also holds Trump accountable for his grotesque abuse of the presidency, noting that “Trump has undermined democracy at every turn, belittling American institutions including the intelligence community, wailing about “rigged” elections, flirting with white supremacists, cozying up to dictators, dismissing established science, and attacking anyone who disagrees with him — even those who have served his administration.” In addition,

Trump hasn’t created law and order, as he often boasts. To the contrary, he has fanned violence with his rhetoric, and he shows little respect for the rule of law. When his longtime ally Roger Stone was convicted of making false statements, witness tampering and obstructing in connection with the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Trump came to the rescue by commuting his sentence. Trump’s cronies get indicted and convicted at an astounding rate. He’s also pardoned several of his lawbreaking friends and supporters, a trend surely to continue if he is elected to a second term…Trump loves to bluster, hates to plan, revels in chaos and lacks concern for anyone but himself. He is hurting America.

An apt summary of the damage done to America by Trump. Looking toward the future, the Tampa Bay Times editorial board concludes: “Over a long career and the gantlet of a presidential campaign, Biden outmatches his opponent at every turn. He’s a decent man and a leader who can help heal the country and put it back on course to meet the pressing challenges of our times. America needs a new president. TheTampa Bay Times Editorial Board strongly recommends Democrat Joe Biden.”

The President has been doing everything he can to make Election Night and the days and weeks afterwards a dangerous and potentially violent juncture. But as I noted at New York, there are real and powerful differences at work as well:

In the wake of the beer-hall ambience of this week’s first presidential debate, it’s probably no surprise that a new study suggests a coarsening of political attitudes among Americans. But researchers want to make it clear that it’s not just crude talk or combative rhetoric that’s on the rise: it’s a bipartisan trend toward condoning potential violence after the election. It’s unclear whether, or how, the president’s COVID-19 infection will affect the atmosphere — it could be sobering, or it could increase tensions even more — but as a symbol of perpetually unsettling times, it’s just more of the new normal.

The violence study was authored by an unusually distinguished and bipartisan group of researchers whose work involves studying Americans’ political attitudes. As they explain in Politico, “Late last year, we noticed an uptick in the number of respondents saying they would condone violence by their own political party, and we decided to combine our data sets to get as much information as possible on this worrisome trend.” What they found was indeed disturbing:

“Among Americans who identify as Democrat or Republican, 1 in 3 now believe that violence could be justified to advance their parties’ political goals—a substantial increase over the last three years.

“In September, 44 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats said there would be at least ‘a little’ justification for violence if the other party’s nominee wins the election. Those figures are both up from June, when 35 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats expressed the same sentiment.”

Perhaps more important, there’s a hard kernel of politically engaged Americans who might be the first in the streets if things go really bad:

“There has been an even larger increase in the share of both Democrats and Republicans who believe there would be either ‘a lot’ or ‘a great deal’ of justification for violence if their party were to lose in November. The share of Republicans seeing substantial justification for violence if their side loses jumped from 15 percent in June to 20 percent in September, while the share of Democrats jumped from 16 percent to 19 percent.”

The numbers almost certainly reflect a steadily increasing bipartisan belief that the other side is preparing to seize the presidency by illegitimate means. Most of that is attributable to the president, who has been alleging over and over that Democrats plan to “rig” the election via manipulation of mail ballots. Trump’s subsequent refusal to say anything reassuring about his willingness to accept an election loss has produced a countervailing conviction among left-of-center observers that he is planning to contest the results if he loses, perhaps by a premature victory declaration on Election Night, or maybe by preventing the full counting of votes in the courts or even by force.

And even among those who don’t necessarily suspect the other side of plans to steal the election, there is a growing awareness that resolution of this election could drag on for an unprecedented length of time as the parties battle in court over a bumper crop of slowly counted mail ballots. If the presidential contest is as close as most expect, this period of post-election uncertainty could violently spill over into the streets. While the roughly one-in-five voters in the new study who think violence might well be justified may not themselves take to the barricades, there will clearly be a large enough pool of sympathizers to make large-scale conflicts possible. Even peaceful protests could turn ugly.

What can be done to turn down the temperature? The study’s authors clearly think it’s a leadership issue:

“Recent research on the United States reaffirms this timeless truth: Leaders play an essential role in fueling the fire or extinguishing the flames of violence among their followers. Preliminary studies show that messages from Biden or Trump denouncing all violence can reduce mass approval of violence.”

Biden has already done that, and it seems unlikely that after having spent months and months relentlessly undermining the legitimacy of the election Trump is going to say “Just kidding!” or even “Yes, the election is rigged, but nobody should get too upset over it!” Calming the waters really isn’t his style.

But while Trump is clearly the arsonist striking matches in a bone-dry forest, let’s not pretend that partisan and ideological polarization in this country is all artificial or cynically manufactured. Trump is a master of exploiting Americans’ existing divisions, which reflect significant disagreements on values and priorities. I won’t go through an exhaustive list, but a moment’s thought conjures up many. Many millions of Americans believe legalized abortion is an American holocaust, while many millions more view revocation of reproductive rights as a barbaric relic of ancient patriarchy that reduces women to brood mares under state supervision. There is a growing conviction on the left that climate change is an imminent threat to the survival of civilization, and a growing conviction on the right that the discussion of climate change is a ruse to justify the introduction of socialism. One large segment of the population thinks systemic racism against Blacks and other minority groups is a cancer eating at American society, breeding inequity and injustice. Another thinks that this is tantamount to the destruction of white people, aided by “political correctness” and “cancel culture” wiping out free speech.

And much more fundamentally, American conservatism is dominated by those who believe that the “inalienable rights” that make the country what it is include property rights, religious rights, gun rights, parental rights, and of course a fetal “right to life” — all based on divine will, natural law, and the wisdom of the Founders — that no majority, however large, should ever be allowed to traduce. And an increasingly alarmed and dominant faction of American progressives believe a coalition of economic and cultural reactionaries are successfully mastering the tools of institutional and economic power to frustrate the popular will and entrench their own power perpetually.

These are not beliefs and fears that you can talk away or resolve with a blue-ribbon commission, although that is what, predictably, the authors of the violence report suggested:

“The best hope now to tamp down support for this potential political violence is to establish an independent, bipartisan third force—a broad commission of distinguished leaders and democratic elders of both parties and of civil society. Its mission would be to reaffirm and defend our democratic norms, especially the critical principles that every valid vote should be counted and that political violence is never justified in the United States. Congress should immediately appoint such a commission.”

This is not the sort of thing that a deeply divided Congress is likely to do, and while harmless, the suggestion is based on the idea that there is general acceptance of what “democratic norms” mean at a time when the president and his party argue that “every valid vote” excludes many millions of mail ballots. But more basically, papering over partisan and ideological differences misses the essential point of why they exist.

Minimizing their significance is actually an insult to the very idea of principled activism. Conservatives are not wrong to recognize that massive demographic, technological, and cultural trends threaten a way of life they desperately want to preserve, and progressives are not wrong to recognize the old institutional arrangements that kept politics ostensibly “peaceful” were intended to maintain a deeply unjust status quo.

If the president has his way, we may find out this very year how rickety the old institutional arrangements for presidential elections are, and how violently large numbers of people care about the outcome. I pray we can avoid pitched battles in the streets, and if we are lucky, avoid a contested election. But let’s not pretend people are ready to take matters into their own hands because of a frivolous partisanship that has no place in America. If we’ve learned anything in this plague year, it should be that politics matter, and that (as Trump rightly said in the first debate) elections have consequences. Violence can indeed set our country on fire, but the kindling is all around us.

Debates are seldom pivotal for determining election outcomes, but Democrats should be encouraged by Andrew Prokop’s “The first post-VP debate poll says Kamala Harris won” at Vox, which notes that “the first poll we have of vice presidential debateviewers is good news for Sen. Kamala Harris — and her running mate, Joe Biden…The poll, conducted by CNN and SSRS, found that 59 percent of debate watchers thought Harris won, and 38 percent thought Vice President Mike Pence won, an impressive margin of victory for Harris…In comparison, a poll by CNN after the 2016 vice presidential debate found that Pence won: 48 percent of respondents that year gave the victory to Pence and 42 percent to Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)… CNN’s David Chalian pointed out on air that part of Harris’s margin is explained by the poll’s sample skewing more Democratic. But that’s not enough to explain all of Harris’s margin: 38 percent of respondents were Democrats, 29 percent were Republicans, and 33 percent were independents…69 percent of women who watched thought Harris won, and 30 percent thought Pence did. Among male viewers, it was a near tie — 48 percent thought Harris won, and 46 percent thought Pence did.”

Looking ahead to the next presidential debate, Dan Merica. Kevin Bohn and Chandelis Duster report at CNN Politics that “Trump says he won’t participate in next debate after commission announces it will be virtual,” and write, “The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which the candidates would participate from separate remote locations,” the commission said in a statement. “The town meeting participants and the moderator, Steve Scully, Senior Executive Producer & Political Editor, C-SPAN Networks, will be located at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in Miami, Florida. The White House Pool will provide coverage of the second presidential debate.”…”I am not going to do a virtual debate,” Trump said on Fox Business. “I am not going to waste my time on a virtual debate.”…Trump’s comment throws into question the second debate after the commission took the significant steep to wholly remake the contest between the two candidates. The move was seen as needed by members of the debate commission given the uncertainty around the President’s health.”

Ramsey Touchberry writes at Newsweek: “Senate Republicans enter the final weeks of this election pouring millions of dollars into states they never expected would be competitive, and are still struggling to explain their indefensible records of voting to eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions and their failed coronavirus response…Sen. Martha McSally (R) is projected to lose her re-election fight to Democrat Mark Kelly, a former astronaut. Cook Political Report rates the race as “lean Democrat.” FiveThirtyEight predicts there is a 79 percent chance Kelly wins…Sen. Cory Gardner (R) is also projected by Cook to lose against Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper. Cook has the race as “lean Democrat.” FiveThirtyEight gives Hickenlooper a 75 percent chance of winning, up from 65 percent on September 2….Cook rates the match between Sen. Susan Collins (R) and Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, as a “toss-up.” FiveThirtyEight has increased the likelihood Gideon unseats Collins from 51 percent on September 16 to 62 percent as of Tuesday….Another “toss-up” race by Cook, FiveThirtyEight shows Sen. Joni Ernst (R) and Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield virtually tied. Last month, they predicted Ernst with a 59 percent chance of winning but have since decreased it to 51 percent.”

“President Trump spent Tuesday night tweeting madly for hours about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and various conspiracy theories about the 2016 election,” Heather Digby Parton writes at salon.com. “Twitterati speculated that his experimental drug cocktail and steroid treatment for COVID-19 might be making him manic and grandiose. But how could you tell, really? This is pretty much his normal modus operandi…Considering the Soviet-style propaganda campaign they’ve been running at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that’s no surprise…The White House is apparently in total chaos, which isn’t really news, but there does seem to be a certain desperation that isn’t always present. This is likely because of Trump’s atrocious messaging to the public over the past few days, in which he’s pretending he has “beaten” the virus with his strength and virility, and telling people to stop letting the virus “dominate” their lives.”

Here’s a better than usual social media meme for Democratic messaging about Trump’s Covid-19 rant:

In “GOP Senate majority at risk after monster fundraising quarter by Democrats,” David M. Drucker writes at the San Francisco Examiner: “Democratic candidates are raising hundreds of millions of dollars. Even previously overlooked challengers saw their coffers swell with contributions from energized grassroots liberals in July, August, and September, turning sleepy Senate races into a potential nightmare for sitting Republicans and the party’s precarious three-seat majority…It’s no longer just Arizona, Colorado, and Maine, blue-trending battlegrounds where Republicans were prepared for a dogfight from the beginning of the 2020 cycle — or purple states such as Iowa and North Carolina. They are now looking over their shoulder in typically ruby-red territory such as Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, and South Carolina….“The numbers are astounding,” GOP operative Doug Heye said. “Republicans are right to be concerned.”..Third-quarter fundraising totals are not due to be released until Oct. 15. But Democrats have begun publicizing their numbers…The cash allows Democratic challengers a chance to drown out Republicans on television and fund robust voter turnout operations with all of the technological frills.”

Nathaniel Rakich shares findings from FiveThirtyEight’s “third and final forecast of the 2020 election,” and writes, “while Democrats are slight favorites to flip the Senate and Joe Biden is a solid-but-not-overwhelming front-runner for the presidency, Democrats have between a 92 and 97 percent chance of keeping control of the House…Democrats must defend 30 seats in districts won by President Trump in 2016 (as opposed to only six Republicans who sit in districts that Hillary Clinton carried)…And now that we have a House forecast, we can combine it with our Senate and presidential forecasts to determine the odds that either Democrats or Republicans will have full control of the federal government…the likeliest scenario is that Democrats will win full control of the federal government: There’s a 63 in 100 chance of that happening…But there is also a good chance (31 in 100) that we will once again have a divided government in Washington…”

From today’s update on election trends by Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Recent rosy polling for Joe Biden in the presidential race may represent an artificial sugar high for the challenger…But at this point, Donald Trump needs to be making up ground — not treading water or falling further behind…11 rating changes across four categories of races (president, Senate, House, and governor) almost exclusively benefit Democrats…Biden’s leads in the RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight polling averages are now close to 10 points apiece, and a couple of respected national polls, CNN/SSRS and NBC News/Wall Street Journal, have shown Biden leading by 16 and 14 points, respectively. The state-level numbers generally have been bad for the president, too: for instance, Monmouth University pegged Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania earlier this week at around 10 points; the pollster’s previous Keystone State survey had Biden up only a few points based on different turnout models. In other words, one of the better state-level polls for Trump in a key state was reversed in fresher polling.”

At CNN Politics, Harry Enten explains “How Trump’s losing among seniors at a historic rate“:

Biden’s well on his way to doing better with seniors than any Democratic nominee in at least 24 years.

Take a look at our latest CNN/SSRS poll. Biden’s up by 21 points among voters 65 and older. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out over the weekend put him up by 27 points with seniors…These are, to put it mildly, massive differences from 2016. In the final average of registered-voter polls, Trump led Clinton by 5 points among seniors. His advantage was 6 points among likely voters. These polls are suggesting something along the lines of 25- to 30-point shifts in Biden’s direction.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

There has been considerable rending of garments about Trump’s inroads into the Hispanic vote, especially in Florida. But how much of a problem is this really for the Democratic ticket? Here’s the latest from the very high quality New York Times/Sienna poll of Florida (overall, Biden +5).

“The Times/Siena poll found no signs of any significant gains by Mr. Trump among the state’s Hispanic voters…with Mr. Biden leading among that group, 58-34. In Miami-Dade County over all, Mr. Biden leads, 61-30. In both cases, the results are comparable to or better than Hillary Clinton’s margin four years ago…”

In FL in 2016, States of Change estimates Clinton carried the Hispanic vote by just 15 points. Maybe Hispanics are less of a problem for Biden than people seen to think they are.

Mary Papenfuss notes in “Horrified Walter Reed Attending Physician Slams Trump’s Drive-By Risk To Secret Service” at HuffPo: “An attending physician at Walter Reed Medical Center blasted the “astounding irresponsibility” of President Donald Trump, saying he put the lives of Secret Service agents at risk to wave at his fans from his motorcade on Sunday…Trump made a spur-of-the-moment decision to briefly leave the hospital where’s he being treated for COVID-19 to do a “surprise” drive-by in the presidential SUV to wave to supporters — whom he called “great patriots” — gathered outside. “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Dr. James Phillips tweeted. “They might get sick…Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity,” Phillips said of the agents accompanying Trump…Phillips — the head of Disaster and Operational Medicine in the Emergency Medicine Department of the George Washington University School of Medicine —  noted that the SUV is hermetically sealed to protect against chemical attacks. “The risk of COVID-19 transmission inside is as high as it gets,” other than during medical procedures, he added.”

Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic could hurt with senior voters. As Harold Gold writes at Marketwatch, “In an interview, economist Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at The New School in New York City and one of the nation’s leading experts on retirement, told me that half—that’s right, half—of Americans aged 55 and up will retire in poverty or near poverty…“Our data is showing that, because of the COVID recession, about 50% of workers over the age of 55 will be poor or near-poor adults when they reach 65,” she said.” Gold asks, “What’s behind this? People losing their jobs and health insurance because of COVID-19? Or losing the employer match on their 401(k) contributions? Or having to tap into retirement savings to cover daily expenses? “All of the above,” said Ghilarducci…But it starts with job losses. “Older workers are losing their jobs at a faster rate, relative to younger people and relative to where they had been before than they were in the Great Recession,” she told me…A report done by the New School Retirement Equity Lab found that over half of older unemployed workers may be forced into involuntary retirement. Nearly three million older workers have left the labor force since March and if the economic disruptions caused by COVID-19 continue, another million could join them soon…“

According to Data for Progress, “Our new Senate polling is showing really good signs for Democrats. We find:

• In Maine, Democrat Sara Gideon has opened up a five point lead over Republican incumbent Susan Collins (46-41).

• In Iowa, Democrat Theresa Greenfield has a narrow edge over Republican incumbent Joni Ernst (46-45).

• In Arizona, Mark Kelly has a commanding nine-point lead over Republican incumbent Martha McSally (51-42).

• In South Carolina, Democrat Jaime Harrison is inches away from Republican incumbent Lindsay Graham — he’s down by just one point (44-45)…That’s right: even in South Carolina, Democrats have a serious shot at flipping Republican-held Senate seats. Read our writeup on these results for Crooked by clicking here.”

Data for Progress also noted of the first presidential candidate debate that “Viewers also thought Biden was more “presidential” than Trump by an even wider margin (53-33). Crucially, this includes Independents and Third Party voters, who rated Biden as more presidential by a 20-point margin…But Biden didn’t just win the debate on character — he won it on policy grounds as well. Voters think he’ll handle race relations, the coronavirus pandemic, the integrity of our elections, and the Supreme Court better than Trump. That said, respondents narrowly preferred Trump’s position on the economy.” A chart:

In “Post-debate CNN poll: Six in 10 say Biden won the debate,” Jennifer Agiesta writes at CNN Politics: “Six in 10 debate watchers said former Vice President Joe Biden did the best job in Tuesday’s debate, and just 28% say President Donald Trump did, according a CNN Poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS…In interviews with the same voters conducted before the debate, 56% said they expected Biden to do the better job while 43% expected that Trump would…About two-thirds said Biden’s answers were more truthful than Trump’s (65% Biden to 29% Trump), and his attacks on the President were more frequently seen as fair. Overall, 69% called Biden’s attacks on Trump fair while just 32% said Trump’s attacks were fair…A majority of debate watchers (57%) said that Tuesday’s debate did not affect their choice for president, while the minority who said they were moved were more apt to say they became more likely to vote Biden (32%) than Trump (11%).” However, “The voters who watched the debate were more partisan than Americans as a whole — 36% identified as independents or non-partisans compared with around 40% in the general public, and the group of debate watchers was more Democratic than a typical survey of all adults, with 39% identifying as Democrats and 25% as Republicans.”

“Joe Biden’s national lead over President Donald Trump nearly doubled after Tuesday’s presidential debate, with voters saying by 2-to-1 that Biden has the better temperament to be president, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. As Mark Murray writes at nbcnews.com, “The poll was conducted in the two days after the unruly and insult-filled debate Tuesday but before Trump tested positive for Covid-19 and was hospitalized Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center…Biden is now ahead of Trump by 14 points among registered voters, 53 percent to 39 percent — up from his 8-point lead in the previous poll, before the debate…The biggest declines for Trump were among seniors (who now back Biden by 62 percent to 35 percent) and suburban women (58 percent to 33 percent)…And men 50 years and older moved to a 1-point advantage for Biden in the latest poll, compared to a 13-point advantage for Trump in the pre-debate NBC News/WSJ poll.”

Regarding Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Murray adds, “The poll asked voters about Trump’s pick to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett…Thirty-five percent of registered voters say they support Barrett’s nomination, while 33 percent oppose it; 30 percent say they don’t know enough about her…The findings are similar to the first NBC News/WSJ numbers on Trump’s 2018 Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh, whom the Senate confirmed by a narrow 50-48 vote…In a separate question, 50 percent of voters say they would prefer the Senate to wait to fill the Supreme Court seat until there’s a winner in the presidential contest, while 38 percent want a vote before the election.”

Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman explain why “Biden Lead Looks Firmer as Midwest Moves His Way” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and note, “Joe Biden is now over 270 electoral votes in our ratings as we move several Midwestern states in his favor.” Kondik and Coleman move Ohio and Iowa from “leans Republican” to “toss-up” and they now have Minnesota moving from” leans Democratic” to “likely Democratic,” and they move Wisconsin from “toss-up” to “leans Democratic. They add, “Changes in the battle for Congress benefit Democrats almost exclusively. We’re moving two Senate races in their direction, as well as several House contests.” Their updated Electoral College map:

After pondering the first presidential candidate debate, I noticed a telling habit of Trump’s and wrote about it at New York:

Viewers who endured to the end of the first Biden-Trump presidential debate in Cleveland did not come away with the impression that either candidate was a modern-day Demosthenes; indeed, there were long stretches in which a complete sentence was not uttered. But unlike Joe Biden, who was as intelligible as most people his age when forced to stay up late, President Trump exhibited an increasingly visible habit of speaking in a sort of shorthand or code. National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty explains it very well:

“By far Trump’s most self-defeating habit in these debates is to refer to stories rather than tell them. He speaks as if he’s talking to people who, like himself, spend hours a day watching Fox News and have a shared folklore of scandal stories that can be referred to in shorthand. He refers to events, like ballots found in a wastepaper basket, but doesn’t tell the story of where they happened, or why they matter.”

Sometimes Trump adopts characterizations from conservative media that are axiomatic to their audiences, but not to puzzled undecided voters. A good example from the debate was the follow-up to Trump’s charge that Biden wants to eliminate private health insurance, which he hotly denied (unsurprisingly to anyone who watched the interminable discussions of Medicare for All in the Democratic primary debates). Trump’s riposte was not entirely in the English language:

“Joe, you agreed with Bernie Sanders, who’s far left, on the manifesto, we call it. And that gives you socialized medicine.”

Trump is alluding to the policy recommendations of the “unity task force” set up by Biden and Sanders in the wake of their primary fight. In a Wall Street Journal column someone must have clipped for Trump, former Republican senator Phil Gramm called the agreement a “manifesto,” and claimed that Biden was accepting Medicare for All “on an installment plan.” In fact, the “unity task force” recommendations and his own campaign’s plans don’t go in that direction at all, which produced some bitter disappointment among single-payer health-care fans at the time

But Trump wouldn’t let go of it during the debate:

President Donald J. Trump:

Listen, you agreed with Bernie Sanders and the manifesto.

Vice President Joe Biden:

There is no manifesto, number one.

Chris Wallace:

Please let him speak, Mr. President.

Vice President Joe Biden:

Number two.

President Donald J. Trump:

He just lost the left.

Vice President Joe Biden:

Number two.

President Donald J. Trump:

You just lost the left. You agreed with Bernie Sanders on a plan that you absolutely agreed to and under that plan … they call it socialized medicine.

Convinced that he had nailed Biden for abandoning an imaginary deal with “the left” that conservative media invented, Trump seemed very pleased with himself.

At another juncture, the president showed an impressive ability to telescope multiple conservative myths about crime policy:

President Donald J. Trump:

You did a crime bill, 1994, where you call them super-predators. African-Americans are super-predators and they’ve never forgotten it. They’ve never forgotten it.

Vice President Joe Biden:

I’ve never said …

Chris Wallace:

No, no, sir. It’s his two minutes.

President Donald J. Trump:

So you did that and they call you a super-predator and I’m letting people out of jail now, that you have treated the African-American population community, you have treated the black community about as bad as anybody in this country.

Conservative media have gleefully seized upon progressive criticism of Biden and the Clinton administration’s sponsorship of a 1994 comprehensive crime measure that, among many other things, toughened mandatory federal sentencing for drug offenders. The bill at the time was attacked by Republicans as weak and loaded with liberal social spending (e.g., “midnight basketball” programs), not to mention gun control. Biden indeed never referred to anyone as “super-predators” (a term actually devised by crime policy maven John DiIulio, who later worked in the Bush White House), and Hillary Clinton’s single use of the term for members of gangs working for drug cartels came two years later.

The idea that Biden locked up Black voters while Trump is “letting people out of jail” comes from the claim by Trump and his fans that his single step toward criminal-justice reform, his signature on the First Step Act, executed reluctantly after he stalled more substantial legislation for years, was of revolutionary significance. Indeed, the idea that Trump single-handedly opened prison doors has been reinforced by some conservative attacks on “his” legislation.

It’s hard to imagine anyone who wasn’t familiar with this elaborate backstory understanding that exchange between Trump and Biden. But it was crystal clear compared to what the president did when the subject of election integrity came up at the very end of the debate, when Wallace asked the candidates: “What are you prepared to do to reassure the American people that the next president will be the legitimate winner of this election?”

Biden went first and assured viewers that he’d accept an election loss once all votes were counted, and that Trump would have no choice but to do the same. Here’s how Trump responded:

“So when I listen to Joe talking about a transition [he really didn’t], there has been no transition from when I won. I won that election. And if you look at crooked Hillary Clinton, if you look at all of the different people, there was no transition, because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won, and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our First Lady, they were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country, and we’ve caught them. We’ve caught them all. We’ve got it all on tape. We’ve caught them all. And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that, because we caught you in a sense, and President Obama was sitting in the office.”

This is an elaborate reference to the conspiracy theory known as “Obamagate,” the claim that the former president — along with his Justice Department, law-enforcement leaders, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden — conspired to persecute the Trump campaign and administration (and notably former national security adviser Michael Flynn) with fake charges of collusion with Russia, partly to cover up their own treasonous interactions with shadowy foreign powers. It’s been the go-to conservative counterpunch in response to the many investigations of the president in Congress and elsewhere, but it’s really not something you can even begin to grok unless you watch a lot of conservative media, as the Guardian noted earlier this year:

“According to research compiled by the Internet Archive, analysed by GDELT and released on Wednesday, since last week Fox News and Fox Business have mentioned Flynn, the FBI and Obama far more often than the coronavirus.

“Nor has such coverage just been pursued by opinion hosts like Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. Hosts of supposedly straight news content have happily followed suit.

“Critics and other media outlets have been quick to call out the supposed scandal, which the former Obama adviser David Plouffe called a ‘sideshow to distract from the shitshow.’”

After his Obamagate digression, Trump dealt with Wallace’s request (to which Biden responded positively) about reassuring viewers that the election results would be accepted by both candidates by saying: “It’s a disaster … this is going to be fraud like you’ve never seen.” And he then related an assortment of anecdotal claims about alleged mail-ballot fraud along with the big lie that Democratic-controlled states are sending out ballots “all over the place” in order to manufacture fake votes for Biden after Election Day.

Trump has himself been the trendsetter in this area of conspiracy-mongering, but what he is alluding to was laid out starkly in the reliably Trumpy journal The Federalist (among many, many examples):

“[W]hen you go to your local precinct to vote this fall, remember that coming behind in many states will be bags full of ballots from unseen persons. There will be no guarantee they’ll arrive on time. No, we will be told that the new system takes a little longer, with some likely tallied long after election day. And if the margin is narrow, is there any question as to which way the vote count will drift?

“More than this year’s election contests will be at stake. We may be witnesses to the end of election integrity.”

Trump and his acolytes have been discussing such lurid (if completely fabricated) scenarios for so long that it’s no wonder he feels little need to explain it methodically. And that’s his biggest problem, not just as a debater, but as a presidential candidate behind in the polls and struggling to deal with a dubious record. He seems incapable of talking to anyone who isn’t already a member of his base, familiar with its rituals, its catchphrases, and its eccentric view of history and current events. It’s likely far too late in this election cycle for him to change.