Just over two weeks left, and Joe Biden maintains a 9% lead in the RCP polling average. He is ahead in the battleground states, by margins ranging from 1.4% in Florida to 7.2% in Michigan. Over 20 million people have already voted as of Friday morning, and there is a widespread presumption that the early voting phenomenon favors Biden (although there is a minority report on that issue here).
Nate Silver's latest forecast details the highly favorable case for a Biden victory, and even the more cautiously optimistic case for a Democratic takeover of the Senate. "Cautious optimism," with the emphasis on caution, is how most Biden voters are feeling, as far as I can tell. Many are leery about getting their hopes too high. Never was there an election that seemed to cause a mass-case of PTSD like the 2016 election did.
As for myself, I was a pox-on-both-houses kind of guy in 2016 and voted for a 3rd party choice, so my reaction to the results was not devastation but rye cynicism. This time, however, I've got my hopes up. I never thought I'd be happy to see a Democrat elected to the Presidency, but as I've stated in this space numerous times, the greatest and most immediate problem facing this county in this moment is a man named Donald.
I have been a Never Trumper from the start, as one might gather from my frequent sharing of posts from the Never Trump flagship, The Bulwark. I think the best critiques of the president come from a roughly conservative perspective, or a "traditional liberal" one if you please. The leftist critique often begins well but then soon drifts into lalaland visions of some handmaiden dystopia and the like.
My problem with liberalism or more correctly modern progressivism is that there is no inherent break (philosophically speaking) against a continual drift leftward. There is nothing in the worldview of the progressive that says, this far and no farther. They have an incautious attitude (and indeed at times a downright trustful attitude) toward power, a silly Utopian strain mixed with a selective busybodyism, a problematic relationship with the very idea of freedom, and an almost unavoidable and annoying self-righteousness.
Ah, well. But all this, though it is problematic, is not so immediately destructive as the madness of King Donald, who a few days ago floated a conspiracy theory (an incoherent pastiche of a conspiracy theory) that included former President Obama having Seal Team 6 killed off. The fact that Donald, who defended himself by saying, well, heck, it's one point of view, and I'm just putting it out there so people can make up their minds, does not discern the true evil of turning his bully pulpit into repository of lies . . . well, let's just say it's deeply concerning.
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