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Well that's the thing.  Other than the attention and inability to be prosecuted, what is Trump wanting out of the job?  It's been a week and he's done *nothing*.  I don't remember who I'm quoting, but he seems to be doing everything he can to keep a job he doesn't even want.

This is my real fear.  I guess the good news is that such a person isn't really on the horizon.  If Trump is truly talking about 2024, then I think he's almost certainly the nominee.  No Republican has stood up to him yet, and I don't think anyone will between now and then.  If Trump runs again in 2024, then I think he'll do everything he can between now and 2028 to set up Don Jr. and Ivanka to run in 2028. 

None of Trump's kids are capable of anything like their father so I'd think we're at least 2032 before there's anyone who can follow in Trump's footsteps.  Hopefully 12 years down the line, we'll have the US in a more secure place.

I do remember that now (and almost certainly based some of my opinion on that memory).  I didn't read all of it so I'll respond back next week or so once I've finished season two.

The CW is showing Swamp Thing.  Like with Stargirl, the episodes are edited so I'm not sure if I'm getting the full show as intended, but it kinda drags a bit.  I still think it's watchable and compelling enough to stick with, but I think it's certainly the weakest of the DC Universe shows and I can see why it wasn't renewed.

I'm glad you liked it!  I think Stargirl has the most heart of all the DC Universe shows.  I think it'll slide pretty easily into the Arrowverse, but I agree with you - I think the production value will suffer in the same way (maybe more?) that Supergirl did.

I'm now halfway through the second season of Titans.  It's my favorite of the DC Universe shows (although Harley Quinn is so good), and I'm excited to see how it continues to grow.  I thought it was nice to bring Bruce Wayne in, although I don't buy Iain Glen in the role....at all.  I know he's supposed to be an older Bruce, but he's also supposed to be an active Bruce.  Iain Glen is almost sixty - was Batman 40 when he took in Dick?  Seems like a really weird casting choice, and I just can't see him being Batman.

It's a lot of fun.  I look forward to it every time I get a chance to watch.

Oh, not at all.  I'm no legal expert, but I've read more than enough people who are say that the lawsuits are a waste of time.  It's placating Trump, it's following orders, and at the end of the day, it will mean nothing.  I'd still like to have an active tracker of which lawsuits are ongoing and which have been denied.  Just for my own amusement.

What I am concerned about is what in the hell the Republicans are doing.  When Mike Pompeo says that there will be a transition to a second Trump administration, I really don't care.  He's a Trump employee, and if Trump doesn't win, he loses his job and all the perks that come with it.  He's hoping for a second Trump term because it benefits him.

What confuses me is why other Republicans are going through with all this.  I can kinda see how McConnell is doing it - he's the face of the Republican Party besides Trump, and if he doesn't toe the line, he's going to spend his whole day fielding angry calls from Trump.  So even if professionally he knows he needs to say the right thing, I can forgive him if he's just trying to make sure he can still get through the day.

But why are other Republicans going along with this?  Why is my asshole senator, Ted Cruz, *STILL* working for the guy who called his wife ugly and said his dad was part of the Kennedy assassination?  Why is Lindsey Graham allowing talk of voter fraud when he won an election *this year*?  Is this what they're going to be doing for the next four years?  Because when you hear the rationales, some of them make sense:

- Keep Trump happy until he's officially gone
- Keep the focus on the election so that republicans can stay focused on the Georgia runoff so they can keep the house
- Fundraising

Which all make sense - but they don't have to say anything, and all those things still happen.  Trump can still fundraise, at least one of the Republicans is almost guaranteed to win, and none of them need Trump in the next 70 days.

Either way, when it's over, we need everyone not named Trump to come out and say "we did a full audit - the election was done correctly - our democracy is secure" - that's the only way we move forward.  But that means Graham and Cruz are going to have to walk back their statements.  And the fact that they made the statements at all means a) they believe this crap or b) they knew it was wrong and said it anyway.  And both of those are terrible and dangerous.

Is anyone out there tracking what sort of lawsuits the Trump campaign is filing and which ones have been denied already?

I just think there's a bit of a power vacuum in the Republican party.  I don't think they'll want to change too much since they had an overall great election, but who steps up?  The same Cruz, Rubio crowd?  Doubtful.  The Bushes are out.  I think there are probably some younger, lesser known Republicans.  But, especially if Trump gets the network going, I think he's going to push his son HARD.  And on name recognition alone, I think he'd get his foot in the door.  Then it's just a matter of how strong the Trump name is in 2024.

There's also a chance he tries to get Ivanka into a public office.  She's probably more palatable than Don Jr but we'll see.

I think Trump would absolutely try to run again.  He'd just be Biden's current age next time.  The only question is whether or not the dementia stuff is actually true.  If it is, he might not be sharp enough to pull it off again.

I agree that Trump is one of a kind.  I just think there are many in the party that would go back to that well again.  Don again, Don Jr, or Ivanka.  Not Eric haha.

Jon Ralston covers elections in Nevada and seems to think there's no way Trump wins.  The reason why it hasn't been called, as speculated by Nate Silver, is that Nevada going to Biden actually gives him the election on Fox and the AP.  Now Fox and the AP could stand by it and just roll with "we show Biden has 270, he's the next president" but mis-calling Arizona and mis-calling the winner are two different things.  So it could be the media deciding to let Nevada sit, blaming the number of ballots, to allow Arizona to get a bit more clearer so that Fox and the AP don't have to look stupid.

I agree with this, but what is the plan?  You can point to 70 million voters and say "those people will defend him and they're well armed" but what would that level of rebellion even look like?  And how would you organize it?  And even if you did, what's the endgame there?

Any sort of coup attempt would need full support of the military, and I don't think enough people in the military support Trump.  You could argue that maybe his best case is that police support him, but military trumps police.  And I think the jump from "I support Trump" to "I'm willing to participate in a coup" might be fairly big.

Trump can cry all he wants, but his best argument is that Pennsylvania votes are going to come in later than Election Day, but there doesn't seem to be any indications that Democrats got their votes in late in any sort of large numbers.  As ireactions said, Biden's team did a good job of getting people to drop off their votes early, and all of them should count.  Maybe they could find some corrupt judges to get a case to the Supreme Court, but Trump's arguments are weak.  Even if he somehow got "Trump v Biden" in front of the court, even with a majority, I can't imagine he wins that case or what that case would even look like.

Even politically, he's running out of options.  McConnell is backing off him.  A lot of Republicans are.  It probably doesn't matter long term, but short term, the Republicans did really well and aren't going to want to taint that with a wild goose chase.

Trump has a really good shot at Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.  Biden might win by a fairly short margin.  If Trump wants, he could probably run for another office (Governor of Florida?) or whatever he wants.  And if he wants, he could probably be the frontrunner in 2024 and we could do this all over again.  But all of that probably starts with not being dragged out of the White House, crying.

And that seems like where we're headed.

The Wisconsin tweet that was making the rounds was apparently a typo and has been deleted.  There might be others, but there's definitely been some typing mistakes.

There's a county in Michigan that had the votes flipped - Biden got the Trump votes and vice-versa.  It wasn't enough to make that big of a difference but it was a few thousand votes as a swing.  If there are a few others, maybe it makes a difference (the same software was used elsewhere, but there's no evidence that any other counties were affected).

But it makes me wonder - do we have these same types of typos/errors in other elections, or is this unique to 2020?  I can't imagine it's unique - I'm guessing Trump voters are just looking for for them more and social media makes them explode.

But has the Democratic Party lost Hispanic men and black men?  Still a ton of time to go through the data, but that's very worrisome if you're a Democrat.  For black and brown men to show up and vote *for* Donald Trump - that can't all be machismo - something is resonating with those men.  If Republicans can diversify their camps and also bring whites back into the fold, they could be a real force.

Huh.

Well the polls were wrong.  Maybe not enough to end Biden but enough to make the race annoying.  Trump will be able to claim victory and fraud (like he's already done), and he'll have recounts and other legal means at his disposal.  Considering Biden will have to come from behind in all the states he's projected to perhaps win doesn't help the narrative in the country, especially among Trump voters.

It's also bad on two other fronts:

1. Polling is wrong, again.  According to one guy I follow on Twitter, it's about as bad as it's ever been.  Will it recover?  Does it need to recover?  And even if it does, will anyone alive now ever trust it again?

2. Whether Trump is defeated or not, Trumpism was not.  Anyone hoping that the victory would be decisive enough that the Republican party would look elsewhere for success has been handily defeated.

Waking up optimistic.  Biden is at 89.2% on FiveThirtyEight - just shy of the "clearly favored" level at 90%.  There's a 90+% chance that he rebuilds the blue wall in MI/WI/MN, and if he does that, then it's just a matter of getting one more state (and NE-2 if that one state is Arizona).  Now we count and wait.

At the end of the day, I want there to be peace and confidence.  I know Trump won't, but maybe this is the last chance we give him.  If he graciously accepts the results of a Biden win, spinning it into a victory by launching a Trump Network, then I'll give him that.  What I don't want is a protracted legal battle.  What I don't want is a declaration of whether or not the Supreme Court is corrupt.  I don't want Biden to win the national vote by 10,000,000 votes and for Trump to be saved by the Electoral College.

I want Biden to win a state like Texas or to sweep GA/AZ/FL/NC so there's no doubt.  I want Trump to be telling the truth that he loves America and not be an American intelligence security risk starting tomorrow, and I'm willing to give him a pass on all his crimes if we can maintain that for the rest of his life.

And most of all, I want what all of us want - I want both parties to meet on January 21 separately.  I want the Republican party to figure out how the Hell things got so warped.  I don't know who's left who could think that - Cruz and Rubio seem to be full Maga/QAnon right now.  Maybe it's younger conservatives and moderates who meet and plot a way to get back to being a truly conservative party.  And I want the Democrats to meet and figure out how the Hell they're only leading this election by 10 points.  Even if they win, they need to understand where they went wrong in the last 5 years.  Again, maybe this push is done by Mayor Pete and Andrew Yang and Amy Klobuchar and, yes, maybe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

This is probably the last election dominated by Baby Boomers.  If Gen X doesn't want anything to do with power, then someone young needs to step up.  Old people are too short-sighted.  As Mayor Pete said on a late night interview, we need a president who will be alive when the big problems are here.

Democrats didn't learn anything from 2016.  Maybe they can now.  Republicans learned the wrong lesson in 2016.  Maybe they can unlearn it now.  That's my very naive hope.

And one of the big reasons why America needs to reject Trump is that Don Jr will absolutely run for president in 2024.  And if America has rejected Trump, America will reject Don Jr.  If America embraces Trump again, Don Jr wins in 2024.

Literally no one wants that.

It's the same argument every time.  2016.  2016.  2016.

Pollsters messed up in 2016.  And they were CRUCIFIED for it.  Go to any post that even references Nate Silver, and he's *attacked* for how bad a job he did.  We can argue semantics about whether or not giving someone a 30% chance to win and then they win is that big of a mistake, but trust me, he paid for it.  And  the polls themselves paid for it.  This is their Super Bowl, and they'll all admit that they blew it.

And if the 2020 election was a week after the 2016 election, then yeah, I think there'd be real doubt about the process being broken.

But they had four years to fix their process.  Four years to rebuild polling from the ground up.  Four years to find their mistakes in sampling.  Find out who they missed.  Find out what went wrong and more importantly, how to fix it.  These are very smart people that are paid a ton of money to do one thing, and they had four full years to clean up their act.

Maybe they pissed away those four years.  Maybe they made the exact same mistakes.  Maybe Trump voters are tricking and gaming the system despite polls' efforts.

But to just completely write off 4 years of efforts because of mistakes made and acknowledged is just a little naive if you ask me.

The stats show that Democrats are overwhelmingly turning their ballots in early.  So while a lot more Democrats are voting by mail, so many of them are already getting returned.  There's a decent chance that a great majority of the Democratic vote will already be in before Election Day happens.  That's not just a good strategy for Covid, it's a great strategy in general.  If Republicans have to stand in line all day, how many of them will wait all day?  How many can afford to?  What if it's cold?  Or rainy?  What if they aren't feeling well because they went to an f-ing rally during a pandemic?  Worse yet, what if someone a few people ahead of them is coughing and they still have another hour to wait?

Trump is having big superspreader events in swing states a week or two before the election where Republicans are expected to mostly wait for Election Day.  I'm willing to bet most Trump fans would go to the polls if they didn't feel well.  But what if they *really* didn't feel well.  What if they're in the hospital?  Cases are piling up in the midwest - some of those people aren't going to be able to vote.  If you had to guess who would be more likely to catch covid right now...I'm willing to bet it's a vote for the guy who hates masks and science and not the guy encouraging masks and social distancing.  I know democrats get sick, but democrats have also voted early.

I don't know why more people weren't outraged by the obvious break in the separation of powers.  Especially ACB, who obviously doesn't care about the optics.  I'm willing to say that she will not take her job seriously.  The democratic message has been to get your votes in (mail in or otherwise) early.  The Democrats, for the most part, have done their part.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight says, because of this, it's not certain that the votes to be counted will necessarily be mostly Democrat.  If Democrats get their ballots in and Republicans don't, the Republican effort to throw out ballots might actually hurt them instead of helping them.

Rebels was good.  Not as great as Clone Wars but still good.

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One thing I was thinking about.  Rise of Skywalker went out of its way to undo a ton from The Last Jedi.  From erasing/backseatting certain characters to dropping plotlines, TROS seemed designed to appease the people who didn't like Episode VIII.

But what was one of the biggest criticisms of TLJ?  Its use of Luke.  And while Luke was definitely post-death retconned to be a little more "what people think Luke should be" than in Episode VIII, they actually missed out on something else:

Luke doesn't have his badass moment.  Luke is certainly heroic in the Last Jedi.  But a lot of people were hoping for a lot more.  Some Expanded-Universe-level badassery that would give a glimpse into the Jedi that Luke used to be.  And JJ doesn't go there.  I know it would've been a bit nuts to have Luke resurrected or something, but there are flashbacks to younger Master Luke in TROS anyway.  And specific flashbacks that are relevant to Kylo.

And now I'm completely stunned that they didn't have Luke and Ben Solo on some sort of Master/Padawan-type mission where something goes wrong and Luke has to use his mastery of the force to get out of it.  It seems like the kind of thing that a) would've appeased fans and b) the kind of fan service JJ would've wanted.

Crazy to think it didn't happen.

Very ready for this election to be over.  Both campaigns are spreading a decent amount of misinformation, and there's good and bad polls painting a very contradicting picture.

- Contradicting stories about voter enthusiasm in Pennsylvania. The New York Times reported that voting is way down for Biden in Pennsylvania.  District polling seems to say this is wrong, and it could either be campaign leaks a) by the Biden campaign to make sure voters show up or b) the Trump campaign to energize their efforts there.  Obama went there last week which, depending on your source tells us, a) that the campaign sent their biggest gun to salvage the situation or b) the Biden campaign knows its in the bag and Obama was more of a closer

- Strange polling in Michigan.  Trafalgar is a garbage poll for a lot of reasons, but they did do a good job of finding hidden Trump voters in 2016.  Major polls closed a lot of these gaps with their sampling, but Trafalgar claims that they haven't done enough.  Biden leads big in Michigan in every poll except right-leaning ones.  Is Trafalgar still finding hidden voters, or are they grasping at straws like they did in 2018?

- Voter registration issues in Wisconsin - are more Republicans registered and voting early in Wisconsin?  It'd be a strange statistical anomaly if that was happening (when the opposite is true almost everywhere else), but the midwest is trending red.

- Texas, North Carolina, Georgia - Biden is either tied or pulling away according to the polling, but all are very-much in the margin of error.  Biden is going to visit Georgia and Kamala Texas.  Are these real possibilities that point to a Biden landslide?  Or are they wasting time and effort in places they don't need to be wasting either?

All the science and common sense show that Biden has this in the bag.  Polls look good on both a national and a state level.  The Biden campaign is acting more aggressively than defensively (implying they're going after battleground states they think they can win and not salvaging states they don't think they can win).  Trump's campaign is no help in figuring it out because it's impossible to tell what he's doing.  But Trump could have a weird effect on the polls because he's so controversial.  Not to even mention shenanigans he might try and pull off.

I'm just ready for it to be over.  A week from tomorrow.

The debate was actually fairly watchable last night.  Very cool that, win or lose, it's the last Trump debate I'll ever have to sit through.

Republican polls seem to be getting a bit more daring - one poll had Trump up 4 in Michigan when no other poll has Biden up less than four.  Most don't even have Biden leading by less than eight.  Biden is winning essentially every swing state according to every reputable poll.  All that's left is knowing whether or not the polls were wrong.  But they'd have to be very wrong in a lot of places.

And I think that's okay.  I disagree with them, but I think they're at least coming at it from a place that can be negotiated with.  Someone that loves guns and doesn't want their guns taken away can work with everyone else.  Most hardcore gun owners are okay with reasonable restrictions that don't take away *their* guns (of course there are exceptions).  Most hardcore abortion people might be less willing to negotiate, but at least them come from a place that I can understand (no one is pro-abortion).

And I think both of these groups (if they're truly single-issue voters) only support Trump because he represents their side.  If the party flowed to a more traditional Republican, they'd stay with at least a similar level of support.  Trump is a means to an end, not a hero or an idol.

I can work with that going forward.

And that's why I actually feel sorry for a lot of MAGA people.  I'm not talking about the obviously racist or the white supremacists or any of those assholes.  I'm talking about poor white grandmas who fell for Russian propaganda and legitimately think that the nation will win if Trump doesn't win - and then donate their last $50 to the Trump campaign.  I feel like there should be thousands of lawsuits - if I donated to the Trump campaign and he used it for non-campaign purposes, I'd be pissed.

I'm naive and I'm trying to be optimistic, and I just don't believe that 40% of my fellow Americans love this guy for nefarious purposes.  Selfish economic reasons?  Sure.  Strictly political "I've never voted Democrat in my life and I won't now" reasons?  Okay.  Even "one of the most powerful countries in the world spending all their time coming up with realistic-ish propaganda tricked me" reasons are somewhat okay.  Or even "guns are my favorite thing in the whole world" or "literally nothing in this world is more evil than abortion" people. 

But "Trump is the best" or "this guy represents me!" or people like that - I hope those are just loud people on social media.

**********

FiveThirtyEight's model seems to have stalled at around 87-88% for Biden.  It's gone up and down the last couple days without any significant movement.  I think that's pretty much where we are.  If Florida goes to Biden, it's almost certainly Biden.  If Florida goes to Trump, the door opens up.  It's still a long road (even if Trump wins Florida, but Biden gets Arizona and North Carolina, Trump has very little shot), but if Biden can just get Florida on Election night, Biden essentially has it locked up no matter what else happens.

I'd love for Biden to get my home state and he just had a poll where he's tied, but I just don't think it happens this year despite record voting here.

Very true.  But I think you have to remember a couple of things.

1. These guys aren't Lindsey Graham or Ted Cruz.  Their jobs are secure.  They can vote however they want, and they don't have to worry about it.  Barrett knows that she's only getting on the bench through nefarious ways, but once she's on, she's on.  Not only has Roberts surprised but even Brett Kavanaugh has surprised (the thought is that he's now the median opinion).

2. I'm not talking about the Supreme Court throwing out illegitimate votes.  I think there's probably some legitimacy to the argument that votes that are received after the election might have less constitutional weight.  So I think there's a judicial argument to be made.  And if I were a Pennsylvania Democrat, I'd be making sure there there's no way that my ballot gets received later than Election Day.

What I'm referring to is Trump literally trying to cheat and trying to get the court to uphold his shenanigans.  Either getting a legislature to throw out all the votes and name him the winner or throwing out *legitimate votes* just because they were going to give Biden the election.  People are worried that just because Trump has the court, they'll always vote in his favor no matter what.  And I don't believe that all five of the "Trump votes" are that crooked.  Maybe ACB is.  Maybe Gorsuch is.  But it doesn't seem like Kavanaugh is, and I think/hope the rest of them take their jobs seriously enough not to let Trump get away with something that is clearly both unconstitutional and illegal.

I don't see how going to war with Fauci helps him in *any* way.  Isn't Fauci, while unpopular with MAGAs, mostly popular?

So I've been watching some of the DC Universe shows.  I watched Doom Patrol on HBO Max, Harley Quinn on SyFy and then HBO Max, and I've been watching Swamp Thing on CW and Stargirl on the CW app.

I'm actually fairly impressed with the shows they've come up with.  I watched Titans season one last year and thought it was fun (although it felt a bit restrained).  I really liked Harley Quinn - it's my favorite of the batch (but also gets the most freedom with animation).  Doom Patrol was a lot of fun, but again, I feel like that show would've been better if it was more tied with Titans.  Even just a cameo here and there would've been nice.

Swamp Thing and Stargirl are a little harder to read since they've edited for CW.  I'm sure it's much worse with Swamp Thing, but as I'm currently watching Stargirl, something was bothering me.

Mainly....what is this universe they've created?  It doesn't feel at all like a superhero universe.  It feels like the JSA/ISA were completely underground, but at the same time, Wildcat had a Wikipedia page with all of his powers?  A world where there used to be superheroes and then the villains killed them all is interesting - they seem to want the world to be identical to others but also there used to be open superheroes but most people don't seem to care/remember anymore.

And I don't see the point.  These are all people who are going to vote for him no matter what.  The *only* possible outcome is that people get sick at these events and then can't vote.  There's no way an undecided voter is going to go to one of these events.  I just don't see the point.

(And of course the point is to stroke Trump's ego.  But the rest of the family wants him to win, right?)

I don't buy the Primary Model.  I think, if anything, it's correlation.  Incumbents tend to win, and incumbents tend to run unopposed.  People running against incumbents tend to have wide open races.  If it's a race between no incumbents, I can buy the enthusiasm metric.

I'm not saying Trump can't win.  But 91% for Trump implies that TONS of people are lying about voting for Biden, and there's been no evidence of that.  And I think the hardest part about shy voters or lying voters is that there's been a stunning consistency to this race.  If you look at the national polls, it's been remarkably consistent since March.  If you look at the state polls, they're pretty consistent.

If they were polling the same exact group of people every time, then I could buy the lying argument.  But there are dozens of polls, all trying to poll different groups.  Conservative polls, liberal polls, independent polls, international polls.  Polls of likely voters, polls of registered voters, polls of all voters.  Polls in every state.  And in all those polls, it's Biden up by 3-15 points all along the way.

So yeah there could be a certain percentage of Trump voters that don't want to admit that they're going to vote Trump or are lying to screw with polls.  But for the results to be the same, that group of liars/shy people have to remain consistent regardless of the sample.  They can't randomly draw a group of people that is more likely to be shy or lie - otherwise the results would tip way in favor of Biden.  They can't find people who are less shy or less likely to lie, or it'd show Trump winning.

We aren't really seeing those polls.  Which tells me that there aren't that many people that are doing it because you'd expect to see those people show up in the polling unless it was *very* coordinated.

Trump can definitely win.  One thing that I'm seeing a lot of Trump people talk about is that percentages aren't a score.  Even if the Primary Model is right, Biden has a 9% chance to winning.  According to 538, Trump has a 13% chance of winning.  These aren't small odds.  People in casinos make those kinds of bets all the time.  I need an ace on the river!  I need the dealer to bust.  I need lucky 21!

Not likely.  But the unlikely happens all the time.

Oh, I agree.  But I still like to hear the far right insanity.  Maybe because I feel like I'm immune to it.  But I think hearing the crazy helps me center myself with the sane.

Classic villain origin, I know.

Yeah this was the crux of the article I posted.  If Biden wins Florida, there's a chance he's at 270 before Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan are even counted.  And, honestly, it really isn't even that big of a stretch.  That's Biden winning Arizona (where he's up fairly big) and Florida.  Trump could win Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia, *and* sweep Wisconsin/Michigan/Pennsylvania and Biden still wins.

And there are still so many paths to victory for Biden if he doesn't win Florida, but any notion of Trump pulling funny business ends if Biden gets Florida.  Which we should know election night.

(Everything that I said would also work, obviously, if Biden gets Texas - which I still view as a fair longshot - I'd agree with 538's guess that it's around 30% - but that's still higher than their prediction that Trump wins at all)

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/1 … ght-428856

This is an interesting thoughtpiece.  Trump will certainly press for a winner on Election night, but what if he's not winning?  He'll obviously pivot to some sort of "let's count the ballots" stance, but he's got very few paths to victory, and as the article says, essentially zero that will be counted by election night unless he flips some states he's not expected to win.

The hope is that Trump isn't winning enough states on Election night (with just the votes that have been counted) that he can say "ELECTION OVER" and try to get people to stop counting.

This is probably true and that's sad.

This makes some sense.  I've been listening to a lot of FiveThirtyEight's political podcast recently, and they speculated that Biden should pull a "you made me do this" with the Republicans.  Saying they won't stack the court if they don't proceed with their nomination.  That 4-5 may be preferable to 7-6.  But maybe he can't say that because it would make the senate races worse.  Maybe someone like Lindsey Graham wins their race because Republicans know they can't lose the Senate and the White House.

****

It sounds like they might agree to an in-person debate for October 22.  I think that would make some sense, but if I'm Biden, I don't see the point.  He debated Trump.  His VP debated Pence.  I don't think there's a ton of room for this race to get much more lopsided than it already is.  I think there's only room for it to get closer.  There's no point in risking it.  The debates aren't adding anything to the race, and there's just the risk that Biden says something that either loses moderate voters or far left ones.

I'm sure Biden doesn't want to besmirch the process, and I'm sure he doesn't think he can ruin it.  But we're really close and Biden's both winning over new voters and strengthening his lead.