Bad Moon On the Rise

When it comes to news summaries, there really is only one story worth noting today.

Ron Suskind of the Times brings us the nightmare scenario Trump's own officials fear the most -- that he will disrupt the election, as outlined below, and incite violence across the country.

These are not Democrats or leftist conspiracy bust speaking; these are those within the Trump administration.

Our country has not faced a crisis of that proportion since the Civil War.

This is where Trump's coded calls to the likes of the Proud Boys, Qanon, and the "militia" members who aimed to kidnap and kill Michigan's governor come into play. They are all "standing by," waiting for him to signal what to do next.

As he continues his desperate strategy of holding large, maskless rallies attacking or mocking anyone and everyone (even Laura Ingraham for heaven's sake) he perceives as not on his side, he is doing immeasurable harm to our democracy.

By goading on his twisted form of white grievance, he is abusing the very people who support him most. It is the under-educated, mainly rural white people who are being manipulated into believing they are victims because better-educated, urban-based people of color are succeeding in ways they are not.

This form of grievance overlooks the many people of color who are also left behind by the economic and technological forces shaping the edge of change sweeping our society.

In fact, a much larger problem is we are dividing into a two class country, with a few mega-rich and a large number of poor people. Trump may be able to convince his supporters they are victims, but he does not tell them that he -- and other wealthy people like him -- are those getting ahead while they fall behind.

It's a cruel joke and it is on those who vote for Trump.

Happy Halloween.

Those headlines...

*  he Day After Election Day -- New York Times journalist Ron Suskind has talked with multiple current and former Trump administration officials who say they’re deeply concerned about what President Donald Trump will do the day after the election next week. In multiple interviews, these officials sketched out a scenario in which Trump would encourage his supporters to disrupt voting in cities in key swing states.“Disruption would most likely begin on Election Day morning somewhere on the East Coast, where polls open first,” Suskind writes. “Miami and Philadelphia (already convulsed this week after another police shooting), in big swing states, would be likely locations. It could be anything, maybe violent, maybe not, started by anyone, or something planned and executed by any number of organizations, almost all of them on the right fringe, many adoring of Mr. Trump.” The big danger, these officials tell Suskind, is that early news of unrest at polling places will spark further instances across the country.“News of even a few incidents could summon a violent segment of Mr. Trump’s supporters into action, giving foreign actors even more to amplify and distribute, spreading what is, after all, news of mayhem to the wider concentric circles of Mr. Trump’s loyalists,” he writes. Officials then say Trump will claim some kind of “victory” on November 4th even if the vote tallies show him behind. “If the streets then fill with outraged people, he can easily summon, or prompt, or encourage troublemakers among his loyalists to turn a peaceful crowd into a sea of mayhem,” Suskind writes. “They might improvise on their own in sparking violence, presuming it pleases their leader.” One FBI official tells Suskind that the agency has been gaming out how it will handle weeks of unrest that could come after the election. “We’ve been talking to our state and local counterparts and gearing up for the expectation that it’s going to be a significant law-enforcement challenge for probably weeks or months,” this official said. “It feels pretty terrifying.” (NYT/RawStory)

* With Election Day looming, an anxious nation hears rumblings of violence (WashPo)

* President Trump and his campaign have been calling for an army of poll watchers on Election Day. What is poll watching, and when does it cross the line? We look at how a federal consent decree restricted the Republican Party for decades, and why its expiration could make a difference in 2020. (NYT)

* GOP shifts from challenging rules to preparing to challenge ballots -- After largely failing to limit access to mail-in voting, Republicans now look to contest votes already cast. (WashPo)

* Videogames were already a multibillion-dollar industry. The pandemic is sending them to another level. The way we entertain ourselves may never be the same. (WSJ)

* The virus had spared Alaska’s most remote villages. Not anymore. (WashPo)

* Nursing Homes, Racked by the Virus, Face a New Crisis: Isolation (NYT)

* As a divisive election arrives, the National Guard prepares for unrest and wrestles with how to respond (WashPo)

* Trump Mocks Laura Ingraham’s Face Mask During Rally -- President Trump called Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host, “politically correct” for wearing a mask during his rally in Michigan on Friday. (AP)

* New lockdowns in England as restrictions return around Europe (WashPo)

* In Florida, voters of color and young voters have had ballots flagged for possible rejection at higher rates than others (WashPo)

* Children from Central America are being sent across the border to Mexico, where they may not have any family. An internal email said the transfers violated the government’s own policies.  (NYT)

* Canada’s oil patch has nearly 100,000 suspended wells, neither active nor capped, and they’re a worrying source of planet-warming methane. (NYT)

***

Don't go around tonight
Well it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise

-- John Fogerty

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Simple Math Time

Here we are in the final weekend before Election Day and the result in the presidential race will hinge on which candidate wins the key battleground states. There are 50 separate elections as opposed to one national election due to our antiquated system so let's look at just three of the most important ones. 

Northwestern journalism professor Doug Foster, who is writing a book on this election cycle in the Midwest, reports: "My own sense of momentum from watching streamed events and talking to my sources in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, show Biden with a considerable lead. The pro-Biden edge is greater than the margin of error in those three states." 

If that proves true, Biden's chances are good and Trump's remaining path to victory in the Electoral College would be exceedingly narrow.

Another way to evaluate what is happening is to estimate the scale of Biden's likely victory in the popular vote, as a proxy for the Electoral results. Doug believes Biden's total may reach over 6 million more votes than Trump's. Contrast that to the only two modern elections where the loser of the popular vote won the Electoral College.

In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 543,816 votes. In 2016, Trump lost it to Hillary Clinton by 2,868,686 -- less than half of this year's likely margin.

Electoral-Vote.com says this translates into 356 Electoral Votes for Biden, 184 for Trump, with 18 too close to call. That, my friends would be a blue landslide.

Naturally, after the last-minute surge by pro-Trump voters in 2016, which few analysts predicted, everyone is reticent about saying out loud what the evidence is saying in 2020.

So let's just say it and see where that goes.

But first, here are the news summaries:

* Trump changes election night plans, cancels party at Trump International (The Hill)

* Trump says Supreme Court will have aided a Biden win (The Hill)

* Turkish Bank Case Showed Erdogan’s Influence With Trump -- New details of the Justice Department’s handling of the accusations against Halkbank reveal how Turkey’s leader pressured the president, prompting concern from top White House aides. (NYT)

* Polls show that Latinos could be a decisive constituency in battleground states across the country — not only where they are recognized as a burgeoning political force, but also in places like Michigan and North Carolina, where they are a growing part of the electorate. (WashPo)

* Trump is again attacking the news media as “the enemy of the people.” (AP) Someone is projecting. (DW)

* Trump rolled back more than 125 environmental safeguards. (WashPo)

* Trump’s most frequent and most effective lie -- that he built “the greatest economy in history” -- appears to be losing its punch at the worst possible time for him. Trump has never had overall favorability ratings in his entire three years and nine months in office, but for most of that time has enjoyed the perception that he was doing a good job handling the economy. Now, with his election for a second term only days away, just about as many Americans think he is doing a bad job. [HuffPost]

* New Terror Attacks Leave France Embattled at Home and Abroad (NYT)

* Coronavirus cases are on the rise in every swing state (WashPo)

* Returned mail-in ballots in the Bay Area have been pouring in and the amount has been “staggering,” according to election officials. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* Major delays slow mail voting in swing states, USPS data shows, as strict deadlines loom (WashPo)

* Democrats have 77% chance of gaining control of the Senate. (538)

* Biden is pulling away from Trump and now has a 90% chance of winning the election. (538)

* U.S. to Remove Wolves From Protected Species List -- Populations have rebounded in recent decades, but some scientists on the panel that evaluated the proposal said it was deeply flawed. (NYT)

***

Now, back to the most likely scenario:

Joe Biden is going to be the next President.

Trump will protest the results, but as the margin will be overwhelming, he will have no option  but to concede, albeit kicking and screaming.

The House will be solidly Democratic and there is a strong probability the Senate will flip to the Dems as well. With their party controlling all three prongs of the executive and legislative branches of the government, Biden and friends will have at least two years to do pretty much whatever they want to do, with the GOP unable to do much but watch.

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, will act as an occasional check on that power, but only on specific issues, not the overall thrust of the administration, over which it has no jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, led by Bernie Sanders, AOC and others, will emerge as a major pressure point on the moderate wing led by Biden.

Biden will attempt to make deals with Republicans to make things happen, so there may be times the progressive wing feels isolated as a result. They will, in turn, be organizing for 2024.

All of this will be a markedly different set of political realities to those we have endured over the past four years, because there will no longer be a race-baiter and a would-be despot at the top of the heap.

Trump, in all likelihood, will be fighting to stay out of prison, not on federal charges but on state charges. And he can't hope for a pardon from Biden to evade those, as the President has no control over the state courts. The appeals process could theoretically reach the Supreme Court, however.

No President leaving office has ever faced the legal barrage that awaits Trump, due to his reckless personal and business behavior over many years. Justice has a way of catching up with people like him.

For that reason, losing the election will be, for Trump, only the beginning of his problems.

Well, that's where saying out loud what appears to be coming takes us!

***

“One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.” 

― Barak Obama (2008)

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You're So Pretty

If -- and this is a big if -- Trump loses the election and goes away quietly, Joe Biden will face the daunting task of trying to heal this nation.

I don't envy him that task. Now that so much pent-up populist rage has been unleashed, it will take patience and persistence to restore a sense of calm and trust.

In these final days before Election Day, desperate Trump supporters are once again turning to conspiracy theories to try and break down Biden's support. But they are fighting a losing battle and they know it.

One of the GOP's major raps against Biden is that he has been in politics 47 years and hasn't accomplished anything. That seems like a fair enough charge, in the rough and tumble of political rhetoric.

But then they launch into the dubious theory that he is somehow corrupt, and their only support for that is to point at activities of his son, Hunter Biden, who is not on the ballot and faces no criminal charges but -- it is alleged -- somehow has corrupted his father.

Well, I'm here to tell them they can't have it both ways. Any candidate who has held office for 47 years has been so thoroughly researched and vetted over and over again that if one scintilla of evidence existed of his corruption it would have been headline news a long time ago.

And when it comes to one's children, if I were one of the GOP operatives, I would not be casting aspersions on Biden while working for a nepotist like Trump.  If Biden chose to attack Trump's family for misdeeds, there would be a very long list of disreputable behavior to discuss indeed.

But Biden is too decent (and perhaps too far ahead) to do that.

One fact remains paramount: The ugliness that Trump has unleashed in the form of racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and pure hate toward anyone who can be considered "other" in his eyes has stained our nation. What a horrible legacy! Those carrying his water share his shame.

Biden's fate will be to have to try and clean that all up. That, while trying to establish a successful war against Covid-19, which may prove impossible, and the need to repair an economy in tatters. In the latter effort, he will no doubt be successful, just as he and Obama were in 2009.

But perhaps the biggest challenge of all will be to restore hope and mutual respect among our people. I honestly don't know how he can do that, and that makes me sad. This society is like Humpty Dumpty --  no one can put the pieces together again.

Still, in sadness there can be music. For some reason the lovely, haunting melody by the Cranberries plays over and over in my head, beat by beat. "You're-so-pretty-the-way-you-are...But you won't change me."

***

The news is not so pretty, but it won't change me...

* There is an unmistakable effort underway to intimidate voters — specifically Democratic voters — when they go to the polls. Right-wing groups are organizing to show up at polls with guns, a development election officials fear will create an unsafe environment for other voters to cast their ballots. In one swing state, an effort to limit the presence of guns at polling locations was met with a court fight and a standoff between the state’s election officials and some members of law enforcement. Only about a dozen states explicitly ban open or concealed carry of firearms at the polls. [HuffPost]

* Dr. Anthony Fauci Says a National Mask Mandate is Needed. (CNN)

* The Surging Virus Has Crashed Into Campaigning in Every Imaginable Way (NYT)

* New study suggests COVID-19 may age some patients' brains by 10 years. (Reuters)

* The U.S. Supreme Court issued two decisions Wednesday evening, declining to stop a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling and a North Carolina Board of Elections order that both extended the deadlines for mail-in ballots to be received in their states. Though both decisions are temporary victories for voting rights advocates, the dissents in each case suggest an ominous possibility. At least three justices ― Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch ― are open to taking up the Pennsylvania case again and potentially throwing out any ballots that arrive within the three days after Nov. 3. [HuffPost]

* Can we ever heal after the election? (WashPo)

* Young and Jobless in Europe: ‘It’s Been Desperate’ (NYT)

* Trump keeps demanding that all ballots be counted by election night, even though federal law permits states to count ballots from troops stationed outside the United States, diplomats and other Americans abroad to have their ballots counted days later, as long as they were sent no later than Election Day. In a tweet flagged by Twitter for being misleading Trump wrote: “Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd.” [HuffPost]

* Why winning rural areas should be a progressive priority (WashPo)

* Democrats throughout the country are winning back a small but potentially critical number of voters in counties and cities that flipped to support Trump four years ago, thanks to a renewed outreach from Democrats and the loss of the populist edge the Republican Party developed in 2016. These areas, where voters are disproportionately white, rural and older, and without college degrees, are mostly in the northern half of the country, especially in the Midwest. They have disproportionate political power due to the overrepresentation of rural states in the Senate and the Electoral College. [HuffPost]

* ‘We Need to Hold On’: Macron Says France Will Reimpose Lockdown (NYT)

* “America is facing a serious challenge to its position as the leader of the ‘rules-based’ world.” Former Gov. Jerry Brown weighs in on the election. [The New York Review]

* As Election Day nears, Trump ponders becoming one thing he so despises: A loser (WashPo)

* Businessman Pleads Guilty in Probe of Giuliani Associates -- A Florida businessman pleaded guilty to charges that he duped potentialinvestors in a fraud-insurance company and that he helped associates of Rudy Giuliani lie to federal election officials about a $325,000 donation to a super PAC supporting President Trump. (WSJ)

* Republicans’ only way to win is to stop people from voting (WashPo)

* Exxon to Slash Up to 15% of Global Workforce, Including 1,900 Jobs in U.S -- The struggling oil giant said it expects to make the cuts over the next year as the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter the oil-and-gas industry (WSJ)

* Make Science Great Again: U.S. researchers dream of life after Trump (Reuters)

* Days From Election, Police Killing of Black Man Roils Philadelphia (NYT)

* Biden is favored to win the election -- We simulate the election 40,000 times to see who wins most often. The sample of 100 outcomes below gives you a good idea of the range of scenarios our model thinks is possible. Biden 89%, Trump 11%. (538)

***

You're so pretty the way you are

You're so pretty the way you are

And you had no reason,

To be so insolent with me

You're so pretty the way you are 

La, la, you got to say it, if you want

to,

But you won't change me.

La, la, you got to say it, if you want 

to.

But you won't change me.

-- The Cranberries

-30-

Needed: A Voice of Reason

The stock market is teetering on the verge of collapse due to the massive Covid-19 crisis facing this country. Meanwhile, the country's highest elected official is MIA on the most important issue of our time.

Indeed, time is running out to blunt the exploding coronavirus case load clogging our emergency rooms, and the decision-making vacuum at the top means there is little chance we can escape the worst case scenario: Hundreds of thousands more dead, the economy shut down out of necessity, and a prolonged depression on the horizon.

This will be the legacy of Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the American people are voting in record numbers. 

***

Back in the 1980s, Victor Navasky, one of the leading journalists of our time, asked me to join the editorial board of The Nation Institute. The non-profit institute publishes The Nation, the longest continuously published magazine in America, dating its earliest issues to Abraham Lincoln's time.

At the time Victor was the editor of The Nation, and the guiding light of a large group of intellectuals he invited to be on that board. Twice a year, I'd fly back to Manhattan to join in the discussions at the magazine's offices, which for years were located just south of Gramercy Park.

In those meetings, I listened to some of the best thinkers in our country describe the historical context of the political developments shaking our nation. One of those people was Georgetown professor Norman Birnbaum, who wove historical themes into his analysis of the badly needed reforms for America to continue the process of democratization that is our best hope for a viable future.

In his 1988 book The Radical Renewal, Norman wrote “If we are to reenact, in contemporary terms, the early American belief in a republic of virtue, we shall have to find a new philosophical basis for both social inquiry and politics. That is a matter for further reflection.” 

Norman died just last year, at the age of 92. He profoundly influenced countless people, including me, and also my son, Dylan, who today is a history major and a senior at San Francisco State University.

Dylan met Norman at a Nation editorial board meeting in ~2007 when he was a precocious eleven-year-old with curly red hair. In the photo, he is at the center of the group, with his computer open, sitting next to Katrina vanden Heuvel, who succeeded Victor as editor and is a major progressive voice in this country. Norman is the short elderly man in a white shirt in the lower right hand corner sitting directly across the table from Dylan.

When they met, Dylan inquired about Norman's tie, which featured ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Norman followed up with with a list of books for Dylan to read about that period of history.

It is at times like this, with such a consequential election upon us, that America could use the calm, soothing words and brilliant insights of somebody like Norman Birnbaum.

May he rest in peace. And may we all continue the search for that "new philosophical basis" to save our society from the darkness that now hovers over it.

***

The news:

 * FORECAST: HIGHEST TURNOUT SINCE 1908 More than 70 million Americans have already cast ballots in the U.S. presidential election, more than half the total turnout of the 2016 election with one week to go until Election Day, according to a Tuesday tally from the U.S. Elections Project. The tally, which shows a record-breaking pace that could lead to the highest voter turnout in percentage terms in more than a century, is the latest sign of intense interest in the contest between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden. It also highlights voters’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to COVID-19 as the pandemic regathers strength heading into winter. [Reuters]

* A Divided Nation Agrees on One Thing: Many People Want a Gun -- Gun buyers say they are motivated by a new destabilizing sense that is pushing them to purchase weapons for the first time, or if they already have them, to buy more. (NYT)

* Trump’s attacks on adversaries often followed by threats to their safety (WashPo)

* Elevated infection levels stoked concerns that more lockdown measures may be imperative, potentially dealing another blow to the economic recovery (WSJ)

* JUDGE BLOCKS BID TO SHIELD TRUMP FROM RAPE DEFAMATION SUIT A federal judge denied Trump’s request that he be replaced as the defendant in a defamation lawsuit alleging he raped columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. The Justice Department argued that the United States —U.S. taxpayers — should replace Trump as the defendant. The judge ruled that a law protecting federal employees from being sued individually for things they do within the scope of their employment didn’t apply to a president. But even if it did, Trump’s public denials of the rape allegation would have come outside the scope of his employment. [AP]

* Hospitals Are Reeling Under a 46 Percent Spike in Covid-19 Patients -- The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus has climbed significantly from a month ago, straining cities that have fewer resources to weather the surges. (NYT)

* Jeering sign-wavers. Caravans of honking trucks. Voter intimidation or free speech? (WashPo)

* The Dodgers’ Justin Turner tests positive for Covid-19, and later celebrates with his teammates on the field. How a bizarre baseball episode became a microcosm of a continued public-health struggle. (WSJ)

* France and Germany announce second national lockdowns to curb soaring coronavirus infections (WashPo)

* COVID-19 SURGES IN CRITICAL MIDWEST BATTLEGROUNDS The coronavirus is getting worse in states that Trump needs the most. In Iowa, polls suggest Trump is in a toss-up race with Biden after carrying the state by 9.4 percentage points four years ago. Trump’s pandemic response threatens his hold on Wisconsin, where he won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016. Meanwhile, Trump rally hosts are racking up COVID-19 fines in Nevada, and public health experts have warned that the U.S. is on track to hit 10,000 new cases a day. [AP]

* Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest (WashPo)

* A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey has found no evidence, so far, of the kind of late surge toward President Trump among undecided voters that helped produce his unexpected wins in 2016. (WSJ)

* Colorado Could See Biggest Blue Wave In 83 Years (CBS)

* The latest ABC News/The Washington Post survey of Wisconsin shows Biden 17 points (not a typo) ahead of Trump, 57 percent to 40 percent, among likely voters. (538)

* The odds are growing that the Democrats will take control of the Senate. Latest polls: Dems 54, GOP 46. (Electoral-Vote.com)

* According to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS of likely voters, 54% back Biden and 42% Trump. (CNN)

* Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking.In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.” The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of healthcare services.” (AP)

* Legendary Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company begs for help in pandemic (The Guardian)

* Looking to undermine Biden, Trump’s campaign is pushing a familiar line of attack: unverified allegations about Biden’s son and his foreign business ties. But reporting in the New York Post, and the emergence of a man who says he worked with Hunter Biden, have raised more questions than answers, including about the authenticity of emails at the center of the story. The renewed allegations trace back to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has repeatedly pushed unfounded claims about the Bidens. Even if the emails in the Post are legitimate, they do not validate claims that Biden’s actions were influenced by his son’s business dealings. (AP)

(NOTE) At this point, those peddling false rumors about Biden (last news item above) are engaged in disinformation. These rumors are part of a last-ditch effort to steal the election on behalf of a man who is an openly racist demagogue. So the people passing on these rumors are themselves tacitly endorsing racism, among all of the other horrors Trump has inflicted on this society. 

I condemn them. Hopefully, they will get their comeuppance on Election Day.

***

Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today is a day of reckoning
Let the weak be strong, let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay it's Independence Day

-- Martina McBride

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