Determination Day

This year Election Day is a different beast. Rather than being the one day nearly everyone votes, it will instead be the last day that anyone votes. And above all, it will be the first day the votes are counted.

So if you have not voted, it's time to join in making history.  Vote.  Before it's too late.

Millions have voted already--perhaps 100 million before the polls even open on Tuesday. Most election experts believe that more than half the votes will have been cast by then. Early voting, both by mail (or drop box) and in person, has been phenomenal. In huge Texas, the early vote is as large as the total vote in 2016. That is likely to be true for a dozen states by Monday. The early vote in tiny Hawaii not only exceeds the total vote in 2016—it is higher than the total vote in any election in the state’s history, including 2008 and 2012 with native son Barack Obama on the presidential ballot.

 But Election Day itself is not therefore just an afterthought. Nor is it the day that only Republicans vote. There are plenty of Democrats and Independents, especially from core constituencies in key places, that have yet to mark their ballots. 

 

And if turnout is anywhere near proportional to early voting totals, we will see higher numbers of voters and a higher percentage of eligible Americans voting than anyone alive has ever seen.

 Nor will Election Day necessarily be the end of the process. In the ordinary course of how particular states count ballots and for how long, votes will be recorded for days and in some states weeks, by law. Unfortunately, the fears and omens gathering around Election Day may also persist: the relentless vote suppression efforts, the threat of armed militias and foreign cyber attacks on the system. Several reports suggest that Trump will continue misusing instruments of government to disrupt election results and the orderly transfer of power, and may refuse to concede any loss while claiming false victories. 

 But let’s stick with Election Day and Election Night, and what we can expect. While that subject will be debated every moment until then, there are a few things to be said, and to watch for.

 On Election Day, the most important factor to watch for is turnout, both generally and in specific places. Some may be tempted to see large turnout as favoring Republicans, because so many Democrats have voted. But that’s not necessarily so. In fact, Democrats will need large turnout in places like Miami Dade in Florida and in Philadelphia, and more categorically among Black and Latino voters. But the general rule this year is very likely to be: the higher the turnout, the better it is for Biden-Harris and almost all Democratic candidates.  The same determination that brought voters out in hostile conditions to vote early must happen again on Determination Day.

 Or put it this way: the only way Biden loses is if turnout is middling low, either generally or in a freakishly selected few places. (If it is very low, then Biden may have already banked enough votes to win.)

 Then comes Election Night and how the votes are counted and reported. Much has been made of the “red mirage,” the counting of Election Day votes skewed Republican, before the mail-in votes that are largely Democratic. Apart from causing viewer stress, this was theorized as providing Trump an excuse to claim victory because the red mirage will make him look like the winner on Election Night, before Democratic mail-in votes slowly overtake this lead in the ensuing days and perhaps weeks.

 But the reality is likely to be more complicated. The order of when votes from the three streams of in-person early, in-person on the day, and mail-in votes are reported, varies from state to state, and sometime county to county within states. And nobody really knows how that will go.  The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight have published state by state guides to how they will report, and the guides do not always agree.  And then there's the vagaries of the day—for instance, if turnout is overwhelming.

 But the assumption that every state counts Election Day votes first is certainly wrong. According to the New York Times,  only Virginia reports just Election Day votes first. Many states do a mixture, or counties within states have different policies. Early on there may even be a blue mirage in Nebraska, Missouri and maybe Montana because they count mail-in votes first.

 In some states, when the red mirage appears it will likely turn blue by the end of the night. But in other states—notably Pennsylvania and Michigan—it could persist until the last arriving mail-in votes are counted, days later. However, even this is unlikely. 

 The big question is whether a red mirage will persist into Wednesday in enough states to provide the illusion that Trump has won the required 270 electoral votes for victory. And the answer is probably not, at least according to a couple of analysts at Politico. 

 

The pattern that is likely to occur in more key states is the blue/red/blue sequence. These are states that count early votes first, then Election Day votes, and then the last mail-in votes. The states where this is more likely to happen include Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas, and maybe Wisconsin. (This cycle doesn’t necessarily mean red will go ahead of blue in the middle but just increase faster.) 

 The potential good news is that this blue/red/blue cycle will probably be completed fairly early on Election Night in Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Ohio. If Biden wins any one of them, he is likely to win the election: especially Florida or Ohio. This is the conventional wisdom now, and it is how the news networks will report it. 

In most polls so far Biden has a small lead in all of them except Ohio, and some polls give him a tiny lead there, too. Again, he doesn’t have to win them all. He wins one or two, and it’s all over but the counting elsewhere.

 But Trump needs to win all of the above states, plus another state where Biden has a small polling lead that may have pretty complete returns Tuesday night: Georgia. And then there’s Texas, which may also have definitive results. 

 Even if Trump wins all of these states, Biden can still win the presidency with the tier of upper midwestern states where his polling lead is higher. But he’ll need Pennsylvania, which in the hive mind of political analysts is turning out to be this year’s Florida or Ohio.

 If Biden must rely on these states, the process will drag on longer. But a lot of analysts believe the winner will be clear on Election Night. Some expect to know by 11 pm Eastern. The numbers crunchers at FiveThirtyEight say there’s a 60% chance we’ll be sure by midnight Pacific. They all say that if we do, the winner will be President Biden.

 So however the count goes, here’s one thing to remember, if you go to bed late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning: in any state that by that time Biden is ahead, no matter how slightly, he will very likely win it. So much for the weeds of Tuesday. 

 The bigger picture? What if the polls are wrong? The polls are always wrong, to some extent. In 2016 they (fatally, as it turned out) underestimated the Trump vote in certain states. In 2012 they underestimated votes for President Obama, and Mitt Romney had to cancel his fireworks. According to the New York Times four days from Election Day, if state polls are as wrong as 2016, Biden still ends up with 335 electoral votes.

 Apart from general Trump revulsion, for me the key differences are that Democrats were not really united in 2016, and were (stupidly) not all motivated to vote. The leftists who voted third party were even dumber. This year Democrats (and the bulk of Independents) are united and highly motivated to vote (that is, angry and scared to death), and third party support is miniscule. 

 So here’s the big possibility: the unique and highly motivated coalition to defeat Trump and Republicans and elect Biden and Democrats will produce an overwhelming tide, leading to large margins in many contested states, and victories in states Democrats haven’t won in years or decades. The red mirage will be barely a blip if it appears at all. We may see so many Biden victories that Pennsylvania could keep counting until March and it wouldn’t matter. 

 However, if it is closer than that, various fears will be engaged. For instance, the fear that the election will be, or at least seem, so close that it will take weeks to resolve, with accompanying turmoil and court cases. But looking at the numbers, FiveThirtyEight estimates that there is no more than a 4% chance of this happening. At worst, days.

 Will voters believe a Trump claim of victory on Election Night results alone? Pew found that half the voters surveyed believe that the winner won’t be known by then. They may not be happy about it, but they are willing to wait for votes to be counted.  And all that's needed to win is 270 in the end, assuming we keep our nerve.

 This is not to say there might not be challenging days and weeks ahead. In fact there will be, no matter what happens on Election Day. With the Trump administration still in charge, and 100,000 new Covid cases a day, this is going to be the greatest test the American system has faced, at least since World War II and probably since the Civil War. And just as surviving the covid crisis depends on the doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers most of the media never sees, surviving Trump will depend on career public servants and state officials whose names we may never know.

 As for Tuesday night into Wednesday, it’s tempting to say, fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. And it may be. Days before November 3, Florida and PA continue to be complicated and hard to read, with lots of dirty dealings going on. But the effect of all of that disruption is relative. A really big turnout resulting in a really big wave suddenly overwhelms all those disreputable efforts. By late in the evening (and possibly earlier), I think it will be pretty clear that Trump is being decisively rejected. After that, enjoy watching the progress of how badly.

  That is, if you've been part of that determination.

Determination

Something is happening.  And it's determination.

Americans are voting early—by mail or drop box, or in person--in record numbers. It is estimated that nearly 70 million ballots have been received, with probably another five million on the way. It could eventually mean that 100 million votes come in before the traditional Election Day, less than a week away.

 The numbers so far are astounding. They’ve blown past the early voting totals of 2016, and already add up to more than half of all the votes cast in the 2016 election. In Texas it’s 90%. In Georgia 71%. 

The mail-in vote as predicted is heavily Democratic. In some places the in-person early voting shows more Democrats, in others more Republicans, but also plenty of declared Independents and undeclared voters. The youth vote is way up. Black voters in Georgia are nearly triple the numbers there were in 2016.

 Something is happening right now. Because of this Washington regime’s subversion of the Postal Service, and thanks to decisions by the Supreme Republican Court, election officials and non-profits are strongly advising voters who have received absentee ballots not to mail them, because they might not arrive by Election Day. They are advised to deliver them to drop boxes or election clerk’s offices. There are many people working hard to identify and help these voters.

 If the 2016 election showed how stupid American voters can be, this election so far indicates how smart they can be. Many heard and read about the Postal Service slowdown, the Republican legislatures and Trump Court of Appeals judges changing rules several times about which votes will count and when votes can be counted. So they mailed in their ballots very early, or they took them to drop boxes, or they voted in person. They’ve completely changed the contours of this election.

 

Voters in Texas and Georgia in particular saw the blatant efforts at vote suppression, so they lined up the first day of early voting and they haven’t stopped.

 Early in-person voting makes it very visible that something is happening. Voters are lining up for hours, surrounded by a life-threatening pandemic virus.  They shouldn't have to, especially the seniors, but they are.  And they stay in line until they vote.  They are determined that their votes are counted.  They need leadership out of this pandemic. They need leadership that sees them and their mortal problems. They need hope.

 They are lining despite forest fires and hurricanes. They are lining up in the rain, the heat, the cold. They defy suppression and intimidation. They are risking their health and their lives. They are at least as heroic as any soldier, for what they are doing for their country and each other.

 And because this is America, they are entertained in line by dancers and musicians. Nonprofits pass out bottled water and coffee. There are hot dog vendors.

 When early voting is over, others will take their place on November 3, Election Day. Again there will be long lines, the pandemic, maybe bad weather. There will be intimidation and probably violence in some places. But they will not be deterred. They will vote. Perhaps you will be one of them.

 

If something continues to happen, the number of Americans who vote—and the percentage of eligible voters who vote-- by the end of the day on November 3 will be greater than in any election anyone now alive has experienced. About 137 million voted in 2016. When early voting started booming, the boldest 2020 forecast was a total of 150 million. That would be the highest percentage turnout since 1908. Now analysts are talking about 160 million, or 165.

 Something is happening—and it is that millions of people are determined to vote, even at a cost. Because they know their votes will to a meaningful extent determine the future.

Poetry Monday: A Little Song for Gaia

As the cricket's soft autumn hum

              is to us,

     so are we to the trees

            as are they

    to the rocks and the hills.

 --Gary Snyder

As a special feature on the DVD of The Practice of the Wild, the short biographical film about Gary Snyder, the poet reads and talks about some poems, including this one, which is part of the Little Songs for Gaia sequence.  He reads it here as a stand-alone.  (It's also used in the film itself, as a voiceover.)  He says that it was inspired by a conversation with his close friend and fellow poet Lew Welch, when they were both quietly looking at the landscape, probably in northern California. Welch wondered what the mountains thought about the trees.  What do you mean? Snyder asked.  To the mountains, Welch guessed, the trees are just passing through.

Snyder's poem focuses on the perspective of time in natural relations, and its effect on perceptions.  But implicit is Welch's sense of everything being alive.  "It is possible to speak of a mountain knowing," Paul Shepard writes in Man in the Landscape, "or, with Jacquetta Hawkes in A Land, of the quiet sentience of rocks."  There is a scientific sense, a good deal more accepted now than when Shepard wrote this in the 1960s, that the web of relationships and behavior of ecosystems like forests and ponds include communication and response to what's going on in the near environment.  Ancient cultures of course accept that rocks and trees have spirits, that they are aware of humans, and humans must treat them with respect and honor.

This DVD also includes an additional interview with Snyder that begins with him talking about the virtue of ahimsa, which is the first precept of Buddhism, and is also central to Hindus and Janism in India.  Snyder translates it as meaning "do as little harm as possible, according to the situation."  So strictly speaking it is not always non-violence.  But what is most important to Snyder is that it applies to everything-- not just to certain humans or even humans in general, but to all beings, including the rocks.

As a boy growing up in the country, young Gary Snyder had a feeling for animals as fellow beings.  But he never lost it, and his conviction that non-human life is just as important led him to study Chinese paintings and then the language, the Japanese language and then Buddhist practice in a monastery in Japan for years.  Even earlier it led him to the last American Indian cultures in his native Northwest.  

We don't know the minds of other beings.  We just don't.  But we know that the degree of consciousness that humans have allows moral thinking and moral decisions.  So this is our duty to the common landscape, the common universe.  This is our part.  In the end we are what we are committed to, even as we fall short. 

The Super-Spreader in Chief and The Blue Tsunami

 On the day that the U.S. first surpassed the previous highest number of Covid cases in a 24 hour period set this summer, Homegrown Hitler held a rally of seniors and other unmasked, pressed together in Florida.  This is the most literal version possible of the President of the United States as the Grim Reaper, a horror of Hitlerian proportions, once the numbness wears off. 

It is also the day--Friday-- that USA Today published the numbers that show that Covid cases grew at a faster rate than before in five counties following one of  the Superspreader-in-Chief's maskless rallies:  two counties in Pennsylvania, two in Minnesota and one in Wisconsin.  And these rallies were before the current madness of several a day when Covid cases are climbing fast.

And we are just entering this dark tunnel of a runaway epidemic this fall and winter.  But the light is ongoing, leading to eventual relief: the election which is already in progress. 

 The US Elections Project out of the U. of Florida estimates that 150 million votes will be cast this year, less than Fivethirtyeight's projection, but enough to top 65% turnout, the highest since 1908.  It may be a conservative estimate.

But if that's the final number, then at least a third of it is already done.  In Texas, it's 70% of the total votes in 2016.  

Some thousands of those votes are going to be thrown out or never counted presumably. But the total numbers of votes may be too great  for such suppressions to change the outcomes.  Further, it may well be that the surge in early voting is at least partly due to voter rebellion against perceived suppression tactics by Republicans like the Governor of Texas.  He tried to severely limit drop boxes for mail-in votes, especially in huge Harris County.  Voters caught on to this and turned to early voting--to the tune of over a million so far, in a county of 2.5 million registered voters.  Early votes have now nearly equaled the total votes there in 2016.

Two other positive indications also emerged Friday.  First, not only do Democrats have a large early vote lead in the swing states, but they are turning out infrequent and newly registered voters at a higher rate. 

Second, the youth vote is soaring in early voting compared to 2016.  In Florida, over 250,000 have voted, versus 44,000 at this point in 2016.  In North Carolina it's more than 204,000 versus 25,000.  And in Michigan it is a phenomenal 145,000 versus only 7,000 in 2016.  Some analysts worried that the youth vote, notoriously unreliable, would be hurt even more by the Covid chaos on campuses.  But these numbers say something else.

The Post-Debate Landscape

At the moment there are four instant polls that asked who won the presidential debate, and all four say Biden, by margins roughly corresponding to his national poll numbers, or better.  Most commentators say this as well, noting it was his sharpest performance.  The best that is being said for Trump is that he wasn't as obnoxious as in the first debate, and some Republicans are taking some solace from this, hoping that Trump voters who were uneasy about him were reassured.  Maybe.  But on balance, no.

Nor did Trump "stop the bleeding" as one network commentator suggested.  Instead, Joe Biden sealed the deal.  He came across as competent and caring.  That's the reassurance any wavering voters are looking for.  CNN had a group of 15 or so undecided voters in North Carolina.  After the debate, none of them thought Trump won.  More importantly, of the nine that said they were now decided, all nine chose Biden.

Of course that's not proof.  But it confirms my sense of it.  Just about everyone now realizes that the decisive issue is going to be character.  On child separations alone, Trump lost the character issue.  

But the debate did not produce what I consider the most significant political news of the day.  That was the FiveThirtyEight/Nate Silver projection that turnout for the election will total 154 million.  The  projected range is 144 to 165 million.  They saw those voter enthusiasm numbers I pointed out yesterday.

That's a major turnout election.  In 2016 turnout was 137 million.  Except for maybe a few states and downballot elections, there is nothing about high turnout that is bad for Democrats, especially now.  Turnout on the high side tends to validate poll numbers (the mediocre turnout was a major problem in 2016.)

The last round of polls will begin appearing next week, taken after this debate.  What turnout on the order of 154 million likely means is that, in figuring margins in state polls and national polls, you should consider Trump's number as the maximum he will get on Nov. 3, and Biden's number as the minimum.  Because turnout could be even higher.  Then add the early votes (including mail-ins) already sent at about the rate of the polls up to now, which have been pretty consistent nationally, at the proportion of the likely total vote.  (Right now it's something like 60 to 80 million votes already cast.) 

High turnout most likely means that the candidate with even a 2 or 3 point lead in the final poll for a given state is likely to win that state on Nov. 3, though it does get tricky with votes already cast.

Right now the Houston Chronicle is touting a poll that shows Biden ahead in Texas.  The New York Times may be the only outfit to poll Kansas, and they have just found that Biden is down by only 7 points there.  Neither of these states should even be close.  It's like saying Trump is ahead in New York and down 7 in California.  And by the way he's not.

Trump must win Florida, North Carolina and Arizona to have a chance.  If Biden wins just one of them, he's all but elected.  He could lose them all and still be elected, provided he wins PA and the upper Midwestern states in which he currently leads by 5 to 10 points.  But if Trump loses Texas, the Republican party will just about be down to six members of the Supreme Court.   

This is Not A Reality Show. This Is Reality.

President Barack Obama is known for his eloquence. But that’s due to more than word choice and cadence or even clarity. He is incisive. In his first speech since the convention, his incisiveness sliced and diced the trumpery and landed square upon the central element at issue in this election. 

 He spoke about the Covid crisis and other individual issues, and cut to the chase of competence and problem-solving, which are not within the realm of the Trump. “This is not a reality show. This is reality,” he said, “ and the rest of us have had to live with the consequences of him proving himself incapable of taking the job seriously.”

 Concerning the Covid crisis he said:

" We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook that would have shown them how to respond before the virus reached our shores. They probably used it to I don’t know, prop up a wobbly table somewhere. We don’t know where that playbook went. Eight months into this pandemic, cases are rising again across this country. Donald Trump isn’t suddenly going to protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself."

 On the economy: "Donald Trump likes to claim he built this economy but America created 1.5 million more jobs in the last three years of the Obama-Biden administration than in the first three years of the Trump-Pence administration. How you figure that? And that was before he could blame the pandemic. Now, he did inherit the longest streak of job growth in American history but just like everything else he inherited, he messed it up. The economic damage he inflicted by botching the pandemic response means he will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to actually lose jobs."

   Healthcare: " Now, they’re trying to dismantle your care in the Supreme court as we speak as quickly as they can in the middle of a pandemic with nothing but empty promises to take its place. It’s shameful. The idea that you would take healthcare away from people at the very moment where people need it most, what is the logic of that?"

  He talked about basic competence and the basis for democratic governance:" Our democracy is not going to work if the people who are supposed to be our leaders lie every day and just make things up. And we’ve just become numb to it. We’ve just become immune to it."

   He called for a return to common American values. “We have to get these values back at the center of public life.” 

 But then he got to the heart of it. He talked about how things would change with a return to those values under Joe Biden. "We’re not going to have a president that goes out of his way to insult anybody who doesn’t support him or threaten them with jail. That’s not normal presidential behavior.... We wouldn’t tolerate it from a high school principal. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a coach. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a co-worker. We wouldn’t tolerate it in our family, except for maybe a crazy uncle somewhere. I mean, why would we expect and accept this from the President of the United States?"

" And why are folks making excuses for that? “Oh, well, that’s just him.” No. There are consequences to these actions. They embolden other people to be cruel and divisive and racist, and it frays the fabric of our society, and it affects how our children see things. And it affects the ways that our families get along. It affects how the world looks at America. That behavior matters. Character matters. “

 And that is turning out to be the central issue of this campaign: character. Voters are frightened by the covid crisis, alarmed about the economy, the prospect of losing healthcare, and issues from racial justice to the climate crisis. But they are sick to death of a loud lying egomanical cartoon psychopath in the White House. And millions of them are eager to reject him, while millions more are quietly willing to reject him. 

 I’ve read reporters in the field who see this. I noted it in a story about the first day of early voting in Wisconsin—a reporter was lucky enough to interview a woman who said she literally did not know who she would vote for when she got into line. She no longer wanted Trump, but somehow she felt that she would betray her Christian religion if she voted against him. But in the end she did, and she told the reporter it was because Joe Biden has empathy, and Trump has none.

 And that in the end is going to make the difference. Because character matters. And this is not a reality show anymore. It is reality. 

Video of Obama's speech in Philly is here.  A transcript is here.

 One More Thing....

The poll numbers continue to show Biden with a strong lead: nationally just below or above 10%, which if it holds will guarantee victory. (The New York Times analysis says that even if the polls are off as much as they were in 2016, Biden would still be getting 309 electoral votes.) But apart from the head-to-head numbers (with three PA polls showing a 7 to 10 point lead for Biden) I spotted two intriguing findings in Wednesday’s batch. 

 A new Pew Research poll shows that only 4% of voters surveyed said they planned to vote for the presidential candidate of one party and a candidate for the federal Senate or House from another party. So-called “ticket splitting” used to be fairly common, but this suggests a huge wave in either blue or red. (This poll also found Biden has a 10 point lead nationally, 52-42. Which by the way is the minimum of what I expect.)

 A new CNBC/Change Research poll finds 91% of likely voters nationally say they are “extremely motivated to vote,” including 92% in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that is further evidence of probable high and even record-breaking turnout, at least before things like voter suppression and interference, both foreign and domestic.

It Has Begun

                                                        Wisconsin early voting today

I’ve voted, and my vote will be counted in the next few days. Opportunities and rules vary from state to state, but voting has begun—with resolve and enthusiasm.  

 And a full two weeks before the official Election Day, it has begun big. That’s especially visible in Early Voting states. 

 In lines that started forming in Georgia at 4 a.m. on the first day of early voting, with Georgians refusing to leave before casting their ballots, even with 4 hour, 6 hour, 11 hour waits.  Think of the determination it takes to do that.

 

On Monday Floridians lined up in the rain in unprecedented numbers on their first day. Twice as many mail-in votes have been received in Florida than in 2016, more than 2 million. Florida is unusual in that it has a tradition of early voting and mail-ins, predominantly by Republicans. Nobody quite knows what it means that this year there are slightly more Democrats. But at the least it signals Democratic enthusiasm and determination to vote.

 On Tuesday, voters lined up in the Wisconsin cold. As the day began, some 30% of the total votes cast there in 2016 had already been cast through absentee ballots. By the end of the day, it was half. 

 Early voting also broke records in Texas, D.C., Ohio, North Carolina, Minnesota and Virginia—so far, everywhere.

 And apparently these are not necessarily all just voters who would have shown up on Election Day anyway. At least 20% of North Carolina early voters didn’t vote in 2016. Early voters are trending younger and more diverse than before, and their numbers and determination suggest a major turnout election, perhaps breaking records.

 The revolt of suburban women against Trump is showing up in early voting—for instance in Michigan suburbs, where most voters were Democratic women.

 

And there’s really something happening in Texas. Despite Texas being the hardest state to vote in, there are signs of huge turnout and interest. In Travis county (which includes Austin) an impossible 97% of eligible voters in the population of some 1.2 million are registered this year. In Bexar County (San Antonio) more than 60% of mail-in votes have already been returned, easily a record. 

 Texans have also been lining up for early voting, and have already cast the most votes in the nation—a number equal to all the votes that Trump got in Texas in 2016.  (In fact this is already the case in 5 states.)

 Even in states of confusion, there are positive signs. Though new (and changing) voting rules are roiling things in Pennsylvania, especially for mail-ins, a record number of (mostly young) poll workers have signed up for Election Day. And that’s also true in other states like Wisconsin, where extra help means faster counts.

 As for mail-in votes like mine, all records are certain to be broken. Based on requests even by late September, some officials expect a majority of ballots to be mailed in this year. 

Since most of those mail-in ballot requests came from Democrats, what’s left for Election Day but Republicans? That’s a big unknown at the moment, but reporting suggests that a lot of early voters went to polling sites because they don’t trust the Trump-corrupted Postal Service chief. They may continue to do so in November. Similarly, if voters keep hearing and reading of rejected mail-in ballots—one of the biggest unknowable factors this year—they may change their plans and vote in person on November 3. 

 Even if most of the votes banked before November 3 came from voters who otherwise would have voted anyway, this frees campaign workers to reach out to more potential voters and get them to the polls on November 3. And if many Democrats have already voted, the expected Election Day thuggery, chicanery, intimidation and suppression won’t have as many targets.

Mail-in votes (at least in states unaccustomed to them) obviously suggest the influence of the Covid Crisis.  But early voting, in addition to suggesting worry about the process, are demonstrating that many voters have made up their minds, and probably want to get this all over with.

 But another big message of early voting that is becoming clear is this determination to vote. It also suggests a very high turnout election—and that favors Biden and the Democrats everywhere.

 So it has begun—but it’s only the beginning.

Poetry Monday: North

North

 “The mind of which we are unaware is aware of us.” R.D. Laing 

 The rising sun not beet

 or blood,

 but sea-rose red.

 I amplified my heartbeat

 one thousand times; 

the animals at first confused,

 then decided I was another

 thunder being. 

 While talking directly to god

 my attention waxed and waned.

 I have a lot on my mind. 

 I worked out

 to make myself as strong

 as water. 

 After all these years

 of holding the world together

 I let it roll down the hill

 into the river.

 One tree leads

 to another,

 walking on

 this undescribed earth.

I have dreamed

 myself back

 to where

 I already am.

 On a cold day

 bear, coyote, cranes.

 On a rainy night

 a wolf with yellow eyes.

 On a windy day

 eleven kestrels looking

 down at me.

 On a hot afternoon

 the ravens floated over

 where I sunk

 myself in the river.

 Way out there

 in unknown country

 I walked at night

 to scare myself. 

 Who is this other,

 the secret sharer,

 who directs the hand

 that twists the heart,

 the voice calling out to me

 between feather and stone

 the hours before dawn?

 Somehow

 I have turned into

 an old brown man

 in a green coat.

 Having fulfilled

 my obligations

 my heart moves lightly

 to this downward dance.

 --Jim Harrison

I think I first became aware of a writer named Jim Harrison in the late 1980s, through his prose pieces in Esquire and Smart, a new magazine for which he wrote a column.  In particular I recall one column that introduced me to the work of Chippewa writer Gerald Vizenor.  Harrison was known for his fiction, and it wasn't long before I was reading it.  He was already famous for the novella "Legends of the Fall," made into a Hollywood film.  One of the first of his fictions I remember reading was the novella "Julip" when it was published in full in Esquire.  He was credited with reviving the novella form (longer than a story, shorter than a novel.)

Since then I've read all of his published novellas and 10 of his 12 novels, plus two volumes of non-fiction.  I continue to believe that his linked novels Dalva and The Road Home are worthy candidates as the Great American Novel of the second half of the 20th century.  I've reviewed several of these books, for (among others) Orion Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Book Review.

But it was a little while before I connected this Jim Harrison to the author of a book of poems I acquired in the early 1970s (Outlyer and Ghazals.)  But they are the same person.  Eventually I caught up with his collection of selected and new poems in the late 90s, titled The Shape of the Journey.  The poem above is in that volume, which had the feeling of elegy, of last words.  Nevertheless he published several more volumes of poems after that, as well as a lot more fiction.

I didn't know Jim Harrison, though I knew or met several people important in his working life, like the poet Denise Levertov, who championed his early work and got his first book published, his lifelong friend and poet Gary Snyder, the writer Jack Turner, even his literary agent, who at one time considered representing me, and offered opinions of a list of my proposed article subjects, approving of all but one, because nobody was interested in shopping malls and American culture.

So if I feel as if I knew him it's because of his words: his writing and his talk in many interviews published over the years.  He shared with Gary Snyder a deep experience in the natural world and an interest in Zen philosophy and meditation.  But he was quite different in other ways, or at least more public about it.  His characters are funny, outrageous, ribald and victims of their vices and their innocence.  We can only guess how much like them Harrison was in his complex life.

Writing was central to Jim Harrison's being, and he felt closest to his poetry.  "To write a poem you must first create a pen that will write what you want to say," he wrote.  "For better or worse, this is the work of a lifetime."  Jim Harrison died suddenly in March 2016, pen in hand.   

Give Biden A Chance: Defeat Mitch McConnell

 Forget Lindsey Graham.  I can see why Democrats salivate when the polls show a close race, but Graham is comparatively hapless.  He's nobody without someone bigger to attach himself to.  The main target now should be Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.  Yes, win the presidency is the first priority, but it's almost useless unless Democrats win the Senate.  And after that, the priority is to cut the head off the evil that the GOP has become, and that's Mitch McConnell.

Apart from Trump, there is no single individual in the government as dangerous to the future.  Mitch McConnell is the embodiment of political evil. And he has been more effectively evil for longer than the regime in the White House. 

 In 2009, at the height of  the Great Recession, with the economy teetering, millions unemployed, families losing homes, industries facing ruin, a leader of the opposition party might put aside partisan politics to work with the new President for the common good in a national--an international--emergency.  Not Mitch McConnell.  He did the opposite.

In an infamous meeting of Republican leaders on Inaugural weekend, McConnell organized a policy of total and complete opposition to everything President Obama and the Democrats in Congress proposed. Even when--as was frequently the case--the proposals included previous Republican demands and policies, and sometimes consisted of ideas previously advocated by Republicans.

Because Mitch McConnell doesn't care about anything but his political power.  H has shown no evidence of a human conscience whatsoever.

 In 2016 he used his power to deny President Obama consideration of his Constitutionally mandated Supreme Court choice, with the bogus excuse that it was too close to the election, then almost a year away.  Now McConnell is about to ram through another nominee far right of the country, while people are already voting in this election, with not even a blush at his own hypocrisy.  His cynicism is as close as he has to a soul.

McConnell engineered the appointment of Trump's divisive Court nominees by one of his first acts as Senate Majority Leader after the current administration took office: he got rid of the standard that a Supreme Court nominee needed 3/5 of the Senate, and instead, for the first time in United States history, mandated that a Justice could be given a lifetime appointment by means of a simple partisan majority.  The 3/5 majority was intended to prevent such naked partisan power polluting the Court. So it was for all of American history until 2017. But McConnell changed all that.

Also in 2016, when the Obama administration conferred with leaders of both parties because of intelligence showing that Russia was attempting to interfere in the election, instead of joining together to fight off this outside danger, McConnell threatened to publicly denounce any efforts to reign Russia in as politically motivated.  The mistake the Obama administration then made was to give into this political blackmail, probably because it seemed most likely that both situations (Russia and the Court) would be quickly remedied when Clinton became President.

Now it's pretty clear that McConnell is going to try to do in 2021 what he did in 2009.  In the throes of a pandemic, in the midst of another Great Recession, in a time of tension over racial justice, and in the last hours in which it might be possible to save the future from runaway climate catastrophes,  McConnell will lead total opposition to anything a Biden administration proposes.

He's already starting by opposing any new stimulus package worth the name, so that a Democratic administration will face a deeper, more intractable recession and a larger, still uncontrolled pandemic.  It does not matter to Mitch McConnell how many people suffer, or what their daily suffering is.  What matters is winning seats in Congress in the next election.

Republicans are into evil pretty deeply. Mitch McConnell makes their evil effective.  But Democrats aren't talking about the Kentucky Senate race, not after the September polls that showed their candidate Amy McGrath behind by double digits.  But McConnell is deeply unpopular in Kentucky.  McGrath has more money to spend on her campaign, although the challenger needs more, and she could always use even more.  And things have changed elsewhere since September.  Democrats can afford to try harder to defeat McConnell, and give themselves a chance to govern.

The Handmaiden's Tale

  

You can’t make this stuff up, or at least you don’t have to, as Margaret Atwood proved in the fiction The Handmaid’s Tale, in which everything she wrote about had already happened in the real world somewhere, at some time. 

 But yes, Republican Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett belonged to a neo-Puritan cult of Catholics called the People of Praise, in which she was officially designated a Handmaiden, the highest category of member to which a woman could aspire, for part of the cult’s ideology was female subservience. The computer-generated photo with the hood inevitably followed.

Among the lesser hypocrisies Republicans are wearing like billboards for mendacity is piously defaming any questions on Barrett’s beliefs as attacks on Christianity or violations of the constitutional religious test, as if they haven’t made careers out of doing all of that and worse themselves, and especially as if these “religious” beliefs don’t have vast social and personal implication in a nation that isn’t officially ruled by prelates.

 Giving them cover is the likes of Miami archbishop Thomas Wenski, who manages to defend Barrett as a handmaiden while condemning Atwood. “That a novelist would ‘culturally appropriate’ this word to use in a distorted way to promote an ideology hostile to the Judeo-Christian patrimony of Western civilization only points to the growing biblical illiteracy of our elites and is indeed very disappointing,” he said.

Wenski’s scholarly defense of the patrimony is obviously biased on its face, even if his earlier foray into politics hadn’t been loudly condemning Notre Dame for inviting President Obama as a commencement speaker because of his policies on abortion. Those policies are actually more in line with the behavior of Catholics than with the rigidity and zealotry that has characterized especially the officials of the Catholic Church in recent decades, particularly in America. The Church also officially outlaws birth control, yet most Catholics have piously ignored that stricture for years.

 But the good news is that Wenski and his ilk may no longer be ascendant. Whatever the long term trends and factors, the shift is happening visibly thanks to the corrupt and immoral regime of Trump.

 Daily events pummel and absorb us, and so not many are noticing what an extraordinary realignment in American politics may be taking place. The number of veteran Republicans who not only are abandoning Trump but personally endorsing the Democratic candidate is the most obvious example. But there are others, including the movement of religious leaders away from Trump and to Biden.

 Last week the Hill reported:

 More than 1,600 faith leaders have endorsed Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president as of Friday, including some who could influence evangelical votes, according to a faith voters outreach group. Vote Common Good, which compiled the endorsements this week, says it is the largest group of clergy to endorse a Democratic candidate for president in modern history.

 The group of endorsements includes prominent evangelical leader Billy Graham’s granddaughter, Jerushah Duford. According to its Executive Director Pastor Doug Pagitt.: “Four years ago, many religious voters decided to look the other way and give Trump a chance, but after witnessing his cruelty and corruption, a growing number of them are turning away from the president." 

 A similar story in the Guardian: 

In July the Public Religion Research Institute found a seven-point drop in white Christian support for Trump, and a Fox News survey in August showed 28% of white evangelicals backed Biden, compared with 16% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.

 The crucial change is the abandonment of the one issue litmus test of abortion. Since probably the 1980s, the “pro-life” hysteria whipped up by zealots completely overcame all other moral and political considerations.

 Now there’s a little room for nuance and complexity, and for a more balanced evaluation.  A group called Pro-life Evangelicals for Biden said that, despite disagreeing with the Democratic candidate’s stance on abortion, “we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore … we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.”

 I emphasize that a statement like that has been unthinkable for the past four decades. From a Catholic it might be called heretical.

 Some of the change is being driven by younger Christians, who see the climate crisis in particular as an overriding moral issue. The recognition that there are other issues with a moral dimension—poverty, racial justice, climate and the environment—and that these may also be “pro-life” in the deeper sense, represents a return to moral rather than ideological evaluations.

 This election is focusing a lot of attention as well by those who are usually quiet. Like the scientists and scientific journals that don’t normally endorse, the enormity of Trump’s ongoing immorality is forcing commitments from some working in a different sphere who prefer to stay above, or at least apart from the fray. In endorsing Biden, Belinda Bauman, the author of Brave Souls: Experiencing the Audacious Power of Empathy, said: “In all my years I’ve never publicly endorsed a candidate. But this year is different – very different. This year we don’t just face a political choice, we face a moral one.” 

 All of this is reflected in voters as well as religious leaders. In terms of numbers, the big movement is not among Protestant Evangelicals (still mostly identifying as Trump supporters)—it’s Catholics.

 An EWTN News-RealClear Opinion poll last month found that Biden holds a 12-point lead over Trump among likely voters who identify as Catholic. In 2016 Trump won Catholics overall by 7%, with a 23 pt. margin among white Catholics. Now Biden's deficit with white Catholics is down to 7 points.  (It helps, of course, that Biden is himself Catholic.)

 In 5 swing states surveyed by Vote Common Good, Biden is getting 16% swing over 2016, which means that he is winning the Catholic vote in these states, where Trump won the Catholic vote in 2016 by 14 points. Biden narrows his losses among Evangelicals with a 7% swing from 2016.

So at the moment an archconservative handmaiden is about to join the real American college of cardinals (the six Catholics of nine Justices on the Supreme Court) to issue her infallible edicts potentially increasing suffering of human souls to satisfy her rigid ideology, it is a posture rapidly being abandoned within her Church.

And if anyone's knee is tempted to jerk into "anti-Catholic prejudice" position, believe me, after twelve years in Catholic schools etc., I know prejudice against Catholics when I see it.  This ain't it.

One More Thing...

Barrett's parade of non answers in her first day of testimony,  so similar even in language that they resembled the hoodlums endlessly repeating I decline to answer on the grounds that what I say may tend to incriminate me to congressional hearings of yore, not only pleaded ignorance of the federal law she supposedly will apply, but demonstrated a bias towards legal technicalities over the impact of decision on real people, even when they number in the millions.  But that's not what the Supreme Court is about, or at least it wasn't.

In fact, considering the real world impact of decisions was so integral that those appointed to the Court often had real world political experience,  It's only recently that Justices were chosen exclusively from the higher ranks of judges, almost always federal judges.  But Justices who had not been judges, or had experience beyond the bench, include some of the most distinguished.  Justice Earl Warren was the Governor of California.  Louis Brandeis was a socially conscious crusading lawyer.  William O. Douglas served as chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  Felix Frankfurter helped form the American Civil Liberties Union.  Stephen Breyer had federal administrative experience before joining the federal Court of Appeals.

These judges would never ignore the consequences of vanishing the US system of healthcare over a narrow interpretation of language.  But apparently the idea of considering the lives of millions of men, women and children has never even occurred to Barrett.

If she is confirmed it will be a political travesty, thanks to Mitch McConnell's unilateral undermining of the Constitutional intent.  While appointments and confirmations have always had a political component, McConnell turned it into a nakedly partisan exercise in 2016 by blocking even a hearing for President Obama's constitutionally mandated appointment, and then transformed the process into a literal partisan one in 2017 by changing the rules so that a Supreme Court Justice is confirmed by a simple majority vote.  For generations it had required two-thirds of the Senate, until 1975, when it was changed to require a vote of three-fifths of the Senate.  Views of the minority--of all minorities--had to be taken seriously then.  That's how the great Justices were confirmed.  That's how the Court became a respected as well as powerful institution.  But not anymore.    

Poetry Monday: Into October

Into October

 These must be the colors of returning

 the leaves darkened now but staying on

 into the bronzed morning among the seed heads

 and the dry stems and umbers of October

 the secret season that appears on its own

 a recognition without a sound

 long after the day when I stood in its light

 out on the parched barrens beside a spring

 all but hidden in a tangle of eglantine

 and picked the bright berries made of that summer 

 W.S. Merwin

Fall Is Coming

 It's scary how high he is.  If the crash is proportional, it's ominous.  If there's anyone in America who should not be near steroids, it's Trump.  And he's getting closer to the Covid danger zone.  

Meanwhile, underneath the headlines of the officials reporting their infections,  the secondary spread to the innocent has begun.  Kellyanne Conway's daughter, who outed her mother's infection, has reportedly tested positive.  The wife of a New York Times White House reporter who tested positive, has herself tested positive.  They join the innocent victims of this regime--the children separated from their parents at the border, the thousands needlessly infected with the plague of our time, Americans facing evictions, hunger, poverty, inaccessible medical care, despair, and the millions whose lives are shredded by these viral failures, including schoolchildren.  And more.

Joe Biden (polling at 57% and 16 points ahead in the CNN poll) spoke clearly and sanely at Gettysburg:

"This pandemic is not a red state or blue state issue. This virus doesn’t care whether you live, or where you live, what political party you belong to, it affects us all. It will take anyone’s life. It’s a virus. It’s not a political weapon."

Of course it is evidence of how insane our politics have become that this (as well as most of the rest of this speech) has to be said.  But it does have to be said.  Trump and the R party have raised the denial characteristic of our time to a feverish high, four weeks before the election. The fall is coming.

Poetry Monday: Remember

 Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,

 know each of the star's stories.

 Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time.  Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath.  You are evidence of 

her life, her mother's, and her's.

Remember your father.  He is your life, also.

Remember the earth, whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too.  Talk to them,

listen to them.  They are alive poems.

Remember the wind.  Remember her voice.  She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are the universe and this

universe is you.  

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

---Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo (Este Mvskokvike or Muscogee) is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. She is also a musician, composer and actor.  This poem is from her collection She Had Some Horses.  I heard her read in the late 90s and met her briefly at the book-signing table afterwards.  I remember.

  

High Irresponsibility

Sunday continued the pattern of high political and medical irresponsibility by the White House.  But the most irresponsible act by far is the failure to keep vice president Pence in Washington, and in the White House itself.  It is Constitutionally irresponsible.

Medically, inadequate and contradictory information suggests to doctors that Donald Trump's condition is worse or at least more dangerous than both public pronouncements and White House/  Trump campaign behavior.  That is such a widespread conclusion that it was in front page headlines of the New York Times and Washington Post, particularly since Trump is being treated with steroids,  not only usually reserved for the very ill but potentially harmful in less advanced cases. 

This alone--plus the characteristically sudden changes in this disease--would politically and constitutionally demand that the Vice president be physically able to assume the office of president at a moment's notice.  Instead Pence is out campaigning, heading now for Utah.

Trump's doctor Conley is his extraordinary Sunday press conference as much as said that he is lying about Trump's condition because Trump is watching.  Even in trying to explain away his omissions and misinformation Saturday he said "In doing so it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily true."  Not necessarily true?

Presumably the suggestion that Trump could be discharged on Monday is part of that keeping up his spirits strategy, though Trump's ride to greet supporters, sealed in with Secret Service officers, demonstrates that his medical people as well as political minions will risk anybody's life in order to mollify the boss.  Even when the boss is under suspicion of himself being the Superspreader.

The hope that this life-threatening experience would change Trump or the White House and transform them into more responsible leaders is foundering.  Trump is eager to get back to a rally, and one of his White House minions says there will be no changes in how they happen.

But this is a continuing story of reality overcoming denial.  I would be surprised even if the vice presidential debate actually happens on Thursday, let alone Trump leaving Walter Reed on Monday.

Also on Sunday, three new national polls were released, and Biden has increased his lead in all three.  The Yahoo/You Guv poll shows him with an 8 point lead, 48% to 40%, up from a 5 point lead.  Reuters/Ipso has Biden ahead by 10 points, 51%-41.  The most dramatic increase and highest numbers comes in the NBC/WSJ poll of registered voters where Biden gained 6 points to lead by a whopping 14 points, 53%-39.  All of these polls were taken since the debate.

An ABC/Ipso poll taken since Trump's Covid diagnosis (which hasn't released head to head numbers) found that near three-quarters of respondents agreed that Trump didn't take the risk of Covid seriously enough, which includes 43% of Republicans.  The percentage of  those concerned about Covid rose to 81% from 72% two weeks ago, with most of that 10 point jump coming from Republicans and Independents.  It therefore seems likely that Trump is not getting a sympathy bump, though he may be a cautionary tale.

The White House Black Hole

 Early Saturday, former Gov. Chris Christie announced he had tested positive.  Christie had been part of Trump's debate prep.  Another US Senator tested positive, and the significance of this was that he was not at the SC nominee event but met with an infected colleague later.  

Then Saturday night word came (from Bloomberg News and NYT Maggie Haberman) that Nick Luna, Trump's White House "body man" tested positive.  This is significant because it is highly likely that he was infected by Trump.  Not every infected person infects others. 

 Luna is also married to a senior advisor to Jared Kushner.  Which brings up another point--the ripple effect on the families of infected Trump insiders.  Or even family members who were present at events, such as the children of the SC nominee, present at the White House last weekend.  Since the public has learned of many of the reported positives only after the information leaked, we really don't know if family members have been infected. 

Meanwhile, official information on Trump's condition remains vague.  Saturday morning included the strange spectre of Trump's doctor providing a sunny assessment, and the WH chief of staff immediately afterwards cautioning reporters that Trump's condition was worse than reported on Friday--a situation, if expected to occur at all, would be expected to be reversed, with the doctor being frank and the political staffer offering a more optimistic view.

Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair reported that sources told him Trump's condition was alarming on Friday, when his temperature spiked and his oxygen levels dropped.  Two sources said Trump had heart palpitations during the night.  Saturday Trump appeared well enough to make a short video from his hospital office but acknowledged that doctors warned his condition could change, over the next few days and even weeks.

The White House itself has been a black hole of information, even to White House staffers and in particular to the non political White House staff, the people who keep the place running, often for multiple administrations.

This May Be Just the Beginning

As the positives mounted up among high ranking Republicans, it looks as if most if not all of them were present at the introduction of the SC nominee last weekend.  Several who have symptoms started noticing them on Friday--almost a week later.  But the week that followed was full of activity among these Trump insiders (including Trump), involving many more insiders and also members of the public as well as big donors: the debate on Tuesday (where the Trump family in particular was present), Trump's private meeting and his public speech on Wednesday in Minnesota (when some observers felt he started showing signs of fatigue and congestion; notably, some saw fatigue even on Tuesday), and (after Trump and his aides knew of Hope Hicks illness) a fundraiser on Thursday.  So there were many more opportunities for people to be infected, that have not tested positive yet, but may test positive in days to come .

As for those who have been infected, the course of the illness also could be long.  Especially in older patients, it may take a week or ten days of moderate symptoms before a sudden turn for the worse.

Because each case is so individual in symptoms and time, the uncertainties multiply as the positives increase.  That the head of the RNC and the head of the Trump campaign tested positive as well as White House aides begin ripples of consequences and uncertainties.  And indeed, at least two Senators tested positive, and they have met with others since last weekend when they likely were infected.  

So for all the talk of people recovering in five days, and for those who have tested negative but who might have been exposed during the week, the story may be just beginning.

Who Was the Superspreader?

 This all started with the report that presidential confidant Hope Hicks had symptoms and tested positive for Covid 19.  The news that Donald and Melania Trump tested positive late Thursday obviously dominated attention.  But the one report I've seen on Hicks said that she is quite sick, with fever and--the telltale Covid sign--loss of smell.  She is also reportedly pissed off at the lax attitudes and practices at the White House, and especially pissed off that the impression has been given--by Trump himself--that she is the source of the Trumps' infection.  In terms of behavior, she is probably the least likely member of the inner circle.

Now that we have some sort of timeline, and a number of other positives, it seems that she probably wasn't the source, and not the superspreader, if there was one.  The common denominator known so far was Trump himself.  He was present at events attended by all the positives so far.  This doesn't mean he was the superspreader, but he can't yet be ruled out as such.

While other Trump family members and others in the inner circle tested negative today, the timeline suggests that infections may be present that haven't shown up yet.  For those exposed to Trump at Tuesday's debate, for example, an infection might not show up until Sunday, on average.  

Otherwise, on Friday evening, each report makes Trump's condition more symptomatic and more serious.  Since no one can trust official pronouncements from this White House, people who claim to know are given more credibility.  An unfortunate situation to say the least.

Presidential Covid Crisis: First Thoughts

 I'm writing this a few hours after the news broke that Donald and Melania Trump have both tested positive for Covid 19 but the White House doctor stated they are both feeling well so far.  They were tested because Hope Hicks, a close aide, tested positive after exhibiting symptoms.  Since it is around 5am in the eastern US, further news is yet to come.  So in this lacuna, I'm having these thoughts...

1.  If both Trumps tested positive, it seems likely that one of them infected the other.  Which means that one of them has likely been infectious for perhaps days.  Donald Trump in particular may have infected a number of people, including Joe Biden.  Shouting at somebody for an hour and a half even from six feet away theoretically could do it.  

What about vp Pence?  Will he be on the contact tracing list?  Negative tests right now don't mean anyone is out of danger--they may be vulnerable for 10 days to 2 weeks.  And what about members of Congress? Their contact has been limited, but they are politicians after all.  This could be a long list.

2.  Tired of waiting for the White House to come to an agreement, Nancy Pelosi and the House passed a $2.2 trillion covid crisis relief bill.  Now the contrast of the White House and the first family receiving highest quality medical monitoring and care at taxpayer expense while millions suffer from lack of health care, from unemployment including new rounds of layoffs, decreased benefits from the federal government and financially devastated states, becomes pretty stark.  Suddenly there might be an agreement.

3. This is the kind of moment that usually brings the country together.  But the ill will created by this White House, and particularly its lying and stonewalling which casts vital information now into doubt, may create a very different dynamic.  This happens on the same day as revelations that cast even Melania Trump is a very poor light.  

4. As for the campaign, when Richard Nixon injured himself in 1960 and couldn't campaign for several days, John Kennedy voluntarily took himself off the campaign trail for that time.  This is a much more complicated case.  For one thing, Joe Biden may well go into quarantine if his doctors feel he might have been exposed to the virus from Trump or others at the debate.  It seems very unlikely that the presidential debates, already in question, will go ahead.  But will Biden do his scheduled tv town hall?  What about the v.p. debates?

5. Longer term, there may be a sympathy vote for Trump in new polls, or if he remains without symptoms and apparently recovers, he may use this experience to bolster his contention that the virus is overrated.  First media reaction was to suggest that this will devastate an already losing campaign.  It might get more complicated.

All of this is preliminary to the drama that will play out for the next two weeks: the Symptoms Watch, the eyes on the helicopter that might be headed for Walter Reed.  And if Trump gets sick--and as everyone is repeating, he's at high risk for bad outcomes because of age and overweight--then people will start getting nervous about this White House consisting of extremist hacks and amateurs with no regard for the country and its institutions but only for partisan politics and ideology, being in charge of the presidency and any necessary changes.  

One More Month

 Immediate political evaluations of the first Trump v. Biden debate are overwhelmingly that Trump lost, if only because he didn’t win. He is behind by a lot. National polls still provide Biden a 7 to 10 point lead, and (according to USA Today’s averages) his lead increased over the past week, not only nationally but in all states in play except Texas and Georgia, and some polls suggest Biden is ahead in them as well. Notably Biden increased his lead substantially in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. So Trump needed a win to change the dynamics.

 David Siders begins his Politico piece on the debate with the entire story in a nutshell:

 The mayhem Donald Trump subjected Americans to on Tuesday might have helped him if Joe Biden had disintegrated. Biden didn’t.

Josh Marshall put it this way:

" I think it was somewhere between bad and disastrous for President Trump... I saw nothing tonight that seems at all likely to improve things for President Trump. Nothing. Biden did fine. Not great. But fine. I’d say he had a B performance with some B+ or even A- minus moments. But for him that’s fine. He’s ahead. He’s not running as best debater. He’s not running as most dynamic figure. He’s not competing for most unstable affect. He’s running as the guy who will end the nightmare."

There were moments that will be repeated but the overall impression for most was that Trump’s constant interruptions of both Biden and the moderator violated all the agreed upon rules as well as the rules of civil political debate for the US presidency, and blew up the debate and perhaps the presidential debate format. This earned universal condemnation, even from Fox News. (Their panel may have sung a different tune had not the abused moderator been their own Chris Wallace.)

 Another Wallace—Nicole at MSNBC—in fact very powerfully characterized Trump’s tactics as abuse, in its contemporary sense. She also suggested that Trump’s approach was not spontaneous, it was planned and in some sense rehearsed by the campaign. But why? she asked.

 Rachel Maddow voiced the answer that others suggested more obliquely. Speaking of Trump she said: “He’s not running against his opponent. He’s running against the election.”

 And what does that mean? 

 After my most recent news fast, I awoke to hear Lindsay Graham asserting that of course Republicans would honor the process of the election. If the Supreme Court says the winner is Biden, they will accept that, he said.

 And I said: the Supreme Court? What happened to the election, which is traditionally decided by totaling up the votes?

 That (and a column whose author I no longer recall that asserted that Trump no longer cares about winning, he’s setting up to stay in power by other means) alerted me to the fact that this insane strategy is not Homegrown Hitler’s alone but the national Republican party’s.

 There are various scenarios for a Trump retention, regardless of the votes. Except for Trump simply refusing to leave—not a winning strategy, unless the Secret Service and the rest of the federal government violate the Constitution—the scenarios for accomplishing this are complicated and require every court case, every decision by every state legislature involved, etc. to go the same Homegrown Hitler way.

 And that’s even before factoring in something that seems to get forgotten in these discussions: there is more than one election on election day, more than one office, and except for the presidency—which includes the intervening electoral college stuff-- they are decided directly by a plurality of votes. Notably every member of the House of Representatives is up for election, and a third of the Senate. Votes have to be counted for those offices as well, which complicates the politics of challenging results. Republicans as well as Democrats don’t take office until their votes are counted, which provides motivation for counting them.

 Moreover, the new Congress takes office on January 3, almost three weeks before the President’s term of office is officially done. The dynamics of forcing a presidential election to be thrown to the House may be greatly affected if, as is likely, there are more Democrats in Congress.

 So what about the Supreme Court? So far this year, challenges asserting fraud in mail-in votes have been notably unsuccessful in courts. The Supreme Court would have to reverse every lower court decision. The suggested strategy is to get votes thrown out—or the election entirely negated—in a few key states. Each case has to be decided on its own merits, and the Rs may have to win them all.

 There may be a test case in the Supreme Court before the election. Republicans are challenging a Pennsylvania decision to extend the time that mailed votes may be received in order to be counted. If the Court doesn’t take this case, or if it decides against the challenge, the whole house of cards could fall right then and there.

 But while understanding the nefarious intentions here, which amount to an attempted coup, and while being prepared to counter such activities, they are all unlikely at this point.

Even if the polls are wrong, not by the margin of error, but by 50%, Joe Biden would still win the presidency in a landslide. 

 The determination of early voters to get their votes counted suggest that more Democrats may vote in-person than had planned to. In any case, people voting against Trump are very determined, and will do whatever is necessary. They want the nightmare to be over. 

 As for election day, there are some interesting dynamics in Pennsylvania (which has started early voting), and the polls in Florida and North Carolina are close, so it still a big unknown whether the outcome of the presidential election will be known by election night, but it is more likely now that it will be pretty evident, at least to analysts and perhaps to everyone.

 Court cases in a few states may well not make enough of a difference. The margins may well be too great in others. The presidential election will not be close, and while the 49 state victory is a thing of the past, this could be an historic landslide by other measures. A Democratic majority in the Senate is also likely. 

 This may yet require some heroics, especially by voters who refuse to be intimidated, bamboozled or dismissed. There are ample opportunities for Republican officeholders—like certain US Senators facing votes to rush through a SC nomination—to wake up from their fatal trance and do the right thing. The stakes are basic and extreme— the future of the US and the future of the Earth.

Poetry Monday: Among School Children

I 

 I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; 

A kind old nun in a white hood replies;

 The children learn to cipher and to sing,

 To study reading-books and history, 

To cut and sew, to be neat in everything

 In the best modern way--the children's eyes

 In momentary wonder stare upon

 A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

 V 

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap

 Honey of generation had betrayed,

 And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape

 As recollection or the drug decide, 

Would her son, did she but see that shape

 With sixty or more winters on its head,

 A compensation for the pang of his birth,

 Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

 VII

 Both nuns and mothers worship images,

 But those the candles light are not as those

 That animate a mother's reveries,

 But keep a marble or a bronze repose.

 And yet they too break hearts--O Presences 

That passion, piety or affection knows,

 And that all heavenly glory symbolize--

 O self-born mocker of man's enterprise;

 VIII 

Labour is blossoming or dancing where

 The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

 Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

 Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil,

 O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, 

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

 O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

 How can we know the dancer from the dance? 

 --William Butler Yeats Four stanzas from "Among School Children" (1927)

The photo above, taken recently, is of a building on S. Hamilton Ave. in Greensburg, PA that was the Sacred Heart School from 1922 to the early 1960s.  This was my first school as a first grader in 1952.  It was the first building outside my home and my grandmother's house where I'd ever spent an entire day.  I was there nearly every weekday of the school year through the fifth grade, until June 1957.  I remember details of this building as it was then, inside and out, very clearly. 

 Instead of the three windows seen in this photos, there were walls of tall windows from near the edges of the building to that arched central area on both sides of it. In height they reached from slightly above desk level to nearly the ceiling.  There were four long classrooms: two facing the street, two the back.  Another makeshift classroom was eventually assembled in the basement.  Until I started school, the basement had previously been Sacred Heart Church.  It is where I attended my first Mass, and made up little stories for myself, to explain what the Latin singing meant.  

In my time there was a kind old nun or two among the nuns our teachers.  Old to us anyway.  But there was also violence, the rule of the ruler across the outstretched hand and more, the body "bruised to pleasure soul."

Sacred Heart School was abandoned when the newly constituted St. Paul's parish finished building a modern new school just outside of Greensburg in the baby booming 60s.  That school in turn has been abandoned, as Catholic schools in the area contracted to one building complex on Main Street in Greensburg, at least part of which is quite old.  The old Sacred Heart building on Hamilton has had many tenants and uses since it ceased being a school.  For awhile the basement was a dance studio for young girls.