Charles P. Pierce/Esquire:
I Used to Take Comfort That This President* Was Too Lazy to Go Full Erdogan
But I didn't take into account how many people would sign on to do the work for him
Nonetheless, having officials of the United States government—which still, theoretically, anyway, works for all of us—openly talking about armed insurrection never has worked out well in the past.
It’s the enablers, folks.
Ides of September and a stable and durable race, so next up from All the President’s Men:
• Ron Johnson, Russian agent, releases Burisma propaganda
• Bill Barr lies about John Durham report less than 60 days pre election
• Debates start Sept 29
Meanwhile people are starting to vote, so time is running out for Trump.
WI +6, MN +16. MN seems off the table and WI competitive but leans Biden. Need more polling in NV, NH, GA, IA, OH.
As for FL:
Not gonna be low turnout.
Marc Caputo/Politico:
‘A heart pumping blue blood:’ How fast-growing Orlando threatens Trump’s reelection
Republicans fear the increasingly Democratic metro area could deliver a massive vote against the president in Florida, a state he can’t afford to lose.
As the population swells in Orange, it’s also exporting Democrats to neighboring communities, like once-red Seminole County.
“If you told me four years ago that Seminole would go blue, I would’ve laughed in your face. But it’s changing,” said Anthony Pedicini, a top Republican operative involved in state legislative races.
“It’s spreading from Orlando into the surrounding areas. Just look at the highway system, it’s like a heart pumping blue blood in every direction from Orlando,” he said.
Frederick Baron and Dennis Aftergut/USA Today:
Dannehy joins Justice honor roll by resigning from politicized Durham FBI Russia probe
Career lawyers should protest or resign like Dannehy to flag partisan misuse of the Justice Department in the election, our core democratic moment.
The Justice Department has delivered an early "October surprise" — and it's probably not one that Attorney General William Barr had in mind.
It came last week when a highly respected and experienced prosecutor, Nora R. Dannehy, unexpectedly resigned as senior aide to Connecticut's U.S. Attorney, John Durham. Durham is leading the Barr-sponsored investigation of the FBI’s own investigation of alleged 2016 Trump campaign Russia connections and Dannehy was his No. 2.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
If Trump loses, you can thank women
Trump still leads among White non-college-educated women, but in what must be a three-alarm fire for Republicans, the pollsters report, “Of the women who usually vote for Republicans, 25% are voting for Biden this year (71% are voting for Trump)…
If you want to know what those ads from the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump are doing, this is it. They are peeling off the most susceptible Republicans, who tend to be women. Women simply do not like Trump. Fifty-five percent of women — including 50 percent in battleground states — have an unfavorable view of him.
Ron Brownstein/CNN:
Why the stability of the 2020 race promises more volatility ahead
The durability of both support and opposition to Trump shows how the motivation for voters' choices is shifting from transitory measures of performance, such as the traditional metrics of peace and prosperity, toward bedrock attitudes about demographic, cultural and economic change. The immovability of the battle lines in 2020 captures how thoroughly the two parties are now unified -- and separated -- by their contrasting attitudes toward these fundamental changes, with Trump mobilizing overwhelming support from the voters who are hostile to them, no matter what else happens, and the contrasting coalition of Americans who welcome this evolution flocking toward the Democrats.
At least we have an idea why the enablers are doing what they are doing. Hint: it’s not economic anxiety.
Jeff Wise/New York:
The People v. Donald J. Trump
The criminal case against him is already in the works — and it could go to trial sooner than you think.
It may seem unlikely that Trump will ever wind up in a criminal court. His entire life, after all, is one long testament to the power of getting away with things, a master class in criminality without consequences, even before he added presidentiality and all its privileges to his arsenal of defenses. As he himself once said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” But for all his advantages and all his enablers, including loyalists in the Justice Department and the federal judiciary, Trump now faces a level of legal risk unlike anything in his notoriously checkered past — and well beyond anything faced by any previous president leaving office. To assess the odds that he will end up on trial, and how the proceedings would unfold, I spoke with some of the country’s top prosecutors, defense attorneys, and legal scholars. For the past four years, they have been weighing the case against Trump: the evidence already gathered, the witnesses prepared to testify, the political and constitutional issues involved in prosecuting an ex-president. Once he leaves office, they agree, there is good reason to think Trump will face criminal charges. “It’s going to head toward prosecution, and the litigation is going to be fierce,” says Bennett Gershman, a professor of constitutional law at Pace Law School who served for a decade as a New York State prosecutor.
STATNews:
The ethics of pausing a vaccine trial in the midst of a pandemic: a conversation with Ruth Faden
The revelation that AstraZeneca paused its clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine has focused attention on the company and the clinical trial process.
The hold occurred after a participant in the trial developed symptoms consistent with a rare but serious spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis.
To better understand the ethics of vaccine trials in the time of coronavirus, I talked with Ruth Faden, a Johns Hopkins bioethicist with a special interest in vaccine development. Here’s a lightly edited version of our conversation.
Steve Schale:
Everything You Wanted To Know About Florida, But Were Afraid To Ask - The 2020 Version
Pull up a chair friends, and it is time for a little chat about your favorite state – the place that is, as Congressman Charlie Crist often remarks, the prettiest state with the prettiest name. That of course is La Florida.
So, what is it?
Almost 22 million residents -- and of the most diverse places anywhere.
World’s 17th largest economy - home to the wealthiest zipcode in America, and several of the poorest.
10 media markets - including 3 of the top 18 in America.
Florida Man. Florida Woman. Florida Man’s pet alligator. Florida Man taking pet alligator into a gas station to buy beer.
10 counties with a population larger than Wyoming.
Deer eating pythons in the Everglades. Herpes monkeys. Brain eating amoeba.
Frozen iguanas injuring people as they fall from trees.
7 statewide elections since 2010 that were decided by less than 1.2%.
Over 51 million votes cast for President since 1992. Less than 20,000 separate Republicans and Democrats.
Gardner Minshew.
Florida.
You got to read the bad with the good, the bad from ex Jesse Helms aide and ex-Never Trumper Danielle Pletka:
Here’s your answer, from other Post columnists:
Alexandra Petri:
I can’t believe you’re forcing me to vote for Trump, which I definitely didn’t already want to do
Dan Drezner:
I never considered voting for Trump in 2016. I may be scared into voting for him this year because of my exaggerated fears.
Take a look at this video re a quick summary of how last night’s town hall went:
Here is Brian Stelter/CNN talking to the participants:
Venturing outside the Fox bubble, Trump faced voter questions and didn't sufficiently answer
Trump talked about the pre-Covid economy and cited "tremendous African American support." Day pressed him for historical context. When was America "great?" Trump still didn't answer. "I don't feel like he adequately answered it," Day told me, "but essentially in doing so, he actually did. America was never great for black Americans in the ghetto." …
"He didn't answer anything," Tubiana told me afterward. "He was lying through his teeth."Tubiana is like so many people: As the pandemic raged, "I was feeling scared, alone and powerless," he said. He said "there were failures of government on both sides of the aisle" last winter and spring, but he felt like Trump stopped providing leadership as the crisis continued from spring to summer. He said he thought Trump stuck to "canned responses" at the town hall. …
"He didn't answer my question," Blaque said.
She said she left the event fuming -- but resolved to do something about it. Going into the town hall, she said, she was "on the fence" about voting at all in 2020. That's why she qualified as an uncommitted voter by ABC's standard. But now, she said, "I'm going to vote for Biden." Trump "reanimated me to vote."